Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 Part 3

In subsequent years Mr. Gladstone publicly made amends to the great Republic for his error of judgment, but it was a long time before he was allowed to forget it.

I had no misadventure in reporting this memorable speech. It was the first occasion on which I had ever heard Mr. Gladstone speak, and it is even fresher in my recollection than my last sight of him shortly before his death. I can recall his tall, upright figure, the handsome, open countenance, as mobile as an actor's, the flashing eye that in moments of pa.s.sion lit up so wonderfully, the crop of waving brown-black hair. I have seldom seen a finer-looking man. I hear once again the beautiful voice, so sonorous, so varied in tone, so emphatic in accent. To the boy of twenty a first sight of this great historic figure was a revelation.

He seemed different from everybody else, almost a being from another world. I suppose that my admiration of Mr. Gladstone, which some have considered idolatrous, is to be dated from that hour. Thirty years afterwards I still regarded him as my political leader, and as the chief of men.

On the second day of his visit to Newcastle, Mr. Gladstone, as the guest of the River Tyne Commissioners, steamed down the Tyne from Newcastle to its mouth. His progress was like that of a conqueror returning from the wars. The firing of cannon, the waving of flags, the cheering of thousands, acclaimed his pa.s.sage down the coaly stream. An immense train of steamers and barges, all gaily decorated, followed in his wake. At different points of the journey his steamer was brought to a standstill, in order that addresses of welcome might be presented to him by different public bodies. He made speeches without end in reply. I think I reported eight of them myself. It was evident that he was deeply impressed by this demonstration, and I have always held that it was on that fateful day in October, 1862, that he discovered that his unpopularity with the upper cla.s.ses was more than counterbalanced by his hold upon the affections of the people. As we were returning to Newcastle in the evening, I happened to be standing near Mrs. Gladstone, and she entered into conversation with me. It was the first time that I had ever seen her. "I think this has been the happiest day of my life," she said to me, with that exuberant enthusiasm in the cause of her ill.u.s.trious husband which was one of the sweetest and n.o.blest traits of her character. Exactly twenty years later, on October 8th, 1882, I sat beside Mrs. Gladstone at dinner at Leeds, where the Prime Minister had just been making a series of memorable speeches, and had received a welcome which even surpa.s.sed that at Newcastle in 1862. I recalled our meeting on the steamboat twenty years before, and her face kindled with an expression of delight. "Ah,"

she said, "I shall never forget that day! It was the first time, you know, that _he_ was received as he deserved to be."

My reporting experiences at Newcastle were as varied as those of most journalists. One day I would be listening to a bishop's charge; the next, in some beautiful spot in the valley of the North Tyne, I would be professing to criticise shorthorns at a cattle show, and on the third day it might be my misfortune to have to be present at an execution. Colliery accidents, boat races (for which the Tyne has long been famous), performances at the theatre--all these came within the scope of my duty.

It was admirable training, and has turned out many a good journalist.

Always to be on the alert, so that no important item of news should be missed by my paper; always to be ready to reel off a column of readable "copy" on any subject whatever; always to be prepared for any duty that might turn up--these were among the necessary qualifications for my post.

Then, as the _Journal_ was short-handed, it sometimes fell to my lot to undertake tasks which usually lie outside the reporter's sphere.

Sometimes I had to take a turn at sub-editing, and sometimes I had even to write a leader. My first attempt at leader-writing for the _Journal_ was on a momentous occasion--the death of the Prince Consort. This was an event which for a time lightened my duties considerably. All public festivities were suspended; meetings of every kind were put off, and for a s.p.a.ce of some weeks the country was spared the infliction of reading reports of speeches.

It was just about a month after the death of the Prince Consort that the most notable incident connected with my career as a reporter at Newcastle occurred. This was the terrible disaster at the Hartley New Pit, a colliery some fifteen miles from Newcastle, near the bleak Northumberland coast. The accident was of a peculiar character, and it excited an extraordinary amount of public interest. Up to that time it had been lawful to work coal mines with a single shaft, so that there was only one possible mode of egress for the men at work in the pit. Hartley was one of these single shaft collieries, and on the morning of Thursday, January 17th, 1862, more than two hundred men and boys were suddenly made prisoners in the workings by the blocking of this shaft. The beam of a pumping engine erected directly over the mouth of the pit broke, and one half of the beam--a piece of metal weighing some fifteen tons--fell down the shaft. It tore down the sides in its descent, and finally lodged at a point above the seam in which the men were working, with an immense ma.s.s of _debris_ from the shaft walls piled above it.

The suspense of the relatives of the buried men and boys was terrible, and the whole civilised world seemed to share their emotion. After the accident had occurred, signals had been exchanged between the buried men and those at the surface, but none could tell how long the former might be able to sustain life in the vitiated atmosphere of the mine, when ventilation was no longer possible. I reached Hartley a few hours after the breaking of the beam, and in the hand-to-hand encounter with death at that forlorn and desolate spot I first became acquainted at close quarters with the tragic realities of life. For a full week in that bitter January weather I may be said to have lived on the pit platform.

