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.
One day, in the summer of 1856, I was walking along Princes Street,
Edinburgh, looking with wonder and delight upon the beautiful panorama
that was spread before my eyes. I was little for my age, and the
gentleman who was my companion, and who was pointing out to me the many
famous buildings and monuments that form the glory of the modern Athens,
was leading me by the hand.
Probably he thought me still younger than I was, and treated me as a mere
child. I had come to Edinburgh on a brief holiday, and was staying at the
house of one of my father's friends. By-and-by, having duly fulfilled his
duty as showman, my companion, in a kindly, patronising way, sought to
draw me out. "And what do you mean to be, my boy, when you grow up?" he
asked. My answer was instantaneous and assured. "I mean to be a newspaper
editor, sir." My friend flung my hand from him and burst into a roar of
laughter, which surprised me even more than it did the passers-by. "A
newspaper editor!" he cried, still convulsed by what appeared to me a
most unseemly, if not offensive, merriment. "Good heavens! And what in
the world has put such a thing as that into the child's head?" My wounded
dignity came to my aid. Was I not fourteen? and had I not already left
school and begun to earn my own living? "I made up my mind a long time
ago," I said in the accents of injured innocence. "When I am a man I mean
to be that, and nothing else." I had a sad time of it for the rest of the
day, for this worthy gentleman appreciated what he regarded as the joke
so keenly that whenever he met a friend he stopped him, and said, "Let me
introduce to you a live editor--that is to be some day." He enjoyed the
situation more than I did.
But it was quite true. Young as I was, I had made up my mind, and was
resolved that nothing should move me from my purpose. Perhaps the
printer's ink of the dear old composing room at St. Andrews had
inoculated me, and made me proof against the usual temptations by which a
boy, dreaming of his future path in life, is beset. Or perhaps it was
because printer's ink is in the blood of the family. Whatever may have
been the cause, journalism was my first precocious love, and my last;
and, looking back across the years of heavy work which now separate me
from that June morning at Edinburgh, I see no reason to repent my early
choice or the loss of every other chance of success in life.
Yet, at the outset, there were a hundred obstacles barring my way to the
door through which I longed to pass. I was already, as I have said, at
work. Knowing full well the narrowness of my father's means, I had
cheerfully taken a situation as a clerk, and kindly Fortune had smiled
upon me in the appointment I secured. Most boys of my time on leaving
school went, as it was phrased in those days, "on the quay side" at
Newcastle; that is to say, they entered the office of one of the great
merchants by whose hands the prosperous trade of the Tyne was carried on.
Here their lives were full from morning to night with the business which
in such a hive of industry seemed to know no slackening. No doubt, a
position in a shipping or colliery office at Newcastle in those days was
one to which many advantages were attached. Not a few schoolfellows of my
own, starting with no greater advantages than I possessed, have become
men of large fortune, have acquired landed estates, have sat in
Parliament, have founded county families. But it was not towards these
ends that my youthful ambition urged me; and, happily for me, the office
to which I went one January morning in the 'fifties, in the humble
capacity of junior clerk, had nothing in common with the bustling,
worrying places of business on the quay side, where the race for wealth
seemed to absorb the thoughts of all, from highest to lowest.
Through the influence of a friend, and chiefly in virtue of my father's
name, I secured a place in what was then known as the W.B. Lead Office.
There was at that time a certain quality of lead distinguished by these
letters which carried off the palm in the lead markets of the world;
indeed, its price was constantly from one to two pounds a ton higher than
that of any other lead procurable. This lead was obtained from the great
mines in Weardale and Allandale, then and for many generations owned by
the Beaumont family. Mr. Wentworth Blackett Beaumont was at that time the
head of the family. There was no eager bustle, due to the keenness of
business competition, in the quiet rooms of the W.B. Lead Office in
Northumberland Street, when I entered it as a boy. The whole of the
produce of the mines was sold to half a dozen great London firms, and the
sales were made in such large quantities that a score of transactions
sufficed for a year's work. How great those transactions were may be
gathered from the fact that I sometimes had to make out a single invoice
in which the sole item stated represented a sum of £40,000.
