Part 3 (2/2)

Unfortunately for me, the _Chronicle_ was a wealthy paper, and the _Journal_ a very poor one. I had, therefore, to wage an unequal war with my richer rival. A British a.s.sociation meeting throws a heavy strain upon the newspapers of the town in which it takes place. Half-a-dozen sections meet every day, and all must be reported; whilst there are, in addition, evening meetings and social functions, the story of which must be told from day to day. Sir William Armstrong, then just coming into fame as a maker of guns, though long known to Newcastle as a great mechanical engineer and the inventor of the hydraulic crane, was the president of the meeting. This added to the pride which the people of Newcastle felt in the fact that their town had been chosen for the scene of so distinguished a gathering. In those days local patriotism ran very high in the old town. We were intensely provincial, and our favourite belief was that Newcastle stood unrivalled among the cities of the earth.

When any distinguished stranger came amongst us--as, for example, Mr.

Gladstone, on the occasion to which I have already referred--we washed our face, and put on our best clothes in order to impress the visitor. We had something of the perfervid nature of the Scot in our characters, and rose to extraordinary heights of enthusiasm on very indifferent pretexts.

It followed that when we had so distinguished a body as the British a.s.sociation to receive as our guests, and when we had furnished in one of our own citizens the president of the meeting, we almost went out of our minds in our exultant delight. I do not know if Newcastle is still capable of these transports of enthusiasm. I rather think that the local patriotism which distinguished so many of our cities fifty years ago is now, in these days of incessant intercommunication, merged in the larger patriotism of the nation. Be this as it may, I must explain that my dissertation on the manner in which Newcastle received the British a.s.sociation in 1863 is merely intended to account for the fact that, as a result of that meeting, I suffered from a serious illness, brought on by anxiety and overwork. I found that reporting, when you had to compete with a formidable rival possessing a staff three times as large as your own, was laborious, as well as exciting; and having a desire to attempt literary work upon a higher level, I gave up my position as a reporter, and adopted instead the vocation of a leader-writer.

My last bit of work as a reporter for the _Newcastle Journal_ was in describing the accident which happened at Bradfield, near Sheffield, in the spring of 1864. The dam of the great reservoir from which Sheffield drew its water supply burst, and a torrent of water, many feet in depth, and nearly a quarter of a mile in width, suddenly rushed down a narrow valley, and flooded the lower part of Sheffield. The tragic occurrence was subsequently described by Charles Reade in his novel, ”Put Yourself in His Place.” Reade was not an eye-witness of the scene that was presented after the flood had spent its force, but I can bear testimony to the fact that he described it accurately. Certainly it was a wonderful and terrible sight that was presented when I visited the place a few hours after the bursting of the dam. The streets of Sheffield were ploughed up to the depth of many feet; lamp-posts were twisted like wire, and many houses either stood tottering with one of their sides clean swept away, or lay a mere heap of ruins. Hundreds of lives were lost. A great battle could not have dealt death more freely than did this flood.

Most of the victims were drowned in their beds, and it was a terrible sight to see the long rows of corpses, clad in night-dresses, that were laid out in the public building that had been hastily turned into a mortuary. I think, indeed, the horror of that spectacle surpa.s.sed even that of the scene at Hartley New Pit, when the victims of the accident there were disinterred.