From ten in the morning till long after midnight I remained there, writing hourly despatches for my paper; then I drove to Newcastle, a cold, dark journey of a couple of hours, and scribbled my latest bulletin at the _Journal_ office. This done, I lay down on a pile of newspapers in the rat-haunted office, and s.n.a.t.c.hed a few hours' sleep before returning to the post of duty. But some nights it was impossible to leave the mouth of the pit even for a moment, for none could tell when the captives might be reached; so I sat with the doctors, the mining engineers, and one or two colleagues before the fire which gave us a partial warmth, though it did not shield us from the pitiless winds and the drifting sleet and snow, which often effaced my "copy" more quickly than I wrote it. It was a time of hardship and endurance, not soon to be forgotten; but it was also a time which tested to the full the capacities, both mental and physical, of the journalist, and I at least derived nothing but benefit from that rough experience.

For a full week the work of re-opening the shaft went on by night and day, and there were wives and parents who during all that week hardly left the neighbourhood of the pit for a single hour. The task of re-opening the shaft was one of extreme peril. The men had to be lowered to their work at the end of a rope in which a loop had been made, which was secured round their bodies. The two chief dangers they had to face were the continual falling in of the sides of the shaft and the presence of noxious gases. They never flinched, however, and I witnessed on that dreary pit platform at Hartley that which I have always considered the bravest deed I ever saw. I and a handful of watchers were dozing round the open fire in the early hours of a bitter winter morning, just one week after the accident had happened, when we were suddenly aroused by an urgent signal from the shaft, evidently coming from the men working far below. We thought that the imprisoned miners had been reached, and eagerly we waited till the first messenger was brought to the surface.

Alas! when he was raised to the mouth of the shaft we saw that he was one of the sinkers, and was unconscious--apparently, indeed, dead. Whilst the doctor in attendance was seeking to restore him, other men were brought up, nearly all in the same condition, until the whole of the sinkers who had been engaged in their perilous task of mercy were laid in a row, pallid and unconscious, at our feet. The truth was at once apparent. The obstacle which had so long blocked the shaft had at last been removed, but a deadly gas--carbon dioxide--had at once ascended from the long-sealed workings, and we knew that the men we had been trying to save must be beyond the reach of help.

One of the sinkers who lay insensible on the platform was the son of the master-sinker, Coulson by name. I saw Coulson, when he realised what had happened, stoop down and kiss the unconscious lips of his son, and then, without a word or a sign of hesitation, he calmly took his place in the loop, and ordered the attendants to lower him into the pit. None dared say him nay, for there was still a last faint possibility that some one among the imprisoned miners might yet be alive. But it seemed to us on the pit-heap that the brave old man was going to certain death, and we never expected to see him alive again when he vanished from our sight. He did come back alive, however, and brought with him the terrible story of what he had seen. All the two hundred imprisoned colliers were dead. They were found sitting in long rows in the workings adjoining the shaft. Most had their heads buried in their hands, but here and there friends sat with intertwined arms, whilst fathers whose boys were working with them in the pit were in every case found with their lads clasped in their arms. They had all died very peacefully, and certainly not more than forty-eight hours after the closing of the shaft. One of the over-men had kept a diary of events. It told how some had succ.u.mbed to the fatal atmosphere before others, and how, in the depths of the mine, a prayer-meeting had been held, and "Brother Tibbs" had "exhorted" his fellow-sufferers. There was something n.o.ble in this peaceful ending of a life of toil and danger. It affected the whole country profoundly. It drew from the Queen, who herself had been but a few weeks a widow, a letter of sympathy which touched the heart of the nation. A subscription was raised for the widows and orphans on so liberal a scale that all their wants were more than provided for. I had myself the pleasure of starting a subscription for Coulson and his heroic fellow-workers in the shaft, which realised a handsome sum; and I was present in the Town Hall at Newcastle when they were decorated with the medals they deserved so well.

Incidentally, this great disaster affected my own career. My accounts, written at the pit mouth from day to day, had been widely quoted and read throughout the country, and it was desired that I should reprint them.

They were accordingly republished for the benefit of the fund raised for the sinkers, and had a large sale. As my name appeared on the reprint, it gave me a certain pa.s.sing renown in journalistic circles, and materially aided me in my future professional life.

Charles d.i.c.kens, as I have already mentioned, came to Newcastle to read from his works during my reportership on the _Journal_. I was, of course, an enthusiastic admirer of his, though, as I have said, Thackeray was my chief hero as a novelist. I have already spoken of the boyish eulogium which I wrote upon d.i.c.kens in antic.i.p.ation of his visit.

