THE FIRST LIBERAL IMPERIALIST.
Forster a Pioneer of Liberal Imperialism--His Political Courage--His
Unfortunate Manner--His Home Life--Intrigues in the Cabinet--The Plots
against Forster's Life--Reaction in his Favour--Forster and Lord
Hartington--The Former's Grief for Gordon--Forster and Lord Rosebery--Mr.
Stead and the _Pall Mall Gazette_--His Responsibility for the Gordon
Imbroglio.
I should like to dwell upon my visits to Forster at his own home at
Wharfeside, and to describe the frank, wholesome talk which I had there
on many different occasions with the master of the house; but the talk
was private, I made no notes of it at the time, and it is better that I
should make no attempt to recall it now. This, however, I will say, in
justice to Forster himself. During all my intercourse with him I never
heard him utter a harsh word or give expression to an unworthy sentiment.
No public man of his day was more cruelly misunderstood by his
contemporaries. It had become a sort of tradition among the followers of
Mr. Chamberlain, and among others who ought to have known better, that
Forster was not even a genuine Liberal. He was supposed to be a trimmer
and a time-server, and all manner of ignoble jealousies were attributed
to him. I know, not only from many repeated conversations with him, but
from acts of his which never reached the public, how deep and genuine was
his faith in Liberal principles, how exalted and far-extended his belief
in the application and development of those principles. He was the first
man of eminence to attempt to bring home to the mind of the nation the
greatness of its Imperial duties and responsibilities. It was he who, in
the days when he was a discarded Minister, sowed the seed which is now
bringing forth fruit in the shape of that unity of the Empire for which
others, who came but yesterday into the field, are, with a great flourish
of trumpets, claiming the credit.
The man who was scornfully described as "the great trimmer" was the most
absolutely fearless man in political life I have ever known. I remember
his coming to me when the question of extending Household Suffrage to the
residents in the counties was first being broached in Parliament. He told
me that he meant to move a resolution extending the measure to Ireland.
No other statesman of importance had at that time suggested such a step,
whilst Lord Hartington had openly denounced it. I implored him to leave
such a measure, which was certain to be unpopular with that section of
the party which had been most favourable to him, to somebody else. "You
have suffered enough already for Ireland," I said. "Let somebody else
knock his head against this stone wall." "Who else will do it?" he
replied. "The thing is right, and it must be done. As for your stone
wall, I have never been afraid of being the first man over a fence."
Trimmer, indeed! As for his alleged jealousy of the men who were treading
on his heels, I can only say that I never heard a syllable from his lips
which gave countenance to this charge against him. Always frank and
outspoken, he was at the same time invariably generous in his judgments
upon his colleagues and his rivals. Rancour he never cherished, and he
could forgive those who had injured him far more freely than most men I
have known.
I have spoken of his manner. This was, I think, his great misfortune.
Again and again he offended men who were brought into contact with him by
his bluntness of speech, and by his disregard of the mere niceties of
deportment. I have heard him denounced as "a heartless ruffian" by
someone who had suffered from an apparent lack of courtesy on his part.
All the time Forster was absolutely unconscious of having given offence,
and when his attention was called to the fact that he had wounded someone
by his manner, he was filled with distress. One day an eminent publicist
who had cruelly misjudged and misrepresented Forster came to me in the
Reform Club and asked if I had ever stayed at Wharfeside. I replied in
the affirmative. "Then," said my friend, "you can perhaps tell me if what
I hear is true. I am told that, rude and bearish as he is to people who
meet him casually, it is nothing in comparison with his brutality in his
own house, and especially to his wife." Angry as I was at this charge
against my friend, I could not refrain from bursting into a roar of
laughter at its absurdity. No woman that ever lived was treated with a
more tender and chivalrous affection and reverence than that which Mrs.
Forster received from her husband. That she was eminently worthy of being
worshipped by the man whose name she bore, all who knew her must admit.
She had inherited great intellectual qualities from her father, Dr.
