The newspapers, when it became evident that the siege of Paris was, after all, destined to take place, had to adopt measures to secure correspondents who were prepared to endure the hardships of that siege in order to furnish information to the British public. The most famous of these correspondents was Mr. Labouchere, who furnished theDaily Newswith the most entertaining journal of a siege ever written by a besieged resident. On behalf of theLeeds MercuryI engaged the services of another well-known journalist to act as our representative during the siege. This gentleman very naturally required a considerable sum of money in advance for his maintenance during the investment. He had written one or two admirable letters in anticipation of the siege, and I cheerfully sent him the amount for which he asked. He received it just before the Prussian lines closed round Paris, and I do not remember that I ever heard from him again. The letters which it is to be presumed he wrote to theLeeds Mercurynever reached that journal.
When the investment began, and Paris was cut off from the outer world, we onlookers with the strip of sea between had certain visible signs of the reality of the siege offered to us in our very midst. The front page of theTimesfurnished one of these signs. Day after day, for weeks at a stretch, the whole of that page was occupied by messages from the French outside Paris to their friends and relatives within the walls. At first English readers were puzzled by this phenomenon. The investment of the city was very strict, and it was difficult to understand how the newspaper could be smuggled inside the barriers; but presently the truth was made known. This page of theTimeswas part of the machinery of the famous pigeon post which connected the outside world with Paris during its long beleaguerment. The page was photographed on a microscopic scale. The film on which the photograph was printed was carried into Paris by a pigeon, a magic-lantern was used to enlarge the photograph, and the messages it contained were copied by Post Office officials, and forwarded to their different destinations. Such a postal service was, I imagine, unique. It was certainly most ingenious.
Another sign of the siege of Paris was presented during those bright autumn days by the appearance of Piccadilly, especially on a Sunday afternoon. I generally spent Sunday in London, and during that autumn, when walking on a Sunday in Piccadilly, I noticed more than once that the majority of the well-dressed persons promenading on the northern side of the street were Frenchmen—most of them wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. They were chiefly Imperialists, for whom there was no place in France under the newrégime, and they had flocked to London literally in thousands, so that the great West End thoroughfare resounded at times with the French tongue.
One feature of that autumn was the unwonted magnificence of the displays of the aurora borealis. I never saw such fine auroras before or since. Night after night the sky was lighted up by the brilliantly coloured shafts of quivering flame. It is hardly surprising that the vulgar should have associated the phenomenon with the wonderful tragedy which was being enacted so near to our shores. The most ignorant, however, did not regard it as an omen. They honestly believed that they saw in the heavens the reflection of the glare from burning Paris.
I did not settle down to my editorial work in Leeds easily. Everything drew me back to London, and I told the proprietors of theMercurythat I did not mean to retain my post after the war came to an end. But at this point a fresh piece of good fortune came to me, though it arose out of a deplorable calamity. TheCaptain, the experimental vessel built by Captain Cowper Coles on designs that many high naval authorities had declared to be dangerously unsound, capsized in the Bay of Biscay, and sank with nearly every soul on board, including her designer, Captain Coles himself. There had been a great newspaper discussion about theCaptain, and theTimeshad taken a vigorous part in it against the Admiralty authorities and in favour of Captain Coles. On the morning on which the news of the disaster was announced, theTimesin its leading article maintained that the catastrophe was in no sense due to the instability of the ship, and urged that anotherCaptainshould be forthwith built. TheLeeds Mercury, on the other hand, took what I regarded as the commonsense view, and insisted that for the future the opinions of the trained experts of the Admiralty should be preferred to those of irresponsible enthusiasts, even though they happened to be, like Captain Cowper Coles, men of genius.
Mr. Edward Baines, like most old journalists, had a profound respect for the wisdom of theTimes, and he was very much disturbed when he found that theLeeds Mercurytook a directly opposite view of the disaster to that of "the leading journal." He expressed to me, in his usual friendly and courteous manner, his regret that I had expressed myself so strongly, and evidently felt that what theTimessaid must be true. But on the following day theTimes, after an interval for reflection, completely changed its position, admitted that the design of theCaptainmust have been at fault, recalled the fact that the catastrophe had been foreseen by the highest authorities, and protested against the building of any more ships of the same character. There was nothing surprising in this change of front, for the first views of the paper had been obviously inconsistent with the facts and with commonsense. But Mr. Baines was immensely impressed by the fact that theLeeds Mercuryhad grasped the essential truth before theTimes. He greatly exaggerated the merit of his editor in the matter, came to the conclusion that I had become indispensable to the paper, and would not rest until I had entered into a new and binding agreement with him to continue my editorship on conditions that were greatly to my own advantage.
Thus this grave disaster to an English ship led to my final relinquishment of the idea of returning to London as a literary free lance, and to my settling in Leeds as permanent editor of theMercury. Gradually my life in the town of my adoption became more agreeable to me. I made friends who were kind to me with the characteristic kindness of Yorkshire. I began to feel the power, as well as the responsibility, of my position; and I learned before long that, even in connection with the local affairs of a great community, a man can render services to his fellow citizens quite as important as any that he can render on the larger platform of public life.
It was at the close of 1870 that I first made the personal acquaintance of a man to whom I was afterwards to be deeply and permanently indebted. This was Monckton Milnes, first Lord Houghton. There was no better known figure in London society in those days than Lord Houghton. But he was much more than a figure in society. Delightful as host,raconteur, poet, and man of letters, he was more admirable still as the generous and willing servant of those who needed help. He had his foibles, his likes and his dislikes; but he was not one of those philanthropists who wait to be asked for their help. Where he was attracted towards anyone he was eager to aid, not only without solicitation, but at times even against the will of the beneficiary himself. I have known many kind men, many true friends, in the course of my life; I have known none whose kindness was more unstinted, more constant, or more generous than that of Lord Houghton. He had come to Leeds in December, 1870, to attend some public meeting, and he was entertained as his guest by Mr. Baines, whose son, as I have already explained, was my predecessor in the editorship of theMercury.
At the dinner-table at Mr. Baines's house, Lord Houghton was as vivacious and as full of good talk as usual. The conversation happened to turn upon slips of the tongue. Houghton said that the most amusing he remembered was that of the lady who, meeting a friend in the street, exclaimed, "Have you heard of the dreadful thing that has happened to my poor brother John? He has become a Yarmouth Bloater." The good lady meant, of course, to say "Plymouth Brother." To Houghton's surprise, his story was received in embarrassed silence, and someone, as he told me afterwards, trod heavily upon his foot. Monckton Milnes was not a man to be easily disconcerted, and he speedily restored the party to a proper mood of geniality; but after dinner he took someone aside, and asked the meaning of the cold reception of his joke. He received the explanation which the reader will anticipate. It was because Mr. Tom Baines had become a Plymouth Brother that he had been compelled to retire from the editorship of theMercury, to the great distress of his father. My name as his successor in that position was unknown until then to Lord Houghton, but he had no sooner heard it than he invited me to visit him at Fryston.
