THE INVINCIBLES.
The Married Women’s Property Act--The Opening of
Parliament--Changes in the Cabinet--Arrest of Suspects in
Dublin--Invincibles on their Trial--Evidence of the Informer
Carey--Carey’s Fate--The Forster-Parnell Incident--National Gift
to Mr. Parnell--The Affirmation Bill--The Bankruptcy and other
Bills--Mr. Childers’ Budget--The Corrupt Practices Bill--The
“Farmers’ Friends”--Sir Stafford Northcote’s Leadership--The Bright
Celebration--Dynamite Outrages in London--The Explosives Act--M.
de Lesseps and Mr. Gladstone--Blunders in South Africa--The Ilbert
Bill--The Attack on Lady Florence Dixie’s House--Death of John
Brown--His Career and Character--The Queen and the Consumption of
Lamb--A Dull Holiday at Balmoral--Capsizing of the _Daphne_--Prince
Albert Victor made K.G.--France and Madagascar--Arrest of Rev.
Mr. Shaw--Settlement of the Dispute--Progress of the National
League--Orange and Green Rivalry--The Leeds Conference--“Franchise
First”--Lord Salisbury and the Housing of the Poor--Mr. Besant and
East London--“Slumming”--Hicks Pasha’s Disastrous Expedition in the
Soudan--Mr. Gladstone on Jam.
An unnoticed Act of Parliament came into force on New Year’s Day, 1883,
which marked the progress of what may be termed the social revolution
in England. This was the Married Women’s Property Act, which had been
passed with very little debate in the previous Session. If it be true
that the position which women hold in a State is an unerring test of
its standard of civilisation, the reign of the Queen will be notable in
history, as one in which the social progress of England has been most
rapid. In England, said J. S. Mill, Woman has not been the favourite
of the law, but its favourite victim. During the last quarter of a
century, however, this reproach has been wiped
[Illustration: CHARLES DARWIN.
(_From a Photograph by Elliott and Fry._)]
away. Year by year new avenues of employment have been opened up
to women. One of the first acts of Mr. Fawcett when he became
Postmaster-General was to admit them to the service of the State.
Parliament, under the wise guidance of Mr. Forster, decided to give
them a fair share of the public endowments set aside for secondary
education. They were afterwards admitted to the benefits of University
education; one of the learned professions--that of medicine--was thrown
open to them; and political enfranchisement is even within their
reach. But in 1883 the law for the first time recognised the fact
that married women could hold property, and abandoned the barbaric
doctrine that for women matrimony implied confiscation. The Married
Women’s Property Act, which was passed by Mr. Osborne Morgan, did for
the women of the people by law, what was done for women of the upper
classes by marriage settlements. It gave a married woman an absolute
right to her earnings, so that her husband could no longer seize them
under his _jus mariti_. It gave her, in the absence of settlements, an
indefeasible right to any property she might have before or that might
come to her after marriage, so that she could use it as she pleased
without her husband’s interference. It made her contract as regards her
own estate, as binding as if she were a man, quite irrespective of her
husband’s consent. On the other hand, it of course released the husband
from liability for all his wife’s debts, unless she contracted them as
his agent. That such an Act should have been passed by a Parliament
in which women were not represented, and in which, till recently,
arguments in favour of the emancipation of women from a state of
tutelage were disposed of by coarse jokes, speaks well for the chivalry
and high sense of justice that characterise British manhood.[184]
The autumn Session of Parliament (which opened on the 24th of October,
1882) had been spent in a struggle over the new Procedure Rules, the
Ministry endeavouring to persuade the House of Commons to adopt the
principle of Closure, which the Conservatives opposed with all their
strength. In this struggle the Ministry won. They carried their Rules
for checking obstruction, and so when Parliament met, on the 15th
of February, 1883, it was expected that the Session would be a busy
one. The composition of the Cabinet had been considerably changed
during the previous year. Mr. Bright and Mr. Forster had left it, Mr.
Bright’s secession being due to his disapproval of the bombardment of
Alexandria; Lord Derby had now become Secretary to the Colonies; Lord
Kimberley had gone to the India Office; Lord Hartington was Secretary
for War; Mr. Childers, Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Mr. Dodson,
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Sir Charles Dilke entered the
Cabinet as President of the Local Government Board. As Under Secretary
for Foreign Affairs he was succeeded by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, a
painstaking but unsteady Whig. The din of the extra-Parliamentary
strife of the recess was stilled, and the House of Commons, like the
country, was in a mood to welcome Liberal measures carried out in a
conservative spirit. Among those announced in the Queen’s Speech were
Bills for codifying the criminal law, for establishing a Court of
Criminal Appeal, for amending the Bankruptcy, Patent, and Ballot Acts,
for reforming Local Government, and for improving the government of
London.
