Retrospect--Return to London--Interview with Mr Gladstone at
Hawarden--Reminiscences.
The memories of that adventurous year in Turkey come thronging back so
quickly that it is hard to choose amongst them. In the retrospect it
looks as if it had been in the main a rather jolly sort of picnic,
and at least there were streaks of splendid enjoyment in it Even our
hardships made fun for us at times. I suppose you can know more about a
man in a month if you go campaigning with him than you might find out
in the course of years in a mere stay-at-home existence. Little
generosities and selfishnesses display themselves more freely when
commons are running short and shelter is scanty than they do amongst
those who, in the phrase of Tennyson's northern farmer, “has coats to
their backs, and takes their regular meals.” One British gentlemen we
had with us during the siege of Plevna was a perpetual source of joy
to me. He was a sort of human jackdaw, the picker-up of unconsidered
trifles; and especially in the way of provender and of medical comforts
he took care to be well provided whatever might befall the rest of
us. It happened one day during the siege that some member of our party
discovered in some huckster's shop in the village a couple of bottles
of rum. He bore these triumphantly to the two-storeyed hut in which the
greater number of us lived together, and that night we held a symposium.
The liquor was vile stuff, but we set fire to it and burned most of the
malice out of it. I made a ballad about that night a year or two later,
and perhaps I may be forgiven if I quote a verse or two of it here. It
gives at least a fair picture of the scene.
“Through ceaseless rain the rival cannon sounded
With sulky iteration boom on boom,
And while assailant and defender pounded
Each other with those epigrams of doom,
I sat at table, by my friends surrounded,
Where mirth and laughter lit the dingy room
And we made merry one and all, though dinner
Had failed for days, and we were growing thinner.
There, while that sulky iterated boom
Shook the thick air, our songs of home we sang;
And memory wrought for each on fancy's loom,
Unmoved, unshaken by War's clash and clang,
Some dreamy picture woven of light and gloom,
Of home and peace.”
Who shall forget that night who took a part in it?
The ceaseless downpour of the rain,
The incessant thundering of the guns,
The shells that ricochetted from the glacis
Or went howling overhead.
“We pushed the gourd about and jested hard,
Sang rattling songs, told many a rattling tale,--
A jest might keep the heart's deep floodgates barred.
Chant gaily, Pity! lest thy blood grow pale:
Bid every sprightly fancy stand at guard!
Be noisy, Mirth! lest all thy mirth should fail,
And yet, and yet our neighbour miseries
Would blur the sparkle in our hearts and eyes.
“For near at hand there lay such countless woes,
Such up-heaped horrors as no tongue can tell,
Where helpless Pity's ineffectual throes
Made that long shambles seem one ghastly hell,
And all the broken, battered, blood-stained rows
Of dead seem blessed in that they sleep so well;
Where the soul sickened and the heart grew faint
At scenes which Dante scarce had striven to paint.”
The rum was all drunk and the wine-gourds were all empty--the last song
was sung and the last tale told, and we betook ourselves to rest. Our
jackdaw friend, for economic reasons, had found a lodging elsewhere. He
found it better to drop in upon the rest of us when there was anything
special going than it would have been to forage for himself. By the
time at which he left us, it had turned much colder, and the rain was
freezing as it fell. The village streets were covered with a slippery
_verglas_ and here and there, where a siege shell had fallen, there was
an embarrassing hole, not easily to be distinguished in the night-time
from the merest puddle. There was scarcely a light agleam in the whole
village, and it is not at all a thing to be surprised at that our
jackdaw lost his way and had a stumble or two into the icy pools which
beset him. He did succeed at last in finding the hut in which he lived,
or rather, he found the site of it, for an 18 centimetre shell had burst
there in his absence and the hut was not. We were making our apology for
breakfast in the dusk before dawn when he returned to us. He was clothed
in a thin armour of ice from head to foot and it trickled from him in
little showers as he stood forlornly before us. The hardest heart must
needs have pitied him, but it was he himself who gave the pathos of the
show away. “Has nobody got a cup of tea?” he asked. “Tea,” cried Bond
Moore, who had a special mis-liking for him, “tea, you------” (the blank
may be filled in according to fancy, on the understanding that it was
neither polite nor complimentary) “there's no tea within five hundred
miles.” “Oh!” said the unhappy man, “I wish I had never come on this
campaign, I do so miss my little comforts!” There was nobody there, I
am sure, who would have been much shocked if, in the circumstances, our
jackdaw had been even blasphemously profane. A man in his condition
may say almost anything and may expect to be forgiven, but at this most
inadequate bleat we yelled with laughter, and the poor jackdaw stood
staring at us with eyes of suffering wonder for a full three minutes
before we could rouse ourselves to attend to his necessities.