Very soon I found that my chief duty as junior clerk in this eminently
sedate and respectable establishment was to read the _Times_ to my
immediate superior. This gentleman I must always remember with a lively
sense of gratitude. His name was Fothergill, and, like myself, he had
little taste for mere business avocations. He was a student, a lover of
literature, a collector of books, and a writer of verse. Fortunate was it
for me to meet with such a companion at that stage in my life--the stage
when one is most susceptible to outside influences. For five years we sat
opposite to each other in the same quiet room, and never once did I hear
fall from his lips an unworthy idea or suggestion. He suffered from
serious weakness of the eyes, and it was for this reason that so much of
my spare time (and it was nearly all spare time there) was devoted to
reading aloud to him. He had only a clerk's income, small enough in all
conscience, but he never wanted money to spend on a book or a magazine. I
remember his delight when the first number of the _Saturday Review_,
to which he had subscribed on its appearance, was placed in his hands.
From that time forward my daily readings of the leaders in the
_Times_ were varied by weekly readings of the brilliant sarcasm and
invective which then distinguished the new review that had entered the
field of journalism with so bold a mien, and was holding its own so
fearlessly against all comers. With such a friend, always ready to give
me of his best--alas, at the time, in my youthful ignorance of men, I
failed altogether to appreciate my good fortune in meeting a companion
like this--my mind rapidly expanded, and before I was half way through my
teens I was learning to put boyish things behind me. Although Fothergill
did not encourage my precocious affection for the press, wisely holding
that a literary life was one reserved only for the few, and, like
matrimony, not to be "taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly,"
he did not, as so many men in his place might have done, stamp ruthlessly
upon my aspirations or subject them to that cruel sarcasm which is so
killing to the ambitions of the young. This, it is true, was done by
another person in the same office--the manager; but, fortunately, that
gentleman was altogether so obnoxious to me for many reasons that his
special dislike of my literary bent, and the sneers with which he greeted
my early appearances in print, did not affect my purpose in the slightest
degree.
I could say much of those five years of my life spent in the W.B. Lead
Office, but I must not weary my readers with that which would be at best
a humdrum tale. My education went on apace. In the evenings I took
lessons at home, and during the day, when I was not otherwise engaged, I
had always a book or a pen in my hand. How high one's aspirations soar in
that season when everything seems possible to the unfledged soul! The
glory of Milton itself seemed hardly beyond attainment, and I nursed the
illusion that within me lay the potentiality of a new Scott, or Dickens,
or Thackeray. Happy, foolish dreams, from cherishing which no man has
ever been the worse! A hundred times I essayed to produce something
worthy of being printed. But the stories, the essays, and--save the
mark!--the poems I attempted had a knack of remaining unfinished, or,
when finished, were so obviously bad, even to my untrained judgment, that
they were promptly destroyed. When at last I did taste the fearful joys
of a first appearance in print, it was on a very humble stage. A great
controversy was raging in Newcastle in 1857 over the appointment of the
then vicar to another living in the town; an appointment that was
obnoxious not only because it was a clear case of pluralism, but because
the vicar himself belonged to the then unpopular High Church party. I
read the articles in the papers, and the letters in which my indignant
fellow-townsmen gave expression to their views, with keen interest, and
at last I was myself prompted to join in the fray. Having carefully
composed a letter to the editor of the _Northern Daily Express_,
which I signed "A Bedesman," I furtively dropped it into the letter-box
at the newspaper office, and tremblingly awaited the result.
I had not long to wait. The next morning, as I was on my way to the
office, I chanced upon a contents bill of the _Express_, and there,
with dazzled eyes, the testimony of which I could hardly believe, I read
the announcement that the paper of the day contained a letter by "A
Bedesman." And here I must make a humiliating confession. The price of
the paper was a penny, and at that particular moment I discovered that I
had not a penny in the world. My weekly pocket-money was sixpence, and it
generally went at one of the old bookstalls in the market before the week
was far advanced. But I could not face the day before me with the
dreadful uncertainty weighing upon my soul as to whether another person
might not have adopted the same signature as myself, and whether,
consequently, I might not be labouring under a fond delusion. I turned
and fled home (fortunately I always started for work in good time), and
asked my mother to lend me the penny I needed. In a broken whisper I
confided to her the fact that I believed there was really a letter of
mine in that morning's _Express_. I got my penny, and in a few
minutes I was feasting my eyes upon that sight--dearer than any other the
world can show to the young literary aspirant--my first printed
composition. I had then just entered my fifteenth year.