It was inevitable that Ireland should form the most prominent topic in
the Debate on the Address, because the country had scarcely recovered
from the tale of horror which had been unfolded by those who were
tracking the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke to
their lairs. On the 13th of January seventeen men were arrested in
Dublin, and on the 20th they were, with three others, charged with
conspiring to murder Government officials. For the most part they were
artisans of the inferior order, but one, James Carey, was a builder
and contractor, and a member of the Dublin Town Council. Under the
pressure of examination two of these men, Farrell and Kavanagh, turned
informers. Carey, finding that other members of the gang were going to
save their necks, offered to betray the conspiracy of which he had been
the guiding organiser. From his evidence, it appeared that after Mr.
Forster had put all the popular leaders of the Irish people in gaol,
a band of desperadoes, called “the Invincibles,” was formed for the
purpose of “making history,” by “removing obnoxious Irish officials.”
Though an attempt was made to show that the “Invincibles” were agents
of the Land League, the only evidence in favour of this supposition
rested on a statement which Carey admitted he had made. Two emissaries
from America furnished the “Invincibles” with their funds, and Carey
said that he thought they “perhaps” got the money from the Land League.
He also said that the knives used for the Phœnix Park murders were
delivered in Ireland by a woman, whom he took to be Mrs. Frank Byrne,
wife of a Land League official. When, however, he was confronted with
Mrs. Byrne he could not identify her. It is only just to add that the
diary of Mullett, one of the accused, was full of expressions of
scorn for the constitutional Home Rule agitators. We may therefore
safely infer that after Mr. Forster had suppressed the Land League
and put its chiefs in prison, what happened in Ireland is what has
happened in every country. For open agitation were substituted secret
societies, and midnight assassins took the place of constitutional
leaders. The conspirators appear to have long dogged Mr. Forster’s
steps, but failed to get a chance of killing him. They had no desire
to attack Lord Frederick Cavendish; indeed, till he was pointed out to
them, they did not know him by sight. He perished on the 6th of May
because he defended his companion, Mr. Burke, who had been marked for
“removal.” Carey was the man who had given the signal for the advance
of the murderers, and he was also base enough afterwards, at a meeting
of the Home Manufacturers’ Association, to propose that a vote of
condolence should be sent to Lady Frederick Cavendish. The end of it
all was that five of the conspirators, Brady, Curley, Fagan, Caffrey,
and Kelly, were hanged. Delaney, Fitzharris, and Mullett were sent
to penal servitude for life, and the others to penal servitude for
various terms. True bills were found against three individuals, Walsh,
Sheridan, and Tynan, the last said to be the envoy who supplied the
“Invincibles” with money, and who was only known to Carey as “Number
One.” Carey was shot dead at the Cape of Good Hope by a man called
O’Donnell, when on his way to a refuge in a British Colony, an offence
for which O’Donnell was tried at the Old Bailey and hanged.
It was whilst the country was thrilled by Carey’s revelations that
Mr. Gorst raised the Irish Question in an amendment to the Address,
urging that no more concessions be made by the Government to Irish
agitation. The House resounded with attacks on Mr. Parnell, who was
reminded that Sheridan, against whom a true bill of murder had been
found as the result of Carey’s evidence, was the same individual, whose
aid in suppressing outrages he had promised to the Government. Mr.
Parnell was accordingly charged with conniving at murder, the loudest
of his accusers being Mr. Forster, who raked up the old story of the
Kilmainham Treaty, when he delivered his indictment of Mr. Parnell
on the 22nd of February. Mr. Parnell did not reply till next day.
Then he contemptuously told the House that he could hold no commerce
with Mr. Forster, whom he considered as an informer in relation to
the secrets of his late colleagues, nay, as an informer who had not
even the pretext of Carey, “namely, the miserable one of saving his
own life.” The _hauteur_ and bitterness of the speech, despite its
closely-knit argument, disproving the allegation that the Home Rule
leaders were consciously associated with the “Invincibles,” or could
be held responsible for what was going on in Ireland after Mr. Forster
had locked them up, greatly inflamed public opinion. Mr. Parnell stood
charged with being the head of a constitutional agitation, some of the
agents of which were now shown to be chiefs of secret societies of
assassins. Without assuming that he had anything to do with the hidden
lives or proceedings of these men, the public condemned Mr. Parnell
because he did not, at a moment when their deeds had horrified the
country, denounce their wickedness. In Ireland, however, his conduct
excited the warmest admiration. Mr. Forster’s taunts he had met with
supercilious disdain, and he had told Parliament that he did not care
to justify himself to any one but the Irish people, who did not require
him to prove that he was not an accomplice of Carey’s. A movement
to present Mr. Parnell with a national testimonial was accordingly
started, and the subscriptions to it ultimately reached £40,000. Mr.
Forster’s attack on Mr. Parnell, at a moment when the House was excited
by Carey’s evidence, may have been ungenerous. But it is to it that Mr.
[Illustration: THE ROUND TOWER, WINDSOR CASTLE.]
Parnell owes the release of his family estate from the encumbrances
that he inherited. Parliament soon grew sick of the Irish Question in
1883.