The newspaper reporter has still, in the discharge of his duty, to see many strange and painful things, but he is now spared some of the most trying sights to which he was exposed in my reporting days. Among these, none was so painful and so revolting as a public execution. I attended several executions during my connection with the Newcastle Press, and I was a witness in 1868 of the last public execution in England--that of Barrett, the Fenian, of whom I shall have more to say by-and-by. I am thankful to know that the necessity of attendance at these dreadful scenes is no longer imposed upon the journalist, and I feel a profound pity for those officials who are compelled by an imperative duty to be present at the private strangling of their fellow-creatures. It is true, however, that use hardens the heart and deadens the nerves. I remember how, on the first occasion of witnessing an execution, as I stood trembling at the foot of the scaffold on which the victim was about to appear, I noticed an old reporter, for whom I entertained a great personal respect, pacing up and down beside me, reading the New Testament. In the pa.s.sion of horror and pity that filled my young heart, I concluded that my friend was seeking spiritual comfort in view of the event in which we were about to take part as spectators and recorders. I said something to him about the horror of the act we were shortly to witness. He looked up with a placid smile from his reading, and said gently--for he was essentially a gentle man--”Yes, very sad, very sad; but let us be thankful it isn't raining.” And then he calmly returned to his daily reading of the Word. If even gentle hearts can thus grow callous, what must be the ”moral effect” of an execution upon those who are already brutalised?

Another unpleasant sight which reporters are now spared is the flogging of garrotters. When the Act authorising this punishment was pa.s.sed, provision was made that the representatives of the Press should be present when it was inflicted. More than once I have had to witness these floggings in the course of my ordinary duty. I confess that they did not affect me as they seemed to affect most of my colleagues. An execution, with the violent thrusting of a human soul into the unknown, moved me deeply; but the physical punishment of a ruffian who had himself inflicted atrocious suffering upon some innocent person seemed to be such well-deserved retribution that even the coward's shrieks for mercy made no impression upon my nerves; and yet I have seen reporters who could laugh and joke at an execution faint at the flogging of a garrotter. So differently are human beings const.i.tuted!

At the end of June, 1864, I left my native town, and went to Preston to undertake editorial duties in connection with the _Preston Guardian_--the leading Liberal paper in North Lancas.h.i.+re. It was a custom amongst journalists in those days always to give a farewell entertainment to a brother of the Press when he quitted a town where he had been engaged for any length of time. I was entertained at the usual complimentary dinner, and was made the recipient of a very handsome testimonial. I felt most unfeignedly that I had not deserved it, yet the possession of the gold watch and collection of standard books subscribed for out of the scanty earnings of my colleagues was a real comfort to me when, with a sad heart, I left the sacred shelter of my home and quitted the town in which the whole of my life up to that moment had been spent.

I reached Preston one summer evening as homesick as any lad could have been. I did not know the name of a single person in the town except that of the proprietor of the _Guardian_, Mr. Toulmin. I did not even know the name of an hotel at which to stay for the night. A porter at the railway station told me the name of the chief inn, and thither I repaired with my belongings.

An amusing experience befell me here, which, as it relates to a state of things that is now obsolete, I may recount. On the day after my arrival, having introduced myself at the _Guardian_ office, and taken formal possession of my new post, I returned to my hotel in time for the daily dinner which the waitress had informed me was served at one o'clock. The coffee-room, when I entered it, was filled by commercial travellers, all hovering with hungry looks around the table that had been laid for dinner. They seemed relieved when I, as shy a youth as could anywhere be found, entered the room, and instantly seated themselves at the table. I looked round for some corner in which I might hide myself from what seemed to me to be their almost ferocious gaze, and was filled with alarm when I found that the only seat left vacant was that at the head of the table. Instinctively I shrank from so conspicuous a place, and as I moved away the hungry company seemed to glare at me more fiercely than ever. A waitress approached me, and saying, ”You are president of the day, sir,”

