CHAPTERXALARUMS AND EXCURSIONSWhether in the biography of a nation, or of a single person, it is alike impossible to trace it steadily through successive years.Ruskin: “Praeterita.”I suppose in a certain sense every brief or retainer or notice of motion or summons for directions is an alarum, or alarm, or call to arms; and each appearance in Court is in the nature of an excursion. But I had in mind in choosing my title some of those occasions on which I was called away from the usual routine of my work to take up other affairs in some different part of the world.And casting my glances back to my early days at the Bar, I remember, as though it were a fact in another person’s life, that I could never keep away from an election if there was one about, though I can be honestly thankful to-day that my young ambition to be one of the principals in such a contest was never granted to me.One of the most stirring elections I played a part in was in the autumn of 1886, when I went down to Bristol to help Mr. Joseph Weston, to whom I acted as a sort of political secretary during the three weeks preceding the election. I am notsure that I was not a corrupt practice or at least an illegal expense within the meaning of the Act, for no return was made about me in the election expenses. But I was really not a fighting unit, being only a personal intelligence department for Mr. Weston, and I sat in his drawing-room, which was papered with sketches and drawings of William Müller, many of which are now in public galleries, and there I watched the progress of the game, made notes of speeches, wrote letters, held conferences with my chief, and in leisure moments studied the methods of one of the greatest water-colour painters of the English School.Sir Joseph Weston, as he afterwards became, was a well-known and popular citizen. Born in 1822, he had, with his father before him, been engaged in the hardware and iron trades. He was connected with big concerns in his own city and Birmingham, such as the Bristol Wagon Works and the Patent Nut and Bolt Company, and politically might be described as a sound but not an advanced Liberal. His life had been business not politics, and he had not given any great amount of thought to the questions of the hour. He had been Mayor of Bristol for four successive years, and always treated every class and creed of citizen with lavish hospitality. It was rumoured that he would have been member for the city before its division into districts, but for an untoward incident arising during his mayoralty, which, though merely prompted by his natural hospitality and kindness of heart, was misunderstoodby those who had to consider its legal parliamentary bearings. Mr. Samuel Morley, who had been member since 1868, was desirous of retiring for reasons of health, and the local association interviewed two candidates. The first was an eminent counsel of the Western Circuit. He, with Gladstone bag and the true faith in him, came down from London, gave the deputation a sound political oration at his hotel, and with incorruptible correctness bade them good evening. The deputation then walked across to the Town Hall, where they were received by Mr. Weston, who told them in a few words his short and simple creed. This over, he said with a sigh of relief: “Now, gentlemen, politics are done with, and I am once more the Mayor of the City, and as I have never allowed any deputation to go away from the Town Hall without entertainment, I can make no exception of yourselves.” The doors were thrown open and they sat down to a princely supper.Sad to say, when this reached the ears of the eminent London counsel and his legal friends in high places in the party, their formal minds saw in the kindly Mayor’s thoughtful hospitality the possibility of future trouble in Election Courts. The fact that the same evening or early next morning the association had unanimously selected Mr. Weston as their candidate, did not seem to weigh with them against his dangerous act of playing the good Samaritan to possible voters. A way out of the difficulty was found by persuading Mr. SamuelMorley not to resign, and in 1885 Mr. Weston’s chance came, when he was assigned the South Division of Bristol, rightly regarded from a Liberal point of view as the one doubtful proposition of the election.Mr. Weston was certainly one of the most generous of men. There was nothing grudging or of necessity about his donations, he was in heart and aspect a cheerful giver. He had a special secretary to investigate cases of distress and keep the accounts of his subscriptions, and it was really a matter of sorrow to him that during the election he had to keep his hands out of his pockets and close his ears to local appeals for fear of committing some breach of election rules. He had always been in favour of Disestablishment, and though this was not really an important issue at this election, the drum ecclesiastical was beaten through the streets of Bedminster, and a serious clerical campaign was entered upon against him. With priestly tact a sermon was preached against Mr. Weston in one of the churches which had been enriched by his gift. If I remember right, the present had been the very pulpit from which the clerical election bomb was hurled. The incident created a good deal of stir. It is curious what small things influence the course of an election. That sermon, the output of sincere, weak-minded, unbusinesslike enthusiasm, preached probably to a regular Tory-voting congregation, where