When I first went out to Turkey I was very much under the domination of
Mr Gladstone's opinion. I was quite full of the unspeakable Turk and
his wickednesses and was quite as anxious as the great Liberal statesman
himself to see the “sick man” bundled out of Europe bag and baggage. But
when I began to move about the country and to meet, as I was forced
to do, men of all sorts and conditions among its native population,
my sentiments with respect to the Turk underwent a thorough and rapid
change. The real people, the men of the commercial and artisan classes
and the rank and file of the army, are amongst the best people I have
ever known. Their religion enjoins them to sobriety, and as a race they
are brave, truthful and kindly, and I never met one authentic instance
in which an act of cruelty was chargeable to the men of the regular
forces. The hordes of Bashi-Bazouks, of Smyrniotes and Tripolites were
of course a set of most unspeakable ruffians, and there are probably no
more deplorable specimens of human nature in the world than are to be
found among the Paris-bred spawn of the harem.
Almost immediately on my return to London I lunched with Canon Liddon
of St Paul's. Our talk naturally turned upon the campaign, and in the
course of it I gave him an account of the affair at Guemlik, as being
typical of whatever disturbances had taken place between the citizen
Turk and the Bulgarians. When General Gourko first broke into the great
plain south of the Balkans with his Cossack advance guard, the Christian
population rose rejoicingly to receive them and persuaded themselves
without difficulty that the rule of their Mahommedan masters was dead
and done with then and there. They were supplied with arms and were
urged to revolt. There is no doubt whatever that they had a great deal
to complain of. They had been under the heel of official oppression for
centuries, although in that respect they were not much worse off than
their Mahommedan neighbours, but they were a despised and abject
race who ate forbidden food and who lived in an almost inconceivable
condition of personal uncleanness. To the Turkish peasant dirt is
anathema maranatha; in his own station of life he is the cleanest man
in the world, and if there is any dirtier person to be found than a
Bulgarian peasant, as I knew him in the war year, I can only say that
I have not yet discovered him. The Christian population (God save the
mark!) were forbidden by law to bear arms, and they were cowards by
tradition. Villagers of the two races lived peacefully enough
together, though there was an open disdain on the one side always and a
smouldering hatred on the other.
It befell that in a neighbouring village the Bulgarians broke into
revolution, and all the able-bodied Turks in Guemlik sallied out to the
assistance of their countrymen, leaving only a few infirm old men and
the women and children. The Guemlik Christians, being persuaded that the
fighting force would never return, rose _en masse_ and put every Turkish
soul to death. The massacre was characterised by a terrible ferocity;
the bodies of the dead were hideously mutilated and were all hurled
pell-mell into the well at the Turkish end of the village, and all the
houses of that quarter were looted and burned down. Contrary to the
expectations of the victors, the Turkish residents returned triumphant.
They took their revenge; they put the Christians to the sword, fired
the Christian houses, and filled up the Christian well with corpses.
The account was quite equally balanced, but it is certain that the
Bulgarians made the first move in the game. It was so everywhere, so
far as my experience went, wherever the citizen Turk was drawn into the
conflict Nothing viler than the conduct of the Government in letting
loose its vast hordes of irregular soldiery with license to slay and
pillage an unarmed population could possibly be conceived. But what I
was concerned to prove was that the Mahommedan villagers had no part or
lot in the cruelties of that time unless by way of stern reprisal.
Canon Liddon was anxious that I should lay my facts before Mr Gladstone.
He despatched a telegram to him and ascertained that he would be willing
to receive me at Hawarden on the morrow, and armed with a brief letter
of introduction, I set out next day, and found the great Liberal
statesman placidly dozing in an armchair in a little study on the ground
floor of the house. At first he hardly seemed to recognise why I was
there, but in less than a minute he became astonishingly alert, and
providing himself with hat and walking-stick took me out into the park.
He walked at an extraordinary pace and plied me with questions in those
ringing, rolling, parliamentary tones of his, with which I had been
familiar in the House of Commons two or three years before. He could not
for one instant lay aside his platform manner, and before I had been in
his society for two minutes I appreciated the statement attributed to
Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, that Mr Gladstone always addressed her
as if she were a public meeting. Every sentence was rounded, polished
and precise, every syllable had its particular rhythmic weight and
value, and with it all there was a certain suavity and courtesy which,
for my own part, I thought very gracious and charming. I had heard one
of his remarkable Budget speeches and knew already with what ease he
handled figures, but he surprised me more than once by his quickness in
calculation. He was questioning me as to Turkish methods of taxation:
population of a province so many--piastres per head of population so
many--what was the precise value of the piastre? Twopence and a fraction
of a farthing.--Ah! in pounds sterling that would be approximately so
much. He made his reckoning with lightning rapidity and he was always
accurate, as I could tell, having all the figures at my fingers' ends
just then.
