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.
In 1867 a change unexpectedly took place in my position. The London
representative of the _Leeds Mercury,_ my old friend Mr. Charles
Russell, now editor of the _Glasgow Herald,_ retired from his post,
and I was appointed to succeed him. In addition to the duties which had
been discharged by Mr. Russell, it was arranged that I was to act as
London correspondent of the _Mercury_ and to continue to be an
occasional contributor of leaders. On September 5th in this year I was
married at Cheadle Congregational Church, Cheshire, to my cousin, to whom
I had long been engaged, and I at once went to London to spend my
honeymoon in the delightful occupation of house-hunting. The London
suburbs wore a different aspect in 1867 from that which they now present.
In the far west of London, at all events, the reign of the semi-detached
villa, with its private garden, was still maintained. There were no lofty
"mansions" comprising endless suites for the accommodation of persons of
limited means, and the system of a common garden for the residents in a
particular street or square was practically unknown outside the central
district of the metropolis. Notting Hill, Kensington, Shepherd's Bush,
and Hammersmith offered to the man of moderate means the choice among an
infinite number of pleasant little villas, each boasting its own garden
and lawn secluded from the public eye. My choice fell upon a house of
this description in Addison Road North, and there I spent two happy
years, the garden, with its fine old tree casting a welcome shade over
the lawn, making me forget the fact that I was, at last, an actual
dweller in the world's greatest city.
Almost my first business in London was to secure admission to the
Reporters' Gallery in the House of Commons. There was an autumn session
in that year, 1867, and I was anxious to get access to the Gallery when
it began. In order to obtain the coveted Gallery ticket I proffered my
gratuitous services as an occasional reporter to the _Morning Star_.
My offer was accepted, and after an interview with Mr. Justin McCarthy,
who was then editor of the _Star_, I was introduced to Mr. Edwards,
the chief of the reporting staff, as a new member of that body. Edwards,
who was one of the veterans of the Gallery, was a character in his way.
He was an Irishman possessed of a delicious brogue, a devout Roman
Catholic, intensely proud of the fact that he had a son in the
priesthood. His mind was stored with reminiscences of the Gallery in the
days when the status of a Parliamentary reporter was hardly recognised
even in the House of Commons itself. Like so many of the Gallery men of
this time, his world seemed to be limited to the little society of which
he was a conspicuous member. Nothing appeared to interest him that lay
outside the immediate duties of a Parliamentary reporter. His sole
reading seemed to be the reports of debates, his sole pleasure listening
to Parliamentary speeches. Many amusing stories were told of him by his
colleagues. Not long before I made his acquaintance, Mr. Bright, in one
of the debates on the Liberal Reform Bill, had made his famous reference
to the Cave of Adullam which caused the anti-reformers in the Liberal
party to be nicknamed "Adullamites." Mr. Bright was interested in the
_Morning Star_, and that newspaper's report of this passage in his
speech was obviously confused and defective. The day after it was printed
the manager of the _Star_ summoned Edwards to his presence in order
to complain of this fact. "Do you think our fellows understood the
allusion to the Cave of Adullam?" he inquired of Edwards. "Of course they
did," replied the latter, hotly. "They're an ignorant lot, I know, but
there isn't one of them so ignorant as not to have read the Arabian
Nights!"
Edwards was very kind to me. He seemed to feel a profound respect for a
man who undertook to do any work for nothing, and he did his utmost to
make my somewhat anomalous position personally agreeable. One bit of good
advice he gave me. That was that I should not let anyone know that I
received no salary. The truth is that in those days the Parliamentary
reporters were a very clannish set--almost, indeed, a close corporation.
To my youthful eyes, most of them appeared to be men who had attained an
almost incredible age. They could talk of the days in the old House of
Commons when no Reporters' Gallery existed, and the unfortunate shorthand
writers had to take their notes on their knees, at the back of the
Strangers' Gallery. In the House of Lords they had to stand in a kind of
gangway, and I have heard a venerable man tell how a certain
distinguished peeress, who had to pass along this gangway when she went
to hear the debates, used deliberately to brush against the reporters as
she did so, and knock the note-books out of their hands. It was, I
suppose, her Grace's manner of displaying her peculiar affection for the
Press. The reporters looked with suspicion upon any newcomer, and for a
time after I entered the Gallery I was viewed with unconcealed dislike by
most of my new colleagues.
A somewhat untoward incident that happened on the first night on which I
took my seat as one of the _Star_ staff added to this feeling.
Worthy Edward Baines, sitting on the Opposition benches below me, no
sooner recognised me in the Gallery than he felt it to be his duty to
come up and have a chat with me. Accordingly he made his way to one of
the side galleries adjoining the reporters' seats, and conversed with me
for several minutes, pointing out the leading members and officials of
the House and making himself generally agreeable, as was his wont. I
little knew what offence I was unconsciously giving to my colleagues. In
those days a gulf that was regarded as impassable divided the members of
the Press from the members of the House. Occasionally the white-haired,
or rather white-wigged, Mr. Ross, the head of the _Times_
Parliamentary corps, might be seen holding a mysterious colloquy in some
gloomy corner behind the Gallery with some politician; but the
overwhelming majority of the reporters had never exchanged a word with a
Member of Parliament in their lives, and, to do them justice, they
evidently had no desire to do so. The caste of reporters neither had, nor
wished to have, any relations with the Brahmins of the green benches
below them, and I found subsequently that if by any chance a reporter
were detected in conversation with even the most obscure Member of
Parliament he thought it necessary to give some explanation of his
conduct to his Gallery friends afterwards. It may be imagined, then, with
what feelings the veterans of the Gallery saw a newcomer, on his very
first appearance in the Gallery, talking on friendly and confidential
terms with a well-known Member of the House. Some of the old hands
positively snorted at me in their indignation, and one of the few friends
I had in the Gallery earnestly warned me that the recurrence of such an
incident would prove fatal to my career as a Parliamentary reporter. Who
would have imagined then that the relations of journalists and Members
would ever assume their present intimate character?
The accommodation for reporters outside the Gallery was very different
then from what it is now. There were two wretched little cabins, ill-lit
and ill-ventilated, immediately behind the Gallery, which were used for
"writing out." But one of these was occupied exclusively by the
_Times_ staff, and the other was so small that it could not
accommodate a quarter of the number of reporters. One of the committee
rooms on the upper corridor--No. 18, if I remember aright--was given up
after a certain hour in the afternoon to the reporters, and here most of
the work of "writing out" was done. As for other accommodation for the
Press, it consisted only of a cellar-like apartment in the yard below,
where men used to resort to smoke, and of the ante-room to the Gallery,
where the majestic Mr. Wright presided.