The evening of his first reading was marked by an incident which nearly cut short my career. The hall where he was to read was full to the door when I arrived. With three ladies--who, like myself, had come too late--I was in danger of being excluded. A form was, however, brought in, and placed directly beneath the platform, so close to it that we had to incline our heads at an uncomfortable angle in order to see the reader's face. Suddenly, before the reading had proceeded very far, the heavy proscenium, which d.i.c.kens always carried about with him for the purpose of his readings, fell with a crash over me and the three ladies on the form. We were so near that the top of the proscenium happily fell beyond us, and we escaped with a severe fright. Years afterwards I was amused to read, in one of the published letters of d.i.c.kens to his sister-in-law, an account of this accident, in which the novelist told how his gasman had said afterwards: "The master stood it like a brick." But it was not upon the master, but upon me and the three ladies that that terrible proscenium suddenly descended.

CHAPTER IV.

FROM REPORTER TO EDITOR.

First Visit to London--The Capital in 1862--Acquaintance with Sothern--Bursting of the Bradfield Reservoir--Attendance at Public Executions and at Floggings--a.s.suming the Editorship of the _Preston Guardian_--Political and Literary Influences--Great Speeches by Gladstone and Bright--Bright's Contempt for Palmerston--Robertson Gladstone Defends his Brother--Death of Abraham Lincoln--Meeting with his Granddaughter.

My first visit to London was on the occasion of the opening of the International Exhibition of 1862. The abominable system of Parliamentary trains, which made it necessary that the third-cla.s.s pa.s.senger should rise in the middle of the night if he had to make a journey of any length, was then in force. I had, therefore, to start at five o'clock in the morning in order that I might reach London in the evening. I can still recall some of the emotions of that journey. London was to me the city of all cities--the one great goal of the journalist's ambition. I took short views of life even then, but my secret hope, ever present to my mind, was that I might some day attain a post in connection with the London Press. As the crawling train came into the southern counties--farther south than I had ever been in my life before--I remember counting the milestones on the road, and suffering all the emotions of the youth in "Locksley Hall" as he draws nearer to the world's central point.

My first impression, when I found myself in the cab that was to carry me to the Brompton Road, where lodgings had been engaged for me, was one of bewilderment at the length of the streets. I had studied a plan of London, and thought from it that I could, in case of need, find my way easily on foot from King's Cross to Brompton. Now I discovered, to my dismay, that streets which had seemed no longer than those with which I was familiar at Newcastle stretched to a length that was apparently interminable; whilst instead of one unbroken thoroughfare I was rattled in my cab through squares and streets innumerable, the names of none of which had I been able to read upon my plan. My next impression was one of delight at the fidelity with which little bits of street scenery had been portrayed by John Leech in _Punch_. In Newcastle we knew nothing of the kitchen area and the portico. I was filled with joy when, in pa.s.sing through the Bloomsbury squares, I recognised, as I thought, the very houses, porticoes, and areas that Leech had made the background for his magnificent flunkeys and neat parlour-maids.

The streets of London were a good deal dingier and dirtier in 1862 than they are to-day, and they were certainly vastly noisier. The wooden pavement was unknown, and the roar of traffic in crowded thoroughfares was positively deafening. The window-boxes filled with the flowers that are now so common and so pretty a feature of the London summer were rare, as also were the coloured awnings and outside blinds now almost universal in the better-cla.s.s of thoroughfares. Hyde Park was untidy and neglected, flower-beds being practically unknown. The fine open s.p.a.ce at Hyde Park Corner did not exist, and Piccadilly Circus was a circus really, and one of very narrow extent. But though far from possessing the magnificence of which it can now boast, London forty years ago had certain advantages over the city of to-day. There were no enormous piles of flats shutting out air and light from the streets, where both are so much needed. Few of the houses were more than four storeys in height, and the irregular architecture which then prevailed in Piccadilly--that most delightful of all the streets of the world--added to its attractiveness. But I must not be led into a digression upon London, a city so great and wonderful that a volume might easily be filled with the story of the a.s.sociations it holds in my memory.

On the day after my arrival in town I was present at the State Opening of the Great Exhibition of 1862, the second--and apparently the last--of the international exhibitions held in London. Its interest was sensibly diminished by the fact that, in consequence of the death of the Prince Consort, neither the Queen nor any member of her family was present. The Duke of Cambridge, then in the prime of his manhood, took the leading part in the ceremony, and he had as his supporters Prince Frederick of Prussia, afterwards the Emperor Frederick, and the Prince of Hesse. We were not so clever in those days at arranging spectacles as we have since become, and, shortly before the hour fixed for the opening ceremony, a good deal of confusion still reigned upon the das set apart for the official notabilities. I was amused to see Lord Granville, who was, if I remember aright, chairman of the Royal Commissioners, broom in hand, vigorously sweeping the carpet in front of the State chairs only a few moments before he had to rush off to receive the Duke of Cambridge. My most vivid recollection of the opening ceremony is the singing of Tennyson's fine ode, composed for the occasion. I can still recall the cadence of the first lines as they fell upon my ears.