Not one writer in a thousand has stopped at a first book, and not one
newspaper contributor in a million has stopped at a first letter to the
editor. Like much better people, I had made the discovery that whilst my
opinions regarding the Genius of Shakespeare, the Art of Fiction, and the
Character of Cromwell were not wanted by anybody, there were some
questions cropping up, as it were, at my own door, about which I might,
if I liked, give an opinion that some persons at all events would think
worth printing. In short, I was enabled to see that though I could not
fly, I might at least walk. How eagerly I turned to profit the discovery
I had thus made need not be told here. For the moment my ambitious
designs were laid on one side. I no longer dreamed of an Epic that should
rival "Paradise Lost" or a novel that might outshine "Vanity Fair"; but I
prepared to discuss the local questions of the hour, the site of a post
office, the opening of a hospital, the grievance of some small public
official, with the zest which I had only felt hitherto when dealing with
the great literary and social problems, to the discussion of which my
untrained intelligence could contribute nothing of value. What I wrote on
such topics as those I have named I cannot pretend to remember; but there
must have been some little promise in my contributions to the
_Express_, for one memorable day, when I got home from work, my
father told me that he had received a visit from Mr. Marshall, the chief
proprietor of that paper, and that this visit closely concerned me. Mr.
Marshall had inquired as to my age and occupation, and having suggested
that my leaning towards journalism ought not to be repressed, had offered
to have me taught shorthand by the reporter of the _Express_.
Finally he had left with my father half a sovereign, which he desired me
to accept in payment of my various contributions to the paper. So, whilst
I was still a mere boy, not having as yet entered on my sixteenth year, I
found myself enrolled among the more or less irregular camp-followers of
journalism.
It was indeed a rapturous moment when I heard this news. If I had been
allowed, I would forthwith have thrown up my place at the W.B. Lead
office and taken service--even the humblest--on the Press. But on this
point my father was firm. I must stick to my proper work for the present,
though there could be no harm in my devoting my evenings to such study
and practice as might fit me for journalism hereafter. Not that he or my
mother desired to see me become a journalist. The Press--at all events in
provincial towns--in those days was the reverse of respectable in the
eyes of the world; and truly there was some reason for the low esteem in
which it was held. The ordinary reporter on a country paper was generally
illiterate, was too often intemperate, and was invariably ill-paid. Again
and again did my mother seek to check my eager yearning for a life on the
Press with the repetition of dismal stories dinned into her ears by
sympathising friends, who deplored the fact that her son should dream of
leaving so secure and respectable a position as a clerkship in the W.B.
Lead Office for the poor rewards and dubious respectability of a
newspaper career.
There was an old friend of my father's--Innes by name--who took it upon
himself to remonstrate with me. After exhorting me fervently for some
time, he sought to illustrate the dangers of the course on which I was
anxious to embark by a personal experience. "Thomas," he said solemnly
(and oh, how I hated to be called Thomas!), "I knew a laddie called
Forster. His father was a most respectable, decent man, that kept a
butcher's shop at the top o' the Side--a first-rate business; and this
laddie--his name was John--got just such notions into his head as ye
have; he was always reading and writing, and nothing would suit him but
to go to college instead of sticking to the shop. And at last he went
away to London, and his poor father died, and the business went all to
pieces, and I've never heard tell of that laddie from the day he went to
London until now. He's died of starvation, most likely, by this time."
"Why, Mr. Innes," I cried, "do you really mean to say that you have never
heard of Mr. Forster's books--his Life of Oliver Goldsmith and 'The
Arrest of the Five Members'? He's one of our great writers now, and if I
could only reach a position like his--" But this prospect was so dazzling
that it fairly took my breath away, and I lapsed into silence, delighted
to find that my old friend's "awful example" should have been a man in
whose footsteps I most ardently desired to tread.