Arnold, of Rugby. She shared the delicate critical spirit of her brother
Matthew; and, above all, she was a delightful woman, gentle, refined,
full of love for those of her own household, but full also of interest
in, and sympathy with, all other men and women. Upon her Forster lavished
the love of his whole heart, and to her judgment he deferred more
constantly than to that of any other person. It always seemed to me that
their marriage was an ideal union, both of brain and heart. When I was
writing his biography, I felt it necessary to say something about the
peculiarities of his manner. Mrs. Forster objected to what I said, not on
the ground that it hurt her feelings to remember those peculiarities, but
because, in her opinion, they had never existed. "I do not understand
what you mean by the peculiarities of his manner," she said to me one
day. "His manner was always delightful, especially to women." This was
the one point on which she was blind with regard to her husband. She did
not see how great was the tribute paid to his sterling qualities by the
fact that so many men loved him and honoured him in spite of his rough
exterior. Often when I was with him I thought of Browning's line, "Do
roses stick like burrs?" It was his very angularities that seemed to make
Forster's friends cling to him so closely.
In the years which followed his retirement from office he remained a
thorough-going Liberal, but he claimed for himself the right of
independent judgment as a member of his own party. The Ministry never got
over the blow it received when he resigned. On the day of his
resignation, when he left the Cabinet, Lord Selborne, who sympathised
altogether with him, rose directly after he did, and said, "If Forster
goes, I must go too." He was actually on his way to the door when
someone--I believe Sir William Harcourt--following him threw his arms
round him, and forcibly detained him till he was brought to a more docile
state of mind.
That, however, was, as everybody knows, a Cabinet of many resignations.
It was said, when it at last came to an end, that there was no man in it
who had not resigned once at least, and that one or two had resigned many
times. The fact is that the disruption of the old Liberal party had
already begun. The new wine provided by Chamberlain and Company fermented
in the old bottles. Nobody felt very happy in the presence of the member
for Birmingham. He was the reverse of conciliatory, and seemed anxious to
let everybody know that he recognised no superior. This would not have
mattered so much if his conduct had been more consistent with the
traditions of Cabinets. Sir William Harcourt was not unversed in
intrigue, and one wonders now how a Cabinet which contained those two men
held together as long as it did. It was the leakiest Cabinet, so far as
its secrets were concerned, that I have known. It is amusing now to
recall the fact that at that time an innocent public, which still
regarded Mr. Chamberlain as a man with more self-assertion than intellect
or force of character, pictured him to itself as the tool of Mr. Morley.
It was Mr. Morley, we were told, who found the policy and the brains, and
Mr. Chamberlain was but the instrument of his will. This is not the only
point upon which the public fell into error, but it is one that deserves
to be noted.
The ugly wrench which was given to the Ministry by Forster's retirement
and the Phoenix Park tragedy that immediately followed it, was aggravated
by the revelations at the trial of the murderers of Lord Frederick
Cavendish and Mr. Burke. Whilst Mr. Forster was still Chief Secretary it
was vaguely known that he had been the object of murderous conspiracies.
The _Pall Mall Gazette_ had sneered at the rumours of plots against
his life, and had pleasantly hinted that they were all a myth, concocted
by Forster's friends in his interests. When James Carey, the infamous
ringleader of the assassins, told his dreadful story in the witness-box
in order to save his neck, the truth was made known, and the world
learned that for months Forster, whilst meeting slander and hostile
criticism in England, had been in constant danger of murder in Ireland. I
have told elsewhere the story of his last week in Dublin, and of the
daily attempts that were made by Carey and his confederates to compass
his death. Some of my readers may remember how at the last he only
escaped the knives of the assassins by something like a miracle. He was
leaving Dublin for the last time, though he himself was not aware of the
fact, and he had arranged to go from Westland Row Station by a certain
train in order to catch the night boat for Holyhead. In the afternoon his
work at the Castle was got through rather sooner than had been expected,
and his private secretary, Mr. Jephson, suggested to him that instead of
waiting for the train they should drive together to Kingstown, and dine
at the club there. The inducement held out to Forster was that in this
way he would have time for a game of whist before going on board the
steamer. He fell in with Jephson's suggestion, and thus escaped from
Ireland safely. That very night the whole gang of Invincibles, as the
murderers had called themselves, had assembled at Westland Row for the
purpose of killing him. Thrice they searched the train, vainly looking
for the man whose death-sentence they had pronounced. Mrs. Forster was in
one of the carriages, but her husband was not there. "If he had been,"
said Carey, in telling the story, "he would not have been alive now."