A visit to the House of Commons, where I remember hearing speeches from Lord Palmerston and Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and where I gazed with longing eyes upon the occupants of the reporters' gallery, fills up my memories of this first sight of London. I might, indeed, have included in them some reference to Sothern, the actor, who was then at the height of his glory in the famous part of Lord Dundreary. But it was at Newcastle, not in London, that I actually made Sothern's acquaintance. No actor ever made a single character so famous as this part of Dundreary was made by Sothern. When he came to Newcastle on his first provincial tour I met him, and spent some pleasant evenings with him after the play. He was a man of refined speech and good social gifts. His besetting weakness, as I learned even then, was that addiction to practical jokes which, on more than one occasion in his subsequent career, involved him in unpleasant situations. One of his favourite tricks was to select some portly and self-important gentleman whom he saw pa.s.sing along Piccadilly or Oxford Street, and, rushing up to him, to claim him as his dearly loved but long-lost uncle. The more strenuously the victim denied the relationship, the more eloquently pathetic and indignant became Sothern. A crowd always collected quickly, and more than once the police were summoned to relieve the putative uncle from the presence of his unwelcome nephew.

Sothern told me that he was driven nearly mad during the long run of Lord Dundreary--or, rather, _Our American Cousin_, as the play was named--at the Haymarket. He found it almost impossible to repeat his own jokes before a house in which he invariably recognised many familiar faces. He was constantly driven to vary his "gag," in order to amuse these veterans of the theatre, and it was in a large measure to escape from them that he made his provincial tour. In one of his conversations on the stage with the fair Georgina, who was endeavouring to entrap him into marriage, he used sometimes, at the moment when the lady thought that he was about to propose, to put a question of a very different kind: "Can you wag your left ear?" I asked him one day what had made him invent so ridiculous a question as this. "Because I _can_ wag my left ear,"

was his prompt response, and straightway I saw the organ in question flapping about like a sail in a breeze. The Theatre Royal at Newcastle in those days was under the management of Mr. E. D. Davis, a well-known figure in the provincial theatrical world. It was before the days of touring companies, and Mr. Davis was supported by an excellent body of artists, including his brother and his son Alfred, as well as his niece Emily Cross. I went to the theatre in the dignified capacity of dramatic critic; but neither then, nor at any subsequent period of my life, did I fall a victim to that pa.s.sion for the drama to which so many Pressmen succ.u.mb. Indeed, I have a lively recollection of incurring the well-merited reproof of pretty Miss Cross for having engaged in one of the stage boxes in a hot political discussion with another Newcastle journalist, Mr. Joseph Cowen to wit. Yet it was at Newcastle that I had my first and last a.s.sociation with dramatic authorship. One of the Davises had written a play which he had called _Wild Flowers_. He asked me to read the ma.n.u.script, and when I had done so I suggested that it should be ent.i.tled _The Marriage Contract_, an emendation which the author duly accepted.

My term of service on the Newcastle Press came to an end sooner than I had antic.i.p.ated. The chief feature of my reporting experiences in 1863 was the meeting of the British a.s.sociation in my native town. There was keen rivalry between the _Journal_ and the _Chronicle_--Mr.

Cowen's newspaper--with regard to the reporting of all local matters.

Unfortunately for me, the _Chronicle_ was a wealthy paper, and the _Journal_ a very poor one. I had, therefore, to wage an unequal war with my richer rival. A British a.s.sociation meeting throws a heavy strain upon the newspapers of the town in which it takes place. Half-a-dozen sections meet every day, and all must be reported; whilst there are, in addition, evening meetings and social functions, the story of which must be told from day to day. Sir William Armstrong, then just coming into fame as a maker of guns, though long known to Newcastle as a great mechanical engineer and the inventor of the hydraulic crane, was the president of the meeting. This added to the pride which the people of Newcastle felt in the fact that their town had been chosen for the scene of so distinguished a gathering. In those days local patriotism ran very high in the old town. We were intensely provincial, and our favourite belief was that Newcastle stood unrivalled among the cities of the earth.

When any distinguished stranger came amongst us--as, for example, Mr.

Gladstone, on the occasion to which I have already referred--we washed our face, and put on our best clothes in order to impress the visitor. We had something of the perfervid nature of the Scot in our characters, and rose to extraordinary heights of enthusiasm on very indifferent pretexts.

It followed that when we had so distinguished a body as the British a.s.sociation to receive as our guests, and when we had furnished in one of our own citizens the president of the meeting, we almost went out of our minds in our exultant delight. I do not know if Newcastle is still capable of these transports of enthusiasm. I rather think that the local patriotism which distinguished so many of our cities fifty years ago is now, in these days of incessant intercommunication, merged in the larger patriotism of the nation. Be this as it may, I must explain that my dissertation on the manner in which Newcastle received the British a.s.sociation in 1863 is merely intended to account for the fact that, as a result of that meeting, I suffered from a serious illness, brought on by anxiety and overwork. I found that reporting, when you had to compete with a formidable rival possessing a staff three times as large as your own, was laborious, as well as exciting; and having a desire to attempt literary work upon a higher level, I gave up my position as a reporter, and adopted instead the vocation of a leader-writer.

