Bygones Worth Remembering Volume I Part 20

* Isaiah could not have prophesied more definitely. Friends of the slaves stoutly denied that the Scriptures sanctioned their bondage. They were afraid the fact would go against Christianity. It was true nevertheless, and the American preachers pleaded this for their opposition and supineness towards abolition.

"And now, gentlemen, as regards the enthusiasm with which you have rallied round your ancient flag, and welcomed the humble representative of those principles whose emblem it is, I trust that neither the lapse of time nor the seductions of prosperity can ever efface it from my memory. To my opponents my acknowledgments are due for the good humour and kindness with which they have received me, and while I would thank my friends for their zealous and unwearied exertions in my favour, I briefly but emphatically a.s.sure them that if promises be an adequate foundation of confidence, or experience a reasonable ground of calculation, our victory is sure. I have the honour to be, gentlemen, your obliged and obedient servant,

"W. E. Gladstone.

"Clinton Arms, Newark, Tuesday, Oct, 9, 1832."

The sincerity, the intrepidity, the sympathy with those who labour, the candour of statement, the openness of mind, the sentiments of piety and freedom (so rarely combined) of his life, are all there. His whole career is but a magnificent enlargement of that address. I have lingered before the hotel in the market-place, where he stayed and from which he made speeches to the electors. There is no one living in Newark now who heard them. Byron lived in the same hotel when he came to Newark with his early poems, which he had printed at a shop still standing in the market-place. The township is enlarged, but otherwise unchanged as the Conservatism he then represented. I have thrice walked through all the streets along which he pa.s.sed, for he visited the house of every elector. What a splendid canva.s.ser he must have been, with his handsome face, his courtesy, his deference, his charm of speech, and infinite readiness of explanation!

I first saw him in the old House of Commons in 1842. Mr. Roebuck had presented a pet.i.tion from me that sitting, and I remained to witness subsequent proceedings. I only remember one figure, seemingly a young-looking man, tall, pallid-faced, with dark hair, who stood well out in the mid-s.p.a.ce between the Ministerial benches and the table, and spoke with the fluency and freedom of a master of his subject Every one appeared to pay him attention. I was told the speaker was Mr. Gladstone.

When he visited the Tyne in 1862, I did not need to be told his name. At that time I was connected with the _Newcastle Chronicle_, and it fell to me to write the leaders on Mr. Gladstone. The miners were told, when they came up from the pits on that day, they would see a sight new in England, which they might not soon see again--a Chancellor of the Exchequer who was known to have a conscience. Other holders of the same office may have had that commodity about them, but not employing it in public affairs, its existence had not been observed. The penny paper which gave the miners that information, we told them would not exist but for Mr. Gladstone. Thousands of miners came up from the pits of Durham and Northumberland, and great numbers succeeded in shaking hands with Mr. Gladstone as he approached the _Harry Clasper_, named after the well-known oarsman of the Tyne, who was on the river with Bob Chambers, who had won a hundred contests. Clasper and Chambers were always named together. Men swam before Mr. Gladstone's vessel a considerable distance, as though they were the water G.o.ds of the Tyne, preparing the way for their distinguished and unwonted visitor. And what a journey it was! Twenty-two miles of banks, counting both sides, were lined with people. The works upon the Tyneside, with their grim piles high in the air, crowned with clouds of blackest smoke, out of which forks of sulphurous flames darted, revealing hundreds of persons surmounting roofs and pinnacles, cheering in ringing tones, above, while cannon boomed at their feet below. Amid it all you could see everywhere women holding up their children to see the great Chancellor of the Exchequer go by. The Tyne has seen no other sight like this.

It was of this visit that I first wrote to Mr. Gladstone. The arrangements for his wonderful reception were the work of Mr. Joseph Cowen, jun. His father was Chief Commissioner for the Tyne--in person taller than Mr. Gladstone, with a gift of speech which sincerity made eloquent. His son, who had organised the reception, never came in sight of Mr. Gladstone from first to last. As I knew Mr. Gladstone liked to know what was below the surface as well as upon it, I sent him two informing notes.

"Going to and fro in the land "--not with inquisitive malice as a certain sojourner mentioned in Job is reputed to have done--on lecturing purpose bent, sometimes on political missions, I knew the state and nature of opinion in many places. The soul and Liberalism of the country was Nonconformist and religious. Many in Parliament thought that London newspapers, published mainly for sale, and which furnished ideas for music-hall politicians--represented English opinion at large. At times I wrote to members of Parliament that this was not so. Mr. Walter James (since Lord Northbourne) was one who showed my reports to Mr. Gladstone.

One day in 1877 Mr. Gladstone sent me a postcard, inviting me to breakfast with him. He was as open in his friendship as in his politics.

In all things he was prepared to dare the judgment of adversaries.