When the truth became known, and it was seen that there was nothing of
the mythical in the conspiracy against Forster's life, public indignation
flamed up afresh at the treatment he had received. When he next came to
Leeds, after the trial of the Invincibles, a crowd followed him through
the streets from the railway station to the _Mercury_ office,
cheering loudly. No wonder that a Government which had to confront the
feeling caused by the treatment meted out to Forster was neither very
happy nor very strong. It was soon after the exposure of the Invincibles
that Forster addressed his constituents in St. George's Hall, Bradford. A
number of Irishmen had got into the gallery, and persistently interrupted
him, so that at last his speech was brought to a standstill. Gathering
himself together, he waited for a moment's silence, and then, with
outstretched arm menacing his antagonists, cried, in a voice which rang
through the hall, "Since you didn't kill me in Ireland, you've got to
listen to me here!" The shout that went up from the meeting as a whole
acclaimed this sentiment with such emphasis that the Irishmen were
reduced to silence, and there was no more trouble. Some persons were,
however, very much shocked by Forster's characteristic bluntness. Among
these was Mr. Gladstone, who thought that his former colleague had shown
very bad taste.
Egypt and Gordon were the topics which I chiefly discussed with Forster
during our years of intimacy after 1882. The fate of Gordon, in
particular, excited in him a degree of emotion of which few would have
thought him capable. More than once I have seen the tears in his eyes
when he was speaking of Gordon, surrounded by his savage foes in his
desert capital. The Ministry, as everybody knows, was floundering in
those days. Even those of us who were the warm friends and admirers of
Mr. Gladstone were troubled and perplexed. Some of us knew, indeed, that
Mr. Gladstone was not the only, nor the chief, sinner in the matter of
Gordon; but he was the scapegoat behind whom those who had a greater
responsibility for the mismanagement of the Soudan business were only too
glad to hide themselves. Forster was filled with indignation and contempt
by the confused utterances of the Ministry, and by Mr. Gladstone's
elaborate attempts to prove that though General Gordon was "hemmed in" he
was not surrounded. Poor Mr. Gladstone! It was sad indeed that he should
have to undertake this thankless task, and should be compelled to make
out a case for a Cabinet which had practically got out of hand. It was in
connection with one of his apologies for the Ministry that Mr. Forster
charged him with being able to persuade most people of almost anything,
and himself of everything. This chance phrase, used in the heat of
debate, was treated by Lord Hartington as being a direct imputation upon
Mr. Gladstone's sincerity, and Forster was lectured and denounced in
terms which made the breach between himself and his old colleagues wider
than ever. There was no truth in the charge made against him. He always
had, and always expressed, a profound admiration for Gladstone's
character, and he had never for a moment doubted his honesty. He felt the
violent invective of Lord Hartington keenly. When he met the latter in
the lobby on the same evening, he said to him, "You were very unfair to
me to-night, and you knew it, but you had such a d----d bad case that I
forgive you."
Again and again, in those days, Forster would come over to Leeds to see
me, to talk about Gordon, or he would ask me to his own house in order to
discuss the same topic. The fascination which it had for him was
extraordinary. If Gordon had been his own brother he could not have been
more deeply interested in his fate. When at last the end of the long
tragedy came, and the news reached England of the failure of the
expedition to Khartoum, and Gordon's death, Forster was affected by it in
the keenest manner. He could hardly speak when he came to me to discuss
the fatal tidings, and he was full of theories as to the possibility of
Gordon having escaped, after all, from his enemies. Apparently he could
not bring himself to accept the truth. It was strange to see this great,
powerful man, who had passed through so many years of fierce conflict on
his own account, broken down by sorrow for one of whom he had
comparatively little personal knowledge, but whose character and fate
appealed to all that was best and truest in his nature. Looking back upon
my years of friendship with Forster, there are no incidents that touch my
sympathies more keenly than those which relate to his heartfelt grief for
Gordon, the great victim of ministerial muddling and administrative
incapacity.
