ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
Whether in the biography of a nation, or of a single person,
it is alike impossible to trace it steadily through
successive years.
RUSKIN: “Praeterita.”
I suppose in a certain sense every brief or retainer or notice of
motion or summons for directions is an alarum, or alarm, or call to
arms; and each appearance in Court is in the nature of an excursion.
But I had in mind in choosing my title some of those occasions on
which I was called away from the usual routine of my work to take up
other affairs in some different part of the world.
And casting my glances back to my early days at the Bar, I remember,
as though it were a fact in another person’s life, that I could never
keep away from an election if there was one about, though I can be
honestly thankful to-day that my young ambition to be one of the
principals in such a contest was never granted to me.
One of the most stirring elections I played a part in was in the
autumn of 1886, when I went down to Bristol to help Mr. Joseph Weston,
to whom I acted as a sort of political secretary during the three
weeks preceding the election. I am not sure that I was not a corrupt
practice or at least an illegal expense within the meaning of the Act,
for no return was made about me in the election expenses. But I was
really not a fighting unit, being only a personal intelligence
department for Mr. Weston, and I sat in his drawing-room, which was
papered with sketches and drawings of William Müller, many of which
are now in public galleries, and there I watched the progress of the
game, made notes of speeches, wrote letters, held conferences with my
chief, and in leisure moments studied the methods of one of the
greatest water-colour painters of the English School.
Sir Joseph Weston, as he afterwards became, was a well-known and
popular citizen. Born in 1822, he had, with his father before him,
been engaged in the hardware and iron trades. He was connected with
big concerns in his own city and Birmingham, such as the Bristol Wagon
Works and the Patent Nut and Bolt Company, and politically might be
described as a sound but not an advanced Liberal. His life had been
business not politics, and he had not given any great amount of
thought to the questions of the hour. He had been Mayor of Bristol for
four successive years, and always treated every class and creed of
citizen with lavish hospitality. It was rumoured that he would have
been member for the city before its division into districts, but for
an untoward incident arising during his mayoralty, which, though
merely prompted by his natural hospitality and kindness of heart, was
misunderstood by those who had to consider its legal parliamentary
bearings. Mr. Samuel Morley, who had been member since 1868, was
desirous of retiring for reasons of health, and the local association
interviewed two candidates. The first was an eminent counsel of the
Western Circuit. He, with Gladstone bag and the true faith in him,
came down from London, gave the deputation a sound political oration
at his hotel, and with incorruptible correctness bade them good
evening. The deputation then walked across to the Town Hall, where
they were received by Mr. Weston, who told them in a few words his
short and simple creed. This over, he said with a sigh of relief:
“Now, gentlemen, politics are done with, and I am once more the Mayor
of the City, and as I have never allowed any deputation to go away
from the Town Hall without entertainment, I can make no exception of
yourselves.” The doors were thrown open and they sat down to a
princely supper.
Sad to say, when this reached the ears of the eminent London counsel
and his legal friends in high places in the party, their formal minds
saw in the kindly Mayor’s thoughtful hospitality the possibility of
future trouble in Election Courts. The fact that the same evening or
early next morning the association had unanimously selected Mr. Weston
as their candidate, did not seem to weigh with them against his
dangerous act of playing the good Samaritan to possible voters. A way
out of the difficulty was found by persuading Mr. Samuel Morley not to
resign, and in 1885 Mr. Weston’s chance came, when he was assigned the
South Division of Bristol, rightly regarded from a Liberal point of
view as the one doubtful proposition of the election.
Mr. Weston was certainly one of the most generous of men. There was
nothing grudging or of necessity about his donations, he was in heart
and aspect a cheerful giver. He had a special secretary to investigate
cases of distress and keep the accounts of his subscriptions, and it
was really a matter of sorrow to him that during the election he had
to keep his hands out of his pockets and close his ears to local
appeals for fear of committing some breach of election rules. He had
always been in favour of Disestablishment, and though this was not
really an important issue at this election, the drum ecclesiastical
was beaten through the streets of Bedminster, and a serious clerical
campaign was entered upon against him. With priestly tact a sermon was
preached against Mr. Weston in one of the churches which had been
enriched by his gift. If I remember right, the present had been the
very pulpit from which the clerical election bomb was hurled. The
incident created a good deal of stir. It is curious what small things
influence the course of an election. That sermon, the output of
sincere, weak-minded, unbusinesslike enthusiasm, preached probably to
a regular Tory-voting congregation, where there was no possibility of
gaining votes, became a valuable electioneering asset to Mr. Weston’s
friends. He himself got many letters from fellow-citizens opposed to
him in politics regretting the affair, but I do not recall that he
ever referred to it in public himself.