As I have mentioned the opposition which my parents offered to my design
to become a journalist, it is only right that I should say that if it had
not been for the atmosphere in which I lived at home, the accomplishment
of that design would never have become possible. Ours was a home of
narrow and stinted means, but of wide and generous sympathies. We
children learned from the example of our dear father and mother to look
beyond ourselves and our own small interests upon the battle of life as
it was being fought in the world at large. If our table was of the
plainest, there were always books and newspapers in the house, and they
were not there for show. My mother had a genuine taste for literature,
and a judgment which, if not infallible, was at least sound. Many a time
would we discuss together the books we were reading. They were not, as a
rule, hot from the Press; but why should they have been, in the case of a
boy with all the literary treasures of the world still untasted? My
father leaned, as was natural, to the more serious side of literature;
but he had a keen interest in public affairs, and he brought to their
study a sagacious and well-informed mind. Whilst the spirit in which both
he and my mother viewed life and the problems which it daily presented to
them was that of a pure and lofty Puritanism, it was broadened and
softened, more particularly in the case of my father, by the gentleness
and liberality of their own characters. So it was in an atmosphere of
culture and liberal thought that I lived my life in those days both at
home and at the W.B. Lead Office.
The _Northern Daily Express_ was a penny newspaper which laid claim
to be the first provincial daily published at that price. The claim has,
I believe, been disputed by Mr. Justin McCarthy, who claims the honour
for a Liverpool journal with which he was himself at one time connected.
But whether first or second, it is certain that the _Express_ was
very early in the field. It had been started at Darlington in 1855 by a
gentleman named Watson. A year later it was transferred to Newcastle, and
it was in the _Express_ office that I first became acquainted with
actual newspaper work. A very curious place was that office when I first
knew it. It consisted simply of two rooms and two cellars in a house in
West Clayton Street. One of the rooms was devoted to the compositors who
set the little sheet; the other was by day the counting-house and the
place where the papers were sold and advertisements received, whilst at
night it became the editorial office--the editor, sub-editor, and
reporters all working together here at the desks occupied by the clerks
during the day. I ought, perhaps, to explain that the staff was not quite
so large as my description of it might lead people to suppose. The
sub-editor, for instance, doubled his part and acted as reporter also.
Still, it was a tight fit in that little room in West Clayton Street when
I went there of an evening to write some paragraph or letter for the next
morning's paper. In the cellars was the machine on which the
_Express_ was printed, and the stock of paper.
In one respect, the _Express_ was better equipped than is many a
pretentious journal of to-day. Its editor--Manson by name--was a man of
remarkable ability, and his carefully-prepared leading articles were
certainly second to none in the newspaper press of his day. This is a
strong saying, but my reader will not think it unjustified when he hears
that Manson's services had been eagerly sought for by more than one
London newspaper, including the _Times_. He was a man of real
genius, but, unfortunately, not without the defects of his qualities. In
my young eyes he was a marvel, and almost an idol. To sit beside him, as
I sometimes did, whilst he forged the thunderbolts which produced so
great an effect upon the opinion of the town, was to me a joy almost too
great for words. I would sit and watch the untiring hand moving across
the slips of blue paper with a mind filled with the awe and reverence
with which a pupil of Michael Angelo might have watched the master at
work. I had at last got my foot on the first rung of the ladder, and my
soul was filled with absolute content. True, my days were given to the
W.B. Lead Office; but seldom did an evening come round without finding
me, on one pretext or another, in the house in West Clayton Street.
Indeed, I had now become almost a recognised member of the staff, and my
little contributions in the shape of paragraphs, letters, and the
inevitable verses appeared almost daily.
I had been trying to teach myself shorthand, and had made some progress
with Pitman's system of phonography; but now, thanks to the kindness of
Mr. Marshall, I secured the services of a first-rate teacher, and soon
made rapid progress in that difficult art. My teacher was Mr. Lowes, an
admirable shorthand writer, who wrote a system of his own. To Mr. Lowes,
phonography appeared to be the chief evil afflicting mankind. What little
things divide the world! In my teacher's opinion it was divided into
phonographers and stenographers, and never did the schoolmen of old show
more bitterness in maintaining their own shibboleths than did Lowes in
asserting the superiority of his system to that of Mr. Pitman--an opinion
which I need scarcely say was not shared by the world.