motioned me to the vacant seat at the head of the board. I do not think I was ever more miserable or more frightened in my life than when, under her imperious direction, I took my seat and met the gaze of a dozen hungry men: on the sideboard stood the soup tureens, the waiting-maids beside them, but not a cover was lifted or a motion made, and dead silence filled the room. I sat in blus.h.i.+ng bewilderment, waiting for the dinner to be served. Suddenly, from the other end of the table, a harsh voice issued from the lips of a burly, red-faced man. ”Mr. President, if you are a Christian, you'll perhaps be good enough to say grace, and let us get to our dinner, which we want very badly.” I managed to stammer forth the formula of my childhood, and thought the worst was over. Not a bit of it. No sooner had the soup been audibly consumed than the hated voice from the foot of the table again a.s.sailed me. ”Mr. President, I really don't know what you mean by neglecting your duties in this way, but let me tell you that this is not a company of teetotallers.” ”Ask them what wine they would like,” whispered the waitress behind me, who saw my plight, and who evidently pitied it, for she added, ”Don't let that nasty man at the other end of the table bully you.” But I was incapable of maintaining the deception in which I had been innocently involved, and, taking my courage in both hands, I frankly told the company that I was not a commercial traveller, had never in my life dined at a commercial table, and, as I knew nothing of the usages of such a place, would beg the gentleman at the other end of the table to take upon himself the duties of president. There was a burst of laughter from the majority of the diners, and good-humour was instantly restored. My _vis-a-vis_, who was addressed as ”Mr. Vice,” was, indeed, somewhat grumpy; but I had won the goodwill of the others, and was allowed to look on, a silent spectator, whilst the many mystic rites and usages which distinguished the ”commercial table” of that epoch were duly celebrated.

Strange to say, that was not only my first but my last experience of the kind, and now I imagine that the old customs of the road--the wine-drinking, the speech-making, the toasts, and the graces before and after meat--are all things of the past.

My editorial career at Preston began with a somewhat painful and even dramatic episode. I had returned to the office, after my dinner with the commercial travellers, in order to attend to my duties for the day. The _Guardian_ was published twice a week--on Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day.

This was Tuesday afternoon. The proprietor had informed me that he was already provided with a leading article for Wednesday's publication, and my duties were therefore confined to the sub-editing of the news and the writing of a few editorial paragraphs. Suddenly Mr. Toulmin entered my room, and, without uttering a word, placed a telegram on the desk before me. It consisted of these words, still imprinted on my memory: ”Was.h.i.+ngton Wilkes died suddenly last night while addressing a public meeting.” I knew Mr. Wilkes by name as a Radical journalist of considerable ability, who wrote regularly for the _Morning Star_.

Accordingly I expressed my regret on hearing of his death. ”Yes,” said Mr. Toulmin, bluntly; ”that's all very well, but now you'll have to write the leader for to-morrow, for Wilkes was to have written it.” Under these startling circ.u.mstances I penned my first leading article for the _Preston Guardian_. Though I thus stepped into the shoes of a dead man, I fear that I can hardly have filled them; but this was, on the whole, not to be wondered at.

Mr. Toulmin, my new employer, was a man of marked character. Long before my business connection with him ceased, I learned to regard him with genuine respect and liking, and these feelings I entertained for him to the day of his death. But his somewhat rough exterior was not altogether prepossessing, and when I came to him first as a raw lad, shy, sensitive, and intolerant of manners that were foreign to my own, I must frankly confess that I felt repelled by him. Besides, I quickly discovered that I should have to fight my own battles if I wished to preserve my professional rights and dignity. I had been engaged as editor and sub-editor of the _Guardian_, and as it was my first editors.h.i.+p, it need hardly be said that I valued my position highly. Mr. Toulmin, I subsequently found, had a reputation for getting all he could out of the members of his staff without much regard to the customs of journalism.

Thus, I had scarcely finished the article which would have been written by Was.h.i.+ngton Wilkes but for his sudden death, when Mr. Toulmin, coming into my room, expressed his warm satisfaction at the quickness with which I had turned out my work; then, with an almost paternal smile upon his face, he laid before me some pages of ma.n.u.script, and in an insinuating voice said: ”Would you mind keeping your eye upon this whilst I run over this proof?” In an instant I grasped his meaning. I had been engaged as editor, and he proposed to fill up my spare time by employing me as a proof-reader. For a moment I was almost apoplectic with indignation at what I regarded as an outrage upon my dignity. To this day I am thankful that I controlled my temper, but I am not less thankful that I had the courage--and it required some courage--to say to him, with a smile as insinuating as his own: ”I should have been delighted, but unfortunately I have an engagement out of doors.” And thereupon I left the room, triumphant.