And when I look back on those nights and days of anxious work, the
crowded meetings, the weary conferences, the dull round of
deputations, and then the final shoutings, booings, or applause of the
result, followed by speeches of triumph or manly resignation, I wonder
there are men always forthcoming to face the cost and trouble of it.
What reward did Weston get from it other than vanity and vexation of
spirit? But when we were in the thick of the thing on Wednesday,
November 25, 1885, no thoughts of the triviality of the affair ever
entered our minds. The eyes of Bristol were upon us and the eyes of
the Empire were on Bristol, and we were all intoxicated by the
unwonted limelight. Men, women and children, horses, donkeys and dogs
wore red or blue favours, and one gallant Tory paraded the streets in
a sky-blue suit, and to the delight of all parties had dyed his dog
the same colour. It was after half-past twelve at night before the
result was announced. We were waiting on the first floor of a little
greengrocer’s shop opposite the local police station. There had been
many false alarms. A huge crowd surged beneath us, cheering and
groaning other results. At length our figures flashed out in a
transparency across the street:
Weston 4217
Hill 4121
――――
96
――――
One half of Bedminster went mad with joy, the other half booed and
groaned as though hope had departed from their lives. Mr. Weston was
whirled away in his brougham to make a round of his constituency and I
went forth to see the fun, for Bristol on an election night had in
those days something of the Eatanswill spirit left. There was
window-breaking going forward in one of the main streets and a few
police sallies, and later on, well after one o’clock, when I reached
an open square, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach or one of his friends was
addressing a large and enthusiastic mob from the windows of the Royal
Hotel. “Who’s in for the South?” shouted someone. “Weston,” came the
answer from hundreds of voices, and prolonged groans followed the
announcement. There were but few police in the streets, and the mob
was orderly enough and well content to shout over its solitary
Conservative success, when a sound of counter-cheers approached from
the south, and as it came nearer the cry went up “Weston! Weston!” He
was boxed up in his neat single brougham. I could not see him from
where I stood, but I could see the stalwarts of his party, a lot of
sturdy fellows who had tied ropes to it, and were pushing and pulling
it along or sitting on the roof and cheering as they rocked their way
into the square. It was the brougham’s last night out, but it was a
glorious one. As it neared the Royal Hotel this delirious procession
became a cause of offence to the rival crowd. As if with one movement,
they turned on the advancing carriage, and it looked as if there would
be a faction fight worthy of the Emerald Isle, in which Weston was
bound to be injured. But a wonderful manœuvre prevented it. From some
ambush sprang to light about a hundred police. They made their way to
their beloved Mayor, surrounding his carriage and sufficient men to
pull it. This solid wedge of police drove itself through the crowd to
the bottom of Clifton Hill, and there the carriage was sent on its way
with a few police, and the main body suddenly turned across the street
and blocked the crowd back. It was a smart piece of work, and the mob
gave the police a most complimentary groan when they saw how they were
outwitted. In this way, in November, 1885, Weston, M.P., came to his
house in Clifton, full of the joy and glory of victory. But in the
summer of 1886 it was entirely the other way, the cheers were for our
opponents and the tears were ours. Then Mr. Weston received a
knighthood from Mr. Gladstone for his services to his country, and his
political career was at an end.
But the alarum came to me from another part of the world altogether at
the next general election. I was at Lancaster Sessions when a telegram
called me to Aylesbury to act as agent for Mr. C. D. Hodgson, who had
pluckily gone down to fight a Rothschild for Gladstone and Home Rule.
We had only a fortnight to do it in――but what a fortnight! I travelled
right up from Lancaster to Willesden, and across from there to
Westbourne Park, catching the last train to Aylesbury, and found
myself late at night in command of a big empty house with tables and
chairs and pens and ink, and a fine band of voluntary workers. It was
many nights before I got a sleep in bed. It was real campaigning.
Everything had to be done in no time. It was a big straggling division
without any railway, but we planned to have a meeting in every village
and carried out our plans, pushing our forces over the Chilterns to
the little village of Totternhoe, the rural silence of whose common
was for the first time disturbed by political speech. Indeed, we were
a thought too active. For our only hope of any success――and that a
slender one――lay in the fact that at the last election feeling had run
so high between the supporters of Liberal and Conservative that open
fights had taken place, and the Conservatives had declared they would
never vote for a Rothschild. If the Conservatives had held aloof it
would have been an interesting fight. However, the Union had to be
saved, our rebellion was taken seriously, a four-lined whip went out
to all the blues, and they flocked to the ballot against us and we
were routed.