there was no possibility of gaining votes, became a valuable electioneering asset to Mr. Weston’s friends. He himself got many letters from fellow-citizens opposedto him in politics regretting the affair, but I do not recall that he ever referred to it in public himself.And when I look back on those nights and days of anxious work, the crowded meetings, the weary conferences, the dull round of deputations, and then the final shoutings, booings, or applause of the result, followed by speeches of triumph or manly resignation, I wonder there are men always forthcoming to face the cost and trouble of it. What reward did Weston get from it other than vanity and vexation of spirit? But when we were in the thick of the thing on Wednesday, November 25, 1885, no thoughts of the triviality of the affair ever entered our minds. The eyes of Bristol were upon us and the eyes of the Empire were on Bristol, and we were all intoxicated by the unwonted limelight. Men, women and children, horses, donkeys and dogs wore red or blue favours, and one gallant Tory paraded the streets in a sky-blue suit, and to the delight of all parties had dyed his dog the same colour. It was after half-past twelve at night before the result was announced. We were waiting on the first floor of a little greengrocer’s shop opposite the local police station. There had been many false alarms. A huge crowd surged beneath us, cheering and groaning other results. At length our figures flashed out in a transparency across the street:Weston4217Hill412196One half of Bedminster went mad with joy, the other half booed and groaned as though hope had departed from their lives. Mr. Weston was whirled away in his brougham to make a round of his constituency and I went forth to see the fun, for Bristol on an election night had in those days something of the Eatanswill spirit left. There was window-breaking going forward in one of the main streets and a few police sallies, and later on, well after one o’clock, when I reached an open square, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach or one of his friends was addressing a large and enthusiastic mob from the windows of the Royal Hotel. “Who’s in for the South?” shouted someone. “Weston,” came the answer from hundreds of voices, and prolonged groans followed the announcement. There were but few police in the streets, and the mob was orderly enough and well content to shout over its solitary Conservative success, when a sound of counter-cheers approached from the south, and as it came nearer the cry went up “Weston! Weston!” He was boxed up in his neat single brougham. I could not see him from where I stood, but I could see the stalwarts of his party, a lot of sturdy fellows who had tied ropes to it, and were pushing and pulling it along or sitting on the roof and cheering as they rocked their way into the square. It was the brougham’s last night out, but it was a glorious one. As it neared the Royal Hotel this delirious procession became a cause of offence to the rival crowd. As if with one movement, they turned on the advancing carriage, and itlooked as if there would be a faction fight worthy of the Emerald Isle, in which Weston was bound to be injured. But a wonderful manœuvre prevented it. From some ambush sprang to light about a hundred police. They made their way to their beloved Mayor, surrounding his carriage and sufficient men to pull it. This solid wedge of police drove itself through the crowd to the bottom of Clifton Hill, and there the carriage was sent on its way with a few police, and the main body suddenly turned across the street and blocked the crowd back. It was a smart piece of work, and the mob gave the police a most complimentary groan when they saw how they were outwitted. In this way, in November, 1885, Weston, M.P., came to his house in Clifton, full of the joy and glory of victory. But in the summer of 1886 it was entirely the other way, the cheers were for our opponents and the tears were ours. Then Mr. Weston received a knighthood from Mr. Gladstone for his services to his country, and his political career was at an end.But the alarum came to me from another part of the world altogether at the next general election. I was at Lancaster Sessions when a telegram called me to Aylesbury to act as agent for Mr. C. D. Hodgson, who had pluckily gone down to fight a Rothschild for Gladstone and Home Rule. We had only a fortnight to do it in—but what a fortnight! I travelled right up from Lancaster to Willesden, and across from there to Westbourne Park, catching the last train to Aylesbury, and found myself late atnight in command of a big empty house with tables and chairs and pens and ink, and a fine band of voluntary workers. It was many nights before I got a sleep in bed. It was real campaigning. Everything had to be done in no time. It was a big straggling division without any railway, but we planned to have a meeting in every village and carried out our plans, pushing our forces over the Chilterns to the little village of Totternhoe, the rural silence of whose common was for the first time disturbed by political speech. Indeed, we were a thought too active. For our only hope of any success—and that a slender one—lay in the fact that at the last election feeling had run so high between the supporters of Liberal and Conservative that open fights had taken place, and the Conservatives had declared they would never vote for a Rothschild. If the Conservatives had held aloof it would have been an interesting