Mr. Bradlaugh, however, furnished the House of Commons once more with a
personal diversion. Lord Hartington’s pledge that the Attorney-General
would bring in an Affirmation Bill was followed by an undertaking from
Mr. Bradlaugh, that he would not press his claim to be sworn till the
fate of this measure had been determined. Though the arguments for and
against such a project had already been thrashed out, it was debated
for a fortnight, the Tories straining every effort to waste time over
its discussion. Finally it was defeated by a vote of 292 to 289; and
when Mr. Bradlaugh wrote to the Speaker claiming his right to take the
oath, Sir Stafford Northcote carried a resolution prohibiting him from
doing so. On the 9th of July, in reply to Mr. Bradlaugh’s threat to
treat this decision as invalid, Sir Stafford revived the resolution
excluding him from the precincts of the House. Mr. Bradlaugh then
brought an action against the Serjeant-at-Arms for enforcing this
order, which the Attorney-General was instructed to defend.
The only real progress made by the Government with business before
Easter was with the Bankruptcy Bill, the main object of which was
to provide for an independent examination into all circumstances of
insolvency, to be conducted by officials of the Board of Trade. It
was read a second time and referred to the Grand Committee on Trade,
who sent it back to the House of Commons on the 25th of June. The
House of Lords passed it without cavil, and Mr. Chamberlain, who had
charge of the measure, was congratulated on the ability and tact which
he had displayed in conducting it. The Patents Bill, which reduced
inventors’ fees, had the same happy history as the Bankruptcy Bill,
in whose wake it followed. The Law Bills of the Ministry were less
fortunate. The Bill establishing a Court of Appeal in criminal cases
was fiercely opposed by the Tories, under the leadership of Sir Richard
Cross, Sir Hardinge Giffard, and Mr. Gibson. It was before the Grand
Committee on Law from the 2nd of April till the 26th of June, when it
was reported to the House and dropped by the Government. The Criminal
Code Bill was read a second time on the 12th of April, in spite of
the hostility of the Irish Party, who resisted one of the provisions
enabling magistrates to examine suspected persons. In the Standing
Committee, however, the Bill was so pertinaciously obstructed by Lord
Randolph Churchill, Mr. Gorst, and Sir H. D. Wolff, that Sir Henry
James abandoned it in despair. When Sir Henry James mentioned this fact
in the House of Commons on the 21st of June, Sir H. D. Wolff asked Mr.
Gladstone derisively “whether, having regard to the signal success of
the principle of delegation and devolution,” he intended to refer any
other Bills to Grand Committees. This question was accentuated by loud
outbursts of mocking laughter from Lord Randolph Churchill, which, Mr.
Gladstone declared, rendered it impossible for him even to hear the
terms of the interpellation.
The Budget was introduced on the 5th of April by Mr. Childers, who
stated that his estimated revenue and expenditure for the coming year
would be £88,480,000 and £85,789,000. This showed a comfortable surplus
which he exhausted by taking 1½d. off the Income Tax, by making
provisions to meet an expected loss on the introduction of sixpenny
telegrams, by reductions on railway passenger duty, and by slight
changes in the gun licence and in tax-collection. He also carried, in
spite of strenuous opposition, a Bill to reduce the National Debt.
By this Bill Mr. Childers created £40,000,000 of Chancery Stock into
terminable annuities for twenty years, to follow those expiring in
1885. Then he created £30,000,000 of Savings Bank Stock into shorter
annuities. As each fell in, it was to be followed by a longer one, so
as to absorb the margin between the actual interest on the Debt and
the sum set aside for its permanent service, thus hypothecating the
taxes of the future. Mr. Childers promised, by his system, to wipe out
£172,000,000 of debt in twenty years.
The Corrupt Practices Bill was read a second time on the 4th of June,
and it not only restricted expenditure on elections, but inflicted
stringent penalties for bribery and intimidation in every form, making
candidates responsible for the acts of their agents, prohibiting
the use of public-houses as committee-rooms, and the payment of
conveyances to bring voters to the poll. The Tories, the Parnellites,
and one or two Radicals like Mr. Peter Rylands, fought hard to relax
the stringency of the measure. It was obstructed in Committee, but
ultimately passed both Houses with no important alterations. The
Agricultural Holdings Bill was also strongly opposed. It gave tenants
a right to compensation for improvements, which was to be inalienable
by contract. The most important amendment, which was moved and carried
by Mr. A. J. Balfour, limiting compensation to the actual outlay,
represented the spirit in which the Opposition sought to destroy the
utility of the Bill. As Mr. Clare Sewell Read (one of the Conservatives
who represented the agricultural interests) observed, this amendment
enabled the landlord to say to the tenant, “Heads I win; tails you
lose. If your improvement succeeds, I get the profit out of it, and
you only the outlay; if it does not succeed, you get the loss.” The
amendment was struck out on Report, and, though the House of Lords
tried to mutilate the Bill, their worst amendments were rejected by the
Commons, and the measure passed. The controversy in the House of Lords
was remarkable for Lord Salisbury’s failure to hold his Party at the
end firm to the policy of resistance. A useful Bill prohibiting payment
of wages in public-houses was also passed. Nor was Ireland neglected.
