CHAPTER I.

Produced by Robert Connal, Charles Franks

and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

MEMOIRS OF

SIR WEMYSS REID

1842-1885

[Illustration: Wemyss Reid]

MEMOIRS OF

SIR WEMYSS REID

1842-1885

EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY

STUART J. REID

TO

Lady Reid,

THE DEVOTED WIFE OF

MY BROTHER,

THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED.

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.

The sense of personal loss occasioned by my brother's death is still so

keen and vivid that if I am to write at all about him--and my duty in

that respect is clear--it must be out of the fulness of my heart. My

earliest recollections of him begin when I was a child and he was a

bright, self-reliant lad in the home at Newcastle, the characteristics of

which are with artless realism described in the opening pages of this

book. It is the simple truth to say that we grew up in an atmosphere of

love and duty. Our father was a man of studious habit, passing rich in

the possession of a library of dry works on theology which his children

never read, and among which they searched in vain for the fairy books and

stories, or even the poetry, dear to the youthful heart. He was a

faithful, rather than a gifted preacher, and I have always thought that

his power--it was real and far-reaching--lay in his modest, unselfish

life, and in that unfailing sympathy which kept him on a perpetual round

of visits to the sick and sorrowful, year in, year out. He had a quiet

sense of humour, and was never so happy as when he could steal a day off

from the insistent claims of pastoral work for a ramble in the country

with his boys.

Always a public-spirited man, and keenly interested in political affairs,

he talked to us freely about the events of the time, and made us feel

that the little affairs of our own home and immediate environment could

never be seen in their true perspective until they were set against the

larger life of the town, and, in a sense, of the nation. When any great

event occurred he used to tell us all about it; when any great man died,

if we did not know the significance of his life and the loss it meant to

the country, it was not his fault. He was a quiet, rather reserved man,

terribly in earnest, we thought, and with a touch of sternness about him

which vanished in later life. He mellowed with the passing years, and

long before old age crept quietly upon him the prevailing note of his

character was charity. He had been in early life associated to some

extent with the Press, and later had written one or two books, so that

ink was in my brother's blood.

Our mother was almost his opposite in character. She was quick, almost

imperious in temper, vivacious and witty of speech, full of sense and

sensibility, in revolt--I see it now--against the narrow conditions of

her lot, and yet bravely determined to do her best, not merely for her

husband and children, but for the rather austere little community in

which she was always a central figure. There was a charm about her to

which all sorts and sizes of people surrendered at discretion, and she

loved books more modern and more mundane than the dingy volumes on my

father's shelves. She had received, what was more rare then than now, a

liberal education, and, besides modern languages, had at least a moderate

acquaintance with the classics. She held herself gallantly in the dim,

half-educated society of her husband's chapel, but reserved her

friendships--sometimes with a touch of wilfulness--for those who

represented whatever there was of sweetness and light in the wider

society of the town. In one respect she was absolutely in harmony with my

father, and that was in her sympathy with the poor and in quiet,

unparaded determination to hold out a helping hand to all that sought it.

She had imagination, and she sent it on errands of good-will. I think my

brother inherited from her his alertness of mind and not a little of his

quickness of apprehension.

I can remember him coming back from Bruce's school all aglow with his

prizes, and I can recall, as if it were but yesterday, his audacious

speeches, and the new books with which, as soon as he earned a shilling,

he began to leaven the dull old library, much to the delectation of the

other children. I can recall a rough cartoon in one of the local journals

which was greeted with huge merriment in the family circle, because it

represented Tom as "Ye Press of Newcastle"--a mere boy in a short jacket

perched on a stool, scribbling for dear life at the foot of a platform on

which some local orator was denouncing the tyranny of the existing

Government. He must then have been about seventeen, certainly not more,

and he was even at that time somewhat of a youthful prodigy. Then he

developed a passion for the collection of autographs, and used to write

the most alluring letters to celebrities, and astound my modest father by

the replies--they were invariably written as to a man of mature life and

public importance--which he had elicited from eminent people in politics

and the world of letters. He, a mere youth, invited a well-known Arctic

explorer to Newcastle to lecture on his perils in the frozen North, and

my father bought him his first hat to go to the railway station to meet

the gallant sailor, who brought his pathetic relics of Franklin to our

house, where he stayed as guest. The great man's chagrin when he found

that a lad scarcely out of short jackets had invited him to Newcastle

vanished in the genial firelight, and in the subsequent reception of the

good townsfolk. Then my brother conceived the ambitious scheme of the

West End Literary Institute, and by dint of energetic and persistent

begging carried the project out, and with a high hand.

Suddenly, when he was still a young reporter, a great calamity befell the

locality. The Hartley Colliery catastrophe plunged all Tyneside in gloom.

He was the youngest reporter on the local Press, but his account of the

long-drawn agony of that terrible time, when two hundred brave fellows

lost their lives, was the most graphic. It brought him local renown. It

was published as a shilling pamphlet, after it had done duty in the

_Newcastle Journal_, and to his credit he gave, though as poor as a

church mouse, the whole of the proceeds--a sum of £40, I think--to the

Relief Fund. It was a characteristic act which was not belied by the

subsequent generosity of his life. All too soon--for he brought as a

young reporter a breezy, new atmosphere into the family circle--he went

to Preston, on the principle of promotion by merit. Then Leeds claimed

him, and next he settled in London, in the short-lived happiness of his

early married life, returning to Yorkshire--this time as chief of the

paper he had served so well. During his career as editor of the _Leeds

Mercury_ I saw comparatively little of him. We were both busy, though

in different ways; but we kept up, then and always, a brisk

correspondence, and his letters, all of them brimful of public interest

and family affection, are before me now. The world is a different place

to me now, but "memory is a fountain of perpetual youth" and nothing can

rob me of its sweetness.

There is scarcely an incident recorded in these pages which he did not

tell me at the time in familiar talk. There is much, also, that he has

not set down here, all of it honourable to himself, which I could recount

about those early days in Newcastle, and to a certain extent also in

Leeds, where I was again and again his guest; but, as he has chosen to be

silent, it is not for me to speak. Oddly enough, I never in my life heard

him deliver a political speech, nor do I think he excelled in that

direction. But he was admirable as a lecturer on literary subjects, and I

have seen him again and again hold a large audience spellbound when his

subject was Charlotte or Emily Brontë, Mrs. Carlyle, the Inner Working of

an English Newspaper, the Character of General Gordon, or some other

theme which appealed to him. He spoke rapidly and clearly, and between

the years 1882 and 1886 gave his services without stint in this direction

to the people of Leeds, Bradford, and other of the Yorkshire towns. The

manuscripts of these lectures are before me as I write; they are all in

his own hand, and they must have taken from an hour to an hour and a half

in delivery. Yet one of the most important of them--it runs to between

sixty and seventy closely written manuscript pages, and bears no marks of

haste--was, as a note in his own hand at the outset shows, begun one day

and finished the next--a proof, if any were needed, of his rapidity in

work. He made many enthusiastic friends amongst the shrewd working people

of the North by these deliverances.

The last twenty years of my brother's life are outside the present

narrative. Two of them were spent in Leeds in ever-widening newspaper

work, and the remaining eighteen in London, under circumstances he has

himself described in another volume, which, for political reasons, is for

the present withheld. It will appear eventually, and personally I feel no

doubt whatever that it will take its place, quite apart from its

self-revelation, as one of the most important and authentic records, in

the political sense, of the later decades of Queen Victoria's reign. My

brother's knowledge of the secret history of the Liberal party in the

memorable days when Mr. Gladstone was fighting his historic battle for

Home Rule, and during the subsequent Premiership of Lord Rosebery, was

exceptional. He was the trusted friend of both statesmen, and probably no

other journalist was so absolutely in the confidence of the leaders of

the Liberal party--a circumstance which was due quite as much to his

character as to his capacity. It is not my intention to anticipate the

story, as he himself tells it, either of the "Hawarden Kite" or the Home

Rule split, much less to disclose his opinions--they are emphatic and

deliberate--of the men who made mischief at that crisis. I leave also

untouched the plain, unvarnished account he gives, on unimpeachable

authority, of a subsequent and not less discreditable phase in the annals

of the Liberal party. There are reasons, obvious to everyone who gives

the matter a moment's thought, that render it inadvisable in the

interests of the political cause with which my brother all his life was

identified, and for which he suffered more than is commonly known, to

yield to the very natural temptation to throw reticence to the winds.

To one point only will I permit myself to make brief but significant

allusion, for I cannot allow this book to go forth to the world with the

knowledge that the publication of the companion volume is--through force

of circumstances--for the present postponed, without at least a passing

reference to what in the authoritative biography of Mr. Gladstone is

called the "barren controversy" which arose in 1892, as to whether the

present Duke of Devonshire, in 1880, tried to form a Government. That

controversy was assuredly "barren" to my brother in everything but the

testimony of a good conscience. He was assailed by almost the whole Press

of the country for the part which he played in it, and not least

mercilessly by journalists of his own party. As he said to me himself at

the time, "If I had been Mr. Parnell, fresh from the revelations of the

Divorce Court, I could not have been treated with greater contumely." If

there was one thing on the possession of which he prided himself in life

more than another, it was loyalty, and seldom was political loyalty

subjected to a more cruel strain. He held his peace with all the

materials for his own vindication in his hand, rather than embarrass Mr.