Mr. Wright was one of the characters of the Gallery. Like most of the
officials of the House in those days, he was a _protégé_ of the
Sergeant-at-Arms, Lord Charles Russell. Rumour declared that he had
originally been a boat-builder on the Thames, and had secured the favour
of Lord Charles by his services in teaching his sons to row. He certainly
looked more like a boat-builder, or the captain of a barge, than the
keeper of the vestibule to the Reporters' Gallery. He was permitted to
purvey refreshments of a modest kind to the reporters. He always had a
bottle of whisky on tap, a loaf or two of stale bread, and a most
nauseous-looking ham. I never, during my career in the Gallery, tasted
that ham. The tradition was that every night, when Mr. Wright, at the
close of his duties, retired to his modest abode in Lambeth, he took with
him the ham, wrapped in a large red bandana which he had been
flourishing, and using, during the evening, and for greater security
placed it under his bed during the night. I do not vouch for the truth of
this story, universally believed by the Gallery men of my day.
I simply repeat that I never in the course of my life tasted one of Mr.
Wright's hams. The sole refreshment I ever consumed in his filthy den
consisted of eggs and tea. The tea I drank with unfeigned reluctance, but
the eggs, however stale, inspired me with a confidence I felt in none of
the other viands provided by the ex-boat-builder. The reporters nowadays
have a dining-room of their own, as well as reading-room, smoking-room,
and tea-room. The status of the Press is changed indeed.
One of Mr. Wright's characteristics was his love of talking Johnsonese. I
can see him in my mind's eye now, as I emerged from the Gallery after a
heavy "turn," reclining on the wooden bench which was his favourite place
of rest. His head half covered with the famous red bandana; his boots
off, and a pair of dirty worsted stockings exposed to view, he twiddled
his thumbs, and through half-closed eyes cast a disparaging glance at the
young member of the Gallery who had not yet patronised either his whisky
or his ham; then, with a grunt, he would wake up and begin to speak. "I
hope, sir, that you are intellectual enough to appreciate the grandeur of
the debate to which you have just been privileged to listen. Sir, it
fills me with an amazement that is simply inexpressible to listen to
those two men, Gladstone and Disraeli, when they are a-conducting
themselves as they 'ave been this evening. What I want to know, sir, is,
where do they get it from? You and me could never do such a thing--no,
not a moment. In my opinion they are more than mortal." But enough of Mr.
Wright, who is dead now, though he lived to see the twentieth century
born, and to mourn over the changed times which no longer made the hungry
reporter dependent upon his famous ham.
The first night of that autumn session of 1867 was a memorable one. Mr.
Disraeli sat on the Treasury Bench as leader of the House. Opposite to
him sat Mr. Gladstone, now the recognised leader of the Liberal party.
Mrs. Disraeli had been seriously ill; was, in fact, still ill when
Parliament met. Mr. Gladstone, who never overlooked the courtesies of
debate, in opening his attack upon the Government after the speech had
been duly moved and seconded, made touching reference to the personal
anxieties of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Disraeli was visibly
moved. He suddenly covered his face with his hands, and one could see
that his eyes were filled with tears. Nearly thirty years later there was
a similar scene in the House, in which Mr. Gladstone was again the moving
cause. This was when, referring to a speech by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, he
spoke of it in terms that made Mr. Chamberlain himself flush with
emotion, and caused the tears to gather in the eyes of that hardened
political fighter. Strange are the links which bind the generations
together!
It was in the late autumn of 1867 that one of the most remarkable of the
outrages committed by the Fenians in London took place. This was the
explosion at the Clerkenwell House of Detention. The object of the crime
was the rescue of two Fenians who were confined in the prison. The
authorities at Scotland Yard had got wind of the plot, and sought to put
the governor of the prison, and the magistrates who controlled it, on
their guard. The latter declared themselves quite able to look after
their prisoners, and declined the proffered assistance of the police.
Instead of keeping guard, as they should have done, round the walls of
the House of Detention, they contented themselves with keeping the
prisoners--whose names, if my memory does not fail, were Burke and
Casey--in their cells at the hour when they usually took their daily
exercise in the yard. A wheelbarrow, laden with powerful explosives, was
deliberately wheeled up to the prison wall, outside the exercise ground,
at the time when Burke and Casey were supposed to be walking there. An
orange was thrown over into the yard, this being the signal that had been
agreed upon with the captives, and the fuse attached to the barrel of
explosives was lighted. Then the conspirators quietly retired, nobody
molesting them. A terrific explosion followed.
I had just left the reading-room of the British Museum that afternoon,
and was crossing the quadrangle, when I heard a sound which my experience
of the Oaks Pit enabled me at once to recognise as that of an explosion.
I thought that some kitchen boiler in an adjoining house must have burst;
but nothing was to be seen, and I went my way, merely making a note, with
the reporter's instinct, of the exact moment at which the explosion took
place. The next morning the London papers were full of the details of the
great crime. Several persons, including some children, had been killed
outright, and many more had been injured. A breach had been made in the
prison wall, but the Fenian prisoners, of course, had not escaped, owing
to the precautions taken by the authorities. The whole country was roused
to a violent state of indignation by this crime, which followed close
upon a similar attempt to rescue other Fenian prisoners who were being
carried in a prison van through the streets of Manchester. The Manchester
crime resulted in the death of a police sergeant named Brett, and for
that murder three men--Allen, Larkin, and Gould, who are still famous in
Irish history as "the Manchester martyrs"--were hanged.
On the day following the Clerkenwell explosion I attended the inquest
upon some of the victims, and, curiously enough, I was the only person
who could inform the coroner of the exact hour at which the outrage was
committed. The police were soon in hot pursuit of the culprits. Five men
were arrested, and after a tedious investigation at Bow Street were
committed for trial at the Old Bailey. If I remember aright, they were
Irishmen hailing from Glasgow. I made my first acquaintance with Bow
Street Police Court at the examination of these men. It was the old
police court--a dismal, stuffy, ill-ventilated room--where justice had
been administered for several generations. I have a lively recollection
of the fact that whilst I was reporting the proceedings I suddenly
fainted, for the first time in my life; and I still remember gratefully
the kindness of the police, who removed me from the court room into the
fresh air, and tended me with the utmost care until I had recovered. This
sympathy with illness is one of the best characteristics of our London
police.