My last bit of work as a reporter for the _Newcastle Journal_ was in describing the accident which happened at Bradfield, near Sheffield, in the spring of 1864. The dam of the great reservoir from which Sheffield drew its water supply burst, and a torrent of water, many feet in depth, and nearly a quarter of a mile in width, suddenly rushed down a narrow valley, and flooded the lower part of Sheffield. The tragic occurrence was subsequently described by Charles Reade in his novel, "Put Yourself in His Place." Reade was not an eye-witness of the scene that was presented after the flood had spent its force, but I can bear testimony to the fact that he described it accurately. Certainly it was a wonderful and terrible sight that was presented when I visited the place a few hours after the bursting of the dam. The streets of Sheffield were ploughed up to the depth of many feet; lamp-posts were twisted like wire, and many houses either stood tottering with one of their sides clean swept away, or lay a mere heap of ruins. Hundreds of lives were lost. A great battle could not have dealt death more freely than did this flood.

Most of the victims were drowned in their beds, and it was a terrible sight to see the long rows of corpses, clad in night-dresses, that were laid out in the public building that had been hastily turned into a mortuary. I think, indeed, the horror of that spectacle surpa.s.sed even that of the scene at Hartley New Pit, when the victims of the accident there were disinterred.

The newspaper reporter has still, in the discharge of his duty, to see many strange and painful things, but he is now spared some of the most trying sights to which he was exposed in my reporting days. Among these, none was so painful and so revolting as a public execution. I attended several executions during my connection with the Newcastle Press, and I was a witness in 1868 of the last public execution in England--that of Barrett, the Fenian, of whom I shall have more to say by-and-by. I am thankful to know that the necessity of attendance at these dreadful scenes is no longer imposed upon the journalist, and I feel a profound pity for those officials who are compelled by an imperative duty to be present at the private strangling of their fellow-creatures. It is true, however, that use hardens the heart and deadens the nerves. I remember how, on the first occasion of witnessing an execution, as I stood trembling at the foot of the scaffold on which the victim was about to appear, I noticed an old reporter, for whom I entertained a great personal respect, pacing up and down beside me, reading the New Testament. In the pa.s.sion of horror and pity that filled my young heart, I concluded that my friend was seeking spiritual comfort in view of the event in which we were about to take part as spectators and recorders. I said something to him about the horror of the act we were shortly to witness. He looked up with a placid smile from his reading, and said gently--for he was essentially a gentle man--"Yes, very sad, very sad; but let us be thankful it isn't raining." And then he calmly returned to his daily reading of the Word. If even gentle hearts can thus grow callous, what must be the "moral effect" of an execution upon those who are already brutalised?

Another unpleasant sight which reporters are now spared is the flogging of garrotters. When the Act authorising this punishment was pa.s.sed, provision was made that the representatives of the Press should be present when it was inflicted. More than once I have had to witness these floggings in the course of my ordinary duty. I confess that they did not affect me as they seemed to affect most of my colleagues. An execution, with the violent thrusting of a human soul into the unknown, moved me deeply; but the physical punishment of a ruffian who had himself inflicted atrocious suffering upon some innocent person seemed to be such well-deserved retribution that even the coward's shrieks for mercy made no impression upon my nerves; and yet I have seen reporters who could laugh and joke at an execution faint at the flogging of a garrotter. So differently are human beings const.i.tuted!

At the end of June, 1864, I left my native town, and went to Preston to undertake editorial duties in connection with the _Preston Guardian_--the leading Liberal paper in North Lancashire. It was a custom amongst journalists in those days always to give a farewell entertainment to a brother of the Press when he quitted a town where he had been engaged for any length of time. I was entertained at the usual complimentary dinner, and was made the recipient of a very handsome testimonial. I felt most unfeignedly that I had not deserved it, yet the possession of the gold watch and collection of standard books subscribed for out of the scanty earnings of my colleagues was a real comfort to me when, with a sad heart, I left the sacred shelter of my home and quitted the town in which the whole of my life up to that moment had been spent.

I reached Preston one summer evening as homesick as any lad could have been. I did not know the name of a single person in the town except that of the proprietor of the _Guardian_, Mr. Toulmin. I did not even know the name of an hotel at which to stay for the night. A porter at the railway station told me the name of the chief inn, and thither I repaired with my belongings.