The Tramways Act enabled Irish Local Authorities to construct, with
the support of Government guarantees, tramways and light railways, and
the Government further assented to provisions to promote by State aid
a scheme for transferring labourers from “congested” to thinly-peopled
districts. In August a Bill was passed setting apart a portion of the
Irish Church surplus to promote the building of fishing harbours. A
useful Irish Registration Bill was rejected by the Peers, but Mr. T. P.
O’Connor contrived to pass a Bill enabling Rural Sanitary Authorities
to borrow money from the Government for the construction of labourers’
cottages. It cannot, however, be said that the Irish Members were
grateful for these measures. They still pursued their favourite policy
of exasperation, and their alliance with the Tories led to a more
systematic and daring use of obstruction than had ever been seen in the
House of Commons. At first Sir Stafford Northcote seemed unwilling to
countenance obstructive tactics; but Lord Randolph Churchill’s bitter
attacks on his leadership in the _Times_ (April 2), and the impatience
of the Tory Party, forced the hesitating hand of their leader in the
Commons. The evil assumed such serious dimensions that Mr. Bright
denounced at Birmingham, in terms of indignant eloquence,[185] “the
men who now afflict the House, and who from night to night insult
the majesty of the British people.” Thus it came to pass, as the
_Times_ said in its review of the Session, that “the main part of the
legislation of the year, with the exception of one or two Bills, was
huddled together, and hustled through in both Houses during the month
of August, amidst an ever-dwindling attendance of Members.” There was
only one Bill which was not obstructed--the Explosives Act; in fact,
it was passed in a panic. The events that led to its production were
somewhat startling. On the night of the 15th of March an attempt was
made to blow up the Local Government Board Offices in Whitehall by
dynamite, and about the same time a similar outrage was perpetrated on
the offices of the _Times_ in Printing House Square. Guards of soldiers
and police were immediately posted at all places likely to be attacked,
and the connection of these crimes with the seizures of dynamite which
were from time to time made by the police in provincial towns, and the
arrest of eight conspirators engaged in the “dynamite war” at Liverpool
in March, could scarcely be doubted. On the 9th of April Sir William
Harcourt’s Explosives Act was therefore carried through both Houses
after an unavailing protest from Lord Salisbury, who complained that
the Peers were taken by surprise.[186] After the Bill had become law
packages of dynamite were seized at Leicester and Cupar-Fife; four men
were condemned at Liverpool as dynamitards; several arrests were made
at Glasgow; and on the 30th of October there were two explosions in the
tunnel of the Metropolitan Railway--between Westminster and Charing
Cross, and between Praed Street and Edgware Road.
[Illustration: THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL, KENSINGTON.]
Egypt furnished the Opposition with many opportunities for embarrassing
the Ministry. Lord Hartington had seriously damaged the _prestige_ of
the Government by his pusillanimous declaration at the opening of the
Session that the English troops would be recalled from Egypt in six
months. Though Mr. Gladstone, on his return from Cannes, was compelled
to throw his colleague over and explain that this statement was purely
conjectural, the distrust which Lord Hartington had inspired could not
be completely eradicated. A more serious difficulty, however, arose
out of the exorbitant tolls which the Suez Canal Company levied on the
shipping trade. Yielding to the pressure of shipping and commercial
interests, Mr. Gladstone sanctioned an agreement by which M. de Lesseps
was to provide additional accommodation by digging a second canal. He
was also to reduce the tolls gradually, and admit a few Englishmen
to his Board of Management. In return the British Government were
to procure him the concession of the land for the second canal, and
enable him to raise a loan of £8,000,000 at 3¼ per cent. A storm of
opposition was raised to this project, on the ground that it recognised
M. de Lesseps’s monopoly to the canalisation of the Isthmus of Suez.
The agreement, which was announced on the 28th of April, was abandoned
on the 23rd of July.