The trial at the Old Bailey resulted in the acquittal of all the
prisoners except one, a man named Barrett. He was convicted, and
sentenced to death. Great interest in his case was felt in Glasgow, and I
was asked by one of the Glasgow newspapers to telegraph to it a full
account of the execution. It was in one respect to be a remarkable
occasion, for an Act had just received the assent of Parliament putting
an end to public executions, and Barrett's was to be the last event of
the kind. I and an old newspaper friend named Donald, who was also
commissioned to describe the scene, agreed to stay up all night in order
that we might witness the gruesome preliminaries of a hanging at the Old
Bailey. We were on duty in the Reporters' Gallery up to a late hour of
the night, and I remember that Mr. Bright, rising from his seat below the
gangway, made an appeal to the Home Secretary to spare the condemned
man's life. It was very unusual for such an appeal to be made in that
fashion, and it was still more unusual to make it within a few hours of
the time fixed for the execution. The Home Secretary was, of course,
unable to comply with Mr. Bright's prayer, but this scene in the House of
Commons was undoubtedly a solemn one, more solemn and impressive than the
tragedy to which it was the prelude. Donald and I, when the House at last
rose, sauntered slowly through the streets, taking note of that night
side of London, which was novel to both of us. In the early hours of the
morning we found ourselves at Covent Garden, where we watched the
unloading of the vegetable carts and the unpacking of the great hampers
filled with sweet spring flowers. Before six o'clock we had reached the
Old Bailey, where already a large crowd was gathering.
Rumours of an attempted rescue, even on the scaffold, had been freely
circulated. Calcraft, the executioner, had received a number of
threatening letters, which had frightened him greatly. The police,
knowing what the Fenians had already attempted in the way of rescuing
their friends, were very much on the alert, and more than a hundred
officers, in private clothes and armed with revolvers, had been placed
outside the barriers amongst the crowd. At six o'clock the great gates
leading to the yard of the Old Bailey courthouse were thrown open, and
with a heavy, rumbling sound the grim old scaffold which had figured in
so many scenes of horror was for the last time drawn forth from its
resting-place and wheeled to its position in front of the small,
iron-barred door, which, as late as 1900, was still seen in the middle of
the blank wall of Newgate Prison. The noise of the workmen's hammers as
they made the scaffold fast was almost drowned by the roar of the quickly
gathering crowd. All the scoundreldom of London seemed to have assembled
for the occasion. It was the last Old Bailey execution crowd. The windows
of the public-house opposite the scaffold had been thrown open, and at
every window men and women were crowded together, eagerly waiting for the
grim approaching spectacle. It was not an edifying sight, this execution
crowd.
There was one strange incident connected with it that has never been put
on record. Shortly after the scaffold had been placed in position I saw
four men, whose faces were familiar to me, trying to force their way
through the crowd, and I was greatly startled when I recognised them as
the four men who had been tried at the same time as Barrett, but who had
been acquitted by the jury. Not knowing what sinister purpose they might
have in view, I felt it my duty at once to warn the chief inspector of
police of their presence. He was greatly disturbed, and quickly pushed
his way through the crowd towards the place I had indicated to him. I
followed close at his heels until we reached the front of the scaffold.
As we did so he quickly put his hand upon my shoulder to stop me, and at
the same time uncovered his head. It was a strange sight that we saw in
the middle of that obscene and blasphemous mob. The four men, who had so
narrowly escaped the fate of Barrett, were kneeling, bare-headed, on the
stones of the Old Bailey in front of the scaffold on which their friend
was about to die, praying silently but earnestly. For several minutes
they continued to kneel and pray, and then, suddenly rising, they
hurriedly left the crowd and disappeared. "Did you ever see anything like
that?" said the inspector to me; and I do not know which of us was the
more moved by this strange incident.
Of the execution itself I have only one thing to say: that is, that
Barrett died in a very different fashion from any other murderer whom I
had seen hanged. He faced death, in fact, like a hero, with undaunted
mien, and a smile upon his pallid lips. I observed that his trousers were
all frayed and worn at the knees, and remarked upon the fact to one of
the warders who was standing beside me. "Yes," he replied, "he has been
on his knees, praying, ever since he was sentenced." I came away from the
spot rejoicing in the thought that I should never again be called upon to
witness that abominable thing a public execution.
It was in 1868 that I gained my first experience of London club-life.
This was when I became a member of the Arundel Club. The club is still, I
believe, in existence, and has a home somewhere in the Adelphi. In 1868
it occupied a house at the bottom of a street, running from the Strand to
the river, which was swept away when the Hotel Cecil was built. This
house had once been the residence of John Black, the well-known editor of
the _Morning Chronicle_, a journalist who used to boast that his
readers would follow him wherever he liked to lead them. The members of
the club were, for the most part, journalists, actors, and artists. It
was a delight to me to find admittance to the society I had hitherto
regarded with wistful eyes from afar. I could feel at last that I had got
a foothold, however humble, in the literary life of London. The man who
introduced me to the club was my old friend James Macdonell. We had
become intimate at Newcastle, in the days when he was editing the
_Northern Daily Express_. His brilliant writing had attracted the
attention of the proprietors of the _Daily Telegraph_, and they had
brought him to London to act as assistant editor of that paper.
Macdonell was a typical journalist, of very fine character. He was an
enthusiast, more than commonly perfervid, even for a Scot. Whatever he
believed, he believed with all his heart and soul. He was always in
earnest, and always striving to give effect to his opinions. His leaders
were really polished essays, of remarkable point and brilliancy. His
conversation was as striking and epigrammatic as his writing. He was
inspired by generous impulses, and his soul was clean. One of his
colleagues on the _Telegraph_ declared that Macdonell evidently
believed that his chief business in life was to frame syllogisms and
apply them. He had a good deal of the temperament of the French man of
letters, and to the enthusiasm of the Gaul he added a fine taste for
style. In those early days in London he was full of the possibilities
that lay before the penny Press, and predicted that the day was not far
distant when the _Daily Telegraph_ would supersede the _Times_
as the chief organ of English opinion. He greatly admired the shrewdness
of the proprietors of the paper, who, having no knowledge of literary
quality themselves, had yet an unerring instinct for what was good in
journalism. He delighted in one story which I have heard him relate more
than once. He had been telling Alexander Russel, of the _Scotsman_,
of the shrewd manner in which Mr. Levy, the principal owner of the
_Telegraph_, had been criticising an article of which he did not
quite approve. The writer had pleaded that the reasoning of the article
was perfectly sound. "We don't want sound reason; we want sound writing,"
was Mr. Levy's response. When Macdonell repeated this to Russel, the
great Edinburgh editor slapped his thigh, and cried, with an oath, "The
Lord knew what He was about when He chose that people for His own!"