Everybody knows that Forster was the reverse of a Little Englander. In
the days when Mr. Chamberlain was still the parochial politician, and the
Manchester School a power in the land, Forster never lost an opportunity
of trying to inspire his fellow-countrymen with the sense of the
greatness of their Imperial position, and of the duties which it imposed
upon them. As founder of the Imperial Federation League, he put himself
at the head of those English statesmen whose names will be identified
with the union of Great Britain and her Colonies in the Empire which we
know to-day. He got very little help from the leading politicians on
either side. Mr. Chamberlain, who now talks as though the
foundation-stone of the Empire was laid in the suburbs of Birmingham,
gave him no aid at all, nor did the active spirits of the Opposition. It
seemed as though most of his old colleagues and opponents regarded
Forster's strenuous advocacy of Imperial Federation as an attempt on his
part to keep his name before the public eye. There was one rising young
politician, however, who took a different view of Forster's action, and
who not only sympathised with his motives, but threw himself into the
cause of which he was the leader. This was Lord Rosebery, and to him and
to Forster belongs the lion's share of the credit for the creation and
development of that sense of Imperial unity which is to-day so great a
factor in the life of the Empire.
At that time Forster's friends had no suspicion that his public career
was drawing to a close. He was many years younger than Mr. Gladstone, was
full of vigour and of an enthusiasm that was almost youthful in its
exuberance, and he seemed to have a long life of work before him. But a
trivial incident revealed to me the fact that things were not as they
seemed, and that this great sturdy Englishman was by no means in the
state of health that men supposed. When walking in Switzerland, he had
accidentally injured the nail of his great toe, and it was necessary to
remove it. Forster regarded the operation as a slight one, and was
anxious that cocaine should be used as an anaesthetic, so that he might,
as he said to me, "have the fun" of witnessing the actual operation. When
the time came, however, it was found to be a much more serious matter
than Forster had supposed. The operation was performed under chloroform
by an eminent surgeon, and this gentleman told me after the operation
that he had discovered that Forster's health was in a very unsatisfactory
condition. Indeed, this little accident was the beginning of the end,
though few at the time suspected the fact.
Before closing this chapter, I may make some further reference to my
friend Mr. Stead. The retirement of John Morley from the P_all Mall
Gazette_ had led to Mr. Stead's promotion, and he had become the
virtual, if not the nominal editor of the paper. He was not long in
impressing the public with the fact that a new and original force had
entered English public life. "I am riding on the crest of the wave," he
wrote to me one day, and such was indeed the fact. The influence of the
paper which he controlled became for a time almost paramount, and Mr.
Stead revelled in his power with all the zest of a schoolboy who has
suddenly been called to sit on the throne of an autocrat. He calmly
undertook the direction of the foreign policy of Great Britain, and
ordered Ministers to do his bidding with an audacity which would have
been absurd but for the fact that Ministers seemed ready to take him at
his word. He it was who first advised them to the evil course of sending
Gordon to Khartoum. "Sarawak the Soudan" was the cry he raised, his
proposal being that Gordon should be sent to found an empire of his own
on the upper Nile. Ministers yielded to his vehemence, and Gordon was
sent to Khartoum, with what results everybody knows. Mr. Stead had the
courage of his opinions, and he was not in the least disconcerted when he
found that his advice had involved the country in the tragical and
disastrous expedition for Gordon's relief. Talking to me one day at that
time, he said, "John Morley told me yesterday that I ought not to be able
to sleep in my bed at nights for thinking of all the men who have lost
their lives over this business." If at any time in my life I had been
inclined to believe in government by newspapers, I should certainly have
been cured of that delusion after seeing what a mess even so brilliant a
journalist as Stead made of the attempt to control the policy of a nation
from an editor's desk.