Lowes was a good fellow, and a most kind and patient teacher. Under his
guidance I soon acquired a certain amount of facility in ordinary
press-work. Contributions to _Chambers's Journal_, the _Leisure
Hour_, and one or two minor religious magazines, gave me as the years
passed an opportunity of addressing a wider audience than the readers of
the _Express_, and though I had as many misfortunes and
disappointments as most young writers, I stuck steadily to my task, and
bit by bit strengthened my position in the world of journalism.
There were other fields of activity, besides the press, that I
assiduously cultivated. For example, in the plenitude of my wisdom, at
the age of seventeen I founded an institution in the west end of
Newcastle, not far from my father's church. I called it the "West End
Literary Institute," and truly it was designed upon a most ambitious
scale. When I recall the way in which I begged money from all and sundry
among my friends for the purpose of starting the institute, and the
manner in which I pestered distinguished authors for presentation copies
of their books, in order to furnish the shelves of the library, I am
driven to the painful conclusion that I must have been a terrible person
in the days of my youth, and something of a prig to boot. Apropos of the
begging for books as free gifts from authors, I had one or two amusing
experiences. Among those whom I importuned in this impertinent way were
Charles Kingsley, and the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Longley.
Kingsley replied to my request in a manner that was as sensible as it was
severe, bluntly telling me that he was a poor man who wrote books in
order to get money, and who could not afford to give them away. I have
written books myself since then, and have had many an application as
unreasonable as that which I addressed to the author of "Alton Locke."
This fact, perhaps, explains my entire approval of the snubbing which
that distinguished man administered to me.
Very different, however, was the response of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. It was a courteous and dignified epistle, expressing his
pleasure at being able to comply with my request, and fifteen handsome
octavo volumes of sermons were forthwith forwarded to me from Hatchard's.
I had other similar experiences, and the result was that when my library
was thrown open to the public the amount of theology which it contained
far outweighed every other department of literature. However, people came
to my reading-room, and I was fortunately able to provide them with other
entertainment besides the reading of old sermons. I started a course of
lectures and readings. I blush to say that I distinguished myself one
evening by reading the play of _Macbeth_ to an unhappy audience of
bored victims. Heaven forgive me! I carried on my West End Institute for
some years, started a flourishing penny bank in connection with it, and
formed numerous acquaintances among the more intelligent artisans of the
district; but at last the building was wanted for an extension of the
Sunday schools connected with my father's congregation, and the little
performance came to an end. I trust it had not made me an incurable prig,
but I fear that it did not do anybody very much good; though, perhaps, it
kept some out of mischief.
No account of Newcastle at this period (1850-60) would be complete
without some reference to one of its most notable inhabitants, Mr. Joseph
Cowen, commonly known at that time to his fellow-townsmen as "Joe." Mr.
Cowen's subsequent career in Parliament, brief though it was, gained for
him a reputation for eloquence hardly inferior to that enjoyed by the
most illustrious of his contemporaries. But in those early days of my
youth it was not his eloquence but his advanced opinions about which his
fellow-townsmen thought most. He openly professed to be a Republican, in
theory at all events, and all his sympathies were engaged on the side of
the oppressed nationalities of Europe. A man of culture, of commanding
abilities, and of considerable wealth, he lived by choice in the plainest
fashion, delighting to be known as one of the people. He dressed at all
times in the kind of suit which a Northumbrian pitman wears when not
actually at work. Years afterwards, when he had just thrilled all England
by a great speech in the House of Commons on the subject of Russian
oppression, I chanced to meet him one day in Pall Mall, and, stopping to
talk to him, was amused to see the glances of curiosity which were cast
at the strangely attired man who had found his way to that fashionable
thoroughfare.
Nor was it only in his dress that he affected a likeness to the
working-men of Tyneside. In his speech he exaggerated the burr of the
Newcastle tongue. Most of us were anxious to get rid of that undesirable
distinction. Mr. Cowen clung to it as one of the most precious of his
possessions. He had to pay for this piece of affectation in later life,
when he became a figure in the House of Commons. His first notable speech
in that assembly was on the Royal Titles Bill of Mr. Disraeli. It was a
very brilliant performance, greatly admired by those who were able to
appreciate it. But, unfortunately, it was not understood by everybody.