It was not to be Macdonell's fate to convert the _Telegraph_ into a
second _Times_. On the contrary, after a few years in Fleet Street,
he himself went to Printing House Square, where he became, in the closing
days of Delane's editorship of the _Times_, the principal political
leader writer. He made a great mark in that capacity, and drew the
_Times_ a good deal further in the direction of advanced Liberalism
than it has ever been drawn before or since. He was a strong hater of Mr.
Disraeli's Imperial policy, and for a time the leading journal lent no
countenance to that line of action. But the curb was put upon the
enthusiastic leader writer, with his strong humanitarian views, and he
had to see the paper with which he was identified taking a course of
which he could not approve. To a man who threw his whole heart into his
work, nothing could be more galling than this. Poor Macdonell fairly wore
himself out with his ceaseless expenditure of nervous and intellectual
force, and he died suddenly and prematurely in 1878. His death was, I
think, the greatest blow to English journalism that it has received in my
time. In 1868, however, Macdonell was still in the heyday of his physical
and mental powers. We used to meet at the Arundel Club in the society
that I have described. Sala, Tom Robertson, Swinburne, and others hardly
less eminent, formed the company; and to these Macdonell, when he was
moved to talk--as he frequently was--would pour out the epigrams in which
he delighted. I can recall some of them that were very brilliant, but
they are too personal to be repeated here.
Another friend of those days never attained to anything like fame. He
died, as he had lived, a simple working journalist, and he is now
remembered only by a handful of personal friends. Yet even now, more than
twenty years after his death, I feel that Robert Donald was in many ways
one of the most gifted men I have ever known. He had come from Edinburgh
to fill a place in the Reporters' Gallery, and he added to his work as
reporter that of London correspondent of the _Glasgow Herald_. With
the rest of his intimate friends, I had an almost unbounded admiration
for his gifts, and an unqualified belief in his future. We knew from
constant and intimate intercourse the wealth of intellect and of feeling
that he possessed, and we were convinced that when he revealed these
riches to the world he would impress others as much as he had impressed
us.
He had been engaged for years in writing a novel--a novel that, we were
convinced, would be a notable addition to the great treasury of English
literature. He was very reticent on the subject of this _magnum
opus_, but at last he consented to submit the manuscript to me and to
another friend with whom he was equally intimate, Mr. Charles Russell. I
can recall the thrill of expectancy and delight with which I first turned
to the voluminous pages of Donald's book. I can remember how I read on
far into the night, revelling in the freshness and vigour of the style,
in the brilliancy of the dialogue which abounded throughout the story,
and in the insight into character and the grasp of human motives that
were everywhere revealed. After I had read a hundred pages I was
convinced that all our anticipations as to Donald's future fell short of
the mark. But I read on and on, and slowly, yet certainly, a deadly sense
of disappointment crept into my heart. It was not that there was any
falling-off in the quality of the work. Every page was as fresh and as
strong as those which preceded it. But when I had read a thousand
pages--large pages, closely written--and had come to the end of that part
of the work that he had finished, I made the appalling discovery that the
story he had to tell had not advanced a single step beyond the point he
had reached in the first chapter. Apparently it would require thousands
of pages more to complete the tale, and the work was already as long as
"Middlemarch" itself.
Donald had the faculty of writing admirably--far better, I still think,
than any but the greatest of his contemporaries; but he lacked the chief
essential of a novelist, the power of making his story march. Russell,
when he read the manuscript, compared it to an immense torso, heroic in
its proportions, splendid in its workmanship, but nothing more than a
fragment after all. "And yet what a quarry it is!" he said to me when we
were discussing it. "If only some inferior writer were allowed to dig
into it, and transfer its gold and marble to his own pages!" My poor
friend's personal story was a real tragedy. He accepted the advice we
gave him, and, laying aside the huge unfinished manuscript, began to
write what he meant to be a short and simple story. He submitted the
opening chapters to the editor of the _Glasgow Weekly Herald_. That
gentleman was delighted with it, and at once accepted the novel for
publication in his journal. The first few weekly instalments were read
with the keenest pleasure by everybody, and the hope ran high that we had
found a new writer who was destined to take his place in the first rank
of English authorship. But by-and-by the readers of the _Herald_
made the discovery that had been made by myself when I read Donald's
unfinished manuscript. Each chapter of the tale was brilliant in itself,
but no single chapter advanced the movement of the story by a hair's
breadth.
For weeks and months the novel ran its course, until the murmurs of
discontent on the part of the readers swelled into a positive roar. Mr.
Stoddart, the editor, who was a warm friend of Donald's, again and again
implored him to expedite the development of the plot, and again and again
he undertook to do so. But it was beyond his power to fulfil his promise.
Then, one day, a terrible thing happened. I was lunching with Donald in a
club in St. James's Street, one of the proprietors of the _Herald_
(now dead) being also his guest. This gentleman suddenly turned to
Donald, and speaking not with intentional brutality, but simply in the
frankness of unrestrained good-fellowship, asked him "when that d----d
long-winded story of his was going to stop?" adding that it must be got
out of the way in a week or two, as they wanted to begin the publication
of another. I saw how my poor friend turned pale at the cruel thrust. He
faltered out a promise that he would finish the tale at once, but I felt
that his heart was broken. He went home and bravely did his best to keep
his promise, but he only found once more that the task was beyond his
strength; and the unfortunate editor was reluctantly compelled to call in
an outsider to put an end in a summary fashion to a story which had
escaped completely from the grasp of its author. Donald never recovered
from the blow. His own ambition was crushed and mortified, and the ardent
hopes of his friends were all destroyed. He did not long survive this
tragical experience. And yet what a man he was! And what capacities he
possessed, capacities which would have enabled him to delight the world,
if only he had not lacked the poor faculty of the storyteller!
These were two of my great friends during my first residence in London,
and they were friends of whom any man might have been proud. Others I
held scarcely less dear, but they are still, happily, living, and I must
refrain from dwelling upon them. I had not been long settled in London
before I found work of different kinds accumulating on my hands. I wrote
London letters every week for the _Madras Times_, under the
editorship of an old friend, James Sutherland, and I contributed to
various provincial papers. But that which chiefly attracted me was
literary work for the magazines, and it was in connection with this work
that I first became acquainted with one of the dearest and most honoured
of the friends of my life, James Payn. I had been for some years an
occasional contributor to _Chambers's Journal_, and had received
more than one encouraging note written in a hand that it was difficult to
decipher, and simply signed, "Editor, _C.J._" At last it occurred to
me that a series of descriptive articles relating to the places and
scenes with which I had become familiar as a Parliamentary reporter might
be accepted by the editor. With much trepidation--for I was still a
neophyte in London literary life--I addressed a personal note to Mr.