It was during this election that I first learned something of the
iniquity of imprisonment for debt. I was told that in a certain
village a tradesman could command some two hundred votes, and that it
would be well to appoint him a chairman of a local committee. I went
over to interview him. He was very shy, and seemed diffident about
Home Rule and afraid of the Catholics, but after a lot of talk he said
he would vote for Hodgson and use his influence in the village in our
favour if he took the chair at our meeting. All this was arranged, but
I could not imagine why such a miserable, mean, uneducated,
narrow-minded little person should be a leader of enlightened thought,
even in a Buckinghamshire village. I was asking one of our supporters
in Aylesbury, a shrewd, keen man of business, about my little friend,
and he opened my eyes as to the nature of his influence.
“Oh, he’s all right,” he said. “He’s got the votes right enough. He’s
two hundred of them on his books.”
“On his books,” I said in surprise, not understanding what he meant.
“Yes. He gives pretty wide credit. The whole village is on his books,
and half of them are under judgment summonses. He don’t put them in
prison, of course, but they know he could do.”
I expressed my view about the iniquity of such proceedings, which I
scarcely credited.
“I don’t see anything wrong in it,” continued my friend. “It’s
checkmate to the parson. The parsons about here threaten a labourer
with hell in the next world if he votes Liberal, and our friend
threatens him with hell in this, if he votes Conservative, and then he
votes as he likes. It seems to me reasonable enough.”
It is curious how far removed this neighbourhood was from London and
the political world. The workers listened eagerly to speeches from
wagons and in schoolrooms, but the questions discussed were evidently
new to most of the hearers. Many strange questions were asked you, and
curious ideas of the position of affairs put forward. One of the
strangest politicians I ever met was an old farm labourer tramping
towards Hughenden. I jumped out of my pony cart and walked with him up
the hill.
“Are you a voter in the Aylesbury Division?” I asked.
“Aye, that I be,” he replied with a grin, in a chanting voice.
“I hope you are going to vote for Mr. Hodgson.”
“Aye, I be going to vote for Mr. Hodgson right enough, fur he be
Gladstone’s man.”
“Right you are,” I said, “he’s Gladstone’s man.”
“We know a bit about them politics down here,” he continued, in a
monotonous sing-song. “You see Disraeli he lived down Hughenden way.
They made him Lord Beaconsfield, and he’s buried over yon. We was very
proud of him, we was.”
I began to think there was a blunder somewhere, and said: “But Hodgson
is Gladstone’s man, you know.”
“All right, I understand, I understand,” he said, rather testily. “I
told you we know all about them things here. When Disraeli was alive,
why, him and Gladstone lived like brothers, didn’t they? And I say now
one’s dead, vote for t’other.”
It seemed useless to disturb the comfortable and convenient myth that
the old gentleman had built round the only two names in the political
world he had ever heard of. We were at the top of the hill, and our
ways parted. I once more assured him that Hodgson was Gladstone’s man,
and bade him farewell.
And I call to mind a very different excursion from these political
ones, for I little thought when I went down in early life to the
assizes at Norwich that I should ever have the honour of presiding in
the wonderful old court there. It is certainly one of the least
convenient for its purpose of any that I have ever seen. There are the
most mysterious collection of pens and pulpits in its interior, which
from the crow’s nest in which the judge sits seem to have been
designed specially to prevent anyone getting from one to the other
when it is necessary to do so. It took twenty-five minutes to get a
jury collected, seated in the right pen and duly sworn. To my
Manchester mind this was a long pause in my day’s work, but there is
more time to the hour in Norfolk than in most places, and once you get
there, there really is no hurry. The witness-box in that court is of
very peculiar design. It is built like a sentry box. The witness
enters it from behind; a special verger or usher shuts him in, and he
stays there until released. I watched a quaint comedy or rather farce
in which a jovial horse-dealer of very ample proportions played the
leading part. With great difficulty he was got into the witness-box
and the door closed by a clever wrist movement of the usher. It is
true some of him overlapped the bar in front, but the rest of him was
actually in the box and the door closed. All would have gone well if
counsel for the defence had not made him laugh――when he must have
expanded, and click! bang! the door flew open, and we had to wait
until the irate usher slowly awakened, strolled down the corridor, and
got him pressed in again and shut the door. This went on two or three
times, to the great discontent of the usher, who at last set his back
to the door and kept the fat horse-dealer in by sheer force. What
would have happened if the back door of the box had been left open I
do not know, but I think it might have hurt the usher’s feelings to
suggest it, so I kept silence.
I was sitting there for my brother, Judge Addison, K.C., who had
recently been appointed, and was ill and had asked me to sit for him,
which as I had a holiday I was very ready to do. It was my first
experience of travelling to little country towns, and in those days,
when there were no motors and the railways were very slow and
inconvenient, it was anything but a pleasant task. I remember in the
County Club, which gave me a kindly hospitality, a genial, well-built,
jolly squire, who knew what my job was, asked me how the working class
of the North compared with the men I met in the courts round Norfolk.