In South Africa the policy of the Government was attacked during
the Session on the ground that it connived at the oppression of the
native chiefs by the Boers, who were not carrying out the Transvaal
Convention. The restoration and overthrow of Cetewayo also provoked
criticism, but the verdict of the country was that the debates all
ended in demonstrating one point, which was this: the existing
tangle of affairs in South Africa was entirely due to the policy of
the late Government, and the existing Government had not been able
to discover any way of satisfactorily neutralising the blunders of
their predecessors. But no question arising in British dependencies
created so much strife as the Indian Criminal Procedure Amendment
Bill, popularly called the Ilbert Bill. Lord Lytton had laid down
a rule whereby every year one-sixth of the vacancies in the Indian
Civil Service must be filled up by natives. As they advanced in the
Magistracy and became eligible for service as District Magistrates and
Sessions Judges, a difficulty arose. Either they must, like European
officials of the same grades, be allowed to try Europeans as well as
native offenders against the Criminal Law, or they must be virtually
wasted. Moreover, an offensive slight must be put on the Indian
servants of the Empress, by prohibiting them from exercising all the
functions pertaining to their grade and rank. In Presidency towns no
difficulty arose. There native magistrates of this grade were allowed
to have jurisdiction over Europeans, the theory being that they
acted under the moral censorship of a European press. But in country
districts it was alleged that they could not be trusted. In fact,
European magistrates must, according to the opponents of the Bill, be
found for every district in which even a handful of Europeans were
living. Yet, as Lord Lytton had diminished the number of Europeans in
the Service and put natives in their places, a serious administrative
difficulty might be created if the native judges were not entrusted
with the duties of the Europeans whom they had displaced. An explosion
of race-hatred was the result of the Ilbert Bill, and the same class
of Anglo-Indians who denounced “Clemency” Canning during the “White
Terror” of 1857, now denounced Lord Ripon in the same violent language.
They even attempted to induce the Volunteers to resign, and Sir Donald
Stewart, the Commander-in-Chief, who, like Sir Frederick Roberts,
supported the measure, condemned the “wicked and criminal attempts”
which the opponents of the Bill had made to stir up animosity against
the Government in the Army. Ultimately a compromise was arrived at, by
which a European when tried before a native judge could claim a jury,
of which not less than one-half must consist of Europeans or Americans.
Curiously enough, at the time this controversy was being developed
into a fierce antagonism of races in India, tidings came to England to
the effect that a tribe in Orissa had begun to worship the Queen as a
goddess.[187] When the natives on the frontier elevated General John
Nicholson to the dignity of a god, the stout soldier used to order his
worshippers to be flogged for their idolatry. Whether any official
steps were taken to discourage a cult that might have rendered the
Queen-Empress ridiculous, was never known. The sect who took her for
their deity seems to have vanished from Indian history.
The Queen played but a slight part in public life in the early part of
1883. Whilst at Osborne in January she awarded the Albert Medal to the
survivors of the gallant exploring party who distinguished themselves
by saving life at the Baddesley Colliery Explosion in May, 1882, and
she sent to the Mayor of Bradford an expression of sympathy with the
sufferers from the fall of a great chimney stack in that town at the
end of the year--a disaster involving the sacrifice of fifty-three
lives. On the 14th of February her Majesty held a Council at Windsor,
and revised the Royal Speech for the opening of the Session. On the
19th of February she attended the funeral of Pay-Sergeant Mayo, of
the Coldstream Guards, at Windsor, who had died suddenly whilst on
duty at the Castle, and on the same day, owing to the Prince of Wales
holding the opening levee of the season on her behalf, her Majesty
was able to be present as one of the sponsors at the baptism of the
infant son of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught at Windsor. On the
6th and 13th of March, however, her Majesty held Drawing Rooms at
Buckingham Palace. On the 17th of March Lady Florence Dixie alleged
that a murderous attack had been made on her in the shrubbery of her
house at Windsor, by two men disguised as women. As her ladyship had
been writing a good deal on the Irish Question, and as the town was
in a panic over the dynamite war waged by the Fenians against public
buildings, it was suggested that this outrage might have been planned
by one of the Irish Secret Societies. Investigation, however, indicated
that Lady Florence must have been labouring under a mistake, and the
incident would have passed out of sight but for its effect on the
Queen’s peace of mind. Lady Florence Dixie’s story had alarmed the
Queen, showing her, as it did, that there was peril almost at the doors
of Windsor Castle. Her Majesty sent Lord Methuen, Lady Ely, and Sir
Henry Ponsonby with messages of sympathy to Lady Florence Dixie, and
finally the Queen’s personal attendant, Mr. John Brown, was despatched
to examine the ground and report on the circumstances of the outrage.
He caught a chill in the shrubbery of Lady Florence Dixie’s villa,
and when he returned to Windsor Castle complained of being ill. He
died of erysipelas on the 27th of March, the day after the daughter of
the Duke and Duchess of Albany was christened. Brown was the son of a
tenant of Colonel Farquharson’s and began life as gillie to the Prince
Consort. For nineteen years he was the personal attendant of the Queen,
and no servant was ever so completely trusted by a royal master or
mistress. “John Brown,” writes the Queen in a note to her “Leaves from
the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,” “in 1858 became my regular
attendant out of doors everywhere in the Highlands. He commenced
as gillie in 1859, and was selected by Albert and me to go with my
carriage. In 1857 he entered our service permanently, and began in that
year leading my pony, and advanced step by step by his good conduct and
intelligence. His attentive care and faithfulness cannot be exceeded,
and the state of my health, which of late years has been sorely tried
and weakened, renders such qualifications most valuable, and, indeed,
most needful upon all occasions. He has since most deservedly been
promoted to be an upper servant and my permanent personal attendant
(December, 1865). He has all the independence and elevated feelings
peculiar to the Highland race, and is singularly straightforward,
simple-minded, kind-hearted, and disinterested, always ready to oblige,
and of a discretion rarely to be met with.” By all accounts Brown
seems to have been an honest brusque sort of man, whose fidelity to
his master and mistress won their entire confidence. Extraordinary
stories were told in Society of his influence over the Queen, and of
the almost despotic authority which he wielded over the Royal Family.