When I first entered the hospitable door of Fryston, I suffered from a distinct feeling of trepidation. It was new to me to meet men of Lord Houghton's social rank and fame on terms of friendly intimacy, and I confess that I was miserably shy when I made my first appearance among the company assembled in that pleasant morning room, where, long years before, Thomas Carlyle had been first introduced to the amenities of English country-house life. Carlyle has told the world, in a letter written to his wife, how much he was confounded by what seemed to him to be the splendours of a society that he had hitherto viewed only from the outside. His description of his bedroom—it was much larger and grander in the letter than any bedroom that really existed at Fryston—of the servants in livery, the menu of the dinner-table, and of the valet who made unlawful and undesired investigation of the contents of his pockets when he intruded himself upon him in the morning, all bespoke the absolute novice. I do not think, however, that he was a greater novice in 1842 than I was in 1870. A very brief experience enables any person of ordinary intelligence to grasp the essential details of country-house life; but many persons—including Carlyle and myself—would have been spared a certain spell of nervous discomfort if there had existed some simple written code explaining those usages and customs in which country-house life differs from the ordinary life of the English middle-classes. But kindness puts an end to all difficulties of the shy guest, and certainly there never was a kinder hostess than Lady Houghton.
From 1870 down to 1885 I had the good fortune to be a frequent visitor at Fryston. Lord Houghton's kindness to me at our first meeting only increased as time passed; and writing of him now, long after he has passed away, I must relieve my heart by saying that I owe more to him and to his unceasing efforts, not merely to draw me out, but to push me forward, than to any other friend I have ever made. There was a whimsical side to his character which, naturally enough, attracted more attention than was given to his more sober qualities. The eccentricities of his youth, embalmed by Sydney Smith and the other humorists of the 'thirties and 'forties, had disappeared when I made his acquaintance; but to the last he was absolutely careless as to public opinion, except on such points as those on which he himself shared that opinion. The truest thing that was ever said of him was said by William Edward Forster at the Cosmopolitan Club one night, when Houghton was leaving it. Someone said, referring to Houghton, "He's a good man to trust when you're in trouble, for he'll stand by you." "He'll do more than that," responded Forster; "he'll stand by a man not only in trouble but in disgrace, and I know nobody else who will." This was where the finer trait in Houghton's independence of character came in. He was always ready to espouse the cause of a man upon whom the world was frowning, but happily this quality is not uncommon among our nobler natures. That which was most uncommon in Houghton's character was his willingness to befriend a man even when he knew that the disgrace into which he had fallen was not undeserved. He could be severe—as severe as anybody I have ever known—upon vice and meanness; but if the sinner needed help he pitied him at once, and was ready to aid him to the best of his power.
His talk in his own house was delightful. It was altogether different from the talk that men heard when they met him at London dinner-tables. Strangely enough, it was at the breakfast-table that he talked best. Most Englishmen are not roused to conversational brilliancy until the day is far spent; but Houghton was at his best at breakfast and immediately afterwards. And how good that best was! He was a walking encyclopaedia, although no man was ever less of "a book in breeches." Whenever I wished to clear up some obscure point in history or politics, in literature or in the personal life of our times, I went to him, and seldom was it that I failed to get the light I wanted. As a judge of character he had no equal among the men I have known, and in the years that have flown since his death I have had the happiness of seeing his forecast of the future of not a few men strikingly realised. The first time I ever heard the name of Lord Rosebery was from his lips, in 1874 or 1875. I had seen the name in print, of course, but to me it was a name, and nothing more. "You don't know Lord Rosebery?" said he one day. "Then mark him well. He is the ablest young man in England, and, I believe, will be Prime Minister before he dies."
On another occasion he shocked me for the moment by a deliverance about Mr. Gladstone. It was in 1880, when the great statesman, having won the most brilliant triumph of his life, and finally defeated his great rival, Lord Beaconsfield, was struck down by serious illness a few weeks after he had regained power. "I am so sorry to see that Gladstone is getting better," Houghton said to me as we sat in the library at Fryston. I could hardly believe my own ears, and expressed my surprise at hearing such a sentiment from the lips of one of Mr. Gladstone's greatest admirers. "Don't you see," responded Houghton, "that if he dies now he will be one of the greatest figures in English history? He has just won the greatest triumph a statesman ever enjoyed. It is impossible that he can remain at this dazzling height.Nowis the time for him to die." Those who only knew Lord Houghton as a genial cynic would have been surprised if they had known that in his opinion the greatest Englishman of his own time was Lord Shaftesbury, and the greatest Englishwoman Florence Nightingale. Those who were acquainted with his poetry would not have felt this surprise. There is much in his verse, neglected though it now be, which deserves a high place in our national literature. But in his later days—or, rather, throughout his life—the world refused to see his more serious side, and treated him as the humorist and the wit, the cynic, and the kind-hearted but eccentric peer who made it his mission in life to try to fuse the two worlds of society and intellect.
He certainly had wonderful success in bringing together men who stood at opposite poles both of position and opinion. In the days when Mr. John Morley was only known as a promising writer of the most terrible heterodoxy, he dined with Houghton, and was placed next the Archbishop of Canterbury. "Who is that clever-looking young man sitting next the Archbishop?" asked Lord Selborne, who was also at the table. When he was told that it was Mr. Morley, the editor of theFortnightly Reviewand the author of the famous "little g," he threw up his hands in absolute consternation. But Houghton had a rare discrimination in bringing men together. He never brought people who disliked each other into juxtaposition, as some notorious hostesses of our own time are fond of doing. What he did was to gather round his table men of talent and worth who would have had little chance of meeting but for his kindly and hospitable intervention, and many a lifelong friendship has thus been begun beneath his roof.
One of the earliest lessons a man learnt on being admitted to Houghton's cosmopolitan society was the great need of care in the selection of topics in addressing a stranger. Most persons one met at Fryston had either done something or were somebodies, and occasionally their fame was not of the kind that commends itself to everybody. It was necessary, therefore, to walk delicately, like Agag, in opening a conversation with a stranger. A terrible experience of my own will illustrate this fact. As boy and man I had adored Thackeray, and made him the hero of my literary dreams. There was one incident in his early life about which I was quite unreasonably curious. I wanted to know which of his schoolfellows it was who broke his nose and disfigured him for life, and I had made up my mind that if ever I met a man who had been at school with him I would question him on this point. During one of my earlier visits to Fryston I found that George Venables, the well-known Parliamentary counsel and Saturday Reviewer, was staying there. Venables was one of the most distinguished men of his day. His ripe judgment commanded universal confidence, whilst the somewhat austere manner which veiled a warm heart inspired chance acquaintances with a certain feeling of awe. During dinner I heard Venables talking about his early days at the Charterhouse, and felt at once that my long-sought chance had come. Accordingly, when I was walking with him in the Fryston woods on the following morning, I plucked up my courage, and asked him if he had been at the Charterhouse with Thackeray. "Certainly I was," replied the eminent publicist; "we entered on the same day, and were great friends all the time we were at school." "Then," said I, rushing blindly upon my fate, "you can tell me what I have long wanted to know. Who was it that broke Thackeray's nose?"
It was winter, and we were walking in Indian file through the woods. As I put this question to Venables, he suddenly stopped, and, turning round, glared at me in a manner that instantly revealed the terrible truth to my alarmed intelligence. He continued to glare for several seconds, and then, apparently perceiving nothing but innocent confusion, not unmixed with alarm, on my face, his own features became relaxed into a more amiable expression. "Did anybody tell you," he said slowly, and with solemn emphasis, "to ask me that question?" I could truthfully say that nobody had done so. My answer seemed to mollify Venables at once. "Then, if nobody put you up to asking me that question, I don't mind answering it. It wasIwho broke Thackeray's nose. We were only little boys at the time, and quarrelled over something, and had the usual fight. It wasn't my fault that he was disfigured for life; it was all the fault of some wretched doctor. Nowadays a boy's nose can be mended so that nobody can see that it has ever been broken. Let me tell you," he continued, "that Thackeray never showed me any ill-will for the harm I had done him, and I do not believe he felt any." Nor, I must add, did Venables show any ill-will to me for thegaucheriewhich had caused me to rake up this painful episode in his career.