Gladstone at a great political crisis.

The letters on which he based his statements are in existence. I wished

to print them, without note or comment of mine, in an Appendix to the

present volume, but permission has been withheld. They cannot remain for

ever in ambush, and when they are published, with my brother's full and

magnanimous comments, it will be apparent to all the world how greatly he

was misjudged. It is enough for the present to say that Mr. Gladstone

himself admitted in a note under his own hand that the interpretation

which my brother put upon the facts submitted to him _absolutely and

entirely justified_ the course which he took in that controversy. Mr.

Gladstone, as Mr. Morley somewhat drily states in his biography,

"reckoned on a proper stoicism in the victims of public necessity," and I

suppose my brother was regarded as thin-skinned, but a man may be

forgiven a measure of sensitiveness when his honour is impeached.

He always used to speak with gratitude of the action of Lord Russell of

Killowen at that period. He heard the gossip of the clubs, and was not

content, like the majority of men, either to believe it or to dismiss the

matter with a shrug of the shoulders. He sought my brother out at his own

house, heard the whole story from his own lips--through an informal but

stringent process of cross-examination--drew his own conclusions, and did

more than anyone else to turn the tide of misrepresentation. Lord Russell

never rested until Wemyss Reid was elected an honorary member of the

Eighty Club, a distinction shared by only two or three persons, and one

which did not a little to bring about, in the Liberal party at least, a

quick reversal of public opinion. The chivalrous action of Lord Russell

was all the more creditable as the two men at the time were only slightly

acquainted. Other honours came to my brother within the next two years.

The University of St. Andrews in 1893 conferred upon him the degree of

LL.D., and in the following year he was knighted "for services to Letters

and Politics."

It is a pleasure to hark back to the literary interests which grew around

the later years of my brother in London. He went thither in 1887 to take

control of the business of Messrs. Cassell & Company--a position of wide

influence and hard work which he retained to the last day of his life. He

used to tell me that he detested the City and the irksomeness of keeping

office hours, but he stuck manfully to his post, and his presence at the

desk there lent a lustre even to the traditions of a great publishing

house. I betray no confidences when I say that at first he found his new

duties somewhat uncongenial. He had won his spurs as a journalist, he was

fond of the cut and thrust of party politics, he missed the rush of

public life, and he felt that perhaps he had been ill-advised in quitting

the editorial saddle. But this feeling of depression quickly wore off

when he set himself, with characteristic energy, to master the details of

his new work, though to the last he often cast longing glances backwards

to the years in which he inspired the policy of a great daily newspaper.

Before he left Leeds--and here I may say that he did not leave without

substantial proof of the esteem in which he was held--he accepted two

literary commissions, either of which would have satisfied most men and

absorbed all their energies for a term of years.

One was the preparation of an authoritative biography of Mr. Forster, the

other a similar work--less political and more literary--on the first Lord

Houghton. He was, of course, in a position to speak from close personal

knowledge of both men, and in each case all their private letters and

papers were placed at his discretion. He found relief from the prosaic

details of a business career in these congenial tasks, if such a term is

applicable to what in reality were labours of love. Both were big books,

and the marvel is how, with all that he had in hand at the time, he

contrived to write them. But the passion for work was the zest of his

life, and it was never turned to more admirable account than in these

labours. "The Life of the Right Hon. W. E. Forster" was published in

1888, and "The Life, Letters, and Friendships of Lord Houghton" in 1890,

and both met with a reception which it is hardly within my province to

describe. It is enough to say that they widened his reputation, added

materially to his influence, and, best of all, brought him many new and

powerful friends.

Almost before he had finished writing the second of these books, at the

instance of Mr. Bryce (with whom his relations were always most close and

cordial) and other well-known men in the Liberal party, he, in

conjunction with Sir John Brunner, founded the _Speaker_, a weekly

journal which was started on similar lines to the _Spectator_, but

devoted to the advocacy of the Home Rule cause, and broadly of the policy

of Mr. Gladstone. The first number was published on January 4th, 1890,

and from that time until October, 1899, he alone was responsible for its

editorial control. He gathered around him a brilliant staff of

contributors; he used laughingly to say that he was over-weighted by

them, and, if I may venture a criticism, he gave them too free a hand.

Contemporary politics were discussed amongst others by Mr. Morley, Mr.

Bryce, Mr. J. A. Spender, and Mr. Herbert Paul. Literary criticism,

economic questions, and other phases of public affairs, were handled by

Sir Alfred Lyall, Mr. Birrell, Mr. Frederic Harrison, Mr. James Payn, Mr.

Henry James, Mr. J.M. Barrie, Mr. Quiller-Couch, Mr. Sidney Webb, Mr. L.

F. Austin, Mr. A. B. Walkley, and a score of young writers; whilst men

like the late Lord Acton and Principal Fairbairn, and occasionally Mr.

Gladstone himself, lent further distinction to its pages. No one worked

harder in those days for the _Speaker_ than my brother's ever loyal

assistant in its direction, Mr. Barry O'Brien, whose intimate knowledge

of the trend in Irish politics was invaluable. I shall not anticipate by

any comments of my own the vivid and always genial pen-and-ink pictures

which are given of the chief members of the _Speaker_ staff in that

part of the Memoirs which yet remains unprinted.

I prefer to fall back in this connection on a little bit of reminiscence,

printed in one of the daily papers on the morrow of my brother's death.

It was written by Mr. L. F. Austin, who alas! has so quickly followed him

to the grave. "Some months ago, feeling himself under sentence of death,

Sir Wemyss Reid applied his leisure to the task of completing his

Memoirs. 'Here is a chapter that may interest you,' he said to me one

day, producing a roll of manuscript. It did interest me very much, and

when it comes to be published it will be read with no little emotion by

the men who formed the regular staff of the _Speaker_ under Sir

Wemyss Reid's editorship. He deals with us all in turn in a spirit of the

kindliest remembrance and simple goodwill; and as I read those pages, I

felt they were his farewell to some of the men who have good reason to

think of him as the staunchest of friends." I was in very close

association with my brother during the whole of the ten years in which he

retained control of the _Speaker_, and took my full share of the

work. They were for him years of strenuous and unremitting toil, but he

used to say that there were few greater rewards for a man of his

temperament than to be in the thick of the political movement, and to be

in the front rank of the fighters. He adopted as his motto in life

"Onwards"--the watchword of his old school at Newcastle, emblazoned on

the back of the prizes which he took in far-off days; and from first to

last he lived up to it. Brusque he sometimes was, decisive always;

perhaps he was too easily ruffled in little affairs, but he was

magnanimous to the point of self-sacrifice in great. After quitting,

under circumstances entirely honourable to himself, the editorial chair

of the _Speaker_, my brother, who for years previously had been an

occasional contributor to the pages of the _Nineteenth Century_,

contributed regularly to that review a political survey of the month.

Some of his best work was put into these articles, and the last of them

was written under great physical stress, and appeared almost

simultaneously with the announcement of his death. It was the last task

to which he put his hand, and the wish of his life was granted: he died

in harness.

It is not too much to say that neither his interest nor his influence in

political affairs suffered the least abatement in the six closing years

of his life, which bridged the distance between his relinquishment of the

_Speaker_ and the hour when he finally laid down his pen. The

withheld portion of this Autobiography makes that abundantly clear, for,

as in a mirror, it reflects the secret history of the Liberal party. His

relations with Lord Rosebery, both during and after that statesman's

brilliant but difficult Administration, were singularly intimate and

cordial--a circumstance which invests with peculiar interest the final

chapters which he wrote. They throw a dry light on the political

intrigues which occurred after Mr. Gladstone's retirement; they reveal

the difficulties--both open and unsuspected--which beset his successor.

Lord Rosebery has written me a letter, and I have his permission to quote

from it:--"I can only dwell on the sterling notes of courage and

friendship. As to the first, he had taken part in many controversies,

which it is now unnecessary to revive, and borne himself gallantly in

them. But before his life ended he was to display a rarer quality. In

September, 1903, he wrote to me that he could only count on a few weeks

longer of life--that he was condemned by all doctors.... He partially

recovered from that attack, though from that day he was doomed to speedy

death. I saw him in February for the last time, not long before the end.

He told me, as he always did, that he did not feel amiss, but that his

doctors all unanimously condemned him to a short shrift; that his friend

Sir Frederick Treves was putting him under a new treatment, from which he

hoped to derive some benefit; but that, whatever happened, he should go

on writing as if nothing were wrong until the end came. That did not long

tarry. In the evening of Thursday, February 23rd, he was taken ill, and

before ten o'clock on Sunday morning he was dead. During the seventeen

months which elapsed from the time of the doom pronounced by his

physicians until its fulfilment, Wemyss Reid so demeaned himself that

none could have penetrated his secret. He was as gay and high in spirit,

as strenuous in work, as thoughtful for others, as ever; so that those

who knew the fatal truth could not bring themselves to believe it. He was

at work for the _Nineteenth Century_ the day before he was taken

with his final attack. But he himself, cheerful and smiling, never lost

the certainty that death hung over him by a thread.

