Part 3 (1/2)

In subsequent years Mr. Gladstone publicly made amends to the great Republic for his error of judgment, but it was a long time before he was allowed to forget it.

I had no misadventure in reporting this memorable speech. It was the first occasion on which I had ever heard Mr. Gladstone speak, and it is even fresher in my recollection than my last sight of him shortly before his death. I can recall his tall, upright figure, the handsome, open countenance, as mobile as an actor's, the flas.h.i.+ng eye that in moments of pa.s.sion lit up so wonderfully, the crop of waving brown-black hair. I have seldom seen a finer-looking man. I hear once again the beautiful voice, so sonorous, so varied in tone, so emphatic in accent. To the boy of twenty a first sight of this great historic figure was a revelation.

He seemed different from everybody else, almost a being from another world. I suppose that my admiration of Mr. Gladstone, which some have considered idolatrous, is to be dated from that hour. Thirty years afterwards I still regarded him as my political leader, and as the chief of men.

On the second day of his visit to Newcastle, Mr. Gladstone, as the guest of the River Tyne Commissioners, steamed down the Tyne from Newcastle to its mouth. His progress was like that of a conqueror returning from the wars. The firing of cannon, the waving of flags, the cheering of thousands, acclaimed his pa.s.sage down the coaly stream. An immense train of steamers and barges, all gaily decorated, followed in his wake. At different points of the journey his steamer was brought to a standstill, in order that addresses of welcome might be presented to him by different public bodies. He made speeches without end in reply. I think I reported eight of them myself. It was evident that he was deeply impressed by this demonstration, and I have always held that it was on that fateful day in October, 1862, that he discovered that his unpopularity with the upper cla.s.ses was more than counterbalanced by his hold upon the affections of the people. As we were returning to Newcastle in the evening, I happened to be standing near Mrs. Gladstone, and she entered into conversation with me. It was the first time that I had ever seen her. ”I think this has been the happiest day of my life,” she said to me, with that exuberant enthusiasm in the cause of her ill.u.s.trious husband which was one of the sweetest and n.o.blest traits of her character. Exactly twenty years later, on October 8th, 1882, I sat beside Mrs. Gladstone at dinner at Leeds, where the Prime Minister had just been making a series of memorable speeches, and had received a welcome which even surpa.s.sed that at Newcastle in 1862. I recalled our meeting on the steamboat twenty years before, and her face kindled with an expression of delight. ”Ah,”

she said, ”I shall never forget that day! It was the first time, you know, that _he_ was received as he deserved to be.”

My reporting experiences at Newcastle were as varied as those of most journalists. One day I would be listening to a bishop's charge; the next, in some beautiful spot in the valley of the North Tyne, I would be professing to criticise shorthorns at a cattle show, and on the third day it might be my misfortune to have to be present at an execution. Colliery accidents, boat races (for which the Tyne has long been famous), performances at the theatre--all these came within the scope of my duty.

It was admirable training, and has turned out many a good journalist.

Always to be on the alert, so that no important item of news should be missed by my paper; always to be ready to reel off a column of readable ”copy” on any subject whatever; always to be prepared for any duty that might turn up--these were among the necessary qualifications for my post.

Then, as the _Journal_ was short-handed, it sometimes fell to my lot to undertake tasks which usually lie outside the reporter's sphere.

Sometimes I had to take a turn at sub-editing, and sometimes I had even to write a leader. My first attempt at leader-writing for the _Journal_ was on a momentous occasion--the death of the Prince Consort. This was an event which for a time lightened my duties considerably. All public festivities were suspended; meetings of every kind were put off, and for a s.p.a.ce of some weeks the country was spared the infliction of reading reports of speeches.

It was just about a month after the death of the Prince Consort that the most notable incident connected with my career as a reporter at Newcastle occurred. This was the terrible disaster at the Hartley New Pit, a colliery some fifteen miles from Newcastle, near the bleak Northumberland coast. The accident was of a peculiar character, and it excited an extraordinary amount of public interest. Up to that time it had been lawful to work coal mines with a single shaft, so that there was only one possible mode of egress for the men at work in the pit. Hartley was one of these single shaft collieries, and on the morning of Thursday, January 17th, 1862, more than two hundred men and boys were suddenly made prisoners in the workings by the blocking of this shaft. The beam of a pumping engine erected directly over the mouth of the pit broke, and one half of the beam--a piece of metal weighing some fifteen tons--fell down the shaft. It tore down the sides in its descent, and finally lodged at a point above the seam in which the men were working, with an immense ma.s.s of _debris_ from the shaft walls piled above it.