Venables himself had been the victim of another mistake, which he resented more strongly than he did my indiscretion. He told the story to me and to Mrs. Procter one day in the drawing-room at Fryston, with keen indignation. A certain noble lord had approached him at an evening party with an air of extraordinary deference. Venables knew the peer very slightly, and was surprised by the salaams with which he was greeted. His surprise changed to fury when he discovered that his lordship had mistaken him for a notorious millionaire of somewhat dubious reputation who had just blossomed into a baronetcy. "Think of it!" he said with lofty scorn. "The fellow came cringing to me as if I were a prince of the blood, merely because he thought I was that odious adventurer, and had money in my pocket." Mrs. Procter sprang from her seat, and, hobbling across the room with extended forefinger, cried to Venables, in tones of dramatic intensity, "Does that noble lord still live?"
It was from Venables that I heard a delightful story about our host which, years afterwards, I repeated in writing Lord Houghton's life. It was the story of Carlyle's remark when Tennyson's friends were trying to procure a pension for him from Sir Robert Peel. "Richard Milnes," said Carlyle, taking his pipe out of his mouth, "when are ye gaun to get that pension for Alfred Tennyson?" Milnes tried to explain to Carlyle that there were difficulties in the way, and that possibly his constituents, who knew nothing about Tennyson, might accuse him of being concerned in a job if he were to succeed in getting the desired pension for the poet. "Richard Milnes," replied the sage, "on the Day of Judgment, when the Lord asks ye why ye didna get that pension for Alfred Tennyson, it'll no do to lay the blame on your constituents. It'syouthat'll be damned." I always had a half impression that, for some reason or other, Lord Houghton did not like to hear that story told in his presence. All the world knows, of course, that he did get the pension for the poet, and thus escaped the penalty anticipated by the philosopher.
But if Lord Houghton was sensitive on some points, he was frank and courageous in acknowledging his own youthful follies and the punishment which they brought upon him. I shall never forget his taking me to a particular corner in that vast library at Fryston—which, like some vegetable parasite, seemed to have spread itself over every inch of available wall-space in the house—and taking down from the shelves a volume of the "Life of Sydney Smith." His object in doing so was to show me the original manuscript of the pungent and witty letter in which Sydney Smith rebuked him sharply for having written a somewhat peppery note to ask the Canon if it was true that he had dubbed him "the cool of the evening." "What a young fool I was!" said Lord Houghton, when he had read the letter to me. "And how good it was of Sydney Smith to set me down in that fashion!"
Everybody knows that Lord Houghton was the most tolerant of men in all matters of faith and opinion; but he did not allow mere carelessness or idleness to serve as an excuse for the disregard of religious observances. My usual time for visiting Fryston was on Saturday, when I was free from the charge of my paper for four-and-twenty hours. My kind friend always insisted on Sunday morning that instead of going to church I should spend the morning in strolling in the park, either alone or in his delightful company. This, he would say, was necessary in the interests of my health. I spent more Sundays at Fryston than I can count, but I never entered the little church hard by the park gates until the sad day when I went there to attend his funeral. One Sunday evening, when there was a rather large party at the Hall—including John Morley—we were summoned by the old butler—himself a character not unworthy of commemoration—to prayers in the morning room. Lord Houghton was good enough to intimate to Morley and myself that we should not be expected to attend, and we accordingly remained in the drawing-room in conversation. A certain young Yorkshire baronet, who was also of the party, influenced by our bad example, stayed behind with us. In a couple of minutes, however, the butler reappeared, and going up to the baronet, said, "Sir Henry, his lordship is waiting for you before he begins prayers." The liberty accorded to the philosophic writer and the editor was not permitted to the country gentleman. I think I ought to add, in justice to Mr. Morley at least, that he and I accompanied the unwilling young man to the scene of the family devotions.
I must stay my hand, however, in these rambling recollections of my kind and brilliant friend and benefactor. No doubt I shall have more to say about him before my task is finished; but for the present I must take up again the thread of my narrative.
A Generous Scot—Paris after the Commune—An Uncomfortable JourneyHome—Illness of the Prince of Wales—Revived Popularity of theThrone—Death and Funeral of Napoleon III.—Burial of the PrinceImperial—Forster's Educational Policy—Bruce's Incensing Bill—My SecondMarriage.
With the opening of 1871 came the armistice before Paris, quickly followed by the conclusion of peace. Then took place the ghastly upheaval of the Commune, and the eyes of the world were once more riveted upon the great city which has been the theatre of so many tragedies. It shocked everybody to think that the heavy sufferings through which unhappy France had passed, instead of uniting all classes of the people together in the bonds of a common sorrow, had only intensified the conflicts of parties and social grades. But in due time the Communist rising itself was suppressed, and peace at last fell to the lot of distracted France.
In September of this year, 1871, I went abroad for the first time in my life. Passing through Belgium and by the Rhine to Switzerland, I visited the Italian lakes before returning to England by way of Paris. There is no need to dwell upon the incidents of a commonplace tour like this, though one can never forget the delightful sense of exhilaration produced by a first experience of the living grandeur of the Alps. Switzerland was not so completely hackneyed in those days as it is now, and to me, of course, as a newcomer, it did not seem to be hackneyed at all. I was too young, I think, fully to realise the indescribable charm of Italy, a charm which is felt more strongly by most of us with each successive visit to that land of dreams and beauty. At Milan I was the victim of a not unusual incident in travel. I found myself stranded at the old Hôtel de la Ville for want of money. I had arranged for a remittance to reach me there; but in those days there were no tunnels through the Alps, and Italy was, in consequence, still a long way from England. My remittance, therefore, took longer to reach me than I had anticipated. The result was that I spent certain miserable days in a state of almost complete impecuniosity. I shall never forget the weary hours during which I tramped the streets, and the endless visits to the post office in search of the letter which I awaited so anxiously.
But whilst in this unpleasant position, I was fortunate enough to meet with an instance of genuine kindliness that really raised my opinion of my fellow-creatures. An old Scotsman used to sit beside me at thetable d'hôteat the Hôtel de la Ville. He was a man of intelligence, and I found his conversation very pleasant. With the pride and sensitiveness of youth, I was, of course, resolute in my determination to conceal from him my unpleasant fix; but one night at dinner he startled me by asking when I was going to leave Milan. I feebly evaded the question by saying that I must first of all see all the sights of the place. "Hoots, man!" he retorted, "ye've seen all the sights, and ye're jist wasting your time and losing your holiday stopping here. I ken weel what it is ye're waiting for. Ye're short of money—that's it, isn't it?" I murmured something to the effect that I was expecting remittances which would, no doubt, reach me almost immediately. "Weel, I'm not going to let a young fellow like you lose your holiday," said my friend, in a very positive manner, "and ye'll just have to make me your banker for what ye want, and get away out of this hole as soon as ye can, for there are better sights to be seen than Milan." I could only prevent his forcing money upon me on the spot by promising that if my remittance did not come next day I would avail myself of his generous offer. Happily, the next day relief came, and I was no longer in pawn at Milan. But blessings on the head of that worthy old Scot, who must long ago have gone over to the majority! At least he nobly redeemed the character of his countrymen from the libel which makes the name of a Scotsman synonymous with meanness.