Payn, asking for an interview. I got a cordial reply, inviting me to call
upon him at the office of Messrs. Chambers in Paternoster Row. Though I
entered his presence with fear and trembling, in two minutes I was at my
ease, and talking freely to the kindest and most generous man that ever
wielded the editorial pen. Neither of us then knew how dear we were to
become to each other, and how close and affectionate was to be our
intercourse during more than twenty years.
To Payn I was, of course, merely a very humble contributor to the journal
he edited; but I was received in a most friendly and cordial fashion, and
found, much to my delight and not a little to my astonishment, that the
brilliant man of letters before me was eager to recognise the bond which
a common calling created between us. There was no air of patronage in his
treatment of my modest proposals. He did what he could to make me feel
that we stood on an equality. This was Payn all over. Throughout his life
he was one of those men of letters who, whilst never sinking into the
boon companionship of Bohemia, show their respect for the calling they
have adopted by treating all the other members of that calling with an
unaffected respect and cordiality. Such men are the salt of our order.
Payn's generosity to young and unknown writers has been attested by many
men who in later life attained eminence, to whom he gave the first
helping hand in their long struggle against fate. When, in later days, I
read these tributes to the splendid and unselfish service which Payn had
rendered to English literature, I always recalled him as I saw him in the
dingy office in Paternoster Row on that day in 1868, when he first gave
me the right hand of fellowship. I shall have much to say of him
hereafter. At this point I need only record the fact that I became a
frequent contributor to _Chambers's Journal_, writing for it a
series of articles, descriptive of the work of the journalist, that were
afterwards republished in a volume called "Briefs and Papers." In this
little book I collaborated with my old friend and schoolfellow, Mr. W. H.
Cooke, who was the author of the chapters describing the experiences of a
young barrister.
By-and-by, as I extended my connection with magazine work, I was brought
into contact with Mrs. Riddell, the gifted writer of that admirable novel
"George Geith," and of other stories of equal merit. Mrs. Riddell was the
editor and proprietor of the _St. James's Magazine_, and I became a
regular contributor to its pages. Here I was brought into intimate
association with a phase of literary life which belongs rather to the
past than to the present. Mrs. Riddell had achieved sudden fame by her
brilliant stories. In these days such fame would have meant for her a
handsome income and a recognised position in society. But forty years ago
fame as a writer was not necessarily rewarded in this way. My first
interview with Mrs. Riddell, who was a lady of delightful manners and
charming appearance, took place literally in a cellar beneath a shop in
Cheapside. The shop was her husband's, and here certain patent stoves, of
which he was the inventor and manufacturer, were exposed for sale. I had
been greatly surprised when Mrs. Riddell, wishing to speak to me about
certain contributions to the _St. James's Magazine_, had asked me to
call, not at the office in Essex Street, but at this shop in Cheapside. I
was still more surprised on finding this gifted woman, in whose brilliant
pages I had found so much to delight me, acting as her husband's clerk,
and engaged in making out invoices in the cellar beneath the shop.
I am afraid that, in spite of her husband's occupation, I cannot give
Mrs. Riddell a testimonial as a business woman. She was, as I have said,
delightful as a writer, and charming as a woman, but her editorship of
the _St. James's Magazine_ did not suggest that she had the aptitude
necessary to success in business. She was very kind to me, and gave me
the opportunity of writing on any subject, and at almost any length, in
the pages she controlled. More than once I have had three long articles
in one number of the magazine; but I was always harassed by the fact that
the magazine was never "out" on the proper day, and that the editor was
always in a hurry for the copy I had to supply. My chief contributions to
the _St. James's_ were a series of sketches of statesmen,
subsequently republished in a volume, entitled "Cabinet Portraits,"
another series of sketches of London preachers, and a novel called "The
Lumley Entail."
This novel was my first venture in fiction, and one curious incident, at
least, was connected with it. I had submitted to Mrs. Riddell nothing
more than the first two or three chapters, and a synopsis of the plot,
when I offered it to her. With a courage that was undoubtedly rash, she
accepted the story forthwith, and decided to begin its publication at
once. I was very busy with my newspaper work at the time, and in
consequence could only write my monthly instalment in bare time for its
inclusion in the coming number of the magazine. One awful day, when the
_St. James's_ for the current month was already overdue, I received
a telegram from the publisher bidding me send in my instalment
immediately, as they were waiting for it in order to go to press. I
rushed to the office in a state of consternation, and explained to the
man that I had duly sent in my manuscript more than a week before. "I
know that," he said quite coolly; "I got it myself, and gave it to Mrs.
Riddell; but unfortunately she has lost it, so you will have to write it
over again." Here was a pretty dilemma for a budding novelist! I did not
take "The Lumley Entail" so seriously as I should have done, and I had a
very vague recollection of the contents of the lost instalment; but there
was no help for it. I had to sit down there and then in the office in
Essex Street, and write another instalment of equal length. It was
altogether different from that which it was meant to replace, and I have
no doubt that it changed materially the fortunes of the more or less
human beings who figured in my tale. Such, however, was the fate of a
young contributor in the hands of an unbusinesslike editor.
But, as I have said, Mrs. Riddell, apart from her imperfect observance of
editorial customs, was a delightful woman. She and her husband lived in a
rambling old house in the Green Lanes, Tottenham. Here she entertained
many of the notable men of letters of her time, and here I had the
pleasure of making the acquaintance of not a few of them. The
establishment was a somewhat primitive one. The workshop in which Mr.
Riddell carried on the manufacture of his patent stoves was at the back
of the house, and a rather large central hall, dividing the dining-room
and the drawing-room, was used as a kind of show-room in which choice
specimens of Mr. Riddell's wares were displayed. The special feature of
these patent stoves was that they were ornamental as well as useful. They
were made to look like anything but what they were. One stove appeared in
the guise of a table, richly ornamented in cast-iron; another was a vase;
a third a structure like an altar, and so forth. But whatever their
appearance might be, they all were stoves. One winter's night, when there
was an inch of snow on the ground, I went out to the Green Lanes to
attend one of Mrs. Riddell's literary parties. It was bitterly cold, and
one of the stoves in the hall had been lighted for the comfort of the
guests. We were a merry company, including, if I remember aright, George
Augustus Sala, and some other well-known journalists. In the course of
the evening Mrs. Riddell asked a well-known barrister, who at that time
dabbled a little in literature, and who has since risen to fame and to a
knighthood, to favour us with a song. He was an innocent young man in
those days, and tried to excuse himself. "Now, Mr. C----," said Mrs.