The suspense of the relatives of the buried men and boys was terrible, and the whole civilised world seemed to share their emotion. After the accident had occurred, signals had been exchanged between the buried men and those at the surface, but none could tell how long the former might be able to sustain life in the vitiated atmosphere of the mine, when ventilation was no longer possible. I reached Hartley a few hours after the breaking of the beam, and in the hand-to-hand encounter with death at that forlorn and desolate spot I first became acquainted at close quarters with the tragic realities of life. For a full week in that bitter January weather I may be said to have lived on the pit platform.

From ten in the morning till long after midnight I remained there, writing hourly despatches for my paper; then I drove to Newcastle, a cold, dark journey of a couple of hours, and scribbled my latest bulletin at the _Journal_ office. This done, I lay down on a pile of newspapers in the rat-haunted office, and s.n.a.t.c.hed a few hours' sleep before returning to the post of duty. But some nights it was impossible to leave the mouth of the pit even for a moment, for none could tell when the captives might be reached; so I sat with the doctors, the mining engineers, and one or two colleagues before the fire which gave us a partial warmth, though it did not s.h.i.+eld us from the pitiless winds and the drifting sleet and snow, which often effaced my ”copy” more quickly than I wrote it. It was a time of hards.h.i.+p and endurance, not soon to be forgotten; but it was also a time which tested to the full the capacities, both mental and physical, of the journalist, and I at least derived nothing but benefit from that rough experience.

For a full week the work of re-opening the shaft went on by night and day, and there were wives and parents who during all that week hardly left the neighbourhood of the pit for a single hour. The task of re-opening the shaft was one of extreme peril. The men had to be lowered to their work at the end of a rope in which a loop had been made, which was secured round their bodies. The two chief dangers they had to face were the continual falling in of the sides of the shaft and the presence of noxious gases. They never flinched, however, and I witnessed on that dreary pit platform at Hartley that which I have always considered the bravest deed I ever saw. I and a handful of watchers were dozing round the open fire in the early hours of a bitter winter morning, just one week after the accident had happened, when we were suddenly aroused by an urgent signal from the shaft, evidently coming from the men working far below. We thought that the imprisoned miners had been reached, and eagerly we waited till the first messenger was brought to the surface.

Alas! when he was raised to the mouth of the shaft we saw that he was one of the sinkers, and was unconscious--apparently, indeed, dead. Whilst the doctor in attendance was seeking to restore him, other men were brought up, nearly all in the same condition, until the whole of the sinkers who had been engaged in their perilous task of mercy were laid in a row, pallid and unconscious, at our feet. The truth was at once apparent. The obstacle which had so long blocked the shaft had at last been removed, but a deadly gas--carbon dioxide--had at once ascended from the long-sealed workings, and we knew that the men we had been trying to save must be beyond the reach of help.

One of the sinkers who lay insensible on the platform was the son of the master-sinker, Coulson by name. I saw Coulson, when he realised what had happened, stoop down and kiss the unconscious lips of his son, and then, without a word or a sign of hesitation, he calmly took his place in the loop, and ordered the attendants to lower him into the pit. None dared say him nay, for there was still a last faint possibility that some one among the imprisoned miners might yet be alive. But it seemed to us on the pit-heap that the brave old man was going to certain death, and we never expected to see him alive again when he vanished from our sight. He did come back alive, however, and brought with him the terrible story of what he had seen. All the two hundred imprisoned colliers were dead. They were found sitting in long rows in the workings adjoining the shaft. Most had their heads buried in their hands, but here and there friends sat with intertwined arms, whilst fathers whose boys were working with them in the pit were in every case found with their lads clasped in their arms. They had all died very peacefully, and certainly not more than forty-eight hours after the closing of the shaft. One of the over-men had kept a diary of events. It told how some had succ.u.mbed to the fatal atmosphere before others, and how, in the depths of the mine, a prayer-meeting had been held, and ”Brother Tibbs” had ”exhorted” his fellow-sufferers. There was something n.o.ble in this peaceful ending of a life of toil and danger. It affected the whole country profoundly. It drew from the Queen, who herself had been but a few weeks a widow, a letter of sympathy which touched the heart of the nation. A subscription was raised for the widows and orphans on so liberal a scale that all their wants were more than provided for. I had myself the pleasure of starting a subscription for Coulson and his heroic fellow-workers in the shaft, which realised a handsome sum; and I was present in the Town Hall at Newcastle when they were decorated with the medals they deserved so well.