Even the highest officers of the Royal Household had to speak him
fairly, otherwise trouble came to them. He attended the Queen in all
her walks and drives, and had the privilege of speaking to her with the
rough candour in which he habitually indulged, on any subject he chose
to talk about. He had often been engaged in services of a delicate
nature for the Royal Family, and it was said that nothing could be said
or done, no matter how secretly, at or about the Court, without his
immediately knowing of it. Löhlein, the Prince Consort’s old valet, was
the only person in the Household whom Brown never dared to meddle with.
Through the _Court Circular_ the Queen bewailed the “grievous shock”
she felt at the “irreparable loss” of “an honest, faithful, and devoted
follower, a trustworthy, discreet, and straightforward man,” whose
fidelity “had secured for himself the real friendship of the Queen.”
This grief was not only natural but eminently creditable to her.
Brown had for years been the guardian of her life, and in the case of
Connor’s attack he had defended her with the grim courage of his race.
But for him her Majesty could not have enjoyed that freedom of movement
out of doors which had been of
[Illustration: JOHN BROWN.
(_From a Photograph by G. W. Wilson and Co., Aberdeen._)]
vital consequence to her health and strength. Old servants, when
possessed of Brown’s sterling qualities of manhood, in process of time
gradually pass into the category of old friends. Their lives become
intertwined in many ways with the life of the family to which they are
attached. Their death leaves behind it in the hearts of their masters
and mistresses the sting of a personal bereavement. This was, in a
special sense, the case with the Queen, whose fate it has been to see
the circle of old familiar faces round her contracting every year. Her
expressions of sorrow over Brown’s grave, though they provoked rude
criticism, merely gave expression to a sentiment of melancholy which
was the natural outgrowth of her life of “lonely splendour.”[188]
From the 18th of April to the 8th of May the Court was at Osborne,
and the state of the Queen’s health was such as to cause her medical
advisers some concern. The dynamite scare, a slight accident that had
happened to her through slipping on the stairs at Windsor Castle, the
deaths of her friend Mrs. Stonor[189] and her attendant, Brown--all
contributed to produce an attack of nervous debility that could only be
remedied by repose.
In the third week of April the Queen created quite a panic among the
sheep farmers and the fashionable purveyors of the large towns. She had
read many gloomy articles in the papers, lamenting the decrease in the
number of English sheep. Instead of anticipating, by a few days, the
appearance of Easter lamb at the Royal table, as did Napoleon I. on one
occasion, her Majesty notified that no lamb would be consumed in her
Household. The effect of the notice was magical. The price of lamb went
down in a few hours to 4d. a pound, and farmers, who had at enormous
expense bred and fed large stocks of lamb for the Easter market, saw
bankruptcy staring them in the face. The economic fallacy was obvious.
The Queen forgot that the slaughter of lambs which were bred for the
butcher, and which but for the Easter market would not be bred at all,
was not the cause of the scarcity of sheep. In a few weeks the notice
was withdrawn.
Though the Queen was still unable to walk, yet on the 8th of May she
was so much benefited by her holiday at Osborne, that she was able,
under the care of the Princess Beatrice, to return to Windsor. On the
26th of May, though still in feeble health, she went to Balmoral.
Extraordinary precautions were taken to prevent the time-table of the
Royal train on this occasion from being published, and her Majesty
sent orders from Windsor that spectators must be excluded from the
stations at which she stopped. Railway directors were not even allowed
to be present when her Majesty arrived at Ferryhill station, Aberdeen,
from whence she drove to Balmoral by the road on the south side of the
Dee--a road she had never taken before. Life at Balmoral was gloomy,
for all the old festivities had been stopped, and everybody was in deep
mourning for John Brown. The Queen hardly ever left her own grounds,
and the Court gladly returned to Windsor on the 23rd of June. On the
3rd of July a shocking accident occurred near Glasgow, which deeply
impressed the mind of the Queen. As a new steamer, the _Daphne_, was
being launched from Messrs. Stephen’s Yard she heeled over and sank.