fight. However, the Union had to be saved, our rebellion was taken seriously, a four-lined whip went out to all the blues, and they flocked to the ballot against us and we were routed.It was during this election that I first learned something of the iniquity of imprisonment for debt. I was told that in a certain village a tradesman could command some two hundred votes, and that it would be well to appoint him a chairman of a local committee. I went over to interview him. He was very shy, and seemed diffident about Home Rule and afraid of the Catholics, but after a lot of talk he said he would vote for Hodgson and use his influence inthe village in our favour if he took the chair at our meeting. All this was arranged, but I could not imagine why such a miserable, mean, uneducated, narrow-minded little person should be a leader of enlightened thought, even in a Buckinghamshire village. I was asking one of our supporters in Aylesbury, a shrewd, keen man of business, about my little friend, and he opened my eyes as to the nature of his influence.“Oh, he’s all right,” he said. “He’s got the votes right enough. He’s two hundred of them on his books.”“On his books,” I said in surprise, not understanding what he meant.“Yes. He gives pretty wide credit. The whole village is on his books, and half of them are under judgment summonses. He don’t put them in prison, of course, but they know he could do.”I expressed my view about the iniquity of such proceedings, which I scarcely credited.“I don’t see anything wrong in it,” continued my friend. “It’s checkmate to the parson. The parsons about here threaten a labourer with hell in the next world if he votes Liberal, and our friend threatens him with hell in this, if he votes Conservative, and then he votes as he likes. It seems to me reasonable enough.”It is curious how far removed this neighbourhood was from London and the political world. The workers listened eagerly to speeches from wagons and in schoolrooms, but the questions discussed wereevidently new to most of the hearers. Many strange questions were asked you, and curious ideas of the position of affairs put forward. One of the strangest politicians I ever met was an old farm labourer tramping towards Hughenden. I jumped out of my pony cart and walked with him up the hill.“Are you a voter in the Aylesbury Division?” I asked.“Aye, that I be,” he replied with a grin, in a chanting voice.“I hope you are going to vote for Mr. Hodgson.”“Aye, I be going to vote for Mr. Hodgson right enough, fur he be Gladstone’s man.”“Right you are,” I said, “he’s Gladstone’s man.”“We know a bit about them politics down here,” he continued, in a monotonous sing-song. “You see Disraeli he lived down Hughenden way. They made him Lord Beaconsfield, and he’s buried over yon. We was very proud of him, we was.”I began to think there was a blunder somewhere, and said: “But Hodgson is Gladstone’s man, you know.”“All right, I understand, I understand,” he said, rather testily. “I told you we know all about them things here. When Disraeli was alive, why, him and Gladstone lived like brothers, didn’t they? And I say now one’s dead, vote for t’other.”It seemed useless to disturb the comfortable and convenient myth that the old gentleman had built round the only two names in the political world hehad ever heard of. We were at the top of the hill, and our ways parted. I once more assured him that Hodgson was Gladstone’s man, and bade him farewell.And I call to mind a very different excursion from these political ones, for I little thought when I went down in early life to the assizes at Norwich that I should ever have the honour of presiding in the wonderful old court there. It is certainly one of the least convenient for its purpose of any that I have ever seen. There are the most mysterious collection of pens and pulpits in its interior, which from the crow’s nest in which the judge sits seem to have been designed specially to prevent anyone getting from one to the other when it is necessary to do so. It took twenty-five minutes to get a jury collected, seated in the right pen and duly sworn. To my Manchester mind this was a long pause in my day’s work, but there is more time to the hour in Norfolk than in most places, and once you get there, there really is no hurry. The witness-box in that court is of very peculiar design. It is built like a sentry box. The witness enters it from behind; a special verger or usher shuts him in, and he stays there until released. I watched a quaint comedy or rather farce in which a jovial horse-dealer of very ample proportions played the leading part. With great difficulty he was got into the witness-box and the door closed by a clever wrist movement of the usher. It is true some of him overlapped the bar in front, but the rest of him was actually in the box and thedoor closed. All would have gone well if counsel for the defence had not made him laugh—when he must have expanded, and click! bang! the door flew open, and we had to wait until the irate usher slowly awakened, strolled down the corridor, and got him pressed in again and shut the door. This went on two or three times, to the great discontent of the usher, who at last set his back to the door and kept the fat horse-dealer in by sheer force. What would have happened if the back door of the box had been left open I do not know, but I think it might have hurt the usher’s feelings to suggest it, so I kept silence.I was sitting there for my brother, Judge Addison, K.C., who had recently been appointed, and was ill and had asked me to sit for him, which as I had a holiday I was very ready to do. It was my first experience of travelling to little country towns, and in those days, when there were no motors and the railways were very slow and inconvenient, it was anything but a pleasant task. I remember in the County Club, which gave me a kindly hospitality, a genial, well-built, jolly squire, who knew what my job was, asked me how the working class of the North compared with the men I met in the courts round Norfolk. I made answer to the effect that the Northerners were quicker and sharper, perhaps, but, then, the Norfolk people had a quaint mother wit. “But,” I added, “either of them can tell you what isn’t true occasionally.”