Riddell, "I know you have brought some music with you, so you must get it
and do as I wish." The young man admitted that he had brought music, and
blushingly retired to the hall in quest of it. Suddenly, those of us who
were standing near the door heard a groan of anguish, and, looking out,
we saw Mr. C---- holding in one hand the charred remains of a roll of
music, and in the other the remnants of what had once been an excellent
overcoat. He had laid his coat, when he arrived, on what was apparently a
hall table. Unluckily for him, it happened to be the patent stove that
had been lighted that evening to cheer and warm us when we escaped from
the storm outside. I draw a veil over the subsequent proceedings.
I believe it was on this very evening that I heard Sala utter one of
those jocosely brutal sentences for which he was celebrated. The literary
men who frequented Mrs. Riddell's house were not, I am sorry to say, so
respectful to her husband as they might have been. They made it very
clear, in fact, that it was the novelist and not the inventor of stoves
whom they came to see, and they were impatient when the latter attempted
to intrude his views upon them. A party of us were gathered in the
dining-room, smoking and otherwise refreshing ourselves. We had been
listening to story after story from some of the best talkers in the
Bohemia of those days, and again and again the attempts of Mr. Riddell to
contribute to our entertainment by some long-winded narration had been
vigorously and successfully repulsed. At last the unhappy host found an
opening, and had got so far as "What you were saying reminds me of an
interesting anecdote I once heard," when Sala, striking his fist upon the
table, thundered a stentorian "Stop, sir!" Mr. Riddell looked at him,
half frightened, half indignant. "If the story you propose to tell us,"
continued Sala, "is an improper one, I wish to tell you that we have
heard it already; and if it is not improper, we don't want to hear it at
all." Yes, clearly one had wandered into Bohemia in those days.
My work in the Gallery of the House of Commons was of great interest. I
watched Disraeli during his first brief premiership in 1868, when he had
to hold the reins of authority in a House in which his party was really
in a minority, and when he had nightly to confront the fierce attacks of
Mr. Gladstone, who was rallying his own followers, both in the House and
in the country, for their successful onslaught upon the Government. It
was a unique and most valuable experience to watch these two great men in
their gladiatorial combats across the table of the House: Gladstone
wielding the mighty broadsword of his powerful eloquence, and seeming as
if at every moment he would annihilate his antagonist; Disraeli, with
marvellous skill and exquisite adroitness, bringing the rapier of his wit
to bear upon his opponent, and again and again pinking him with some
stinging epigram or smart retort that set all the Tory benches roaring
with delight. It made one's young blood grow warmer to watch the struggle
from the impartial height of the Reporters' Gallery.
I was in the House on that memorable occasion when Disraeli made a speech
which astounded his followers so much that they were only able to account
for it by the hypothesis that he had taken too much to drink. This is a
harsh way of stating the case, but there is no doubt a measure of truth
in it. Disraeli was not a self-indulgent man, but in those days his
devotion to his duties in the House was so great that he would sometimes
sit all the evening listening to a debate without taking any food, and in
his dinnerless condition the stimulant he took before making his speech
in reply occasionally got into his head. Certainly, in the memorable
speech on the Irish Church question, to which I allude, he was betrayed
into excesses for which some justification was necessary. I remember
seeing him, at the close of that speech, draw his handkerchief from his
pocket and wave it round his head, before he sank back exhausted on the
Treasury bench; and I can still see the pale and angry face of Mr.
Gladstone as he sprang to his feet to reply, and hear the stern tones in
which he referred to "the excitement--the too obvious excitement--of the
right honourable gentleman."
Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff has recently furnished the world with many
volumes of personal reminiscences. He does not include among those
reminiscences any reference to a scene which I witnessed in the House of
Commons during Disraeli's first brief premiership, although Sir
Mountstuart was himself the hero of the occasion. It was one Wednesday
afternoon. There was an empty House and a dull debate, but Disraeli was
in his place on the Treasury Bench, so that anything might happen. It
pleased the Mr. Grant Duff of those days to deliver himself of a
philippic, at once voluminous and violent, against the Prime Minister. He
quoted the opinions of foreign critics to the disadvantage of Mr.
Disraeli; he emphasised them by fine flights of his own imagination; and
he illustrated his speech with a wealth of gesticulation and a variety of
intonation that convulsed his scanty audience with laughter. People
wondered mildly what punishment was in store for the audacious man who
was thus breaking one of the unwritten canons of the House, for in those
days it was regarded as bad form on the part of a man not himself in the
front rank to attack one in the position of Mr. Disraeli. As the speech
proceeded, the Prime Minister sat in his favourite attitude, his arms
folded, his head slightly bent forward, and his vacant eyes fixed upon
the points of his boots. He might have been carved in stone for any trace
of emotion that he displayed. We in the Gallery anticipated that this air
of absolute indifference was to be the punishment of his rash assailant.
But to our surprise, when Grant Duff sat down, Disraeli instantly sprang
to his feet. As he did so, he raised his single glass to his eye, and
looked fixedly across the House to the spot where the member for Elgin
was slowly composing himself after his mighty effort. For some seconds
Disraeli, with an air of cold, cynical aloofness, continued to gaze at
the unfortunate man. Then, with a favourite action, he suddenly dropped
the glass from his eye, and, waving his hand with an airy gesture of
contempt, said, "I shall not detain the House, sir, by referring to
the--the _exhibition_ we have just witnessed; but I merely wish to
say in reply to an honourable member below the gangway," and so on. This
was, I think, the most cruel speech I ever heard Disraeli make, and for
the moment it seemed to have a crushing effect upon its subject.
In those days Disraeli was not the Tory idol he subsequently became. I
well remember, on the historic evening when Mr. Gathorne Hardy moved the
adjournment of the House because of the absence of Mr. Disraeli at
Windsor, and the news instantly spread that Lord Derby had resigned and
Mr. Disraeli had become Prime Minister in his place, that there was a
hubbub--not merely of excitement, but of disapproval--in the Lobby. Tory
members of the old school were furious at having "that Jew," as they
contemptuously styled him, set over them. I walked from the House that
evening with Sir Edward Baines and Mr.--afterwards Sir Charles--Forster.