"So much for his courage; and now for the other note that I would

touch--his friendship. His ideal of friendship was singularly lofty and

generous. He was the devoted and chivalrous champion of those he loved;

he took up their cause as his own, and much more than his own; he was the

friend of their friends and the enemy of their enemies. No man ever set a

higher value on this high connection, which, after all, whether brought

about by kinship, or sympathy, or association, or gratitude, or stress,

is under Heaven the surest solace of our poor humanity; and so it

coloured and guided the life of Wemyss Reid. His chief works were all

monuments to that faith; it inspired him in tasks which he knew would be

irksome and which could scarcely be successful, or which, at least, could

ill satisfy his own standard. This is a severe test for a man of letters,

but he met it without fail.... All this seems lame and tame enough when I

read it over. But it was true and vivid when Wemyss Reid was living, and

giving to his friends the high example of a brave and unselfish life.

Among them, his memory will be a precious fact, and an inheritance long

after any obituary notice is forgotten. It will live as long as they

live; he would scarcely have cared to be remembered by others." Lord

Rosebery's kindness to my brother--it was constant, delicate, and

unwavering--can never be forgotten by any of his relatives. He was the

first visitor to the house of mourning on Sunday, February 26th; he came

in haste, with the hope that he might still be in time to see my brother

alive.

Here, perhaps, is the place to mention some other of his friends: I mean,

of course, those with whom he was most intimate in his closing years. It

may be I have forgotten some; if so, I need scarcely add that it is

without intention. But I do not like to end without at least recalling

his close relations with Lord Burghclere, Mr. Bryce, Sir Henry Fowler,

Mr. Edmund Robertson, Sir Henry Roscoe, Sir Norman Lockyer, Sir Frederick

Treves, Sir John Brunner, Principal Fairbairn, Dr. Guinness Rogers, the

Rev. R. H. Hadden, Mr. W. H. Macnamara, Mr. Douglas Walker, Mr. J. C.

Parkinson, Mr. G. A. Barkley, Mr. Charles Mathews, Mr. J. A. Duncan, Mr.

Edwin Bale, Mr. Barry O'Brien, Mr. Herbert Paul, Mr. J. A. Spender, and

last, but certainly not least, Mr. Malcolm Morris, who was with him at

the end. James Payn, William Black, Sir John Robinson represent the

losses of the last few years of his life; all of them were men with

whom--literature and politics apart--he had much in common.

It is impossible to cite the Press comments on the morrow of my brother's

death, but room at least must be found for one of them--the generous

tribute of his friend Mr. J. A. Spender in the _Westminster

Gazette_:--

"I well remember how bravely and serenely he bore his death-sentence and

how modestly he communicated it to his friends, as if an apology were

needed for speaking of anything so personal. And then he picked himself

up and started again, determined that his work should go forward and his

interests lose none of their edge, though his days were short. He was the

last man in the world to think of such a thing; and yet to many of us he

seemed the perfect example of how a man should bear himself in such a

strait. I have heard young men speak of him as old-fashioned, and, judged

by some modern standards, his virtues were indeed those of the antique

world. He loved his profession for its own sake, believed in its

influence and dignity, hated sensationalism--whether in politics or in

newspapers--would rather that any rival should gain any advantage over

him than that he should divulge a secret or betray the confidence of a

friend. And so he came to be the confidant and adviser of many eminent

men who were attached to him for his sterling qualities of head and

heart, for his knowledge, his integrity, his admirable common-sense. Of

all his qualities none was more attractive than the staunchness of his

friendship. To those whom he really liked, old or young, eminent or

obscure, Wemyss Reid was always the same, a champion who would brook no

slight, and whose help was readiest when times were worst. A literary

man, he was quite without literary jealousy, and never so happy as when

giving a hand-up to a new writer or a young journalist. All of us who

knew him are in his debt--_neque ego desinam debere_."

I will permit myself to make one other quotation, and only one. In

September, 1903, we lost our only sister. We three brothers had been at

her funeral in Scotland; it was the last time we were all together. I

lunched a day or two later with him at the Reform Club, and though, like

myself, he was naturally depressed, he spoke cheerfully, and there was

nothing to hint that he was more than tired. Three days later, September

19th, he wrote me a long letter, which began with the words, "Heaven

knows, I do not want to add to your anxieties at the present moment, but

I think I ought to tell you what has happened to me." He then went on to

say that his friend Mr. Malcolm Morris had met him at the Club on the

same day that I was there, and, startled by his appearance, had asked him

a number of questions. Mr. Morris had been abroad and had not seen him

for some time, but he insisted on an immediate visit to a specialist, and

this was arranged for the following Saturday, the day on which he wrote

the letter from which I am citing. He was told at that interview that his

condition was most serious, even critical--in fact, that he had not long

to live. So he wrote, "I have clearly to put my house in order, and to

wait as calmly as possible for what may happen. The thing has come upon

me very suddenly in the end, but I have had forebodings for some time

past. You remember what I said to you on my way to Kilmarnock last week?

I want nobody to worry about me personally. If my work is to come to an

end soon, it will at least have been a full day's work. I know I can

count on your brotherly love and sympathy."

Lady Reid and his children were at the moment from home. I went to him at

once; he was sitting alone in his house, and he received me with a smile.

He talked calmly and without a shadow of fear, and with no hint of

repining. He had gathered from the specialist that he had only a few

weeks at the most to live, and he told me that as he rode away in a

hansom from the house where he had received what he called his sentence

of death, he looked at the people in the street like a man in a dream,

and with a curious feeling of detachment from the affairs of the world.

But he rallied, and went about his work as usual, was as keenly

interested as ever in the politics of the hour, and gave to those who

knew how much he suffered an example of submission and fortitude which is

not common.

Naturally I saw much of him in his closing days, and in talk with me he

nearly always turned to the old sacred memories which we had in common.

When I was a mere youth and he at the beginning of his career as a

journalist, I remember his telling me never to forget that blood was

thicker than water. His letters to me during thirty years, and many

practical deeds as well, if I were to publish the one or to state the

other, would prove how constantly he himself bore that in mind. Others

can speak of his gift as a raconteur, his superb power of work, his moral

courage, his quick capacity in the handling of public questions; all this

I know, and I know besides, better perhaps than anyone else who is likely

to speak, his intense family affection, his real though unparaded loyalty

to conviction, and the magic of a kindliness which was never so apparent

as when the way was rough and the heart was sore.

All the letters which arrived after his death--and they came in

battalions--were quick with the sense of personal loss. They came from

all sorts of people--from school-fellows in the distant Newcastle days,

and obscure folk who had their own story to tell of his kindness, to

statesmen of Cabinet rank, and men whose names are famous in almost every

walk of life. Personally, I think I was most touched by the remark of a

poor waiter, "a lame dog" whom, it seems, he had helped over a difficult

stile in life, and who declared that he was "one in a thousand."

Assuredly, as far as courage and sympathy are concerned, those simple

words were true.

STUART J. REID.

_Blackwell Cliff, East Grinstead.

October 12th, 1905._

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

One who tries to tell the story of his life and of his personal

experiences, public and private, undertakes a task of rare difficulty.

Now that I have completed the work that I set myself to perform some

years ago, I recognise more fully than I did at the outset the greatness

of this difficulty, and I am only too conscious that, at the best, I have

succeeded but partially in overcoming it. The egotism which is

inseparable from a narrative written, as this necessarily is, in the

first person, is perhaps the most obvious of all the defects which it

must present to the reader. Quite frankly I may say that, on reading

these pages, I am filled with something like confusion by the extent to

which I have been forced to bring my own personality, my own sayings and

doings, even into those chapters which deal with public affairs. I can

only plead in extenuation of my offence that I do not see how it could

have been avoided in that which is neither more nor less than an

Autobiography. I may add that I have tried always to speak the truth, and

have never consciously magnified my own part in the transactions upon

which I have touched.

The closing chapters of the story have been written under what seemed to

be the shadow of approaching death. Indeed, at one time I had no hope

that I could live to complete my task. No man who writes thus, on the

verge of another world, would willingly swerve by so much as a

hair's-breadth from what he believes to be the truth. But human nature

and human limitations remain the same from the beginning to the end of

life, and I am fully conscious of the fact that the soundness of my

judgments upon affairs and my fellow-men is not less open to impeachment

to-day than when I was moving in the main current of human activity. If

in anything that I have written I have wronged any of my fellow-creatures

it has been absolutely without intention on my part, and I can only hope

that they will vindicate themselves, after the publication of these

pages, as quickly and completely as possible.

I have had no exciting story to tell, and no personal triumphs to

chronicle. My simple desire has been to write of the persons and events

of my own time in the light in which they appeared to my own eyes, and by

doing so to give possibly some information regarding them which may be

new to many of my readers. I have been always much more of a spectator

than of an actor in the arena; but it has been my lot to be very near,

for many years, to those who were actively engaged in that "high chess

game whereof the pawns are men"; and we have authority for the belief

that the onlooker sees more than the actual player of the drama he

describes.

I must add that nowhere, except in a few cases in which I make special

mention of the fact, have I trusted to mere hearsay evidence. I have

confined myself to that which I know to be the truth, either from my

personal observation or from documents of unimpeachable authority. My

opinions may be of very little value, but my facts are, I believe,

incontrovertible.

WEMYSS REID.

_26, Bramham Gardens, South Kensington,

January 1st_, 1905.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY DAYS.