The day after it was delivered, Mr. Disraeli was questioned at a
dinner-party by a lady, who asked him what he thought of the new orator
whose presence had been revealed to the House. "I'm sorry I can't answer
your question," said the Prime Minister. "It is true that a gentleman,
whom I had never seen before, got up on the Opposition side and made a
speech which seemed to excite great enthusiasm in a certain part of the
House; but, unfortunately, he spoke in a language I had never heard, and
I haven't the slightest idea in the world what he said."
But in the days of which I am now writing Mr. Cowen was still a long way
from the House of Commons. His fame, however, was even then of no common
kind. He was known throughout Europe as a man willing to befriend, not
merely with speech and pen, but with purse, every victim of political
oppression. By the despotic Governments of the Continent he was held in
feverish hatred, and at one time his modest house at Blaydon Burn was
regularly watched by French, Russian, and Austrian spies; nor was it
without good reason that the tyrants of Europe saw in him their natural
enemy. Under his roof many of the most eminent refugees from the
countries I have named and from Italy found a welcome shelter, and in one
room in that house was a small printing press on which thousands of
revolutionary proclamations in all the languages of Europe had been
printed. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Kossuth, Felice Orsini, and scores of other
notable revolutionaries whose names I forget, were his friends and
guests, and through his influence a large party of us in Newcastle were
led to take almost as warm an interest in political affairs on the
Continent as in the movements of parties at home. Again and again in
those days, when France was crushed under the heel of the Second Empire,
when Poland was vainly writhing in her cruel bonds, when Hungary was
filled with the spirit of rebellion, and when the people of Italy were
taking their first steps by the intricate paths of conspiracy and
insurrection towards unity and freedom, Joe Cowen would find some excuse
for summoning a public meeting in the old Lecture Room, Nelson Street, in
order that we might listen to some patriot exile as he told the story of
his country's wrongs, or give expression to our own detestation of the
despotism which at that time weighed upon Europe, from the banks of the
Seine to those of the Volga.
No impressionable youth could fail to be affected by such an influence as
this, and if in those days I shrank from Mr. Cowen's views on home
politics as being too advanced, I was one of the most enthusiastic of his
adherents in his self-appointed mission against the tyrannies of the
Continent. How well do I remember some of the faces and figures of Mr.
Cowen's friends and guests! I can still see Kossuth with his grey hair
and wrinkled brow, and Mazzini with his melancholy eyes and handsome
face; I can still hear the tones of Louis Blanc as he stands on the
platform of the lecture room and talks to us in excellent English of the
epoch of the Great Revolution. But the one man whose face and figure
dwell most vividly in my recollection is Orsini, the great Italian who,
after a lifetime spent in the attempt to deliver Tuscany and Lombardy
from the yoke of the tyrant, died under the guillotine in Paris, and by
his death secured for Italy her long-sought freedom. Orsini came to
Newcastle shortly after his escape from an Austrian dungeon at Mantua,
and addressed a great meeting in the Lecture Room. He spoke English
fairly well; but it was the appearance of the man, and the knowledge of
all that he had suffered in the struggle for Italian freedom, that
appealed to one more eloquently than his words. Never had I seen any man
whose appearance equalled that of this Italian martyr who died as an
assassin. His features were almost faultless, whilst his jet-black hair
set off the lustrous pallor of his complexion with extraordinary
effectiveness. Attired in fashionable evening dress, his hands encased in
white kid gloves, and a smile, gentle rather than pathetic, lighting up
his beautiful face, he looked the last man in the world whom one would
naturally associate with desperate deeds. Yet, not many weeks after I had
grasped his hand, he had brought about the terrible attempt upon the life
of the Emperor Napoleon, when the latter was driving through the Rue
Lepelletier, Paris, by which many innocent persons perished, and was
himself lying in prison under sentence of death. Mr. Cowen once told me
that it was he who provided the funds for carrying out Orsini's plot
against Louis Napoleon's life, but he did so in absolute ignorance of the
fact that this was the purpose to which the money was to be appropriated.