“Oh,” he cried, “liars! Of course, they’re liars!That’s nothing. They are all Radicals and Dissenters about here!”I have often wondered how my good friend Judge Willis, K.C., got on with the Norfolk squire when he was appointed to that circuit.The difference between the Manchester ways of thought and those of Norfolk were very marked, and so were their methods of business. At one place a solicitor began quoting some law from a book, when his opponent got up indignantly and said it was a well-understood local custom that if a solicitor was going to bring a law book, he should give notice to the other side. I agreed that it was a very proper custom, and impounded the law book, feeling strongly that if there was any advantage in the possession of the law book it should be with the Court.The case went on very well without any law, as it was a running-down case and a not unamusing one. A local ruffian had hired a pony and cart and gone to Sheringham to collect his father’s rents. He took two friends with him, and they seemed to have drunk the rents and smashed up the trap and lamed the pony. The ruffian was a humorist, very stolid and slow, with an added falsetto of his own to the long, drawling Norfolk speech which seemed to amuse the people in court greatly. Neither solicitor could make anything of him, so I thought I would try my hand on him.“Now, how did the accident happen?” I asked sternly.“Nay, I doan’t know. I was ’elping to put ponyback i’ sharves. I doan’t know how ’e got out. I think belly band broke.”“But you must know something about it.”“Na—ay,” drawled the witness. “I worn’t driving; Bill wor driving.”“Then if you remember nothing about it, were you drunk?”“Me drunk?” asked the witness in pained surprise. “What, me drunk! Na-ay, I wor no more drunk nor your lordship.”There was a titter, promptly suppressed, but the witness stared blankly at the crowd without a twinkle in his eye.“Well, what was Bill doing while you were putting the pony in?”“Bill!” A long pause of thought. “Oh, Bill! ’E wor sittin i’ ’edge looking on.”“Was Bill drunk?”“What, Bill drunk? Na-ay, ’e wor no more drunk nor your lordship.”A second and more prolonged titter.“Well, what was the other man doing?” I asked.“Oh, you mean Jim. Let me see. Jim wor lying on ’is back in the road. Some boys got ’old of ’im and began draggin’ ’im by the ’eels round the common. ’E wor a bit drunk, ’e wor.”“Very drunk, I should say,” commented the Court severely.“Na-ay,” dissented the witness with deep seriousness. “Na-ay, I doan’t think so. It was sea airthat upset Jim. ’E’d been to Sheringham, and Jim ’e ain’t used to sea air.”Everyone in court laughed loud at this excuse, except the witness and the Court, and of the two the witness was far the better actor at keeping an impassive face.Many strange stories were told of Addison’s predecessor, the late Judge Price, who seems to have been a second Crompton Hutton in his methods of administering justice. I got a vivid glimpse of his system at one of the courts I visited. It was held in a little country town in a big barn-like building. The judge robed in a caretaker’s house. Then we formed a procession, the judge and the registrar being preceded by a policeman and a yellow dog, his property. It was rather like going to be hanged without a chaplain. We crossed a brick-paved yard and walked up the centre of a crowded building. A conjuror had been there the night before, and the judge sat on a daïs of packing cases covered with green baize. These keggled whenever the witnesses came up. The plaintiff stood on an auctioneer’s rostrum, and the defendant sat on a common Windsor chair. Whenever a case was called on the Registrar got up and called out, “All witnesses leave the court.” No one moved, and the policeman and the dog strolled round the building and selected witnesses. These he threw out with very little trouble, but it was an undignified proceeding, and wasted a lot of time. I could see that I should spend the rest of the day in the place, and probably missthe last train if I did not move. So I sent for the Registrar, a worthy gentleman of the old school, and told him my views.“I don’t want all the witnesses out of court,” I said.“The late judge always had them out of court, your Honour.”“I dare say, but I don’t think it’s necessary, and it wastes time.”“Yes, your Honour, but the late judge always had the witnesses out of court,” repeated the Registrar.“Well, I must ask you not to order them out of court to-day. It takes a long time to get them out, and longer still to get them back again.”There was a note of contempt in the Registrar’s voice as he replied, “The late judge never had the witnesses back, your Honour.”I felt that I was in the presence of a procedure invented by a judicial genius.