Incidentally, this great disaster affected my own career. My accounts, written at the pit mouth from day to day, had been widely quoted and read throughout the country, and it was desired that I should reprint them.

They were accordingly republished for the benefit of the fund raised for the sinkers, and had a large sale. As my name appeared on the reprint, it gave me a certain pa.s.sing renown in journalistic circles, and materially aided me in my future professional life.

Charles d.i.c.kens, as I have already mentioned, came to Newcastle to read from his works during my reporters.h.i.+p on the _Journal_. I was, of course, an enthusiastic admirer of his, though, as I have said, Thackeray was my chief hero as a novelist. I have already spoken of the boyish eulogium which I wrote upon d.i.c.kens in antic.i.p.ation of his visit.

The evening of his first reading was marked by an incident which nearly cut short my career. The hall where he was to read was full to the door when I arrived. With three ladies--who, like myself, had come too late--I was in danger of being excluded. A form was, however, brought in, and placed directly beneath the platform, so close to it that we had to incline our heads at an uncomfortable angle in order to see the reader's face. Suddenly, before the reading had proceeded very far, the heavy proscenium, which d.i.c.kens always carried about with him for the purpose of his readings, fell with a crash over me and the three ladies on the form. We were so near that the top of the proscenium happily fell beyond us, and we escaped with a severe fright. Years afterwards I was amused to read, in one of the published letters of d.i.c.kens to his sister-in-law, an account of this accident, in which the novelist told how his gasman had said afterwards: ”The master stood it like a brick.” But it was not upon the master, but upon me and the three ladies that that terrible proscenium suddenly descended.

CHAPTER IV.

FROM REPORTER TO EDITOR.

First Visit to London--The Capital in 1862--Acquaintance with Sothern--Bursting of the Bradfield Reservoir--Attendance at Public Executions and at Floggings--a.s.suming the Editors.h.i.+p of the _Preston Guardian_--Political and Literary Influences--Great Speeches by Gladstone and Bright--Bright's Contempt for Palmerston--Robertson Gladstone Defends his Brother--Death of Abraham Lincoln--Meeting with his Granddaughter.

My first visit to London was on the occasion of the opening of the International Exhibition of 1862. The abominable system of Parliamentary trains, which made it necessary that the third-cla.s.s pa.s.senger should rise in the middle of the night if he had to make a journey of any length, was then in force. I had, therefore, to start at five o'clock in the morning in order that I might reach London in the evening. I can still recall some of the emotions of that journey. London was to me the city of all cities--the one great goal of the journalist's ambition. I took short views of life even then, but my secret hope, ever present to my mind, was that I might some day attain a post in connection with the London Press. As the crawling train came into the southern counties--farther south than I had ever been in my life before--I remember counting the milestones on the road, and suffering all the emotions of the youth in ”Locksley Hall” as he draws nearer to the world's central point.

My first impression, when I found myself in the cab that was to carry me to the Brompton Road, where lodgings had been engaged for me, was one of bewilderment at the length of the streets. I had studied a plan of London, and thought from it that I could, in case of need, find my way easily on foot from King's Cross to Brompton. Now I discovered, to my dismay, that streets which had seemed no longer than those with which I was familiar at Newcastle stretched to a length that was apparently interminable; whilst instead of one unbroken thoroughfare I was rattled in my cab through squares and streets innumerable, the names of none of which had I been able to read upon my plan. My next impression was one of delight at the fidelity with which little bits of street scenery had been portrayed by John Leech in _Punch_. In Newcastle we knew nothing of the kitchen area and the portico. I was filled with joy when, in pa.s.sing through the Bloomsbury squares, I recognised, as I thought, the very houses, porticoes, and areas that Leech had made the background for his magnificent flunkeys and neat parlour-maids.

The streets of London were a good deal dingier and dirtier in 1862 than they are to-day, and they were certainly vastly noisier. The wooden pavement was unknown, and the roar of traffic in crowded thoroughfares was positively deafening. The window-boxes filled with the flowers that are now so common and so pretty a feature of the London summer were rare, as also were the coloured awnings and outside blinds now almost universal in the better-cla.s.s of thoroughfares. Hyde Park was untidy and neglected, flower-beds being practically unknown. The fine open s.p.a.ce at Hyde Park Corner did not exist, and Piccadilly Circus was a circus really, and one of very narrow extent. But though far from possessing the magnificence of which it can now boast, London forty years ago had certain advantages over the city of to-day. There were no enormous piles of flats shutting out air and light from the streets, where both are so much needed. Few of the houses were more than four storeys in height, and the irregular architecture which then prevailed in Piccadilly--that most delightful of all the streets of the world--added to its attractiveness. But I must not be led into a digression upon London, a city so great and wonderful that a volume might easily be filled with the story of the a.s.sociations it holds in my memory.