He understood that it was wanted for the equipment of another
insurrectionary expedition against the Austrians in Italy, and he
willingly subscribed the amount asked for.
As for Orsini, he met his death like a hero; but it is well known that
before dying he succeeded, as a leading member of the Carbonari, in
extracting from the French Emperor, who had himself belonged to that
society, a promise that he would free Italy from Austrian oppression. By
giving that promise, Louis Napoleon was delivered from the fear of
violent death at the hands of the Carbonari, whilst his fulfilment of it
in the war of 1859 gave Italy her first great step towards unity and
freedom. Even the romantic page of history has never recorded a more
notable transaction than that which thus took place in a condemned cell
between an assassin lying under sentence of death and a reigning Emperor;
nor would it be possible to denounce regicide so absolutely as most of us
do if there were many instances in which it had proved so successful as
it did in the case of Orsini.
I have dwelt at undue length on an episode which my readers probably
think altogether outside the scope of this narrative, but it does not lie
quite so far apart from it as they may imagine. It was my association as
a boy with Mr. Cowen's enthusiastic assertion of the rights of oppressed
nationalities, and the stirring of my spirit which necessarily resulted
from contact, however slight, with men like Kossuth and Orsini, that
first made me a real Liberal in politics.
As I have mentioned the Lecture Room--a dismal, stuffy, ill-lighted
little theatre--I may refer to two meetings unconnected with foreign
politics which I remember in it. One was in 1857, when the Dissenters of
Newcastle had revolted against the domination of the Whig clique, and at
the general election had set up a candidate of their own. They had great
difficulty in finding one, for they required a man who would pay his own
expenses (in those days a very serious item), and the chance of success
was by no means brilliant. At last, however, they secured a rich retired
Bombay merchant, and he came down to Newcastle forthwith to address his
first meeting. The Lecture Room was crowded with enthusiastic
Nonconformists, and these were the words with which the unhappy candidate
began his speech: "Gentlemen, four-and-twenty hours ago, if anybody had
asked me where Newcastle-on-Tyne was, I could not have told them." This,
to an audience full of the local pride which possessed the soul of every
genuine Newcastle man! I need hardly say that, having ascertained where
Newcastle was, Mr. C. speedily departed from it, amid a storm of
indignation, never again to be seen in its streets.
More vivid still is my recollection of the Lecture Room on the occasion
when Thackeray delivered his lectures on the Four Georges to an audience
more select than numerous. I was at the age when, as the author of
"Vanity Fair" himself has said, "to behold Brown, the author of the last
romance, in the flesh, is a joy and a delight." Anybody who had written a
book seemed to me to be a hero; what was it then to see and to hear the
literary idol of my youth? Thackeray, with his tall figure, his silvery
hair, his upturned face, expressive and striking, though by no means
beautiful, seemed to me as I sat on my bench and listened to him to be
nothing less than one of the gods. He was an admirable lecturer; his
voice was musical and clear, his pronunciation singularly distinct and
accurate, and the little touches of sarcasm and humour which he conveyed
to his audience by a tone or an inflection, quite inimitable. I heard, as
I sat listening to his lecture on George the Third--by far the best of
the series--someone near me yawn, and my soul was filled with horror at
what I thought nothing less than an act of sacrilege. I never saw the
great novelist except on the occasion of his visit to Newcastle, but to
the end of my days it will be a delight thus to have beheld him in the
flesh. Dickens I heard read several times, though never in the Lecture
Room; yet I cannot say that any of his readings made upon me the
impression produced by Thackeray's lectures. The actor and the arts of
the popular entertainer were too plainly visible in all that he did, and
I received something like a shock when, having written an enthusiastic
but juvenile panegyric upon him on the occasion of one of his visits to
Newcastle, I learned that he had sent his secretary to buy a dozen copies
of the paper to send to his friends. That so great a man should have
thought a mere newspaper effusion worth noticing seemed to me altogether
incredible. The reader may smile at the confession, but I own I never
thought quite so much of Dickens, as a man, after this incident. This
only shows how high was the pedestal upon which I had placed him, and how
slight was my knowledge of human nature.