Paris in September, 1871, presented a strange sight to the eyes of a visitor. The shadow of the double ordeal of the siege and the Communist rising still lay heavily upon it. In the streets traces of the conflict between the Versaillists and the Communards were everywhere visible. Lamp-posts twisted by the shell fire, plate-glass windows perforated by bullets, columns chipped and shattered, and the pavement ripped up for the erection of barricades, were the common sights of the streets; whilst the blackened ruins of the Tuileries, and the other public buildings destroyed by the rebels, remained to attest the desperate character of the civil war that had been waged in the capital. The inhabitants had not yet recovered from the privations of the siege and the horrors of the Commune. There were few who smiled, and there were many who could not speak of the past without tears. That which was specially noticeable was the fact that all the fury of the Parisians seemed to be turned against the Communards. Many of them, speaking of the Prussians, referred warmly to the contrast between their conduct and that of their own lawless fellow-citizens.
Outside Paris the traces of the siege were everywhere visible, and driving along the country roads near St. Cloud—where the people were still living in tents and wooden sheds, almost every house having been destroyed—one came constantly upon little groups of graves of German soldiers who had been buried where they fell, each grave marked by its wooden cross with its simple inscription. These monuments spoke eloquently of the tragic character of the struggle. At Versailles, where the National Assembly was sitting, the great bulk of the Communist prisoners were confined in the orangery in front of the palace. Loaded cannon commanded this improvised prison, where many hundreds of men and women were herded promiscuously. Standing on the terrace above the orangery, I leant over the balustrade in order to look on the prisoners beneath. I had to withdraw hastily, for from the miserable crowd there came up an unbearable stench, such as might emanate from a cage of wild animals. Now and then one saw Communists being escorted by soldiers to meet the swift vengeance of the court-martial which was sitting to try them. These unhappy prisoners, who had little chance of escaping the penalty of death, bore themselves with firmness, and manifestly believed that they were sufferers in a holy cause. Not even the sight of the destruction they had wrought in Paris could wholly stifle one's feelings of sympathy with them in their wretched plight.
I had a second experience of the disadvantages of impecuniosity before I reached London. During the latter part of my trip I had found a pleasant travelling companion in the person of Mr. Charles Townsend, of Bristol, a gentleman who subsequently represented that city in Parliament. As we were travelling straight through from Paris to London, and had, as we believed, ample funds for the journey, we signalised the close of our trip on the Continent by a specially good dinner on the evening of our departure, for which we had to pay a price in accordance with its merits. We were returning by the Dieppe route. The journey by rail was delayed because all the bridges near Paris were broken, and we had to creep across temporary wooden structures. Before we were allowed to board the steamer at Dieppe, all passports were carefully examined. The police were on the search for escaped Communists, and whilst it was easy enough to get into France, it was much more difficult to get out of the country. Our passports, however, were in order, and we were soon lying down to sleep in the cabin of the steamer in the full belief that we should find ourselves in England in a few hours. I slept soundly, and only awoke when the sun was well up in the heavens. The steamer was at rest, and I thought we were in the harbour of Newhaven; but, to my dismay, when I went on deck I found that we were still moored to the quay at Dieppe. A terrific northwesterly gale was blowing, and the captain had not ventured to put out. All that day we lay at Dieppe, the result being that the money which would have taken us, under ordinary circumstances, in comfort to London, was expended before we quitted France. When we reached Victoria Station our united capital consisted of a halfpenny. We could not even tip the porter who attended to us. I felt it was the meanest moment of my life. We drove straight to a bank, however, and in a few minutes had each a pocketful of gold. The double lesson I received during this first Continental trip has made me careful ever since to take sufficient funds on every journey to carry me safely through to the end.
The great public event of the autumn of 1871 was the illness of the Prince of Wales. He had been staying in November with Lord Londesborough at Scarborough, and on his return to Sandringham he was attacked by typhoid fever. For a time no anxiety was felt, because it was believed that the illness was a slight one. But suddenly the news was flashed through the country that his Royal Highness had taken a turn for the worse. This was followed a few hours later by the announcement that the Queen and the other members of his family had been suddenly summoned to his bedside; and yet a little later came the tidings that his case was hopeless, and that he was rapidly sinking. December 14th, the day which had proved fatal to his father exactly ten years before, was at hand, and everybody believed that it would see another heavy blow dealt at the Royal Family. It is impossible to describe the emotion produced by the most unexpected news of the Prince's condition. The telegrams from Sandringham were of so positive a nature that they forbade hope. On Friday, December 13th, the gloom deepened hourly. At midnight a telegram reached the office of theLeeds Mercurysaying that the family were gathered round the Prince's bed awaiting his dissolution. That telegram was received in every other newspaper office in the kingdom. Everywhere Lives of the Prince were hurriedly prepared, and articles written announcing the event which appeared to be imminent.
When the time approached for theMercuryto be sent to press, though we had made every preparation in case of the Prince's death, the fatal news had not yet arrived. I consequently wrote an article upon his illness and the emotion it had caused, to be inserted if his death had not taken place when we went to press. Needless to say, it was this article, and not that in which the national calamity was bewailed, that appeared in theLeeds Mercurynext morning. The only other daily newspaper that had a leading article on the Prince's illness was theTimes. In every other newspaper office the conviction that he was at the very point of death was so strong that no preparation had been made for his possible survival. When the morning of the fateful 14th came it was announced that the Prince, though still in grave danger, had rallied. For several days he hung between life and death, and then began rapidly to mend, thanks to his own good constitution and to the extraordinary care and skill with which he was nursed by Sir William—then Dr.—Gull.
The revived popularity of the Throne in England may be dated, I believe, from that period. The Queen's long withdrawal from the public eye, consequent upon her widowhood, had led the multitude, ignorant of the manner in which she devoted herself to the heavy duties of her position, to regard her as being little more than a figurehead. Certain politicians, in the autumn of 1871, had taken advantage of this state of feeling to begin a crusade against the monarchy, and a section of the extreme Radicals really seemed to believe that the glorious Throne of England was about to be overthrown. But the sharp touch of personal sorrow changed all this, and revealed to the English people their true sentiments towards the Queen and her family. The grief, universally felt when it was believed that we were about to lose the heir to the Crown, and the affectionate sympathy with which his slow recovery was followed, convinced us all, as they convinced the outside world, that the bonds between the English Throne and the English people were far closer and stronger than most persons had imagined. The trumpery campaign against the monarchy died in a single night, and from that day to this the mutual love and trust of monarch and people have gone on steadily increasing.
The announcement that the Queen proposed to attend St. Paul's Cathedral in state to return thanks for the recovery of her eldest son touched the heart of the nation afresh, and evoked the first great popular demonstration of loyalty that had been witnessed since the early days of the reign. I was present in the Cathedral at that solemn and stately service on the 27th February, 1872, the precursor of the still more stately service held at Westminster on the 21st June, 1887. Except on the occasion of the Jubilee of the last-mentioned year, and of that of 1897, London has never witnessed a more remarkable outburst of loyal enthusiasm. At night the whole town was illuminated, St. Paul's Cathedral being lighted up after the fashion of St. Peter's at Rome on Easter Day. The crowds which filled the streets were enormous, and as the London police had not then acquired the art of marshalling vast multitudes, there was terrible crushing, and several lives were lost. Three persons were suffocated at Temple Bar, which was already marked for removal. I myself had the narrowest escape from death on Ludgate Hill, where the multitude was packed in one dense, immovable mass for hours. The people in the houses on the hill passed down water in buckets to the fainting crowd, and now and then some woman or child was positively hauled out of it by ropes, and thus placed in safety. It was not a sight that could ever be forgotten, and it impressed forcibly upon one's mind the strength of the hold which the monarch has upon the hearts of the people of this country.