Birth and Parentage--Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the 'Forties--A Visit to St.

Andrews--The Scottish Sabbath--First Acquaintance with a Printing

Office--Tyneside in the Mid-Century--In Peril of Housebreakers--At Dr.

Collingwood Bruce's School--A Plague of Flies--Cholera--Fire.

CHAPTER II.

PROBATION.

Aspirations After a Journalistic Life--A Clerk's Stool in the W.B. Lead

Office--Literary Ambitions--An Accepted Contribution--The _Northern

Daily Express_ and its Editor--Founding a Literary Institute--Letters

from Charles Kingsley and Archbishop Longley--Joseph Cowen and his

Revolutionary Friends--Orsini--Thackeray's Lectures and Dickens's

Readings.

CHAPTER III.

MY LIFE-WORK BEGUN.

On the Staff of the _Newcastle Journal_--In a Dilemma--Lord John

Russell and Mr. Gladstone at Newcastle-upon-Tyne--Mr. Gladstone's

Triumphal Progress--A Memorable Colliery Disaster: A Pit-Sinker's

Heroism--Adventure at a Dickens Reading.

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--Assuming 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.

CHAPTER V.

WORK ON THE LEEDS MERCURY

My New Duties--Betrothal--The Writing of Leading Articles--The Founder of

the _Leeds Mercury_--Edward Baines the Second--Thomas Blackburn

Baines--Patriotic Nonconformists--Another Colliery Disaster: A Story of

Heroism--An Abortive Fenian Raid at Chester--Reminiscences of the Prince

of Wales's Visits to Yorkshire--Mr. Bright and the Reform Demonstrations

of 1866--The Closing Speech at St. James's Hall--The Tribune of the

People Vindicates the Queen.

CHAPTER VI.

LIFE IN LONDON.

Appointed London Correspondent of the _Leeds Mercury_--My

Marriage--Securing Admission to the Reporters' Gallery--Relations between

Reporters and Members--Inadequate Accommodation for the

Press--Reminiscences of the Clerkenwell Explosion--The Last Public

Execution--The Arundel Club--James Macdonell--Robert Donald--James

Payn--Mrs. Riddell and the _St. James's Magazine_--My First

Novel--How Sala Cut Short an Anecdote--Disraeli as Leader of the House in

1868--A Personal Encounter with him at Aylesbury--Mr. Gladstone's First

Ministry--Bright and Forster--W.E. Baxter--Irish Church Disestablishment

Debate in the House of Lords--Mr. Mudford--Bereavement.

CHAPTER VII.

EDITOR OF THE _LEEDS MERCURY_.

Forming Good Resolutions--Provincial Journalism in the 'Seventies--

Recollections of the Franco-German War--The Loss of the _Captain_

and its Consequences to me--Settling Down at Leeds--Acquaintance with

Monckton Milnes--Visits to Fryston--Lord Houghton's Chivalry--His

Talk--His Skill in Judging Men--Stories about George Venables--Lord

Houghton's Regard for Religious Observances.

CHAPTER VIII.

MY FIRST CONTINENTAL TOUR.

A Generous Scot--Paris after the Commune--An Uncomfortable Journey

Home--Illness of the Prince of Wales--Revived Popularity of the

Throne--Death and Funeral of Napoleon III.--Burial of the Prince

Imperial--Forster's Educational Policy--Bruce's Licensing Bill--My Second

Marriage.

CHAPTER IX.

A NEW ERA IN PROVINCIAL JOURNALISM.

Bringing the _Leeds Mercury_ into Line with the London

Dailies--Friendship with William Black--The Dissolution of 1874--The

Election at Leeds--Mr. Chamberlain's Candidature for Sheffield--Mr.

Gladstone's Resignation--Election of his Successor--Birth of the

Caucus--The System Described--Its Adoption at Leeds--Its Effect upon the

Fortunes of the Liberal Party--The Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation.

CHAPTER X.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO BRONTË LITERATURE.

Visit to Haworth--Feeling Against the Brontës in Yorkshire--Miss Nussey

and her Discontent with Mrs. Gaskell's "Life"--Publication of "Charlotte

Brontë: a Monograph"--Mr. Swinburne's Appreciation--An Abortive Visit to

the Poet--Lecture on Emily Brontë and "Wuthering Heights"--Miss Nussey's

Visit to Haworth after Charlotte's Marriage.

CHAPTER XI.

VISITS TO THE CONTINENT.

Politics in Paris in 1877--An Oration by Gambetta--the Balloting--The

Republic Saved--Gambetta's Funeral--A Member of the Reform Club--The

Century Club--A Draught of Turpentine and Soda--The "Press Gang" at the

Reform--James Payn and William Black--George Augustus Sala and Sir John

Robinson--Disraeli's Triumph in 1878--A European Tour.

CHAPTER XII.

A CHAPTER OF MISFORTUNES.

Death of my Sister's Husband and of my Brother James--An Accident on

Marston Moor--Sir George Wombwell's Story of the Charge of the Light

Brigade--His Adventure on the Ouse--Editing a Daily Newspaper from a Sick

Bed--Reflections on Death--Death of my Mother--Serious Illness of my Only

Daughter.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1880.

Mr. Gladstone's Position in 1879--His Decision to Contest Midlothian--How

he came to be Adopted by the Leeds Liberals--The Conversation Club--A

Visit from John Morley--The Dissolution of 1880--Lecture on Mr.

Gladstone--His Triumphant Return for Leeds--His Election for

Midlothian--Mr. Herbert Gladstone Adopted as his Successor at Leeds--Mr.

Gladstone's Visit to Leeds in 1881--A Fiasco Narrowly Avoided--A

Wonderful Mass Meeting--Mr. Gladstone's Collapse and Recovery--My

Introduction to Him--An Excursion to Tunis--"The Land of the Bey"--Mr.

A.M. Broadley's Prophecies--Howard Payne's Grave--A Series of

Coincidences.

CHAPTER XIV.

CONCERNING W.E. FORSTER AND OTHERS.

The Beginning of Mr. Stead's Journalistic Career--His Methods--Birth of

the New Journalism--Madame Novikoff and Mr. Stead--Mr. Stead's Attacks

upon Joseph Cowen--How he dealt with a Remonstrance--W. E. Forster--Mr.

Chamberlain's Antagonism--The _Leeds Mercury_'s Defence of

Forster--How he was Jockeyed out of the Cabinet--Forster's

Resignation--News of the Phoenix Park Murders--Forster's Reflections--Mr.

Gladstone's Pity for Social Outcasts--Mr. Chamberlain's Brothers

Blackballed at the Reform--Failure of an Attempt to Crush the _Leeds

Mercury_--Forster's Gratitude.

CHAPTER XV.

THE FIRST LIBERAL IMPERIALIST.

Forster a Pioneer of Liberal Imperialism--His Political Courage--His

Unfortunate Manner--His Home Life--Intrigues in the Cabinet--The Plots

against Forster's Life--Reaction in his Favour--Forster and Lord

Hartington--The Former's Grief for Gordon--Forster and Lord Rosebery--Mr.

Stead and the _Pall Mall Gazette_--His Responsibility for the

Gordon Imbroglio.

CHAPTER XVI.

NOVELS AND NOVELISTS.

"The Lumley Entail"--"Gladys Fane"--My Experience in Novel-Writing--About

Sad Endings--Imaginary Characters and Characters Drawn from Life--Visits

from William Black and Bret Harte--Black as an After-Dinner Speaker--How

Bret Harte saw Haworth Parsonage, and was Roughly Entreated by a

Yorkshire Admirer--A Candid Opinion on the Brontë Monograph.

CHAPTER XVII.

TO THE DEFEAT OF THE GOVERNMENT (1885).

More Antagonism towards Forster--A Household Suffrage Demonstration at

Leeds--A Meeting at the Carlton Club and a Coincidence--Forster and "the

most Powerful Man in England"--Single-Member Constituencies and the

Cumulative Vote--Dynamite Outrages--Police Protection for Statesmen--I

Receive Threatening Letters and Get a Fright--Death of Lord

Houghton--Lord Derby and how he was Misunderstood--An Unconventional

Dinner at Lord Houghton's--A Visit to Tangier--In Peril of the

Sea--Gibraltar "a Magnificent Imposture"--Captain W. and the M.P.--To the

North Cape--Cheering a Funeral Party--News of Mr. Gladstone's

Overthrow--Home Again.

MEMOIRS OF

SIR WEMYSS REID.

* * * * *

CHAPTER I.

EARLY DAYS.

Birth and Parentage--Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the 'Forties--A Visit to St.

Andrews--The Scottish Sabbath--First Acquaintance with a Printing

Office--Tyneside in the Mid-Century--In Peril of Housebreakers--At Dr.

Collingwood Bruce's School--A Plague of Flies--Cholera--Fire.