Whether in the biography of a nation, or of a single person, it is alike impossible to trace it steadily through successive years.
Ruskin: “Praeterita.”
I suppose in a certain sense every brief or retainer or notice of motion or summons for directions is an alarum, or alarm, or call to arms; and each appearance in Court is in the nature of an excursion. But I had in mind in choosing my title some of those occasions on which I was called away from the usual routine of my work to take up other affairs in some different part of the world.
And casting my glances back to my early days at the Bar, I remember, as though it were a fact in another person’s life, that I could never keep away from an election if there was one about, though I can be honestly thankful to-day that my young ambition to be one of the principals in such a contest was never granted to me.
One of the most stirring elections I played a part in was in the autumn of 1886, when I went down to Bristol to help Mr. Joseph Weston, to whom I acted as a sort of political secretary during the three weeks preceding the election. I am notsure that I was not a corrupt practice or at least an illegal expense within the meaning of the Act, for no return was made about me in the election expenses. But I was really not a fighting unit, being only a personal intelligence department for Mr. Weston, and I sat in his drawing-room, which was papered with sketches and drawings of William Müller, many of which are now in public galleries, and there I watched the progress of the game, made notes of speeches, wrote letters, held conferences with my chief, and in leisure moments studied the methods of one of the greatest water-colour painters of the English School.
Sir Joseph Weston, as he afterwards became, was a well-known and popular citizen. Born in 1822, he had, with his father before him, been engaged in the hardware and iron trades. He was connected with big concerns in his own city and Birmingham, such as the Bristol Wagon Works and the Patent Nut and Bolt Company, and politically might be described as a sound but not an advanced Liberal. His life had been business not politics, and he had not given any great amount of thought to the questions of the hour. He had been Mayor of Bristol for four successive years, and always treated every class and creed of citizen with lavish hospitality. It was rumoured that he would have been member for the city before its division into districts, but for an untoward incident arising during his mayoralty, which, though merely prompted by his natural hospitality and kindness of heart, was misunderstoodby those who had to consider its legal parliamentary bearings. Mr. Samuel Morley, who had been member since 1868, was desirous of retiring for reasons of health, and the local association interviewed two candidates. The first was an eminent counsel of the Western Circuit. He, with Gladstone bag and the true faith in him, came down from London, gave the deputation a sound political oration at his hotel, and with incorruptible correctness bade them good evening. The deputation then walked across to the Town Hall, where they were received by Mr. Weston, who told them in a few words his short and simple creed. This over, he said with a sigh of relief: “Now, gentlemen, politics are done with, and I am once more the Mayor of the City, and as I have never allowed any deputation to go away from the Town Hall without entertainment, I can make no exception of yourselves.” The doors were thrown open and they sat down to a princely supper.
Sad to say, when this reached the ears of the eminent London counsel and his legal friends in high places in the party, their formal minds saw in the kindly Mayor’s thoughtful hospitality the possibility of future trouble in Election Courts. The fact that the same evening or early next morning the association had unanimously selected Mr. Weston as their candidate, did not seem to weigh with them against his dangerous act of playing the good Samaritan to possible voters. A way out of the difficulty was found by persuading Mr. SamuelMorley not to resign, and in 1885 Mr. Weston’s chance came, when he was assigned the South Division of Bristol, rightly regarded from a Liberal point of view as the one doubtful proposition of the election.
Mr. Weston was certainly one of the most generous of men. There was nothing grudging or of necessity about his donations, he was in heart and aspect a cheerful giver. He had a special secretary to investigate cases of distress and keep the accounts of his subscriptions, and it was really a matter of sorrow to him that during the election he had to keep his hands out of his pockets and close his ears to local appeals for fear of committing some breach of election rules. He had always been in favour of Disestablishment, and though this was not really an important issue at this election, the drum ecclesiastical was beaten through the streets of Bedminster, and a serious clerical campaign was entered upon against him. With priestly tact a sermon was preached against Mr. Weston in one of the churches which had been enriched by his gift. If I remember right, the present had been the very pulpit from which the clerical election bomb was hurled. The incident created a good deal of stir. It is curious what small things influence the course of an election. That sermon, the output of sincere, weak-minded, unbusinesslike enthusiasm, preached probably to a regular Tory-voting congregation, where there was no possibility of gaining votes, became a valuable electioneering asset to Mr. Weston’s friends. He himself got many letters from fellow-citizens opposedto him in politics regretting the affair, but I do not recall that he ever referred to it in public himself.