Among those who watched the passage of the Queen and the Prince of Wales from Buckingham Palace to St. Paul's there was one notable and historic personage. This was Napoleon the Third, at that time living in exile at Chislehurst. Within twelve months the ex-Emperor was dead. His death was the cause of a singularly picturesque demonstration on the part of the ruined Imperialist party. I went to Chislehurst to see the lying-in-state which preceded the funeral. The train which took me down from Charing Cross was crowded with Frenchmen wearing the rosette of the Legion of Honour, and on every side I heard men called by names that for twenty years had been part of the history of Europe. The poor Emperor lying in his coffin, guarded by men who but recently had been the great officers of an Imperial household, was a pathetic object. I noticed that his hair had turned grey; and the shortness of stature that he had been so anxious to conceal when living was now plainly apparent. His funeral, which took place on the following day, fittingly symbolised the fall of the Second Empire. Preceding the hearse walked a body of French workmen in blue blouses, the foremost of whom bore the tricolour, rudely fastened to a branch which had been hastily torn from one of the fine trees at Camden Place. Behind the hearse the young Prince Imperial walked alone, a pale, thoughtful, delicate youth, who seemed little fitted to bear the burden of the Pretendership. Behind him, in a single line, were four of his father's cousins, of whom the most conspicuous was Prince Napoleon. His likeness to the great Emperor was startling, and, as he walked bareheaded, one could see that it was emphasised by the way in which he had trained a solitary lock of hair upon his massive brow.
The Emperor was buried in a temporary vault in the Catholic chapel of Chislehurst. The building was too small to admit a tithe of the crowd of French people who were present, but those who could not enter the chapel knelt throughout the service on the damp grass of the churchyard. When the funeral party returned to Camden House, I witnessed an unexpected and dramatic scene. The mourners had come back, as they went, in absolute silence. From highest to lowest, all seemed to be suffering from the deepest depression. The young Prince was the first to step within the door of the house. As he did so, he turned and bowed to the great company of Frenchmen—the wreckage of his father's empire. Instantly every hat was raised, and a tremendous cry went up, "Vive Napoléon le Quatre!" The suddenness and unexpectedness of this acclamation of the youth as the inheritor of the Napoleonic legend startled and impressed all those of us who were present as spectators.
Alas! in how brief a space of time I attended another funeral at Camden Place, and saw the body of the boy, who had thus been hailed as Emperor, carried across the breezy common to rest by his father's side. But now it was with the sad music of military bands and the pomp and glitter of an army in motion that the body was carried to the tomb. The Prince Imperial was buried with the honours due not merely to a royal prince, but to an English soldier. The Union Jack lay side by side with the tricolour upon his coffin, and four English princes acted as pall-bearers. The Queen herself watched from a pavilion erected above the wall of Camden Place the passage of the funeral party from the house to the place of burial. It was strange to think that this display of heartfelt sorrow, which was shared alike by the highest and the lowest, had been drawn forth by the death of the last representative of the Napoleonic Empire. But one could not forget the opening words of the young Prince's will, in which he declared that he died with a heart full of gratitude to the Queen of England and her family. If that could have been the end of the Napoleonic legend it would have been a fitting one; but even on the day of the funeral of the Prince the truth that peace is seldom to be found in the houses of the great was painfully illustrated. The chief mourner was Prince Napoleon, to whom had fallen the second place only at the burial of the Emperor. When the party came out of church the Prince took a ceremonious farewell of the members of our Royal Family, and then, disregarding the entreaties of the officials that he would return to Camden Place and meet the greatly bereaved mother, leapt into his carriage and in a harsh voice cried imperiously to the driver, "A Londres!"
After the curtain had fallen on the great drama of the Franco-German War there was an interval during which this country was chiefly occupied with questions of domestic interest. The Gladstone Ministry had completed its great achievements. It had disestablished the Irish Church, abolished purchase in the Army, established vote by ballot, reformed the Irish land system, and, above all, had created a national system of education. To Mr. Forster had fallen the high honour of carrying this last-named measure, and it is an honour which seems even greater now than it did at the moment when the Royal assent was given in 1870 to the Education Bill. At that time, indeed, Forster met with criticism and abuse, rather than admiration and gratitude, for his great achievement. As older persons will remember, he excited the bitter hostility of the Dissenters and a section of the Radicals because of his refusal to make a hopeless crusade against the Church schools the basis of his educational policy. Even if he had believed such a step to be just, he would have committed the gravest of errors if he had yielded to Nonconformist clamour. It would have been impossible, even in the Parliament of 1868, to have carried such a Bill as the Birmingham Education League demanded, and there has been no Parliament since then that would even have looked at such a task. Remembering this fact, the injustice of the bitter attacks made upon Mr. Forster by a certain section of the Radicals, among whom a young Birmingham manufacturer named Joseph Chamberlain was now beginning to make himself conspicuous, is manifest.
One can only account for the acerbity with which Mr. Forster was attacked on the ground that, both as a Radical and the son of Nonconformist parents, he had excited the hope among the extreme party that he himself would be as extreme as any of them. The wisdom with which he turned existing institutions to account, and succeeded in masking the batteries that the Church was ready to open upon any State system of education, was denounced as cowardice and lukewarmness; and as a consequence of the greatest triumph of his career—a triumph hardly excelled by any other Minister of our time—he became the object of the undying suspicion and hatred of a large number of the members of his own party. To the end of my days it will be a cause of pride to me that, although myself an ardent Liberal, and the son of a Nonconformist minister, I gave all the support I could in the columns of theLeeds Mercuryto Mr. Forster. That this support was of real importance to him was due to the fact that theLeeds Mercurycirculated largely in Bradford, the town for which Mr. Forster sat.
My championship of Forster and his educational policy, though it had the warm support of Sir Edward Baines and of the majority of Yorkshire Liberals, brought upon me the heavy displeasure of the advanced Radicals. Like Mr. Forster, I was regarded as a traitor to my principles, and again and again in those days, when I attended public meetings, I heard theLeeds Mercuryand its editor denounced by those who declared that the Liberalism propounded in its columns was a feeble, milk-and-water product, scarcely better than open and undiluted Toryism. Here I must pause to interject one word of grateful acknowledgment of the generous manner in which the proprietors of theMercurystood by me in those stormy days, and encouraged me to give free expression to the independent opinions that I had formed. It was a time of trial for Liberalism in general, and it was also a time of trial for the young editor who, in supporting what he believed to be the truth, had thus to run counter to the convictions of a very important section of his readers. Yet, looking back, I cannot say that I suffered any substantial injury from the ordeal through which I had thus to pass. It is true that for many years I was regarded with suspicion as being only a half-hearted Liberal by a considerable section of my party in Yorkshire; but I had the compensation of being allowed to speak my own mind, and of knowing that my words were not without influence upon others. No greater compensation than this can be desired by any publicist.
It was not the education question alone that engaged the attention of the public in the years 1872 and 1873, with which I am now dealing. The great problem of the liquor traffic had been brought to the front, in a large measure owing to the spirited but somewhat mischievous campaign maintained at a great cost by the United Kingdom Alliance, in favour of the measure known as the Permissive Bill. I have never been able to understand why the promoters of the Permissive Bill should have made a fetich of that very dubious measure. Yet for a whole generation it has been their shibboleth, and, no matter what might be the aims or the virtues of the man who refused to pronounce it, the supporters of the Permissive Bill have regarded him as an enemy. They, at least, have not laid themselves open to the charge of trimming. For more than thirty years the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill, has been their cry; and as a consequence they have seen these years pass without the carrying of any real amendment of our licensing system.