It was in the old town, now the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne that I first

saw the light--March 29, 1842. My father, the Rev. Alexander Reid, was

trained first at the University of St. Andrews, under Dr. Chalmers, and

afterwards at Highbury College, London, under Dr. Pye-Smith, for the

Congregational ministry. On leaving College he settled in 1830 at

Newcastle, and there remained for half a century a faithful and honoured

preacher, retiring in 1880 amid the esteem of the whole community on

Tyneside. He died in 1887 under the roof of my younger brother Stuart, at

Wilmslow, Cheshire, a year which was memorable to me in other than a

sorrowful sense, since it was then that I settled in London. It was said

of my father at the time of his death, in one of the Newcastle papers,

that for a man to be in difficulty or sorrow was a passport to his help

and sympathy. My mother was the daughter of Thomas Wemyss, of Darlington,

a well known Biblical scholar and critic, a kinsman of the poet Campbell,

and a direct descendant of the Stewarts of Ascog, Bute, a family which

traced its descent in unbroken succession--with the bar sinister at the

start--from Robert II. of Scotland.

Of the six children who grew up in the austerely simple but happy

surroundings of my father's home, the eldest, Mary, was the daughter of

my father by a previous marriage; she married the Rev. William Bathgate,

D.D., of Kilmarnock, and died as recently as 1903, to my great sorrow. My

elder brother James, with whom I was most closely associated in boyhood

and youth, was always more or less of an invalid, and died at Leeds in

1880--the year in which our mother also passed away. I came next in the

family, and my younger brothers are Alexander, now manager of the Dublin

and Wexford Railway, and Stuart, who, like myself, has followed

journalism and literature. It only remains for me to mention the youngest

member of the family, John Paul, a bright and affectionate little fellow

of thirteen, whose loss in 1868 threw a shadow over the home which only

the passage of long years softened.

Newcastle, in those days, was scarcely a third of its present size, and

the river Tyne, which is now a mere ditch, hemmed in on either side by

great manufactories, shipbuilding yards, and wharves, from its mouth to a

point above Newcastle, was then a fair and noble river, which watered

green meadows and swept past scenes of rural beauty. The house in which I

was born stood in Elswick Row, and in the year of my birth--1842--that

terrace of modest houses formed the boundary-line of the town on the

west. Beyond it was nothing but fields and open country. There was no

High Level Bridge in those days, spanning the river and forming a link in

the great iron highway between the English and Scotch capitals; nor had

so much as the first stone of the famous Elswick Ordnance and Engineering

Works been laid. The future Lord Armstrong, whom I met at dinner not long

ago, looking hardly older than when I first saw him, was then a

solicitor, whose office stood in Westgate Street, and whose dreams could

scarcely have foreshadowed his ultimate destiny. Richard Granger was just

completing that great reconstruction of the centre of the town which gave

Newcastle so noble and unprovincial an appearance; but the fine streets

he had constructed--finer than any others to be found in England at that

period--were still untenanted, and it was melancholy in walking along

Clayton Street to see nine houses out of ten mere empty shells without

doors or windows.

My earliest recollections start out of the void with great distinctness

on one particular day. It was my third birthday, and I can still recall

vividly the two boys--myself and my brother James--who were playing

together in the garden in front of the pleasant house we then occupied in

Summerhill Terrace, when I was called into the drawing-room to receive my

birthday gifts.

It is not, however, with the memories of a child that I wish to entertain

my readers, except in so far as they may have some intrinsic interest of

their own. Dimly I can recall the year of storm and stress on the

Continent, when thrones were toppling and the tide of revolution

threatened a general catastrophe; vaguely, too, I remember the firing of

the guns from the old castle, which announced the death of Queen Adelaide

in 1849; but it was not until 1850 that my real life may be said to have

begun. In the spring of that year I went on a long visit to my paternal

grandfather at St. Andrews, where his family had been settled for many

generations. In the station of Berwick-upon-Tweed the luggage of

passengers was examined in order to see that whiskey was not being

smuggled across the Border, and I was filled with childish wonder as I

watched the process.

St. Andrews, as it was in 1850, bore little resemblance to the well-known

pleasure resort of to-day. So far as I can remember, there was not a

modern building in the city, and as a picture of an old-world Scottish

town it was without a flaw. No club-house faced the sea, nor were there

the fashionable residences which adorn the modern St. Andrews. The grass

grew and the oats ripened where now stretch the long terraces devoted to

summer lodgings for the visitors. North Street and South Street were the

two city thoroughfares, if thoroughfares they could be called, seeing

that even in them the green weeds grew freely. Antiquity and repose

characterised the place as a whole, though in the winter months the stir

of young life filled the little city, troops of red-cloaked students

passing to and fro between the grey, weather-beaten halls of the

University and their lodgings. At the end of South Street stood the ruins

of the cathedral with the fine tower, in which the beams of some great

vessel of the Spanish Armada, wrecked on the neighbouring Bell Rock, were

carefully preserved, and the graceful arches of the sacred building, for

the destruction of which John Knox was responsible. Many generations of

my forefathers slept side by side in one particular portion of the

cathedral grounds, and here my grandfather used to bring me to play among

the tombs and to spell out the names of kinsmen who had died a century or

more before my own earthly pilgrimage began. The whole place, with its

noble ruins of castle and cathedral, its grey and empty streets, its

venerable halls, its green links and fine coast-line, made a profound

impression upon my imagination as a child. To this day I can recall not

only the scene itself, but the sounds, the colours, the briny odours, the

very atmosphere of the place.

Golf was then, as now, the one great amusement of the citizens, though

there was this difference between the past and the present. In those days

the game was almost unknown to the rest of the world, and to all intents

and purposes St. Andrews had a monopoly of it. [Footnote: Blackheath, of

course, had then, as now, its ancient golf club.] We all talked golf,

even if we did not all play it. The shop-boys rose betimes of a summer's

morning to enjoy a round on the links before breakfast, and learned

professors and staid ministers gave their afternoons to the same

absorbing pursuit. Child though I was, even I had my clubs, and played in

my own fashion at the game.

My grandfather, who had retired from his business as a manufacturer of

flax some years before, had a number of poor relations and dependents

whom he frequently visited, taking me with him as a companion. Many of

these were weavers, and in those days the weaver carried on his craft at

home. I can see distinctly the little stone cottages in the narrow wynds

off South Street, which I was wont to visit; I can recall the whirr and

rattle of the loom "ben the house," and picture to myself the grave

elderly man who on my entrance would rise from the rickety machine in

front of which he was seated, and, after refreshing himself with a pinch

of snuff, adjust his horn-rimmed spectacles and stare, with a seriousness

which to me was somewhat disquieting, at the little English boy who had

found his way into his presence. Kind they were without exception, these

simple homely folk; but their gravity was hardly to be measured. Stern

Calvinists to a man and a woman, the world was clearly to them no

playground, no place for the frivolous pursuit of pleasure; and even the

innocent sports of a child seemed to jar on their sense of the fitness of

things.

It was on Sunday, however, that the full severity of the Scotch

Puritanism of that day made itself felt in my inmost soul. Oh, the dreary

monotony of those Sabbaths at St. Andrews! The long, long service and yet

longer sermon in the forenoon, the funereal procession of the

congregation to their homes, the hasty meal, consisting chiefly of tea

and cold, hard-boiled eggs, which took the place of dinner, and the

return within a few minutes to the kirk, where the vitiated atmosphere

left by the morning congregation had not yet passed away. Even when the

second service had come to a close, the solemnities of the day were not

ended, for the Sunday School met in the late afternoon, and remained in

session for a couple of hours. But it was not the public services,

terrible though these were, that formed the most depressing feature of

Sunday in St. Andrews; it was the rigid discipline which pervaded her

home-life. My grandfather, I believe, was looked upon as being somewhat

lax in his religious views, and he was undoubtedly more liberal--perhaps

one might say more advanced--than many of his neighbours. Yet even he had

to render homage to the universal law. So when Sunday came round the

blinds were closely drawn, lest the rays of the sun should dissipate the

gloom befitting the solemn day, whilst no voice in the household was

raised above a sepulchral whisper. Lucky for me was it that I was sent to

bed early, and that thus the horrors of the Sabbath were in my case

abbreviated. The older members of the family sat in a silent semicircle

round the smouldering fire, each holding, and some possibly reading, a

book, the suitableness of which for use at such a time was beyond

question. The Bible, the metrical version of the Psalms, and one or two

volumes of discourses by divines of undoubted orthodoxy, formed the only

literature recognised on these occasions. For myself, I had brought with

me from home a copy of the delightful, though now forgotten, book called

"Evenings at Home." and my Sabbatical sufferings were intensified by the

sight of this volume on a high bookshelf, where it remained beyond my

reach from Saturday night till Monday morning.

My life among these grave, elderly men and women would probably have been

a sad one but for one fact. Adjoining my grandfather's residence was a

small printing office, which he had established some years before for the

benefit of a widowed daughter-in-law. A door opened from the house into

the printing office, and through it I would steal whenever I got the

chance. It was not only that the journeyman printer (there _were_

journeymen in those days) was the kindest of men, whose memory I cherish

with affection to this hour, and who never failed to welcome me with a

smile and a pleasant word when I invaded his domain. The place had a

charm of its own for me, mysterious, inexplicable, but absolutely

enthralling. The cases of type, the presses, the ink-rollers, the damp

proof-sheets--chiefly of bills announcing public meetings or the "roup"

of some bankrupt farmer's stock--filled me with wonder and delight. Child

as I was, I saw in these humble implements of the petty tradesman the

means by which one mind can place itself in contact with many.