Never again did Mr. Toulmin invite me to a.s.sist him in reading a proof, and long afterwards he made frank admission to me of the fact that this incident proved that I was ”not going to be put upon.” Very soon I found that he was not only a kind-hearted but a very able man. He had begun life, at the age of six, in a cotton factory. The statement to-day is hardly credible, but such is the fact. In those cruel times, when no Lord Ashley had as yet arisen to open the door of the workman's prison-house and set the children free, this poor child had been shut up from six in the morning till six at night in the fetid atmosphere of a cotton-mill.

G.o.d knows what the economic value of such a weakling's labour may have been! One would think that a South Carolina planter would have been wiser than to work his ”stock” at such an age. Be this as it may, my friend had pa.s.sed through this terrible apprentices.h.i.+p to toil--always hungry, always tired; and had not only survived it, but emerged from it a man.

When I knew him he could talk calmly of the horrors of his childhood, but there was an undercurrent of bitterness in his reference to those times which one could understand and respect. He was an ardent and convinced Liberal, and I think that I owe more to his teaching for the character of my own political views than I owe to anybody else.

When I went to Lancas.h.i.+re in 1864 the terrible effects of the cotton famine were everywhere to be seen. History has done justice to the n.o.ble fort.i.tude with which the operatives of Lancas.h.i.+re ”clemmed” (starved) in silence during that awful time. Never shall I forget the pale, pinched faces of the men and women as they walked to and from their daily labour.

The worst of the struggle was over, but hundreds of great mills were still closed, and those which were open only ran half-time. The working cla.s.ses in Lancas.h.i.+re, as in most places, were on the side of the North in the American Civil War, and not even the sufferings which that war caused them, made them abate their opposition to the slave-holding South.

But in Lancas.h.i.+re, as elsewhere, the upper cla.s.ses--with the exception of the few who followed the n.o.ble leaders.h.i.+p of John Bright--were enthusiasts on the side of the South, and, if they had dared, would have urged English intervention on behalf of the Confederate States. There was thus a strong and marked difference of opinion between the upper and the lower cla.s.ses in Lancas.h.i.+re, as elsewhere. The great question in domestic politics was that of Parliamentary reform. Advanced Liberals believed that if only the franchise was enlarged, and the working-man admitted within the pale, Liberal principles and ideas would henceforward triumph permanently in our national politics, and they were, consequently, eager to bring about this great const.i.tutional change. Tories also believed that this would be the effect of the enlargement of the franchise, and they naturally opposed it vehemently. Neither party foresaw that the elements common to human nature everywhere would influence the course of politics just as fully after the working men had been admitted within the pale of the Const.i.tution as before, and that we should find even amongst the lower orders the same differences between Liberals and Conservatives as prevailed in the middle cla.s.s.

The sober Whiggish turn of mind which I had inherited from my father influenced me greatly in those days. Like the rest of the world, I believed that to admit the working cla.s.ses to the franchise would be to give democracy a free rein, and to bring about changes, both social and political, of an extreme kind. Many of the changes then suggested did not seem to me to be wise. For this reason I could not enter as heartily as I might otherwise have done into the demand for Parliamentary reform. To go slowly, I thought, would be to go safely. From this Laodicean frame of mind I was rescued by Mr. Toulmin. It was not only that he could speak of the dark days at the beginning of the century, and of the inequality and injustice which then prevailed under Tory rule in England; he was able also to point out the contrast between the unselfish and heroic conduct of the Lancas.h.i.+re operatives with regard to the American Civil War, and that of their superiors, in whose hands the political destinies of the country rested. He was in the habit of enforcing his broad and sensible arguments on the subject of Parliamentary reform by means of a quaint little diagram, which he was continually presenting to those with whom he engaged in argument. ”Look at this,” he would say, pointing to an inverted pyramid, ”that is the British const.i.tution as it is at present.