In 1873 the Gladstone Government, now drawing towards the close of its remarkable history, introduced a great measure of licensing reform, known at the time as Mr. Bruce's Bill. It was a wise and statesmanlike scheme, and if it had been carried it would have wrought a beneficent social revolution in this country. But the Government, in their attempt to deal in a practical way with the evils of our drink system, had to face not only the opposition of the unholy alliance of the pulpit and the beer-shop, but the hostility of the United Kingdom Alliance and its supporters throughout the country. It was from the friends of the Permissive Bill, rather than from the friends of the Tory party and the publicans, that the Government scheme received its death-blow. The fanatical opposition of extreme politicians had not proved fatal to Mr. Forster's Education Bill, and as a consequence we have had for thirty years a great national system of education at work in England, producing results of immeasurable value. But the fanatics did kill Mr. Bruce's Licensing Bill, and the thirty years that have followed have in consequence seen no amelioration of the greatest of our social evils. TheLeeds Mercurygave an uncompromising support to the Government proposals with regard to the licensing system, and I thus roused against myself the anger and ill-will of the adherents of the United Kingdom Alliance, who were no less bitter against me than were the extreme Radicals and Dissenters. I have no desire to fight my battles over again in these pages, but the reader will understand that the editor of a Liberal newspaper who was thus placed in a position of antagonism to more than one important section of his party had not an altogether happy lot. Yet I enjoyed it. I had my full measure of confidence in the soundness of my own opinions, that great characteristic of the young journalist, and in my many encounters with the foes of my own household I always tried not to come off second-best.
The year 1873 was memorable to me in another and more personal sense. On the 26th of March I married again. My second wife, who, I am glad to say, still survives, was Miss Louisa Berry, of Headingley, Leeds. This union brought with it settled domestic happiness, and gave me once more what I needed—solace and sympathy under my own roof. Here perhaps, as I have touched upon private affairs, is the right place to speak about my children. The eldest, John Alexander, was born in London, and is the only child of my first marriage. The other two, my daughter Eleanor and my younger son Harold, were born at Headingley, during my later Leeds life. Surely nothing to a man immersed in public work can be more helpful than the loving devotion—it was never denied to me—of those who turn what would otherwise be a mere dwelling place into a home.
Bringing theLeeds Mercuryinto Line with the LondonDailies—Friendship with William Black—The Dissolution of 1874—TheElection at Leeds—Mr. Chamberlain's Candidature for Sheffield—Mr.Gladstone's Resignation—Election of his Successor—Birth of theCaucus—The System Described—Its Adoption at Leeds—Its Effect upon theFortunes of the Liberal Party—The Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation.
It was in the autumn of 1873 that I undertook a formidable task as a journalist. I had long been of opinion that the provincial daily papers, if they were properly organised, might make themselves independent of the London dailies, and prevent the latter from competing with the local press. Having convinced the proprietors of theMercuryof the soundness of my views, I looked out for allies elsewhere. TheManchester Guardianwas the chief rival in those days of theLeeds Mercuryin the great district comprising East Lancashire and Yorkshire. TheGuardianwas conducted with spirit and energy, and I had been annoyed to find that it was gradually pushing its way into that which we regarded as the territory of theMercury. I accordingly proposed to the local rival of theGuardian, theManchester Examiner, that it should enter into an alliance with theLeeds Mercuryfor the improvement of both newspapers. My proposal was rejected with great promptitude by the managers of theExaminer. They declared that they regarded the costly efforts that were being made by theGuardianto establish its preeminence in Lancashire as a ridiculous waste of money, and plainly intimated that they would never attempt to enter into a competition which, in their opinion, savoured of stark lunacy.
Long afterwards I remembered my negotiations with theExaminerwhen I saw that newspaper, after passing through a lingering decline, finally absorbed by its successful rival, theGuardian. Baffled at Manchester, I turned my eyes to another quarter. TheGlasgow Heraldsuffered in Scotland from the spirited management of theScotsmanas we were suffering from the enterprise of theManchester Guardian. I went to Glasgow and laid my proposals before the proprietors and editor of theHerald. After some negotiations they were accepted, and a working alliance was established between theLeeds Mercuryand theGlasgow Herald, which only came to an end in 1900. We established a joint London office, with special wires to Leeds and Glasgow respectively. (I ought to say that theHerald, like theScotsman, already had its special wire from London.) We formed a thoroughly efficient editorial staff to do the work of the London office, and we entered into an arrangement with one of the London daily papers by which we secured access to all the information it received. In this way I was able to guarantee the readers of theLeeds Mercuryas good a supply of important London news as they could obtain in one of the London dailies. I went further than this, however, and took a step of the wisdom of which I am not now so fully convinced as I was in 1873. This was the installation of a night editor in our office in Fleet Street, whose business it was to secure the earliest copies of the London morning papers and to telegraph from them over our private wires any special items of news that those papers contained, and that were not supplied by the ordinary agencies. TheTimeswas hostile to this new departure, and we had some difficulty in getting copies of the paper for the purpose of our "morning express," as we called the new service. The other London dailies did not object. The result was that a great part of each day's issue of theLeeds Mercurycontained all the special items of news published in the chief London newspapers of the same morning. It was a bold and audacious innovation in the methods of English journalism, and I need not say that it was one that was quickly imitated by others.
Besides making arrangements for a special report of Parliament, I extended the old London letter of theMercuryby securing for it a number of contributors who were interested in different fields of activity. Hitherto it had only been political. I now gave it a social and literary character as well. It was in carrying out this part of my work that I first became the intimate friend of William Black. I had met him years before, but our friendship was of the slightest until I induced him to take a leading part in the London correspondence of theMercury. He was at that time assistant-editor of theDaily News, but he did not like the work, and was anxious to be relieved of the drudgery of nightly attendance at the office in Bouverie Street. I was able to offer him terms which justified him in relinquishing his connection with theDaily News. He was just beginning his career as a brilliantly successful novelist. "A Daughter of Heth" had won the favour both of the critics and the public, and this he had followed up with "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton." The arrangement he made with theLeeds Mercuryenabled him to devote his time and strength to fiction, and, as I have said, it brought us into a relationship which quickly ripened into one of affectionate intimacy.
There never was a man who stood the sharp test of prosperity better than did Black. When we first became intimate he was just beginning to be known, but within a year or two from that time he had become the most popular of English novelists, and had become famous throughout the civilised world. Obscure or famous, he was just the same. To a rare simplicity of manner he added a chivalrousness of spirit that was almost an inspiration to those who were brought into contact with him. As a friend he scarcely had an equal. In all the affairs of life he would make his friend's cause his own, and fight for it with an energy and enthusiasm that few men are capable of showing, even on behalf of their own interests. At a time, for example, when he was deep in the writing of one of his own greatest novels, he voluntarily undertook the work of a dying friend as a contributor to the Press, in order to ensure the payment of his salary to the end of his life. I remember meeting him once on his way to that friend's room, carrying in one hand a hare and in the other a can containing some soup or other delicacy. He was very particular about his appearance, always smart in his dress, and rigorously observant of the socialconvenances; yet these characteristics did not prevent his walking through the streets of London on a summer afternoon laden in this fashion. My first dinner with him was at the Pall Mall Club, in Waterloo Place, at the end of 1873. He had another young man of our own age to share the entertainment, and behind his back he spoke of this young man—who was, like himself, a Scotsman—with an enthusiastic admiration. He was an artist who had just come up to try his fortune in London, and that fortune, Black declared, could be nothing less than the Academy. He was right, for the man who made the third at that little dinner-party was the late Colin Hunter, A.R.A.