It is not to be supposed that I had even the dimmest perception of

anything beyond the most obvious features of the printer's business, but

the seed was sown then which was to fructify throughout my whole

remaining life, and from the day when I first felt the fascination of

that humble printer's workshop, I never ceased to regard myself as in a

special degree a child of the printing-press. How delightful were the

hours which I and David, the journeyman aforesaid, spent together when

business was slack--and it was often slack! Then it was that together we

would compose the most wonderful announcements of the great enterprises

to which I was to commit myself in after life. Now it was the prospectus

of a "genteel academy" of which I was to be the principal, and again it

was the announcement of the opening of a vast emporium for the sale of

goods of every description under my direction, that we thus composed and

printed. These advertisements were invariably printed on gilt-edged paper

in the bluest of ink, and, when I subsequently returned home, excited

prodigious envy in my elder brother, who had never been privileged to

"see himself in print."

My stay at St. Andrews ended at last in a somewhat melancholy fashion. As

the place seemed to agree with me, it was settled that I should remain

for a year at least; and in order that the time might not be wasted I was

sent to school, the school being the well-known Madras College. Here both

boys and girls were taught together. Of the present state of that famous

institution I know nothing, nor do I wish to utter a word of

disparagement of those who were responsible for its management fifty

years ago; but to me, a timid boy who, in spite of his Northumbrian burr,

was turned to ridicule as a Cockney by the Fifeshire lads and lasses, it

wore the aspect of a veritable place of torment. That classic instrument

of discipline, the tawse, was in use at every hour of the day, girls as

well as boys receiving barbarous punishment under the eyes of their

class-mates. Perhaps the cruelty was not so great as it seemed to me, but

at all events it was enough, so far as I was concerned. My dread of the

terrible lash grew into a brooding horror, which poisoned my days and

destroyed my nights; and before I had been a month at the school I was

seized with an attack upon the brain which nearly proved fatal.

Let me mention here, by way of testifying to the orthodoxy of the

religious training given to my young soul, that on the first night on

which I became delirious I was pursued by a phantom, plainly visible to

my overwrought imagination, which wore the exact guise of the Evil One.

Horns, hoofs, tail, and trident, were all clearly seen, and I sprang

wildly from side to side of my bed trying to evade the fiend's attempt to

capture me, until at last I took refuge, trembling and almost fainting,

in my grandfather's arms. My youth and my good constitution carried me

safely through an illness of no ordinary severity, and one day, as I lay

in bed in the first stage of convalescence, I had the joy of hearing my

mother's voice, and of knowing that she was with me once more. A few days

later I returned with her to Newcastle, and thus ended the attempt to

make a Scotsman of me.

My visit to the North, however, had the effect of stimulating my

intelligence, and giving me a real interest in things around me. Travel

had, in short, done its usual work of instructing and vivifying the mind.

Henceforward I had a standard of comparison to apply to home scenes and

experiences which I had not previously possessed. One favourite resort of

ours at home was a grove of trees situate midway between the outskirts of

the town and the village of Benwell. To us children, and to certain other

young folk who were our playmates, it was known as Diana's Grove, though

whether the name came from some fancy of our own or some bygone

tradition, I was never able to ascertain. On the maps of those days it

bore quite another designation. It was a delightful spot, and when,

accompanied by our nursemaid, my brothers and I set off to spend a long

summer morning there, we seemed to have reached the height of bliss. The

grove was separated from Elswick Lane by sloping fields, where wheat and

barley grew luxuriantly, and the narrow path by which we ran, shouting

with joy, through these fields to our haven among the trees led past a

little fountain at which we always stopped to drink. The grove itself was

a small wood of oak and fir trees, covering a piece of rising ground from

which the most delightful views of the beautiful Tyne Valley and the

country lying south of the river were to be obtained. How often as a

child, when tired with my boyish games, I have sat with my brother

beneath one of the trees of the grove, and looked with eyes of wonder on

the scene before me! The noble river seemed to flow almost at our feet,

and the only signs of life upon its surface were the great keels passing

slowly up and down. Beyond it were the green meadows of Dunstan, whilst,

rising behind them, was the fine amphitheatre crowned by the pretty

village of Wickham and the woods of Ravensworth and Gibside. Young as I

was, I could quote poetry; and I remember how, as I looked upon this

scene, there invariably occurred to me the lines--

"Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood

Stand dressed in living green;

So to the Jews old Canaan stood

While Jordan rolled between."

Away yonder, across the brimming river, was the Canaan of my

imagination--the mysterious, unknown land into which my little feet were

so eager to wander, reckless of what might happen there. Why do I dwell

upon this simple scene? I do so because, alas, it is now a scene of the

past. Where my young comrades and I made merry fifty years ago in the

shade of the oak trees, or beside the well in the meadow, there is now a

vast cemetery, and some of those who played with me there now sleep

peacefully almost in the shadow of the Diana's Grove we loved so well.

And the prospect from the grove--where is it now? Along the north bank of

the Tyne, at that very spot, stretch the immense works of Lord Armstrong,

whilst the houses of his workmen, in thickly-planted streets, cover the

fair meadows of my youth, and the dense cloud of smoke for ever rising

from forge and furnace blots out the prospect of the southern shore.

Hardly less melancholy is the change which has overtaken the favourite

seaside resorts of my childhood. Tynemouth was the earliest

watering-place of which I knew anything. In those days the pleasant

village, not yet defiled by the soot of Shields, consisted of three

streets, called respectively Front Street, Middle Street, and Back

Street. There was no great pier casting its mighty arm into the sea

across the mouth of the river, and the favourite resort of visitors, the

place where we children played and bathed, and our elders lounged and

read or flirted, according to their tastes, was the quaint little haven

now given up to the pier works. How high the breakers were that rolled

into that haven as I stood, a wondering child, and watched them from the

shore! I have tossed on many seas since then, and have stood on many a

storm-swept headland; but nowhere have I seen waves so high--so

irresistible in their majesty, as those waves at Tynemouth seemed to my

innocent eyes to be.

Far greater than the change at Tynemouth is that which has taken place at

Whitley, another of our favourite summer resorts, on the delightful

Northumbrian coast. What Whitley is now I do not know; but when I last

saw it, more than a dozen years ago, it had become a rambling, ugly,

ill-built town, chiefly given over to lodging-house keepers, though

redeemed by its fine stretch of hard sand. Very different was the Whitley

with which I first made acquaintance in 1849. There was no lodging-house

in the place; nothing but a sequestered village, which could not boast of

church or chapel, and which had only one small shop. My parents used to

hire a charming little cottage belonging to the village blacksmith. Its

front opened upon the village street, and behind was a garden, full of

the simple cottage flowers which are so strangely unfamiliar to those

doomed to dwell in towns. A summer-house, clothed in honeysuckle, was one

of the features of the garden, and the delicious scent seemed to me in

those happy days, when I first reached the cottage on one of our summer

holidays, to be as it were the fragrance of heaven itself. Nobody else

seemed to visit Whitley in those first years of our sojourn there; so

that we had the noble stretch of sands and the long line of cliffs almost

to ourselves during the long summer's day, and my father, lying on the

yielding turf above the sands, could study his sermon for the coming

Sunday at peace, unmolested and almost unseen by any man. There must

still, I suppose, be spots somewhere on the long coastline of this island

where one might find combined the peace, the seclusion, and the beauty of

that bit of Northumberland as I knew it fifty years ago; and yet,

whatever my understanding may say, my heart tells me that I shall never

again see anything like the Whitley of my youth. [Footnote: Since these

pages were penned, the memory of the blacksmith's cottage at Whitley has

been vividly brought back to me under rather singular circumstances. In

the spring of 1895 I was dining in Downing Street with Lord Rosebery,

then Prime Minister. Next to me at dinner was seated Sir James Joicey,

the millionaire colliery owner and Member of Parliament. Sir James is,

like myself, a Northumbrian, and our conversation naturally turned upon

our native county. I spoke of the blacksmith's cottage, and the bower of

honeysuckle at Whitley, with the enthusiasm which old memories evoked. To

my surprise, there was an answering gleam of pleasure and tenderness on

my friend's face. "_You_ lived in the blacksmith's cottage?" said

he. "Why, so did we when I was a boy!" We found, on comparing dates, that

the Joiceys had followed my own parents as tenants of the tiny house when

the latter gave it up. To both of us it seemed a far cry from the honest

blacksmith's modest cottage to Mr. Pitt's dining-room in Downing Street.]

It was in the autumn of 1850 that a rather curious adventure befell me,

which might well have cut short my career, and prevented these pages from

ever seeing the light. We were about to remove from Summerhill Terrace to

a house not far distant which had just been bought by my father, and, as

it happened, one dull afternoon I was left alone at home, my mother and

the servants being all engaged at the new house. I was left with strict

injunctions to "put the chain on the front door," and to bolt the kitchen

door, which was on a lower level than the other. The first order I

obeyed, but the second, under the temptation of an entrancing story in

_Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_ which absorbed my thoughts, I entirely

forgot. I was devouring this story, as only children do devour stories,

when I heard the front door opened. I was sitting in the parlour, at the

back of the house, so that I could not see anyone enter the garden.

Running to the door, under the belief that my mother had returned, I

found myself confronted by two men. They were--or pretended to

be--pedlars; and one of them carried a case filled with sham jewellery.