An amusing experience befell me here, which, as it relates to a state of things that is now obsolete, I may recount. On the day after my arrival, having introduced myself at the _Guardian_ office, and taken formal possession of my new post, I returned to my hotel in time for the daily dinner which the waitress had informed me was served at one o'clock. The coffee-room, when I entered it, was filled by commercial travellers, all hovering with hungry looks around the table that had been laid for dinner. They seemed relieved when I, as shy a youth as could anywhere be found, entered the room, and instantly seated themselves at the table. I looked round for some corner in which I might hide myself from what seemed to me to be their almost ferocious gaze, and was filled with alarm when I found that the only seat left vacant was that at the head of the table. Instinctively I shrank from so conspicuous a place, and as I moved away the hungry company seemed to glare at me more fiercely than ever. A waitress approached me, and saying, "You are president of the day, sir,"

motioned me to the vacant seat at the head of the board. I do not think I was ever more miserable or more frightened in my life than when, under her imperious direction, I took my seat and met the gaze of a dozen hungry men: on the sideboard stood the soup tureens, the waiting-maids beside them, but not a cover was lifted or a motion made, and dead silence filled the room. I sat in blushing bewilderment, waiting for the dinner to be served. Suddenly, from the other end of the table, a harsh voice issued from the lips of a burly, red-faced man. "Mr. President, if you are a Christian, you'll perhaps be good enough to say grace, and let us get to our dinner, which we want very badly." I managed to stammer forth the formula of my childhood, and thought the worst was over. Not a bit of it. No sooner had the soup been audibly consumed than the hated voice from the foot of the table again a.s.sailed me. "Mr. President, I really don't know what you mean by neglecting your duties in this way, but let me tell you that this is not a company of teetotallers." "Ask them what wine they would like," whispered the waitress behind me, who saw my plight, and who evidently pitied it, for she added, "Don't let that nasty man at the other end of the table bully you." But I was incapable of maintaining the deception in which I had been innocently involved, and, taking my courage in both hands, I frankly told the company that I was not a commercial traveller, had never in my life dined at a commercial table, and, as I knew nothing of the usages of such a place, would beg the gentleman at the other end of the table to take upon himself the duties of president. There was a burst of laughter from the majority of the diners, and good-humour was instantly restored. My _vis-a-vis_, who was addressed as "Mr. Vice," was, indeed, somewhat grumpy; but I had won the goodwill of the others, and was allowed to look on, a silent spectator, whilst the many mystic rites and usages which distinguished the "commercial table" of that epoch were duly celebrated.

Strange to say, that was not only my first but my last experience of the kind, and now I imagine that the old customs of the road--the wine-drinking, the speech-making, the toasts, and the graces before and after meat--are all things of the past.

My editorial career at Preston began with a somewhat painful and even dramatic episode. I had returned to the office, after my dinner with the commercial travellers, in order to attend to my duties for the day. The _Guardian_ was published twice a week--on Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day.

This was Tuesday afternoon. The proprietor had informed me that he was already provided with a leading article for Wednesday's publication, and my duties were therefore confined to the sub-editing of the news and the writing of a few editorial paragraphs. Suddenly Mr. Toulmin entered my room, and, without uttering a word, placed a telegram on the desk before me. It consisted of these words, still imprinted on my memory: "Washington Wilkes died suddenly last night while addressing a public meeting." I knew Mr. Wilkes by name as a Radical journalist of considerable ability, who wrote regularly for the _Morning Star_.

Accordingly I expressed my regret on hearing of his death. "Yes," said Mr. Toulmin, bluntly; "that's all very well, but now you'll have to write the leader for to-morrow, for Wilkes was to have written it." Under these startling circ.u.mstances I penned my first leading article for the _Preston Guardian_. Though I thus stepped into the shoes of a dead man, I fear that I can hardly have filled them; but this was, on the whole, not to be wondered at.

Mr. Toulmin, my new employer, was a man of marked character. Long before my business connection with him ceased, I learned to regard him with genuine respect and liking, and these feelings I entertained for him to the day of his death. But his somewhat rough exterior was not altogether prepossessing, and when I came to him first as a raw lad, shy, sensitive, and intolerant of manners that were foreign to my own, I must frankly confess that I felt repelled by him. Besides, I quickly discovered that I should have to fight my own battles if I wished to preserve my professional rights and dignity. I had been engaged as editor and sub-editor of the _Guardian_, and as it was my first editorship, it need hardly be said that I valued my position highly. Mr. Toulmin, I subsequently found, had a reputation for getting all he could out of the members of his staff without much regard to the customs of journalism.

Thus, I had scarcely finished the article which would have been written by Washington Wilkes but for his sudden death, when Mr. Toulmin, coming into my room, expressed his warm satisfaction at the quickness with which I had turned out my work; then, with an almost paternal smile upon his face, he laid before me some pages of ma.n.u.script, and in an insinuating voice said: "Would you mind keeping your eye upon this whilst I run over this proof?" In an instant I grasped his meaning. I had been engaged as editor, and he proposed to fill up my spare time by employing me as a proof-reader. For a moment I was almost apoplectic with indignation at what I regarded as an outrage upon my dignity. To this day I am thankful that I controlled my temper, but I am not less thankful that I had the courage--and it required some courage--to say to him, with a smile as insinuating as his own: "I should have been delighted, but unfortunately I have an engagement out of doors." And thereupon I left the room, triumphant.