They were both full of the dislike felt on the Tory side for the change
in the leadership of their party. It is strange to note how quickly the
views of a party change with regard to its leaders. I remember the time
when the idea that Mr. Gladstone would ever be Prime Minister was treated
with ridicule by not a few of those who sat beside him in Parliament. I
have myself heard Mr. Disraeli assailed in scornful and sarcastic terms
by Lord Salisbury, and have listened to his sneering retort. Even after
Disraeli became Prime Minister in 1868 it is notorious that the Duke of
Buccleuch refused to entertain him as his guest when he visited Scotland
to rally the party before the General Election of that year. It was on
the occasion of this visit that he gave such offence to the graver
section of the Tories by the speech in which, explaining the genesis of
the Household Suffrage Act, he used the words, "I educated my party." A
few years later the whole party was proud of having been educated by him;
but when he made this speech his words were regarded as an insolent
display of vanity on the part of an upstart who had elbowed his way to
the front at the expense of better men.
My only personal encounter with the great Tory leader was connected with
this same speech at Edinburgh. I went to Aylesbury, during the course of
the 1868 election, in order to report a speech of his. He spoke in the
Corn Exchange, which was crowded to excess. The accommodation for the
reporters was quite unequal to their demands, and I had to stand among
the crowd and take my notes as best I could. A good-natured farmer in
front of me invited me to use his back as a desk, against which I placed
my note-book. Disraeli had not proceeded very far with his speech before
I found that my friend was not by any means in agreement with the
illustrious speaker. Again and again he interrupted him with exclamations
and questions. For a long time Disraeli took no notice of these
interruptions, but at last one stung him into action. The orator had
paused for a moment, and my farmer friend, seizing his chance, bawled out
in a stentorian voice, "What about educating your party?" The Prime
Minister instantly turned round, raised his glass to his eye, and with an
angry and contemptuous glare, transfixed--me! The farmer's courage had
given way when he found that his shot had told, and, to my unutterable
disgust, he dropped upon his knees, and left me to face the music.
Disraeli looked at me for a perceptible space of time, and then, dropping
his glass, said, in those chilling tones of which he was a master, "I
shall certainly not try to educate _you_, sir." Everybody stared at
me; everybody groaned at me; and it was only the consciousness of my own
innocence that kept me from dropping on my knees beside the treacherous
author of my humiliation.
In that election of 1868 I recorded my first parliamentary vote. Living
at 24, Addison Road North, I was an elector of Chelsea, and I duly
supported at the polling booth the joint candidature of Sir Charles Dilke
and Sir Henry Hoare. This was the last General Election before the
passing of the Ballot Bill. Representatives of the different candidates
sat on either side of the poll clerk, and duly thanked each elector as he
recorded his vote for the man whom they represented.
I wrote an article in the _St. James's Magazine_ describing the
opening day of the session of the new Household Suffrage Parliament. It
was called "The Birthday of an Era," and, looking back, I think I was
fully entitled to make use of that somewhat high-sounding phrase. It was
the beginning of the Gladstonian epoch in English history, and, for good
or for evil (in my own opinion mainly for good), it was destined to make
a deep impression on the institutions and fortunes of the nation. When
Mr. Gladstone entered upon his first term of office as Prime Minister, he
was certainly surrounded by a wonderful band of colleagues. They included
Lord Granville, Lord Hartington, Lord Kimberley, Mr. Lowe, Mr. Bright,
Mr. Cardwell, Mr. Childers, Mr. Bruce, and Mr. Forster. In my time no
stronger ministry than this has had power in England. The men I admired
most after Mr. Gladstone were Mr. Bright and Mr. Forster. I had not yet
made the personal acquaintance of Forster, and did not dream of the close
ties by which we were eventually to be united; but I was drawn to him
from the very first by an instinctive feeling of liking and esteem. His
blunt speech, his careless dress, his unpolished but genuine manners, all
seemed to me to mark him out as that rare creature a thoroughly honest
politician; and whilst I sat in the Reporters' Gallery, there was no one
after Mr. Gladstone whose speeches delighted me more than did those of
Forster.
Before the Ministry had been long in office I was brought into contact
with one of its members, Mr. W.E. Baxter, the Secretary to the Admiralty.
Mr. Baxter was a great reformer and a financial purist. When he went to
the Admiralty he found extravagance and confusion, not to speak of
corruption, pervading all the departments connected with the provision of
_matériel_ for the Fleet. He set to work at once, with the vigour of
the new broom, to cleanse the Augean stable. Naturally he excited the
bitter hostility of those whose personal interests were affected by his
action, and these, being in many cases persons of influence, were able to
inspire attacks upon his policy in the leading organs of the daily press
in London. I, in my small way, as London correspondent of the _Leeds
Mercury_, had defended him against some of these attacks. Baxter
noticed my defence, and sought me out in order to thank me for it. He did
more than this. He proposed that I should hear from him from time to time
how he was advancing in his work of reorganisation and reform, and should
make the facts known to the public through the columns of the
_Mercury_. This was great promotion for me. In those days the
provincial press had no direct connection with Ministers or the leaders
of parties; and the "London correspondent" was not in a position to
supply his readers with news at first hand, or with any news, indeed,
that was at once original and authentic. Through Mr. Baxter I suddenly
found myself placed in a position that enabled me to provide the _Leeds
Mercury_ with political and administrative news that was not only of
the highest importance, but that had not appeared anywhere else. For Mr.
Baxter was better than his word. When I went, as I did several times a
week, to see him at the Admiralty, he not only told me all that was going
on in his own department, but all that could be published with regard to
the proceedings of the Government as a whole. I think I am correct in
saying that I was at that time the only correspondent of a provincial
newspaper who was favoured in this way, and my letter to the
_Mercury_ began to be read and quoted in many different quarters.
Certainly my position was made both easier and more important by this
friendship with Mr. Baxter.
During the whole of 1869 I attended the debates in Parliament, and
watched with eager sympathy the progress of the Government in the heavy
task that it had set itself. The passing of the Bill for disestablishing
the Irish Church was the chief business of that memorable session. The
speaking on both sides was at the highest level. In the House of Commons,
Gladstone, Disraeli, Bright, Lowe, and Gathorne Hardy distinguished
themselves above all others. But the palm for oratory, as has so often
been the case, was borne off by the House of Lords. That House presented
a brilliant spectacle during the debates on the second reading of the
Bill which the majority of the peers detested so heartily. The speaking
against the measure was far more effective than that in its favour.