Their great desire seemed to be to get me to unchain the door. I was

simple enough to tell them that I was alone in the house, but my

simplicity did not carry me so far as a compliance with their urgent

request. After arguing with me for several minutes, and even endeavouring

to bribe me with a trumpery jewel, the men withdrew, muttering. I watched

them for a moment, and took note of the keen, earnest gaze they bent upon

the house before leaving the garden. But the voice of the charmer in

_Tait_ was calling too loudly to allow me to dwell upon anything

else, and I was quickly back again in the parlour and deep in mystery.

It might have been twenty minutes later that there fell upon my startled

ear a sound which under the circumstances was distinctly sinister--that

of a man's foot on the sanded floor of the kitchen passage below. A timid

child at all times, there is no need to say that when I crept to the head

of the stairs, and, after listening there breathlessly for a few seconds,

ascertained beyond doubt that more than one man was moving about in the

rooms below me, I was filled with almost a paralysing sense of terror.

Here at last the "robbers" of whom I and my brother had so often talked

in frightened whispers in our beds, were come in good earnest. What was

to be done? And then there flashed upon me, like an inspiration, the

recollection of a plan which we had talked over together when discussing

the best means of driving the robbers from our house, should they ever

enter it. We had both agreed, then, that if we could but induce any

ordinary thief to believe that a certain big relative of ours, whose

colossal proportions we had often admired, was on the premises, there

would be no need to do anything else to make the intruder flee

affrighted. My mind was made up. Creeping softly back into the parlour, I

seized the tongs. These I hurled suddenly down the kitchen stairs, and

when the terrible din thus raised had died out, I cried in my childish

treble, "Uncle John! Uncle John! Come downstairs! There are thieves in

the house!" There was a cry of rage or alarm from the kitchen, a hurried

scuffling of feet on the floor, and then through a window I saw my two

friends the pedlars flying through the yard, and pausing not to look

behind. I ought, of course, to have forthwith gone downstairs and done my

duty by that back door, which I had so shamefully neglected earlier in

the day; but I am ashamed to say that my momentary access of courage had

entirely died away by this time, and that for no imaginable sum of money

would I have dared to descend those stairs, and pass through the dark

passage leading to the back door. The thieves were in due time captured

and transported for another offence; but my parents refused to prosecute

them in order that I might escape the ordeal of a public examination.

They were desperate ruffians, and the police declared their belief that

if they had known I was alone in the house they would have murdered me.

I now come to my schooldays in the distant years 1852-4. My father, as I

have already said, was a minister of religion for fifty years at

Newcastle. He was one of the gentlest and noblest of men, one whom I have

never ceased to revere as the very pattern and exemplar of a Christian

gentleman. But those who follow such a calling cannot expect to gain

riches as their reward, and my father was a poor man. Despite his

poverty, he was resolved that his sons should have the best education

that he could procure for them. That meant that they must be sent to the

best school in the town--Percy Street Academy. So when my elder brother

in 1848 was of school age, he took him to Mr., not then Dr., Bruce, to

enter him as a pupil. I have no doubt that he went with some trepidation,

knowing full well that the school fees would be a heavy tax upon his

small income. I was sitting with my mother in the drawing-room of

Summerhill Terrace when my father returned, and I saw that there was an

unwonted brightness on his gentle face. He told my mother how Mr. Bruce,

after examining my brother, had pronounced him to be fully qualified to

enter the school; and then my father asked about the fees. The answer he

received was, "My dear Mr. Reid, I never take a fee from a minister of

religion." And so it came to pass that not only my brother James but

myself and my two younger brothers were educated at Percy Street without

any fee being paid on our behalf. No one will wonder that I cherish Dr.

Bruce's memory with unstinted gratitude and reverence.

Schooldays, despite the popular theory, are, as a matter of fact,

generally as uninteresting to the schoolboy as their story is to the

public, and I shall not detain the reader with much about this period of

my life. Dr. Collingwood Bruce, the father, by the way, of Mr. Justice

Bruce, was then and long afterwards the most famous school master in the

North of England, and under him I received that small fraction of my

education which a man usually obtains during pupilage. Percy Street

Academy, Newcastle, has long since disappeared, after having counted no

inconsiderable proportion of the best-known residents among its pupils.

It occupied a series of rambling buildings with an imposing house at the

end of the row, in which lived "The Doctor," the assistant masters, and

the boarders. But though the school is gone, my old schoolmaster died but

recently, enjoying to the last the respect of his fellow citizens and the

repose of a happy old age. He is known to fame as the author of the

leading work on the Roman Wall, and as an antiquary of high repute. I

have a grateful recollection of many of his acts during my school career;

and, looking back, there are none I now esteem more highly than the

attempts he constantly made to interest his pupils in the general affairs

of the world outside the school-gates.

How well, for example, do I remember the school being summoned one

morning in November, 1854, to the large writing room! Here the Doctor was

standing at his desk awaiting us, armed with a copy of the _Times_.

It had just arrived, and it contained W. H. Russell's brilliant account

of the battle of Inkermann. In a few well-chosen words, the Doctor--who

was an excellent public speaker--explained that he had called us from our

tasks in order that we might listen to the story of a great deed done for

England of which every Englishman ought to be proud; and then he read the

whole story of the battle as it is told in Russell's graphic narrative,

whilst we boys cheered each deed of English valour and groaned at the

Russians as lustily as though we had been ourselves spectators of the

fight. It was a wise act on the part of Dr. Bruce, and many others

besides myself must have been grateful to him for having thus made us

participators in the emotion which in those stirring times thrilled the

nation.

It was before the Crimean War, however, that we in Newcastle passed

through an experience the like of which I shall hardly encounter again.

Newcastle was then notorious for its bad sanitation. A great part of the

town consisted of houses of extreme antiquity, crowded together in narrow

alleys in the neighbourhood of the river. These alleys, I may note in

passing, were known as "chares"--a designation which used habitually to

puzzle the Judges of Assize when they had to inquire into the

circumstances of one of the not infrequent riots which in those days

chequered the harmony of life on the banks of the Tyne. It was towards

the end of July, 1853, that the rumour spread, reaching even a schoolboy

like myself, that the cholera was approaching. A few weeks later it was

with us in all its grim reality. Its actual appearance in the town was

preceded by an extraordinary phenomenon which may, or may not, have been

connected with the epidemic. One hot morning in August, when I left home

for school, I was struck by the curious appearance of the atmosphere. No

sooner had I stepped out of doors than I found that the strange dimness

which pervaded everything was due to swarms of minute flies, which

literally darkened the skies and settled in innumerable hosts upon every

object animate and inanimate. It was impossible to breathe without

inhaling these loathsome insects whenever the mouth was opened, and in

order to protect ourselves my brother and I fastened our pocket

handkerchiefs over our faces and walked to school in this fashion. We

found that most other persons had adopted the same device. The plague

lasted in Egyptian intensity for the whole of that day. The next day it

had to a certain extent subsided, and on the third the dead flies might

have been seen literally in heaps, each one of which must have contained

countless thousands, in the corners of halls and passages. Everybody

connected this most disagreeable phenomenon with the approach of the

pestilence, and, whether they did so rightly or wrongly, the cholera only

too certainly followed upon its heels.

Its first appearance raised feelings of terror in many hearts. I confess

for myself that when I heard that three persons had died of cholera in

the town on the previous day I fell into a small panic; but it was then

that my mother, always a deeply religious woman, seeing how things were

going with us, called her children together, and in the happiest manner

succeeded in converting our dread of an unknown and mysterious evil into

a perfect and childlike trust in the protection of a Heavenly Father.

What she said I cannot now recall; I only know that from that moment,

whilst many of our companions in school and at play went about with

pallid faces and unstrung nerves, all our fears seemed as if by magic to

have vanished. But the reality of the plague was terrible indeed, and the

month of September, 1853, is never likely to be forgotten by anyone who

then lived at Newcastle. It was not merely that the mortality was

enormous, the deaths on some days being above a hundred, but that the

circumstances attending the plague were of a gruesome and harrowing

character. Not a few of the scenes in the streets recalled the story of

the Great Plague of London. We had the same incidents of the dead lying

unburied because there were none left to carry them to the grave. We had

the piles of coffins waiting for interment in the churchyard. We had sad

stories of men seen wheeling the corpse of wife or child in a barrow to

the place of burial. In the evenings workmen carried burning

disinfectants through the streets, the blue flames and sickening stench

of which heightened the horrors of our situation. And perhaps most awful

of all was the suddenness with which the disease slew. One evening in

that terrible month my brothers and I were playing in the garden of our

next-door neighbour with his children; by-and-by he himself came out to

smoke his evening pipe, and as usual he had a kindly word for each one of

us. We left him, when we went to bed, sauntering in the placid eventide

among the flowers he was wont carefully to tend. When I got downstairs

next morning a rough country servant, who was then in our employment,

bluntly told me that "that laddie B----" (naming our neighbour) had died

of the cholera during the night.