Never again did Mr. Toulmin invite me to a.s.sist him in reading a proof, and long afterwards he made frank admission to me of the fact that this incident proved that I was "not going to be put upon." Very soon I found that he was not only a kind-hearted but a very able man. He had begun life, at the age of six, in a cotton factory. The statement to-day is hardly credible, but such is the fact. In those cruel times, when no Lord Ashley had as yet arisen to open the door of the workman's prison-house and set the children free, this poor child had been shut up from six in the morning till six at night in the fetid atmosphere of a cotton-mill.

G.o.d knows what the economic value of such a weakling's labour may have been! One would think that a South Carolina planter would have been wiser than to work his "stock" at such an age. Be this as it may, my friend had pa.s.sed through this terrible apprenticeship to toil--always hungry, always tired; and had not only survived it, but emerged from it a man.

When I knew him he could talk calmly of the horrors of his childhood, but there was an undercurrent of bitterness in his reference to those times which one could understand and respect. He was an ardent and convinced Liberal, and I think that I owe more to his teaching for the character of my own political views than I owe to anybody else.

When I went to Lancashire in 1864 the terrible effects of the cotton famine were everywhere to be seen. History has done justice to the n.o.ble fort.i.tude with which the operatives of Lancashire "clemmed" (starved) in silence during that awful time. Never shall I forget the pale, pinched faces of the men and women as they walked to and from their daily labour.

The worst of the struggle was over, but hundreds of great mills were still closed, and those which were open only ran half-time. The working cla.s.ses in Lancashire, as in most places, were on the side of the North in the American Civil War, and not even the sufferings which that war caused them, made them abate their opposition to the slave-holding South.

But in Lancashire, as elsewhere, the upper cla.s.ses--with the exception of the few who followed the n.o.ble leadership of John Bright--were enthusiasts on the side of the South, and, if they had dared, would have urged English intervention on behalf of the Confederate States. There was thus a strong and marked difference of opinion between the upper and the lower cla.s.ses in Lancashire, as elsewhere. The great question in domestic politics was that of Parliamentary reform. Advanced Liberals believed that if only the franchise was enlarged, and the working-man admitted within the pale, Liberal principles and ideas would henceforward triumph permanently in our national politics, and they were, consequently, eager to bring about this great const.i.tutional change. Tories also believed that this would be the effect of the enlargement of the franchise, and they naturally opposed it vehemently. Neither party foresaw that the elements common to human nature everywhere would influence the course of politics just as fully after the working men had been admitted within the pale of the Const.i.tution as before, and that we should find even amongst the lower orders the same differences between Liberals and Conservatives as prevailed in the middle cla.s.s.

The sober Whiggish turn of mind which I had inherited from my father influenced me greatly in those days. Like the rest of the world, I believed that to admit the working cla.s.ses to the franchise would be to give democracy a free rein, and to bring about changes, both social and political, of an extreme kind. Many of the changes then suggested did not seem to me to be wise. For this reason I could not enter as heartily as I might otherwise have done into the demand for Parliamentary reform. To go slowly, I thought, would be to go safely. From this Laodicean frame of mind I was rescued by Mr. Toulmin. It was not only that he could speak of the dark days at the beginning of the century, and of the inequality and injustice which then prevailed under Tory rule in England; he was able also to point out the contrast between the unselfish and heroic conduct of the Lancashire operatives with regard to the American Civil War, and that of their superiors, in whose hands the political destinies of the country rested. He was in the habit of enforcing his broad and sensible arguments on the subject of Parliamentary reform by means of a quaint little diagram, which he was continually presenting to those with whom he engaged in argument. "Look at this," he would say, pointing to an inverted pyramid, "that is the British const.i.tution as it is at present.

Does it not strike you as being rather top-heavy, and not unlikely to topple over in a storm? Now look at this," and he placed the pyramid on its proper base. "That is what I want to see, and you'll agree with me it's a great deal safer than the other way." I thought of Tennyson's words: "Broad-based upon her people's will," and felt that there was more in the rude little diagram than in many subtle and learned arguments.