Black lived in those days in a roomy, old-fashioned house in Camberwell Grove; and here, in course of time, I spent many a pleasant evening with him. His second wife, a charming North-country lady, was, as most now know, the original of "The Princess of Thule," the heroine of the book of that name, and the portrait was far more true to life than most sketches of heroines drawn from reality are. Black's mother, a kindly old Scotswoman, justly proud of her son, was another inmate of the house. It was from her I learned that Coquette, the bewitching creature who plays the chief part in "A Daughter of Heth," had for her original Black's first wife. I discovered for myself that the author was the original of "The Whaup," and when I taxed him with it he did not deny the fact. One evening, after dinner at Camberwell Grove, we went for a walk together. When we reached the top of the Grove he drew my attention to a pleasant little villa standing in its own ground. "James Drummond," he said, "lives there." I wondered who James Drummond was, but said nothing. By-and-bye, as we pursued our way, he pointed out other houses, and told me the names of their occupants, all utterly unknown to me. At last I said, "Who are these people, Black? I don't know one of them." "You soon will know them, though, my boy," he answered. "Just wait and see if you don't." And sure enough, when "Madcap Violet" appeared, all the unknown personages of that night-walk at Camberwell were straightway revealed to me.
Black had an artist's eye and the soul of a poet. In general company he was shy and ill at ease. If he talked at all to strangers, he talked with nervous volubility, and too often perhaps with little meaning. In this respect he reminded one of Goldsmith. But when he was with a friend, and could open his heart freely, he gave you glimpses of a most beautiful nature, a noble sense of chivalry, and the keenest eye in the world for catching those gleams of spiritual light that sometimes illuminate even the dullest of the bare realities of life. He was always sketching his friends, and making them figure in his stories; but he did it in such a fashion that the person drawn never recognised his portrait. He once admitted that he had made use of me as a lay-figure in his literary studio, but I was never able to discover by what character I was supposed to be represented. As a rule, he was much too kind to his friends when drawing their portraits, for he liked to think the best and say the best of a man. Only once in my long friendship with him did I know him to exercise his power of making a man whom he disliked appear odious in his pages. But this particular person was so odious in reality that everybody felt that Black had only done him justice. Of course, Black was careful to give no clue to the identity of the disagreeable man which could be of the slightest use to the general reader. A few of us knew perfectly well who was meant, but that was all. Unfortunately, the particular story in which this person figured was first published serially in an illustrated magazine, and by some extraordinary chance—or mischance—the artist, in depicting the disagreeable man, drew a portrait of the actual original that was positively startling in its likeness. No one who knew him opened the magazine without saying at once, "Why, here's a portrait of So-and-so." And yet the likeness was absolutely accidental. Black assured me that the artist knew nothing of the original disagreeable man, and had never even seen him. It was all a freak of the long arm of coincidence.
I do not know whether I may not be boring my readers in telling these little stories about works of fiction which they may never have read or have cared to read. Yet those of us who can recall the refreshment and delight which Black's earlier books spread amongst us will never allow that the shadow of eclipse that now lies upon his literary fame is either deserved or likely to prove lasting. No novelist of his century—alas! this new century has begun without William Black—had his power of painting a woman's heart and soul, or his deft grace in making the portrait at once real and ideal. I do not wish to overpraise, but the man who could draw Coquette, and Sheila, and Madcap Violet was, I hold, a master in his craft. That he was, in a very literal sense, an artist in words, is universally admitted. There are passages in his writings which, in their power of conjuring up before the mind of the reader the scenes they describe, are not surpassed by anything that Ruskin himself ever wrote. The fact is that Black's sympathies drew him more strongly to art than to literature. If he could have had his way, I think he would rather have been a great painter than a great writer, and certainly he always loved the company of artists better than that of journalists and men of letters. He was most at his ease in the studios of his friends. He was never so full of an eager, effervescent happiness as at the private view at the Academy, when, seizing you by the arm, he would lead you from picture to picture, pointing out the merits of each, and ending up by introducing you to the artist. The artists, on their side, held him in no common esteem, and long regarded him as first of those among the writers of the day who had a real appreciation of and sympathy with art.
I must leave Black for the present, however, and return to Leeds, and the events of 1874. My special wire and London arrangements had not been long in existence before they received a most unexpected justification. One night in February, 1874, when seated in my editor's room, I received over the private wire a telegram that took my breath away. It was from our London sub-editor, announcing that Parliament was to be dissolved immediately, and that Mr. Gladstone had written a long address to the electors of Greenwich, explaining his policy and intentions. My informant added that this startling news was still a profound secret in London, and that in all probability no other newspaper in Yorkshire would get possession of it. Everybody interested in our political history now knows the story of that bolt from the blue. It came with absolute unexpectedness, and some even of Mr. Gladstone's own colleagues in the Cabinet were taken by surprise. I know, at all events, of one member of the Ministry who was staying at the time in a country house in Yorkshire, and who, when theLeeds Mercury, with its announcement of the dissolution and the long address of Mr. Gladstone to the Greenwich electors, was brought to him, insisted that the paper must have been hoaxed. Mr. Gladstone had kept his secret so well that at six o'clock on the evening of the day on which he penned his manifesto there were not twenty people in all England who knew what was about to happen. So far as theLeeds Mercurywas concerned, this startling step ensured for it a great success. No other newspaper in Yorkshire—and, if I remember rightly, only one other provincial paper in England—was able to announce the great event. TheMercuryaccompanied the manifesto with a "double-leaded" leader, and of course made the most of so precious a piece of news. Those who doubted the wisdom of the increased expenditure to which I had induced the proprietors of the paper to consent, doubted no longer.
The General Election which followed immediately upon the dissolution was a short but very bitter contest. It ended in the rout of the Liberal party, a rout almost as signal and complete as that which befel it twenty-one years later, in 1895. Mr. Disraeli, who had been nowhere at the polls in 1868, was suddenly swept into the highest place by those "harassed interests" which Mr. Gladstone's great administration had offended by a policy that Disraeli described as one of "plundering and blundering." It was, in reality, a policy which preferred the interests of the nation to those of the privileged classes. In Leeds, where I had now, for the first time as editor of a daily newspaper, to taste the doubtful joys of a General Election, a fight of extraordinary vehemence was waged.
Leeds was one of the three-cornered constituencies created by the Reform Bill of 1867, and its representatives at the time of the dissolution were Sir Edward Baines, Mr. Carter, an advanced Radical, very popular with the working-classes, and Mr. Wheelhouse, a Conservative barrister. Sir Edward Baines was the only one of the three who had achieved a Parliamentary reputation. He had represented Leeds for fifteen years, and he was recognised as its principal citizen by the community at large. He was a total abstainer and an ardent advocate of temperance reform, but in the eyes of the fanatical supporters of the Permissive Bill he had committed the unpardonable sin in giving his adherence to Mr. Bruce's measure. So, in spite of his character and his public services, they brought out against him one of the agents of the United Kingdom Alliance. The Tories had brought out a local gentleman named Tennant as their second candidate. He was a man of many occupations, including that of a brewer. The fight which followed was the most bitter in which I have ever been engaged. Practically, Edward Baines stood alone, getting no help from Carter. The Liberal party had fallen to pieces, and Edward Baines, as a supporter of the Government, had to bear the weight of the offence given both to the Radical Nonconformists and to the rabid teetotallers. The Alliance candidate must have known that he had no chance of winning the seat, but he persisted in his opposition to Sir Edward Baines, though the effect of defeating him would be to secure the election of the local brewer. Such are the extremes to which men allow themselves to be carried at times of excitement. The end of the struggle was the defeat of Sir Edward Baines, and the return of Carter, Wheelhouse, and Tennant. What happened in Leeds happened in a great many other places. The teetotallers deliberately wrecked the only Government which was prepared to reform the licensing system. They have had more than a quarter of a century in which to repent their folly.
