FROM MANAGER TO DIRECTOR
I had long cherished the hope that when, in the course of time, I sought
to retire from the active duties of railway management, I might, perhaps,
be promoted to a seat on the Board of the Company. Presumptuous though
the thought may have been, I had the justification that it was not
discouraged by some of my Directors, to whom, in the intimacy of after
dinner talk, I sometimes broached the subject. But I little imagined the
change would come as soon as it did. I had fancied that my managerial
activities would continue until I attained the usual age for
retirement--three score years and five. On this I had more or less
reckoned, but
"_There's a divinity that shapes our ends_
_Rough hew them how we will_,"
and it came to pass that at sixty-one I exchanged my busy life for a life
of comparative ease. And this is how it came about. A vacancy on the
Board of Directors unexpectedly occurred in October, 1912, while I was in
Paris on my way home from a holiday in Switzerland and Italy. I there
received a letter informing me that the Board would offer me the vacant
seat if it really was my wish to retire so soon. Not a moment did I
hesitate. Such an opportunity might never come again; so like a prudent
man, I "grasped the skirts of happy chance," and the 5th day of November,
1912, saw me duly installed as a Director of the Company which I had
served as Manager for close upon twenty-two years. It was an early age,
perhaps, to retire from that active life to which I had been accustomed,
but as Doctor Johnson says, "No man is obliged to do as much as he can
do. A man is to have a part of his life to himself." I made the plunge
and have never since regretted it. It has given me more leisure for
pursuits I love, and time has never hung heavy on my hands. On the
contrary, I have found the days and hours all too short. Coincident with
this change came a piece of good fortune of which I could not have
availed myself had not this alteration in my circumstances taken place.
Whilst in Paris I heard that Mr. Lewis Harcourt (now Viscount Harcourt),
then Colonial Secretary, had expressed a wish to see me as I passed
through London, and on the 28th of October, I had an interview with him
at his office in the House of Commons. There was a vacancy, he informed
me, on the recently appointed Dominions' Royal Commission, occasioned by
the resignation of Sir Charles Owens, late General Manager of the London
and South-Western Railway, and a railway man was wanted to fill his
place. I had been mentioned to him; would I accept the position? It
involved, he said, a good deal of work and much travelling--voyages to
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Newfoundland. Two
years, he expected, would enable the whole of the work to be done, and
about twelve months' absence from England, perhaps rather more, but not
in continuous months, would be necessary. It was a great honor to be
asked, and I had no hesitation in telling him that as I was on the eve of
being freed from regular active work, I would be more than happy to
undertake the duty, but--"But what?" he inquired. I was but very
recently married, I said, and how could I leave my wife to go to the
other side of the globe alone? No need to do that, said he; your wife
can accompany you; other ladies are going too. Then I gratefully
accepted the offer, and with high delight, for would I not see more of
the great world, and accomplish useful public work at the same time. Duty
and pleasure would go hand in hand. I need not hide the fact that it was
one of my then Directors, now my colleague, and always my friend, Sir
Walter Nugent, Baronet (then a Member of Parliament), who, having been
spoken to on the subject, was the first to mention my name to Mr.
Harcourt.
Soon after my retirement from the position of Manager of the Midland, my
colleagues of the Irish railway service, joined by the Managers of
certain steamship companies that were closely associated with the
railways of Ireland, entertained me to a farewell dinner. Mr. James
Cowie, Secretary and Manager of the Belfast and Northern Counties Section
of the Midland Railway of England (Edward John Cotton's old line),
presided at the banquet, which took place in Dublin on the 9th of
January, 1913. It was a large gathering, a happy occasion, though tinged
inevitably with regrets. Warm-hearted friends surrounded me, glad that
one of their number, having elected to retire, should be able to do so in
health and strength, and with such a smiling prospect before him.
When I became a Midland Director, Mr. Nugent was no longer Chairman of
the Board. He had been called hence, after only a few days' illness at
the Company's Hotel at Mallaranny, near Achill Island, where, in January,
1912, he had gone for a change. In him the company lost a faithful
guardian and I a valued friend. He was succeeded by Major H. C. Cusack
(the Deputy Chairman), who is still the Chairman of the Company. A
country gentleman of simple tastes and studious habits, Major Cusack,
though fond of country life, devotes the greater part of his time to
business, especially to the affairs of the Midland and of an important
Bank of which he is the Deputy-Chairman. The happy possessor of an
equable temperament and great assiduity he accomplishes a considerable
amount of work with remarkable ease. For his many estimable qualities he
is greatly liked.
On the 14th of November I made my _debut_ as a Dominions' Royal
Commissioner, at the then headquarters of the Commission, Scotland House,
Westminster. Soon the Commissioners were to start on their travels, and
were at that time holding public sittings and taking evidence.
This is a narrative of railway life at home, not of Imperial matters
abroad, and it is therefore clearly my duty not to wander too far from my
theme; nevertheless my readers will perhaps forgive me if in my next
chapter I give some account of the Commission and its doings. The fact
that I was placed on the Commission chiefly because I was a railway man
is, after all, some excuse for my doing so.