And when I look back on those nights and days of anxious work, the crowded meetings, the weary conferences, the dull round of deputations, and then the final shoutings, booings, or applause of the result, followed by speeches of triumph or manly resignation, I wonder there are men always forthcoming to face the cost and trouble of it. What reward did Weston get from it other than vanity and vexation of spirit? But when we were in the thick of the thing on Wednesday, November 25, 1885, no thoughts of the triviality of the affair ever entered our minds. The eyes of Bristol were upon us and the eyes of the Empire were on Bristol, and we were all intoxicated by the unwonted limelight. Men, women and children, horses, donkeys and dogs wore red or blue favours, and one gallant Tory paraded the streets in a sky-blue suit, and to the delight of all parties had dyed his dog the same colour. It was after half-past twelve at night before the result was announced. We were waiting on the first floor of a little greengrocer’s shop opposite the local police station. There had been many false alarms. A huge crowd surged beneath us, cheering and groaning other results. At length our figures flashed out in a transparency across the street:
One half of Bedminster went mad with joy, the other half booed and groaned as though hope had departed from their lives. Mr. Weston was whirled away in his brougham to make a round of his constituency and I went forth to see the fun, for Bristol on an election night had in those days something of the Eatanswill spirit left. There was window-breaking going forward in one of the main streets and a few police sallies, and later on, well after one o’clock, when I reached an open square, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach or one of his friends was addressing a large and enthusiastic mob from the windows of the Royal Hotel. “Who’s in for the South?” shouted someone. “Weston,” came the answer from hundreds of voices, and prolonged groans followed the announcement. There were but few police in the streets, and the mob was orderly enough and well content to shout over its solitary Conservative success, when a sound of counter-cheers approached from the south, and as it came nearer the cry went up “Weston! Weston!” He was boxed up in his neat single brougham. I could not see him from where I stood, but I could see the stalwarts of his party, a lot of sturdy fellows who had tied ropes to it, and were pushing and pulling it along or sitting on the roof and cheering as they rocked their way into the square. It was the brougham’s last night out, but it was a glorious one. As it neared the Royal Hotel this delirious procession became a cause of offence to the rival crowd. As if with one movement, they turned on the advancing carriage, and itlooked as if there would be a faction fight worthy of the Emerald Isle, in which Weston was bound to be injured. But a wonderful manœuvre prevented it. From some ambush sprang to light about a hundred police. They made their way to their beloved Mayor, surrounding his carriage and sufficient men to pull it. This solid wedge of police drove itself through the crowd to the bottom of Clifton Hill, and there the carriage was sent on its way with a few police, and the main body suddenly turned across the street and blocked the crowd back. It was a smart piece of work, and the mob gave the police a most complimentary groan when they saw how they were outwitted. In this way, in November, 1885, Weston, M.P., came to his house in Clifton, full of the joy and glory of victory. But in the summer of 1886 it was entirely the other way, the cheers were for our opponents and the tears were ours. Then Mr. Weston received a knighthood from Mr. Gladstone for his services to his country, and his political career was at an end.
But the alarum came to me from another part of the world altogether at the next general election. I was at Lancaster Sessions when a telegram called me to Aylesbury to act as agent for Mr. C. D. Hodgson, who had pluckily gone down to fight a Rothschild for Gladstone and Home Rule. We had only a fortnight to do it in—but what a fortnight! I travelled right up from Lancaster to Willesden, and across from there to Westbourne Park, catching the last train to Aylesbury, and found myself late atnight in command of a big empty house with tables and chairs and pens and ink, and a fine band of voluntary workers. It was many nights before I got a sleep in bed. It was real campaigning. Everything had to be done in no time. It was a big straggling division without any railway, but we planned to have a meeting in every village and carried out our plans, pushing our forces over the Chilterns to the little village of Totternhoe, the rural silence of whose common was for the first time disturbed by political speech. Indeed, we were a thought too active. For our only hope of any success—and that a slender one—lay in the fact that at the last election feeling had run so high between the supporters of Liberal and Conservative that open fights had taken place, and the Conservatives had declared they would never vote for a Rothschild. If the Conservatives had held aloof it would have been an interesting fight. However, the Union had to be saved, our rebellion was taken seriously, a four-lined whip went out to all the blues, and they flocked to the ballot against us and we were routed.