It was not only from my intercourse with Mr. Toulmin that I derived mental profit in those days. I was always a rapid worker, and I speedily found that two days and a half in each week sufficed to enable me to discharge my duties at the _Guardian_ office. The ample leisure which I thus enjoyed I devoted to reading, and in my lonely lodgings I spent hours each day in study. As I look back upon that time I feel again stealing over me like a vivifying flood the influence of Carlyle, under the spell of whose teaching and inspiration I then practically came for the first time. The companions of my solitude in those days were at least not ign.o.ble ones. Carlyle, Browning--not yet the victim of the Browning Society--Thackeray, and most of our great historians, were always by my side, and my mind gradually expanded as it absorbed their words and thoughts. In one respect Preston has always seemed to me to be unique among English towns. The centre of the town, if I may commit a bull, lay at a point on its circ.u.mference. The Town Hall, the parish church, the leading business thoroughfare, the railway station, and the _Guardian_ office were all close to the river Ribble, separated from it only by the beautiful Avenham Park, where the residences of the local aristocracy were to be found. All the industrial part of the town, and the houses of the operatives, lay farther away from the river. Across the river there was nothing but open country. My modest lodgings in Regent Street were at the same time within three minutes' walk of the _Guardian_ office and of the old wooden bridge that crossed the Ribble. Thus I could escape almost directly from the town into the open country, and many were the hours I spent in delightful solitary rambles through the lanes and fields of rural Lancashire. It is a good thing for a young man to have time for solitary thinking, and no one who is worth his salt can enjoy the kind of solitude which fell to my lot at Preston without gaining by it. If I went there a boy, I left the place, after my eighteen months of editorship, a man.

Of my newspaper experiences at Preston there is not much to record. Two notable speeches that I heard and reported--although I would not read proofs I was quite willing to oblige Mr. Toulmin by keeping up my practice as a shorthand writer--recur to me. One was a speech made in 1865 by Mr. Gladstone at Manchester. The chief memory it has left with me is of the touching and stately eloquence with which he told his audience that he felt that his own life's work was drawing to a close. Of the men with whom he had entered upon public life, he declared the majority had pa.s.sed away, and that fact reminded him that he could not reasonably expect that his own time could be much further prolonged. No one who heard him could have imagined that thirty years of public service still lay before the speaker. The other speech was still more notable, for it introduced me for the first time to the greatest of all the orators of the nineteenth century, John Bright. Mr. Bright's speech, which was delivered at Blackburn, promised to be of peculiar interest, inasmuch as he made it only a few days after the death of Lord Palmerston, in October, 1865. Everybody was curious to know what the great Liberal would say of the man whose policy he had so often opposed, and with whom he had so often crossed swords on the floor of Parliament. I went to Blackburn as curious as anybody else. Bright made a long speech, and from beginning to end he never mentioned the name of Palmerston. Years afterwards, in a spirit, I fear, slightly tinged with malice, I would sometimes supply that notable omission by naming Palmerston to Mr. Bright. The effect was always the same, and always electrical. "Palmerston!" he would cry. "The man who involved us in the crime of the Crimean War!" And then he would break off with an angry toss of his leonine head; but the accents of immeasurable scorn filled the hiatus in his speech.

In after years I became what I still remain--an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Bright's oratory. I hope to say something on a later page on this subject. Here I need only note the fact that his first speech disappointed me. Indeed, men were usually disappointed when they heard him for the first time. They went expecting to hear an orator full of sound and fury. They were amazed by the reserve--one might almost say the repose--of his style. Of gesture he made absolutely no use. He never let his magnificent voice rise above a certain pitch; he never poured out his words in a tumultuous torrent; he was always deliberate and measured in his utterances, and it was only as you grew accustomed to him that you noted those wonderful inflections of the voice which expressed so clearly the emotions of the orator.

In 1865 the country was much agitated on the question of the cattle plague. It was a question that particularly affected Cheshire and the rural parts of Lancashire. The action taken by the Government, of which Mr. Gladstone was a prominent member, was strongly opposed by the representatives of the agricultural interest. A county meeting was held at Preston to consider the subject and to denounce the Ministry. If I remember aright, the Earl of Derby, the famous "Rupert of debate," was in the chair, and he was surrounded by half the magnates of Lancashire. It was a notable and imposing gathering. One t.i.tled speaker after another got up and abused Ministers, and it was notable that Mr. Gladstone fell in for the hottest measure of abuse. When some resolution was about to be put a man seated in the body of the hall got up and asked if he might say a few words. He was a tall, thick-set person, and his dress was so plain that most of us took him for a farmer, if not a farm-labourer. The meeting, which was enjoying the eloquence of earls and aristocrats of every degree, turned with anger upon the unknown intruder, and shouted "Name, name!" with all its might. "My name is Gladstone," said the stranger, in a clear and powerful voice. Everybody burst into a roar of laughter. It seemed so curious that immediately after listening to unmeasured vituperation of _the_ Gladstone, this humble person who had obtruded himself unexpectedly upon the scene should happen to be of the same name. But before the laughter had subsided Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, who was on the platform, shouted out the explanation of the mystery. "Mr. Robertson Gladstone, of Liverpool." It was the brother of the much-hated Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had gone to the meeting to defend his ill.u.s.trious relative; and defend him he did, with so much force and eloquence that he not only made some of the n.o.ble speakers look rather foolish, but convinced one, at least, who heard him that if he had adopted a Parliamentary career, he too might have been one of the great figures of the House of Commons.