On the day after my arrival in town I was present at the State Opening of the Great Exhibition of 1862, the second--and apparently the last--of the international exhibitions held in London. Its interest was sensibly diminished by the fact that, in consequence of the death of the Prince Consort, neither the Queen nor any member of her family was present. The Duke of Cambridge, then in the prime of his manhood, took the leading part in the ceremony, and he had as his supporters Prince Frederick of Prussia, afterwards the Emperor Frederick, and the Prince of Hesse. We were not so clever in those days at arranging spectacles as we have since become, and, shortly before the hour fixed for the opening ceremony, a good deal of confusion still reigned upon the das set apart for the official notabilities. I was amused to see Lord Granville, who was, if I remember aright, chairman of the Royal Commissioners, broom in hand, vigorously sweeping the carpet in front of the State chairs only a few moments before he had to rush off to receive the Duke of Cambridge. My most vivid recollection of the opening ceremony is the singing of Tennyson's fine ode, composed for the occasion. I can still recall the cadence of the first lines as they fell upon my ears.

A visit to the House of Commons, where I remember hearing speeches from Lord Palmerston and Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and where I gazed with longing eyes upon the occupants of the reporters' gallery, fills up my memories of this first sight of London. I might, indeed, have included in them some reference to Sothern, the actor, who was then at the height of his glory in the famous part of Lord Dundreary. But it was at Newcastle, not in London, that I actually made Sothern's acquaintance. No actor ever made a single character so famous as this part of Dundreary was made by Sothern. When he came to Newcastle on his first provincial tour I met him, and spent some pleasant evenings with him after the play. He was a man of refined speech and good social gifts. His besetting weakness, as I learned even then, was that addiction to practical jokes which, on more than one occasion in his subsequent career, involved him in unpleasant situations. One of his favourite tricks was to select some portly and self-important gentleman whom he saw pa.s.sing along Piccadilly or Oxford Street, and, rus.h.i.+ng up to him, to claim him as his dearly loved but long-lost uncle. The more strenuously the victim denied the relations.h.i.+p, the more eloquently pathetic and indignant became Sothern. A crowd always collected quickly, and more than once the police were summoned to relieve the putative uncle from the presence of his unwelcome nephew.

Sothern told me that he was driven nearly mad during the long run of Lord Dundreary--or, rather, _Our American Cousin_, as the play was named--at the Haymarket. He found it almost impossible to repeat his own jokes before a house in which he invariably recognised many familiar faces. He was constantly driven to vary his ”gag,” in order to amuse these veterans of the theatre, and it was in a large measure to escape from them that he made his provincial tour. In one of his conversations on the stage with the fair Georgina, who was endeavouring to entrap him into marriage, he used sometimes, at the moment when the lady thought that he was about to propose, to put a question of a very different kind: ”Can you wag your left ear?” I asked him one day what had made him invent so ridiculous a question as this. ”Because I _can_ wag my left ear,”

was his prompt response, and straightway I saw the organ in question flapping about like a sail in a breeze. The Theatre Royal at Newcastle in those days was under the management of Mr. E. D. Davis, a well-known figure in the provincial theatrical world. It was before the days of touring companies, and Mr. Davis was supported by an excellent body of artists, including his brother and his son Alfred, as well as his niece Emily Cross. I went to the theatre in the dignified capacity of dramatic critic; but neither then, nor at any subsequent period of my life, did I fall a victim to that pa.s.sion for the drama to which so many Pressmen succ.u.mb. Indeed, I have a lively recollection of incurring the well-merited reproof of pretty Miss Cross for having engaged in one of the stage boxes in a hot political discussion with another Newcastle journalist, Mr. Joseph Cowen to wit. Yet it was at Newcastle that I had my first and last a.s.sociation with dramatic authors.h.i.+p. One of the Davises had written a play which he had called _Wild Flowers_. He asked me to read the ma.n.u.script, and when I had done so I suggested that it should be ent.i.tled _The Marriage Contract_, an emendation which the author duly accepted.

My term of service on the Newcastle Press came to an end sooner than I had antic.i.p.ated. The chief feature of my reporting experiences in 1863 was the meeting of the British a.s.sociation in my native town. There was keen rivalry between the _Journal_ and the _Chronicle_--Mr.

Cowen's newspaper--with regard to the reporting of all local matters.