I made answer to the effect that the Northerners were quicker and
sharper, perhaps, but, then, the Norfolk people had a quaint mother
wit. “But,” I added, “either of them can tell you what isn’t true
occasionally.”
“Oh,” he cried, “liars! Of course, they’re liars! That’s nothing. They
are all Radicals and Dissenters about here!”
I have often wondered how my good friend Judge Willis, K.C., got on
with the Norfolk squire when he was appointed to that circuit.
The difference between the Manchester ways of thought and those of
Norfolk were very marked, and so were their methods of business. At
one place a solicitor began quoting some law from a book, when his
opponent got up indignantly and said it was a well-understood local
custom that if a solicitor was going to bring a law book, he should
give notice to the other side. I agreed that it was a very proper
custom, and impounded the law book, feeling strongly that if there was
any advantage in the possession of the law book it should be with the
Court.
The case went on very well without any law, as it was a running-down
case and a not unamusing one. A local ruffian had hired a pony and
cart and gone to Sheringham to collect his father’s rents. He took two
friends with him, and they seemed to have drunk the rents and smashed
up the trap and lamed the pony. The ruffian was a humorist, very
stolid and slow, with an added falsetto of his own to the long,
drawling Norfolk speech which seemed to amuse the people in court
greatly. Neither solicitor could make anything of him, so I thought I
would try my hand on him.
“Now, how did the accident happen?” I asked sternly.
“Nay, I doan’t know. I was ’elping to put pony back i’ sharves. I
doan’t know how ’e got out. I think belly band broke.”
“But you must know something about it.”
“Na――ay,” drawled the witness. “I worn’t driving; Bill wor driving.”
“Then if you remember nothing about it, were you drunk?”
“Me drunk?” asked the witness in pained surprise. “What, me drunk!
Na-ay, I wor no more drunk nor your lordship.”
There was a titter, promptly suppressed, but the witness stared
blankly at the crowd without a twinkle in his eye.
“Well, what was Bill doing while you were putting the pony in?”
“Bill!” A long pause of thought. “Oh, Bill! ’E wor sittin i’ ’edge
looking on.”
“Was Bill drunk?”
“What, Bill drunk? Na-ay, ’e wor no more drunk nor your lordship.”
A second and more prolonged titter.
“Well, what was the other man doing?” I asked.
“Oh, you mean Jim. Let me see. Jim wor lying on ’is back in the road.
Some boys got ’old of ’im and began draggin’ ’im by the ’eels round
the common. ’E wor a bit drunk, ’e wor.”
“Very drunk, I should say,” commented the Court severely.
“Na-ay,” dissented the witness with deep seriousness. “Na-ay, I doan’t
think so. It was sea air that upset Jim. ’E’d been to Sheringham, and
Jim ’e ain’t used to sea air.”
Everyone in court laughed loud at this excuse, except the witness and
the Court, and of the two the witness was far the better actor at
keeping an impassive face.
Many strange stories were told of Addison’s predecessor, the late
Judge Price, who seems to have been a second Crompton Hutton in his
methods of administering justice. I got a vivid glimpse of his system
at one of the courts I visited. It was held in a little country town
in a big barn-like building. The judge robed in a caretaker’s house.
Then we formed a procession, the judge and the registrar being
preceded by a policeman and a yellow dog, his property. It was rather
like going to be hanged without a chaplain. We crossed a brick-paved
yard and walked up the centre of a crowded building. A conjuror had
been there the night before, and the judge sat on a daïs of packing
cases covered with green baize. These keggled whenever the witnesses
came up. The plaintiff stood on an auctioneer’s rostrum, and the
defendant sat on a common Windsor chair. Whenever a case was called on
the Registrar got up and called out, “All witnesses leave the court.”
No one moved, and the policeman and the dog strolled round the
building and selected witnesses. These he threw out with very little
trouble, but it was an undignified proceeding, and wasted a lot of
time. I could see that I should spend the rest of the day in the
place, and probably miss the last train if I did not move. So I sent
for the Registrar, a worthy gentleman of the old school, and told him
my views.
“I don’t want all the witnesses out of court,” I said.
“The late judge always had them out of court, your Honour.”
“I dare say, but I don’t think it’s necessary, and it wastes time.”
“Yes, your Honour, but the late judge always had the witnesses out of
court,” repeated the Registrar.
“Well, I must ask you not to order them out of court to-day. It takes
a long time to get them out, and longer still to get them back again.”
There was a note of contempt in the Registrar’s voice as he replied,
“The late judge never had the witnesses back, your Honour.”
I felt that I was in the presence of a procedure invented by a
judicial genius.