It was, of course, in the Leeds election that I felt the deepest personal interest; but theMercuryhad to take note of all the elections in Yorkshire, and some of these were of special interest. At Sheffield a candidate came forward in the extreme Radical interest whose speeches attracted some notice in Yorkshire, though they passed unobserved by the larger public beyond. This was Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who now made his first attempt to win Parliamentary honours. Up to that moment I had only known Mr. Chamberlain as a young Birmingham politician who was fond of saying things both bitter and flippant, not only about his political opponents, but about the older members of his own party. He had made himself one of the buglemen in the cry raised against Mr. Forster, towards whom he seemed to entertain a feeling of almost personal antipathy. At Sheffield he made himself conspicuous by his sneers at Mr. Gladstone and almost all the recognised leaders of Liberalism. His own political opinions appeared to be based upon a crude and intolerant Radicalism of the Socialistic type. He evidently believed that promises of material benefits would enable him to win the support of the mass of the electors, and he conceived also that the best method of displacing his seniors in the party of which he was a member was to assail them with a rather coarse invective. These methods did not commend themselves to the electors of Sheffield, and Mr. Chamberlain was soundly beaten. But he had great ability, accompanied by great force of character, and all the world knows how his ability and forcefulness have since carried him to one of the highest places in political life. It is, however, not as a Radical, but as a militant Tory that he now figures before the world.
I should not have dwelt upon the Sheffield election of 1874 but for the fact that it was this election which made me one of Mr. Chamberlain's political opponents. I did not like the way in which he spoke of men who had been serving the country before he himself was born; and, without questioning his honesty, I came to the conclusion that personal ambition played a large part in his political professions. It followed that from 1874 onwards theLeeds Mercurywas never friendly to Mr. Chamberlain, and never gave him its confidence, even at a time when he was the idol of English Radicalism. For years I had to suffer because of this attitude towards the Birmingham politician; and many a time, when I have been sitting on the platform at a political meeting in Leeds, some speaker has inveighed fiercely against me because of my want of faith in Mr. Chamberlain. I had my revenge in 1885, when the Leeds Liberals swung round to my view of that gentleman, and I was hailed—quite undeservedly—as a prophet because I had always distrusted one whom they now not only distrusted, but disliked and despised.
Let me say, before leaving Mr. Chamberlain, that I still consider that the worst blot upon his political career was the manner in which he treated Mr. Forster. No doubt his dislike of Mr. Forster was in the first instance inspired by his repugnance to the Education Act; but I cannot help saying that in later years it degenerated into what, at any rate, looked like a feeling of antipathy towards the man who, at that time, was regarded as standing high in the succession to Mr. Gladstone as leader of the Liberal party. When I come to deal with the events of 1882, I shall have something to say of the part which Mr. Chamberlain played towards Mr. Forster in the painful events which issued in the latter's withdrawal from Mr. Gladstone's second Administration.
The Liberals of England were naturally very despondent after the unexpecteddébâcleof 1874. They had believed that the good works of a Government which had wrought so much for the public benefit would have been appreciated by the great mass of the electors, and they were unfeignedly astonished at the verdict returned by the country. They had not taken into account that swing of the pendulum which has so large an influence in popular constituencies. Nor had they noted the extent to which the unity of the Liberal party, and its consequent strength, had been impaired by the action of advanced sections, who were so passionately bent upon carrying the measures in which they were themselves most deeply interested that they did not stop to count the cost of their proceedings on the fortunes of the party as a whole. It took some little time to recover our spirits after that heavy blow, but soon some of us began to feel that in time "the loppèd tree would grow again." I was helped in coming to this conclusion by some words addressed to me by a shrewd old Yorkshire Tory, which I have remembered gratefully ever since. "I suppose you Liberals really think, as the fools of the Tory newspapers seem to do, that your party is finished for ever and a day. Don't make any such mistake. A Ministry no sooner begins to live than it begins to die. Our people are in the full flush of triumph just now, but already they are beginning to die." The shrewd good sense of my friend has often struck me since, and many a time I have had occasion to notice how quickly the process of decay sets in after the formation of even the strongest Governments.
The chief event in the history of the Liberal party in the year succeeding its great defeat was the unexpected resignation by Mr. Gladstone of his post of leader. I am not concerned either to defend or to blame this episode in the career of a very great man whom I followed with enthusiasm and an unfaltering devotion for many years, but who had, as I was always conscious, some of the defects of his qualities, and whose action in a given case could never be predicted with confidence. There is no doubt that Mr. Gladstone, old Parliamentary hand as he was, even in 1875, had a very real dislike for those personal intrigues and jealousies which play so large a part behind the scenes in our public life. It is a curious fact that for nearly forty years no intrigues were more active, and no jealousies more bitter, than those which had relation to Mr. Gladstone himself. There was always someone ready to intrigue against him. There were always those who thought that, if only he could be got out of the way, there might possibly be room for themselves upon the top of the mountain. In 1868 the representatives of this class had protested against his being allowed to become Prime Minister. In 1874 they, or their successors, were still louder in their protests against his being allowed ever again to form an administration. He was a defeated Minister, and some of them took care to bring this fact home to him in as unpleasant a way as possible. One, at least, had good reason to repent of his audacity. No one who was in the House of Commons on the memorable afternoon when Sir William Harcourt tried a fall with Mr. Gladstone, and met with such terrific punishment, is ever likely to forget the scene. It was said at the time by a humorous observer describing the debate that when Sir William—"my own Solicitor-General, I believe," as Mr. Gladstone said in describing him—had listened to the speech in which his late chief inflicted due chastisement upon him, like one of Bret Harte's heroes "he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more." Mr. Gladstone's resignation of the leadership at the beginning of 1875 was not, I think, unconnected with the fact that he knew that there were certain active spirits in the Liberal party who, believing themselves fully equal to any position to which they might be called, were unfeignedly anxious that they should have at least a chance of arriving at the front place.
Yet, when Mr. Gladstone did resign the leadership, no one named any of these intriguers as his possible successor; and it may be noted here that none of the intriguers has even yet secured the reward he coveted. The two names mentioned as those of possible leaders in 1875 were those of Mr. Forster and Lord Hartington. I name them in this order because Mr. Forster was first suggested, and the suggestion came not from any wire-pullers or clique, but from the body of Liberals as a whole. But Mr. Forster's enemies on the Opposition benches, though not very numerous, were very bitter, and they at once put forward as the strongest card they could play against Mr. Forster the name of Lord Hartington. Lord Hartington was, like Forster himself, a man of high character, to whom no taint of intrigue attached. He had not offended any section of the party in the way in which Forster had offended the Nonconformists, and, above all, he was the son and heir of the Duke of Devonshire. Social influence counts for a great deal in political life in this country, but there was another factor that also counted in favour of Lord Hartington. This was the fact that he could not sit in the House of Commons after his father's death, and that, consequently, if he were chosen, he would be more or less of a stopgap. A stopgap is, of course, always popular with the intriguer who knows that he himself has not yet arrived.