Indeed, at this distance of time I can only recall one speech by a
supporter of the Bill which impressed itself so strongly upon me as to
remain fresh in my memory after the lapse of more than thirty years. That
was the speech of Dr. Connop Thirlwall, Bishop of St. David's, who was
courageous enough to stand against his brethren, and to prefer the claims
of justice to those of the Establishment in which he was a leading
figure. On the other hand, two at least of the speeches delivered against
the Bill are still vividly present to my mind. The first was the speech
of Dr. Magee, Bishop of Peterborough, an extraordinary display of florid
and flowing eloquence. It moved the House so greatly that when he sat
down the Tory peers rose, almost in a body, and rushing across the floor,
offered him their personal congratulations and handshakes in recognition
of his success. Such a scene, common enough in foreign Chambers, was
almost without precedent in our cold and stately House of Lords. The
other memorable speech was that of Lord Derby, "the Rupert of debate."
Though I had no sympathy with his views, I could not but admire the
almost passionate fervour with which he pleaded for the Irish Church, and
the indignation with which he denounced those who were bent upon
despoiling it. I remember his quoting with dramatic effect the curse
uttered by Meg Merrilees upon Ellan-gowan--a curse which he intended, of
course, to apply to Mr. Gladstone. It was the last speech that Lord Derby
ever made. When the announcement of the final surrender of the Peers,
after the Bill had passed through Committee, was made by Lord Cairns, I
saw Lord Derby rise from his seat and, with a face inflamed with
indignation, hobble swiftly out of the Chamber. He never entered it
again.
This incident belongs to the tragedy of politics; but the debates on the
Irish Church Bill in the House of Lords were not without their touches of
comedy. One of these was supplied by Lord Westbury, the ex-Liberal Lord
Chancellor. He made a very amusing, a very bitter, and an almost wholly
inaudible speech against the Bill. The older peers, with their hands
behind their ears, clustered round him to catch his witticisms, some even
kneeling on the floor in order to be near enough to hear him. They
chuckled and laughed consumedly, but we unfortunate reporters in the
Gallery had but the faintest idea of what it was they were laughing at.
One sentence I did indeed catch, and still remember. It was to the effect
that if the Irish Church were disestablished there would be no provision
for the celebration of holy matrimony in Ireland in accordance with
Protestant rites. "Was it possible," Lord Westbury asked, with simulated
indignation, "that the authors of this iniquitous measure really meant to
drive all the unmarried Protestants of Ireland into mortal sin?" The old
peers around him enjoyed this effort of the imagination mightily.
The other comic incident I remember was of a different kind. The
Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Trench, on behalf of his fellow-prelates, made
a long speech against the Bill. Dr. Trench was a man of very high
character and fine talent, but he was not at home in the House of Lords,
or, indeed, in a political speech. When he advanced to the table of the
House, he caused a slight titter by producing an unmistakable black
sermon case, and spreading it open before him. By-and-by, as he proceeded
with his sonorous but somewhat melancholy discourse, everybody perceived
that he was preaching a sermon. The intonation of his voice, the
phraseology, the measured sweep of the hands, all smacked of the pulpit.
The whole House listened eagerly, and watched intently for the accident
that was certain to happen. At last it came. "I beseech you, my
brethren," said the Archbishop, in a moment of apostolic absence of mind,
and the whole House exploded in a roar of long-suppressed laughter, which
made it impossible to learn the nature of the Primate's appeal.
For any man of intelligence the position of a parliamentary reporter is
one of great interest and full of great possibilities. In my days in the
Gallery there was, as I have already stated, little communication between
the Gallery and the House proper. The art of exploiting the Press had not
yet become familiar to the politicians, and a great gulf seemed to be
fixed between the reporters and the members. Since then, that gulf has
almost disappeared, and not a few men have stepped down from the
Reporters' Gallery to the floor of the House. But our very aloofness from
the inner side of parliamentary life, with its personal interests and its
incessant intrigues, strengthened our position as independent critics and
observers. We looked on as at a play in which we ourselves had no part,
and those who possessed the instinct for politics which is the gift of
the born journalist were able to see more and learn more from our
independent standpoint than many of the actual actors saw and learned.
Some of the most capable of our political writers and critics were
trained in the Gallery. One of my most intimate friends in those days was
Mr. Mudford, who subsequently became known to fame as the editor of the
_Standard_, and who built up that journal's great reputation. Of
Mudford's capacity as an editor it is hardly necessary to speak here, but
I may note in passing that even in his early days in the Gallery he
displayed the marked characteristics which distinguished him when he was
at once the ablest and the least known of London editors. His
independence of character was even then combined with a strong
indisposition to make many acquaintances, or to cut any figure in public.
It was my privilege to be counted thus early in his career among his
friends, and I am glad to say that it is a privilege which I still enjoy.
My stay in London was brought to an end in the early part of 1870, amid
circumstances that changed the whole tenor of my life, and for a time
left me a crippled and wounded man. I have said nothing in these pages of
my private life or my domestic happiness. My marriage had proved to be,
in all respects save one, everything that the heart of man could desire.
The one drawback was my wife's delicate health; but she had shown such
marvellous recuperative powers at times when the doctors had spoken in
the gravest manner of her case, and she possessed so unfailing a flow of
natural good spirits, that it was impossible for one who, perhaps, saw
only that which he desired to see, to believe that her case was hopeless.
Yet hopeless it really was during the whole of the two short years of her
married life. Her death--it took place on the 4th of February--was a blow
that seemed to shatter my own life to its very foundations. I cannot
dwell upon it, unless it be to say that at that time of unspeakable
sorrow I first learned the value of human sympathy, and made the
discovery that there are, happily, in this world not a few men and women
who seem to have the gift of being able, not indeed to remove, but to
share and to lighten the burdens of their fellow-creatures. It is only
those who have gone through such an ordeal as this of mine who can fully
understand all that human sympathy may be in that hour of darkest woe
when a man, still standing on the threshold of life, finds himself alone
in a world which to him has suddenly become an empty desert.
One incident, and one only, of those days I will venture to recall. I was
walking along the Strand in the blackest hours of my misery, when I saw
an old man approaching me whose depth of mourning showed that he had
sustained the same bereavement as myself. There was probably a difference
of fifty years in our ages, but we were alike in the sacred kinship of
sorrow. As he drew near me I saw his eyes fixed upon mine with a long
look of tenderness and sympathy that went to my very heart, and comforted
me subtly. I envied him his age, which seemed to bring him so much nearer
to the end. I do not think he envied me my youth. It was but for a moment
that we were thus drawn to each other in the crowded street--"ships that
passed in the night," in the darkest night, indeed; but that moment I
have never forgotten.