A hundred and fifty lives were lost, and the Queen not only sent a
message of sympathy to the survivors, but a subscription of £200 to a
fund raised for their relief. The Court removed to Osborne on the 24th
of July, where a few days later the Queen received M. Waddington, the
new French Ambassador. On the 24th of August her Majesty left Osborne
for Balmoral, which she reached on the following day. She conferred the
Order of the Garter on her grandson, Prince Albert Victor of Wales,
on the 4th of September. It was thought strange that this distinction
should be granted to the Prince whilst he was still a minor: George
IV., for example, was not admitted to the Order till long after he
had come of age. What was stranger still was that the investiture
should have been a private function, conducted in the drawing-room
at Balmoral, and not a public ceremonial in St. George’s Chapel. The
exceptional character of the distinction was a proof of the high favour
in which her Majesty held her grandson. Excursions to Braemar, Glassalt
Shiel, Glen Cluny, and the neighbourhood were made during September.
The Duke and Duchess of Connaught visited her Majesty in October on
the eve of their departure for India, and the ex-Empress Eugénie, who
was at Abergeldie, came to her almost every day, and long excursions
in the bleak scenery of the Aberdeenshire mountains were organised for
the Royal party. It was not till the 21st of November that the Court
came back to Windsor--the same day on which the Duke and Duchess of
Connaught landed at Bombay. After her return the Queen seems to have
been engrossed with business to an unusual extent--much of it relating
to troublesome private matters, and it was stated that her Majesty and
Sir Henry Ponsonby during the first week had to work together for five
and six hours at a stretch, ere they could overtake their task. Every
day, however, the Queen drove in the Park, and every evening she gave
a dinner-party, to which not more than fifteen guests were invited.
On the 12th of December her Majesty received the Siamese Envoys, and
it was intimated that she intended to raise the poet Laureate to the
Peerage. On the 18th of December the Court removed to Osborne, where
Christmas-tide was spent.
Politically and socially the Recess of 1883 was full of interest. Just
as Parliament was prorogued Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville brought
an irritating controversy with France to a close. In the spring,
Admiral Pierre had been sent with a squadron to enforce French claims
of sovereignty over a portion of the north-west of Madagascar. In the
course of operations at Tamatave the Admiral had behaved rudely to
the British Consul. He had insulted the commander of H.M.S. _Dryad_,
and he had illegally arrested and imprisoned Mr. Shaw, an English
missionary. Mr. Gladstone had alluded gravely, but in terms of studied
moderation and courtesy, to these events in the House of Commons. The
Opposition, however, harried him with attacks; and all over the land
Conservative writers and speakers denounced the Government for its
cowardly subservience to France. The only effect which these indiscreet
criticisms could have was obviously to convince France that she ran
no risk in refusing reparation to the Englishmen whom her agents had
injured. Fortunately the Government of the French Republic had a keen
sense of justice. It did not misunderstand the firm but temperate tone
of the English Foreign Office; and the French Government accordingly
offered an apology and compensation to Mr. Shaw. It turned out that
Admiral Pierre, who died in France soon after his recall, had been
suffering from an exhausting disease at the time he had offended
Captain Johnstone of the _Dryad_. There was no disposition on either
side, therefore, to exaggerate the personal aspect of the question, and
the dispute ended in a manner highly creditable to the diplomacy of
both nations.
In Ireland the National League, which had been founded in 1882 as a
continuation of the old Land League, was extending its organisation.
Mr. Healy’s electoral victory in Monaghan suggested that an attack
should be made on the last stronghold of the Unionist Party in Ireland.
League meetings were therefore held in Ulster; but the Orangemen,
terrified by this invasion of Home Rulers into their loyal territory,
attempted to repel it by force. They organised rival meetings, and
planned armed attacks on the Leaguers. Occasionally Mr. Trevelyan
had to suppress the demonstrations of both “Orange” and “Green” by
proclamation. In England the Recess was one of stormy political
agitation. The Liberal Party felt that it was necessary to submit some
measure to Parliament in 1884, on which, if need be, they might risk
an appeal to the constituencies. Hence, at Leeds, their provincial
leaders and delegates resolved to press a measure of Parliamentary
Reform on the country. A small minority, who urged that the reform of
the Municipality of London and of County and Local Government should
have the first place, were overruled by those who raised the famous
cry of “Franchise first.” The Tory leaders, when they spoke on the
subject, merely suggested that the problem of Parliamentary Reform
was encumbered with difficulties. For some time the Liberal leaders
rarely spoke save to contradict each other either as to the order of
legislation in the coming Session, or as to whether, if Household
Suffrage were extended to the counties, the Redistribution of Seats
would be dealt with by a separate Bill. During the Recess, Sir Stafford
Northcote roused the Conservatism of North Wales and Ulster. Lord
Salisbury attempted to thrill his party with terror by an article in
the _Quarterly Review_, bewailing the “disintegration” of English
society under Mr. Gladstone’s malefic influence; and in another
periodical--the _National Review_--he appealed strongly for popular
support by a strong semi-Socialistic paper advocating the better
housing of the poor. In fact, the end of 1883 and the beginning of
1884 will be long remembered for an outbreak of _dilletante_ Socialism
among the upper classes. The powerful pen of a gifted novelist had
revealed, as by flashes of lightning, the unexplored regions of the
East End of London. In fact, Mr. Walter Besant’s vivid pictures of
its dull grey life of toil, varied only by hunger, and ending only in
death, had seared the conscience, if they had not touched the heart,
of a brilliant society of pleasure. Beneath the bright wit and mocking
humour of the satirist,
[Illustration:
THE PARISH CHURCH, CRATHIE. BRAEMAR CASTLE.