Incidentally I mentioned the invitation to two persons only, but next day a pa.s.sage appeared in a newspaper--much read in the House of Commons at that time--to the effect that Mr. Gladstone was inviting unusual persons to his house, who might be useful to him in his campaign on the Eastern question, so anxious was he to obtain partisan support in the agitation in which he was engaged. There was no truth whatever in this, as Mr. Gladstone never referred to the subject, nor any of his guests.

But I took care at that time not to mention again an invitation lest it should occasion inconvenience to my host. The visit to the Tyne had some picturesque incidents. By happy accident, or it might be from thoughtful design, Mrs. Gladstone wore an Indian shawl having a circle in the centre, by which she was distinguishable. Every person whom thousands come out to see, should have some individual mark of dress, and should never be surrounded by friends, when recognition is impossible and disappointing to the crowd.

At Middlesboro', Mrs. Gladstone was taken to see molten metal poured into moulds. I knew the ways of a foundry, and that if the mould happened to be damp, a shower of the liquid iron would fall upon those near. The gentlemen around her seemed to think it an act of freedom to warn her of her danger, so I stepped up to her and told her of the risk she ran. She said in after years, that if I did not save her life, I saved her from great possible discomfort.

Middlesboro* was then in a state of volcanic chaos. Mr. Gladstone predicted that it would become what it is now, a splendid town. It was in the grey of a murky evening, when blast furnaces were flaming around him, that Mr. Gladstone began in a small office--the only place available--a wonderful comparison between Oxford and the scene outside.

Alas! the dull-minded town clerk stopped him, saying that they wished him to make his speech in the evening--not knowing that Mr. Gladstone had twenty speeches in him at any time. The evening came, but the great inspiration returned no more.

The night before he had spoken in Newcastle, when he made the long-remembered declaration on the war then raging in America, the reporter of the Electric Telegraph Company had fallen ill, and Mr.

Cowen asked me to take his place. It is easier to report Mr. Gladstone verbatim than to summarise his speech as he proceeded on his rapid, animated, and unhesitating way. So I condensed the famous pa.s.sage in these words: "Jefferson Davis had not only made a navy, he had made a nation (Sensation)." The word was too strong. There was no "sensation;"

there was only a general movement as of unexpectedness, and "surprise"

would have been a more appropriate word; but it did not come to me at the moment, and there was no time to wait for it, and the "sensational"

sentence was all over London before the speech was ended. The next night he recurred to the subject at Middlesboro' with qualifications, but the Press took no notice of them. The "sensation" appended to the sentence had set political commentators on fire.

A notable speech was made by the Mayor of Middlesboro'. In presenting addresses to Mr. Gladstone, local magnates complimented him upon his distinction in Greek, which none of them were competent to appraise. The Mayor of Middlesboro', an honest, stalwart gentleman, said simply, "Mr.

Gladstone, if I could speak as well as you can speak, I should be able to tell you how proud we are to have you among us." No speech made to him was more effective or relevant, or pleased him more.

By the courtesy of Mr. Bright, who procured me a seat in the Speaker's gallery when there was only one to be had, I heard Mr. Gladstone deliver, at midnight, his famous peroration, when, with uplifted hand, he said, "Time is on our side."

I remember the night well. The Duke of Argyll came into the gallery, where he stood four or five hours. I would gladly have given him my seat, but if I did so I must relinquish hearing the debate, as I must have left the gallery, as no stranger is permitted to stand. So I thought it prudent to respect the privileges of the peerage--and keep my seat.

In the years when I was constantly in the House of Commons, I was one day walking through the tunnel-like pa.s.sage which leads from Downing Street into the Park, I saw a pair of gleaming eyes approaching me. The pa.s.sage was so dark I saw nothing else. As the figure pa.s.sed me I saw it was Mr. Gladstone. On returning to "The House," as Parliament is familiarly called, I mentioned what I had seen to Mr. Vargus, who had sat at the Treasury door for fifty years. "Yes," he answered, "there have been no eyes enter this House like Mr. Gladstone's since the days of Canning."

Yet those eyes of meteoric intensity so lacked quick perception that he would pa.s.s by members of his party in the Lobby of Parliament without accosting them, fearing to do so when he desired it, lest he should mistake their ident.i.ty and set up party misconceptions. Mr. Gladstone ignored persons because he did not see them. It should not have been left to Sir E. Hamilton to make this known after Mr. Gladstone's death.

The fact should have been disclosed fifty years before.

To disappointed members with whom I came in contact, I used to explain that Mr. Gladstones apparent slightingness was owing to preoccupation.

He would often enter the House absorbed by an impending speech--which was true--and thought more of serving his country than of conciliating partisans. Lord Palmerston was wiser in his generation, who knew his followers would forgive him betraying public interest, if he paid attention to them.