It was during this election that I first learned something of the iniquity of imprisonment for debt. I was told that in a certain village a tradesman could command some two hundred votes, and that it would be well to appoint him a chairman of a local committee. I went over to interview him. He was very shy, and seemed diffident about Home Rule and afraid of the Catholics, but after a lot of talk he said he would vote for Hodgson and use his influence inthe village in our favour if he took the chair at our meeting. All this was arranged, but I could not imagine why such a miserable, mean, uneducated, narrow-minded little person should be a leader of enlightened thought, even in a Buckinghamshire village. I was asking one of our supporters in Aylesbury, a shrewd, keen man of business, about my little friend, and he opened my eyes as to the nature of his influence.
“Oh, he’s all right,” he said. “He’s got the votes right enough. He’s two hundred of them on his books.”
“On his books,” I said in surprise, not understanding what he meant.
“Yes. He gives pretty wide credit. The whole village is on his books, and half of them are under judgment summonses. He don’t put them in prison, of course, but they know he could do.”
I expressed my view about the iniquity of such proceedings, which I scarcely credited.
“I don’t see anything wrong in it,” continued my friend. “It’s checkmate to the parson. The parsons about here threaten a labourer with hell in the next world if he votes Liberal, and our friend threatens him with hell in this, if he votes Conservative, and then he votes as he likes. It seems to me reasonable enough.”
It is curious how far removed this neighbourhood was from London and the political world. The workers listened eagerly to speeches from wagons and in schoolrooms, but the questions discussed wereevidently new to most of the hearers. Many strange questions were asked you, and curious ideas of the position of affairs put forward. One of the strangest politicians I ever met was an old farm labourer tramping towards Hughenden. I jumped out of my pony cart and walked with him up the hill.
“Are you a voter in the Aylesbury Division?” I asked.
“Aye, that I be,” he replied with a grin, in a chanting voice.
“I hope you are going to vote for Mr. Hodgson.”
“Aye, I be going to vote for Mr. Hodgson right enough, fur he be Gladstone’s man.”
“Right you are,” I said, “he’s Gladstone’s man.”
“We know a bit about them politics down here,” he continued, in a monotonous sing-song. “You see Disraeli he lived down Hughenden way. They made him Lord Beaconsfield, and he’s buried over yon. We was very proud of him, we was.”
I began to think there was a blunder somewhere, and said: “But Hodgson is Gladstone’s man, you know.”
“All right, I understand, I understand,” he said, rather testily. “I told you we know all about them things here. When Disraeli was alive, why, him and Gladstone lived like brothers, didn’t they? And I say now one’s dead, vote for t’other.”
It seemed useless to disturb the comfortable and convenient myth that the old gentleman had built round the only two names in the political world hehad ever heard of. We were at the top of the hill, and our ways parted. I once more assured him that Hodgson was Gladstone’s man, and bade him farewell.
And I call to mind a very different excursion from these political ones, for I little thought when I went down in early life to the assizes at Norwich that I should ever have the honour of presiding in the wonderful old court there. It is certainly one of the least convenient for its purpose of any that I have ever seen. There are the most mysterious collection of pens and pulpits in its interior, which from the crow’s nest in which the judge sits seem to have been designed specially to prevent anyone getting from one to the other when it is necessary to do so. It took twenty-five minutes to get a jury collected, seated in the right pen and duly sworn. To my Manchester mind this was a long pause in my day’s work, but there is more time to the hour in Norfolk than in most places, and once you get there, there really is no hurry. The witness-box in that court is of very peculiar design. It is built like a sentry box. The witness enters it from behind; a special verger or usher shuts him in, and he stays there until released. I watched a quaint comedy or rather farce in which a jovial horse-dealer of very ample proportions played the leading part. With great difficulty he was got into the witness-box and the door closed by a clever wrist movement of the usher. It is true some of him overlapped the bar in front, but the rest of him was actually in the box and thedoor closed. All would have gone well if counsel for the defence had not made him laugh—when he must have expanded, and click! bang! the door flew open, and we had to wait until the irate usher slowly awakened, strolled down the corridor, and got him pressed in again and shut the door. This went on two or three times, to the great discontent of the usher, who at last set his back to the door and kept the fat horse-dealer in by sheer force. What would have happened if the back door of the box had been left open I do not know, but I think it might have hurt the usher’s feelings to suggest it, so I kept silence.
I was sitting there for my brother, Judge Addison, K.C., who had recently been appointed, and was ill and had asked me to sit for him, which as I had a holiday I was very ready to do. It was my first experience of travelling to little country towns, and in those days, when there were no motors and the railways were very slow and inconvenient, it was anything but a pleasant task. I remember in the County Club, which gave me a kindly hospitality, a genial, well-built, jolly squire, who knew what my job was, asked me how the working class of the North compared with the men I met in the courts round Norfolk. I made answer to the effect that the Northerners were quicker and sharper, perhaps, but, then, the Norfolk people had a quaint mother wit. “But,” I added, “either of them can tell you what isn’t true occasionally.”