]
there glowed the fire and fervour of the prophet; and when a voice
which, like Mr. Besant’s, had the ear of a hundred millions of
English-speaking people, preached in the most fascinating of parables
the doctrine that Wealth owes, and ever will owe, an undischarged duty
to Poverty--a mighty impetus was given to the cause of social reform.
Hands swift to do good were stretched forth from the West End to the
East End, and a movement destined to realise, in the Jubilee Year
of the Victorian era, some of Mr. Besant’s ideals in “All Sorts and
Conditions of Men,” was now initiated. Unfortunately it was vulgarised
by much imposture at the outset. The pace of three London seasons had
been unusually rapid, and Society at this juncture had exhausted its
resources of amusement and its capacities for pleasure. The town was
fuller than usual, for Cabinet Councils had been unwontedly early;
and the great families who flock to London when they get the first
hint that the autumnal period of political intrigue has set in, had
abandoned their country houses sooner in the year than was customary.
The theatres were unattractive. The Fisheries Exhibition had closed;
and the world of fashion was hungry for some fresh object of interest.
Like Matthew Arnold’s patrician, though Society made its feast and
crowned its brows with roses in the winter of 1883-4, it was still left
lamenting that
“No easier and no quicker passed
The impracticable hours.”
The movement in philanthropy which Mr. Besant’s writings originated,
and which Lord Salisbury’s essay on the Housing of the Poor stamped
with the imprimatur of British respectability, was just what was
needed to supply a stimulus to which the blunted nerves of the idlest
pleasure-seeker would respond. In the days of Lord Tom Noddy and Sir
Carnaby Jenks persons of quality in similar circumstances would have
gone to see a man hanged. Some years later, as M. Henri Taine notes,
they would have applied for an escort of police and inspected the
thieves’ kitchens and other hideous lairs of crime. Now, under escorts
of enchanted philanthropists, lay and clerical, male and female,
curious parties were organised in the West End to visit the slums, just
as they were arranged to visit the opera. These amateur explorers were,
indeed, dubbed “slummers” by cynical writers in the Press; and the verb
to “slum” almost made good its footing in the English vocabulary. Few
of these strange visitors remained behind in the East End to help in
the work of charity whose objects excited their morbid curiosity. It
was also an untoward coincidence that of these few some of the most
fussy and bustling subsequently figured conspicuously in the Divorce
Court.
It had been the intention of the Government to reduce the number of
the troops in Egypt, and some hint of this had been given by Mr.
Gladstone at the Lord Mayor’s banquet in the Guildhall. But before
the plan could be carried out a catastrophe happened in Egypt which
interfered with it. It had always been the ambition of the Khedivial
family to extend their dominion to the Equator. They had drained Egypt
of men and money to conquer that vast and difficult region known as
the Soudan, and under the pretext of suppressing the slave trade, they
had endeavoured to sanctify their policy of costly conquest. When,
however, disturbances broke out in Lower Egypt, the wild tribes of
the Soudan, ever ready to revolt against the Egyptians or “Turks,”
whom they regarded as brutal extortioners, joined the standards of a
pretended prophet, called the Mahdi, and Colonel Hicks, a retired
Indian officer, was sent with an Egyptian army to suppress the rising.
The British Government sanctioned, but gave no aid to the expedition.
By their foolish policy they made themselves morally responsible for
its fate without taking steps to make its success a certainty. In
November Hicks Pasha and his army were cut to pieces at El Obeid, and
Egyptian authority in the Soudan was represented by a few beleaguered
garrisons at such places as Khartoum, Suakim, and Sinkat. The British
Government dissuaded Tewfik Pasha from trying to re-conquer the Soudan,
but advised him merely to relieve the garrisons and hold the Red Sea
coast and the Nile Valley as far as Wady Halfa. By thus blocking the
only outlets for its produce the insurrection in the province might
be strangled. Here the Ministry delivered themselves into the hands
of their enemies. If they tried to re-conquer the Soudan the Tories
could denounce a blood-guilty policy that wasted the substance of
Egypt to gratify Khedivial ambition. If they induced Tewfik Pasha to
let the Soudan alone, they could be denounced for abandoning one of
the conquests of civilisation to barbarism and the slave trade. But in
the first weeks of 1884 there was a lull in political agitation, which
was only partially broken by Mr. Gladstone’s address to his tenants
at the Hawarden Rent Dinner on the 9th of January. It was in this
speech that he advised farmers groaning under prolonged agricultural
distress, aggravated by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, to seek
consolation in pensive reflection on the Hares and Rabbits Act, and in
an energetic application of their industry to the production of jam.