After two hours' hard walking, he took me in to luncheon. We were by
this time in the thick of our theme, and on our arrival at table he
banished the servants from the room and himself carved at the sideboard
and handed round the dishes. H e ate his own meal standing, and he
carried on his questions all the while. I do not know if he had then
made his famous rule about the seventy-two bites to a mouthful, but I
certainly thought him anything but deliberate in eating. Whether he took
much or little I could not tell, but he was certainly talking all the
time, and I shall never forget the noble sonorosity of the tone with
which he approached me with a dish in either hand and asked': “Can I
assist you to another potato, Mr Murray?” The simple query was offered
in the finest parliamentary manner. There were present at the meal
the members of the family and one guest beside myself, a Mr Howard, a
corpulent, silent gentleman, who accompanied us when we went out into
the park again. We recommenced our walk at about two o'clock, and kept
it up until the evening shades were growing pretty thick about us. I was
inclined to be pretty glad when it was over, for though I was as hard as
nails at that time, being fresh as I was from the severe training of the
campaign, I was walked almost off my legs. The talk went on ding-dong
all the time, and in the course of it my host asked me with what weapons
the Zaptiehs--the mounted police who were relied on to keep order--and
the irregulars who were committing unchecked atrocities everywhere,
were respectively armed. I was compelled to tell him that the Zaptiehs
carried an old-fashioned matchlock, whilst the Irregulars were in great
part armed with the Winchester repeating rifle, which was then the
latest invention of destructive science. The corpulent visitor had long
since resigned the effort to keep within hearing. Gladstone faced round,
and in those noble, oratorical tones of his called out, “Is it not
odious, Howard; is it not odious?” The gentleman appealed to was utterly
out of earshot, and came trotting briskly towards us to find out what
the question meant, but Gladstone was away again at score, and he was
again out-distanced in a minute. Gladstone spoke of the duty which was
imposed upon him to turn out the Government of Lord Beaconsfield, of
whom he invariably spoke as Mr Disraeli. I ventured to say to him, “You
will have to fight for that, sir,” when he turned upon me with a most
vivid gesture, and striking his walking-stick upon the pathway with such
vehemence that he made the gravel fly, answered me, “Aye, sir, and we
shall fight.” When the time came for me to go, he accompanied me to the
hall, and with great courtesy assisted me into my overcoat with his own
hands. It was a rather remarkable-looking garment, that overcoat, and
one of a sort not often seen in England, but I had passed through London
so rapidly that I had had no time to replenish my wardrobe. The garment
itself was woven of camel's hair, and it was lined with bearskin. As
he was helping me into it he asked, “Where did you obtain possession of
this extraordinary garment, Mr Murray?” “I bought it, sir, in Bulgaria,”
I answered. “Ah,” said he, with a perfectly grave face and falling
back a step to look at it, “I have had much to say of the Bulgarian
atrocities of late years, but this is the only one of which I have had
ocular demonstration.”
I met Mr Gladstone afterwards at a big social function which was
engineered by the late William Woodhall, some time member for Stoke and
Master of the Ordnance. Finding him unoccupied and alone, I ventured to
ask to be recalled to his remembrance. “No need for that, Mr Murray,” he
answered, “no need for that,” and plunged back straightway into the
talk at Hawarden as if it had taken place only yesterday. There were all
manner of amusements provided for Mr Wood-hall's guests, and into one of
them at least he plunged with the delighted enthusiasm of a boy.
Poor Charles Bertram, the conjurer, was there, and it was arranged that
a hand of Napoleon should be played under his direction between the
statesman and Sir Francis Burnand, then editor of _Punch_. “You,
gentlemen, must decide between you,” said the conjurer, “as to who is
to win.” It was agreed that Gladstone was to be the victor, and Bertram,
who, of course, had not apparently seen the cards, instructed him as to
what he was to lead and what to play in sequence, securing for him
all five tricks out of an apparently impossible hand. He was immensely
delighted and interested, and held a very animated conversation
afterwards with Bertram on the art of conjuring.
A good many years later yet, when I brought over from Australia the
nucleus of a comedy company to perform here in a piece of my own
writing, I had amongst them a very remarkable child actor, whose name
was Leo Byrne. He played the title rôle in my comedy of _Neds Churn_,
and when the provincial run of the piece was over he was employed by
Sir Henry Irving to play the child's part in Lord Tennyson's tragedy of
_Becket_. Mr Gladstone was present at one performance, and not wishing
for some reason of his own to be identified by the public, took his seat
out of view of the audience on the prompt side of the stage. Whilst
the curtain was down, Mr Gladstone took the fictitious son of the
Fair Rosamund on his knee and began to question him. “You come from
Australia, my little man?” he said. “Yes, sir,” the boy answered. “And
what do you think of England?” he was asked. “I think it is being ruined
by the Liberal Party,” Master Byrne responded. The great man laughed and
suffered him to escape, which I am told he did very willingly. Mr Bram
Stoker afterwards took the child apart and told him that one of these
days he would be very proud of having been taken on that old gentleman's
knee. “Oh! I know,” the imp responded, “it's old Gladstone; I don't want
to be bothered with him. I have promised another boy to go and spin tops
with him behind the scenes.”