“Oh,” he cried, “liars! Of course, they’re liars!That’s nothing. They are all Radicals and Dissenters about here!”
I have often wondered how my good friend Judge Willis, K.C., got on with the Norfolk squire when he was appointed to that circuit.
The difference between the Manchester ways of thought and those of Norfolk were very marked, and so were their methods of business. At one place a solicitor began quoting some law from a book, when his opponent got up indignantly and said it was a well-understood local custom that if a solicitor was going to bring a law book, he should give notice to the other side. I agreed that it was a very proper custom, and impounded the law book, feeling strongly that if there was any advantage in the possession of the law book it should be with the Court.
The case went on very well without any law, as it was a running-down case and a not unamusing one. A local ruffian had hired a pony and cart and gone to Sheringham to collect his father’s rents. He took two friends with him, and they seemed to have drunk the rents and smashed up the trap and lamed the pony. The ruffian was a humorist, very stolid and slow, with an added falsetto of his own to the long, drawling Norfolk speech which seemed to amuse the people in court greatly. Neither solicitor could make anything of him, so I thought I would try my hand on him.
“Now, how did the accident happen?” I asked sternly.
“Nay, I doan’t know. I was ’elping to put ponyback i’ sharves. I doan’t know how ’e got out. I think belly band broke.”
“But you must know something about it.”
“Na—ay,” drawled the witness. “I worn’t driving; Bill wor driving.”
“Then if you remember nothing about it, were you drunk?”
“Me drunk?” asked the witness in pained surprise. “What, me drunk! Na-ay, I wor no more drunk nor your lordship.”
There was a titter, promptly suppressed, but the witness stared blankly at the crowd without a twinkle in his eye.
“Well, what was Bill doing while you were putting the pony in?”
“Bill!” A long pause of thought. “Oh, Bill! ’E wor sittin i’ ’edge looking on.”
“Was Bill drunk?”
“What, Bill drunk? Na-ay, ’e wor no more drunk nor your lordship.”
A second and more prolonged titter.
“Well, what was the other man doing?” I asked.
“Oh, you mean Jim. Let me see. Jim wor lying on ’is back in the road. Some boys got ’old of ’im and began draggin’ ’im by the ’eels round the common. ’E wor a bit drunk, ’e wor.”
“Very drunk, I should say,” commented the Court severely.
“Na-ay,” dissented the witness with deep seriousness. “Na-ay, I doan’t think so. It was sea airthat upset Jim. ’E’d been to Sheringham, and Jim ’e ain’t used to sea air.”
Everyone in court laughed loud at this excuse, except the witness and the Court, and of the two the witness was far the better actor at keeping an impassive face.
Many strange stories were told of Addison’s predecessor, the late Judge Price, who seems to have been a second Crompton Hutton in his methods of administering justice. I got a vivid glimpse of his system at one of the courts I visited. It was held in a little country town in a big barn-like building. The judge robed in a caretaker’s house. Then we formed a procession, the judge and the registrar being preceded by a policeman and a yellow dog, his property. It was rather like going to be hanged without a chaplain. We crossed a brick-paved yard and walked up the centre of a crowded building. A conjuror had been there the night before, and the judge sat on a daïs of packing cases covered with green baize. These keggled whenever the witnesses came up. The plaintiff stood on an auctioneer’s rostrum, and the defendant sat on a common Windsor chair. Whenever a case was called on the Registrar got up and called out, “All witnesses leave the court.” No one moved, and the policeman and the dog strolled round the building and selected witnesses. These he threw out with very little trouble, but it was an undignified proceeding, and wasted a lot of time. I could see that I should spend the rest of the day in the place, and probably missthe last train if I did not move. So I sent for the Registrar, a worthy gentleman of the old school, and told him my views.
“I don’t want all the witnesses out of court,” I said.
“The late judge always had them out of court, your Honour.”
“I dare say, but I don’t think it’s necessary, and it wastes time.”
“Yes, your Honour, but the late judge always had the witnesses out of court,” repeated the Registrar.
“Well, I must ask you not to order them out of court to-day. It takes a long time to get them out, and longer still to get them back again.”
There was a note of contempt in the Registrar’s voice as he replied, “The late judge never had the witnesses back, your Honour.”
I felt that I was in the presence of a procedure invented by a judicial genius.