It is easy to conceive the effect which an incident like this necessarily

had upon the mind of a child; and there were many such incidents. I

verily believe that if we had not been clad by our mother's care and

wisdom in that armour of trusting faith, we should have suffered

irremediable injury. As it was, it became apparent that we must be

removed from the plague-stricken town. But whither could we go? No

visitor from Newcastle or any other riverside town could find admittance

into any of the lodging-houses on the coast. Happily a port of refuge was

open to us in the little blacksmith's cottage at Whitley, and thither, to

our great relief, we were transported about the time when the virulence

of the epidemic began to abate. My father had himself suffered from an

attack of the disease, probably incurred whilst visiting, with quiet but

unstinted devotion, the sick, and I also had had a very slight touch of

it. The fine air of Whitley and the sunny hours spent on the lonely sands

did wonders for us all; and when we returned home it was to find

Newcastle restored to its ordinary life, with only the empty places in

many households to remind us of the ordeal through which the town had

passed.

I have spoken of the resemblance between this outbreak of cholera and the

Great Plague of London. Curiously enough, the likeness between the

experiences of the northern town in the nineteenth century and the

capital in the seventeenth was to be made yet closer. It was just a year

after the epidemic had passed away that we were visited by another

calamity, infinitely less appalling, and yet at the time of its

occurrence far more startling. Sound asleep in the middle of a dark

October night, I began to dream, and, naturally enough at the time, my

dreams were of the war which had then begun. A Russian fleet escaping

from the Baltic had sailed up the Tyne and was bombarding Newcastle. So

ran my vision, and its effect was heightened by the firing of the guns I

heard in my sleep.

Suddenly my dream and everything else vanished from my mind, driven out

by a shock the like of which I had never experienced before. I was

sitting up in bed, trembling violently, and wondering what awful thing it

was that had broken in upon my slumbers. It was a sound--but such a

sound! Nothing approaching to it had ever fallen on my ears before; and

even when wide awake I still heard its echoes vibrating around me. My

brother James, strange to say, had slept peacefully through the roar of

an explosion the noise of which was heard at Sunderland, fourteen miles

away. In response to my cries he awoke, and at my urgent request went to

the window, which I was myself at the moment too much unnerved to

approach. Directly he drew aside the curtain the room was filled with a

glare that rendered every object as plainly visible as in broad daylight.

We believed that a large building used as a tannery immediately behind

our house must be on fire, but the building stood, and we saw that the

glare which lighted up the whole heavens was far away. It was shortly

after three o'clock on the morning of October 6th, 1854. Presently our

natural agitation was increased by a violent knocking on the front door

of the house at that untimely hour. It was the old man who "kept" my

father's chapel at Tuthill Stairs, and he brought with him a doleful

story. Evidently hysterical from the shock he had received, he told my

father, amid his sobs, that half of Newcastle and Gateshead had been

blown down by a frightful explosion in one of the Gateshead bonded

warehouses; that the dead and dying were lying about in hundreds, and

that, to crown everything, Tuthill Stairs Chapel had been destroyed.

It was indeed a tale of woe; and though my father promptly discounted it,

it was impossible to doubt, with the evidence of that flaming sky before

our eyes, that something very terrible had happened. Whether old Dixon

expected my father to act as an amateur fireman, or whether he hoped for

services of a more spiritual kind, I do not know; but he resolutely

refused to return to the scene of the disaster unless my father

accompanied him. So by-and-by my brother and I found ourselves

accompanying my father and the chapel-keeper on their way to the fire.

A strange spectacle it was which was presented to us. Thousands of

persons were hurrying down towards the river side; and upon their faces

shone the reflection of the glowing sky. By-and-by, as we came within

range of the effects of the explosion, we found broken windows and

shattered doorways on every side. It was not, however, until we reached

the High Level Bridge, and from the giddy height of the roadway looked

down upon the river and the two towns, that we realised the full extent

of the disaster which had happened so suddenly. To our right, as we stood

on the bridge, raged a fire of immense extent. The flames were roaring

upwards from one of the great bonded warehouses of Gateshead, and

threatening at every moment to attack the old parish church, which stood

like a rock strangely illumined in the glare; to our left, in the crowded

streets and alleys of the lower part of Newcastle, I counted no fewer

than seven fires burning fiercely in different places, whilst on the

river there were three ships in flames. It was wonderful to look up and

see burning sparks and fragments hurtling through air, resembling nothing

so much (I thought at the time) as a snowstorm every flake of which was a

point of fire; it was wonderful, too, to see the shipping in the river,

the broad stream itself, and the long lines of houses on either side

glowing in the dancing flames. We could hear the rush of the fire

heavenwards; we could see the mere handfuls of men--soldiers, police, and

what not--who were vainly striving to cope with the terrible enemy they

had so suddenly been called upon to face; and even as we looked we saw

fresh fires break out, and above the roar of the mighty furnace on the

Gateshead side--with the glowing crater which marked the site of the

great explosion--could hear at intervals the cries of the workers.

Looking back, I think that was upon the whole the most sublimely

impressive sight I ever beheld. The two burning towns; the river between

them glittering as though its waters had been turned to gold; the dense

silent crowds around me--these made up a picture the memory of which can

never fade.

Though old Dixon's "hundreds of dead and dying" was the wildest of

exaggerations, there had been a most lamentable loss of life as a

consequence of the explosion. What had happened was this: about midnight

a fire had broken out in a vinegar manufactory in the densely-crowded

district of Gateshead lying between the parish church and the river. This

fire, baffling the efforts of the fire brigade, spread quickly, until it

reached some large bonded warehouses adjoining the vinegar manufactory.

By this time it had acquired such proportions that it had been found

necessary to summon the military from the Newcastle Barracks to assist in

the effort to extinguish it, whilst vast crowds of people assembled, not

only in the neighbourhood of the fire itself, but on the bridges and

Newcastle quay, from which an excellent view was to be obtained. The fire

at last reached a warehouse owned by a gentleman named Bertram, and here

it assumed a new character. The exact contents of the warehouse remain

undiscovered to this day. At the time it was freely asserted that Mr.

Bertram had, in direct breach of the law, warehoused a large quantity of

gunpowder; but scientific witnesses who were subsequently examined showed

that it was possible that certain chemicals stored in the warehouse, when

suddenly combined, as by the falling of the floors, would be quite as

explosive as gunpowder itself.

Be this as it may, after one or two slight explosions--those which in my

dream were transformed into the cannonade of a Russian force--the whole

warehouse with all its contents was suddenly blown into the air by the

force of an explosion seldom equalled in its terrible violence. That

explosion not only carried the burning materials across the river to

Newcastle, where they quickly produced another conflagration as serious

in its character as that which was raging in Gateshead, but inflicted

terrible injury both to life and property. The persons in the

neighbourhood of the burning building, including soldiers, firemen,

police, and Mr. Bertram, the owner of the warehouse, were instantly

killed; and in many cases not a trace of their remains could afterwards

be found. On the bridges and on Newcastle quay the great crowds of

onlookers were thrown to the ground by the shock, and several were killed

outright; whilst, far and wide, buildings were partially unroofed,

windows broken, and a great and populous district reduced to the state in

which one might have expected to see it after a bombardment. The exact

number of those killed was never ascertained, but I believe that between

thirty and forty persons lost their lives.

As I came away with my father and brother from the scene of the fire, my

young nerves received the shock which invariably follows the first sight

of death. In the Sandhill--the scene of Lord Eldon's elopement with the

beautiful Bessie Surtees--a man was lying on the pavement who had been

killed by the force of the explosion. As I passed, they were lifting the

body into a cart, and the sight of the head, hanging helplessly like that

of a dead bird, was one I never forgot. All that day the fires burned

fiercely, and it was not until the third day that they were really

subdued. Indeed, on the Gateshead side the ruined warehouses smoked and

smouldered for more than a week. In all, the value of the property

destroyed was something like a million sterling.

Never shall I forget my morning at school on the day on which the fire

first broke out. Boylike, it was the wonder rather than the horror of the

thing which was uppermost in my mind, and I and my schoolfellows, before

the morning bell sounded, eagerly related to each other all that we had

seen; those who, like myself, had been early on the ground having much to

tell to eager listeners. It was only when we had trooped excitedly into

our class-rooms, and found ourselves face to face with our masters, that

we began to realise the actual solemnity of a catastrophe the like of

which had never before befallen an English provincial town. In the Latin

room, where I was due at the opening of the school, I was unfeignedly

surprised to see Mr. Garven, our old classical tutor, sitting in tears at

his desk, and I can still hear the broken whispers in which he attempted

to speak to us of the terrible event.

It came home, I ought to say, very closely to "Bruce's school." More than

one of those killed had been pupils, and the son of Mr. Bertram, upon

whom already an excited public opinion was seeking to fasten the

responsibility for the explosion, was one of our schoolfellows, and had

but the day before joined us in our lessons. Suddenly as, in a

half-hearted way, we began our usual tasks, Dr. Bruce entered, pale and

agitated. "Boys," he said, "a dreadful thing has happened to our good old

town. God knows how far the mischief may extend, and what ruin may be

wrought; but we know already that more than one old pupil here have lost

their lives, and that some of you boys have lost those near and dear to

you. There can be no school to-day. It would not be decent----" And then

the Doctor's voice fairly gave way, and we found ourselves dismissed to

an unexpected--and, for once, an undesired--holiday. These things sink

deep into the youthful imagination, and the memory of them can never be

lost. As I look back upon the years I spent at school, that dark October

morning stands out with a prominence that causes every other day of my

school life to sink into insignificance.