Does it not strike you as being rather top-heavy, and not unlikely to topple over in a storm? Now look at this,” and he placed the pyramid on its proper base. ”That is what I want to see, and you'll agree with me it's a great deal safer than the other way.” I thought of Tennyson's words: ”Broad-based upon her people's will,” and felt that there was more in the rude little diagram than in many subtle and learned arguments.

It was not only from my intercourse with Mr. Toulmin that I derived mental profit in those days. I was always a rapid worker, and I speedily found that two days and a half in each week sufficed to enable me to discharge my duties at the _Guardian_ office. The ample leisure which I thus enjoyed I devoted to reading, and in my lonely lodgings I spent hours each day in study. As I look back upon that time I feel again stealing over me like a vivifying flood the influence of Carlyle, under the spell of whose teaching and inspiration I then practically came for the first time. The companions of my solitude in those days were at least not ign.o.ble ones. Carlyle, Browning--not yet the victim of the Browning Society--Thackeray, and most of our great historians, were always by my side, and my mind gradually expanded as it absorbed their words and thoughts. In one respect Preston has always seemed to me to be unique among English towns. The centre of the town, if I may commit a bull, lay at a point on its circ.u.mference. The Town Hall, the parish church, the leading business thoroughfare, the railway station, and the _Guardian_ office were all close to the river Ribble, separated from it only by the beautiful Avenham Park, where the residences of the local aristocracy were to be found. All the industrial part of the town, and the houses of the operatives, lay farther away from the river. Across the river there was nothing but open country. My modest lodgings in Regent Street were at the same time within three minutes' walk of the _Guardian_ office and of the old wooden bridge that crossed the Ribble. Thus I could escape almost directly from the town into the open country, and many were the hours I spent in delightful solitary rambles through the lanes and fields of rural Lancas.h.i.+re. It is a good thing for a young man to have time for solitary thinking, and no one who is worth his salt can enjoy the kind of solitude which fell to my lot at Preston without gaining by it. If I went there a boy, I left the place, after my eighteen months of editors.h.i.+p, a man.

Of my newspaper experiences at Preston there is not much to record. Two notable speeches that I heard and reported--although I would not read proofs I was quite willing to oblige Mr. Toulmin by keeping up my practice as a shorthand writer--recur to me. One was a speech made in 1865 by Mr. Gladstone at Manchester. The chief memory it has left with me is of the touching and stately eloquence with which he told his audience that he felt that his own life's work was drawing to a close. Of the men with whom he had entered upon public life, he declared the majority had pa.s.sed away, and that fact reminded him that he could not reasonably expect that his own time could be much further prolonged. No one who heard him could have imagined that thirty years of public service still lay before the speaker. The other speech was still more notable, for it introduced me for the first time to the greatest of all the orators of the nineteenth century, John Bright. Mr. Bright's speech, which was delivered at Blackburn, promised to be of peculiar interest, inasmuch as he made it only a few days after the death of Lord Palmerston, in October, 1865. Everybody was curious to know what the great Liberal would say of the man whose policy he had so often opposed, and with whom he had so often crossed swords on the floor of Parliament. I went to Blackburn as curious as anybody else. Bright made a long speech, and from beginning to end he never mentioned the name of Palmerston. Years afterwards, in a spirit, I fear, slightly tinged with malice, I would sometimes supply that notable omission by naming Palmerston to Mr. Bright. The effect was always the same, and always electrical. ”Palmerston!” he would cry. ”The man who involved us in the crime of the Crimean War!” And then he would break off with an angry toss of his leonine head; but the accents of immeasurable scorn filled the hiatus in his speech.

In after years I became what I still remain--an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Bright's oratory. I hope to say something on a later page on this subject. Here I need only note the fact that his first speech disappointed me. Indeed, men were usually disappointed when they heard him for the first time. They went expecting to hear an orator full of sound and fury. They were amazed by the reserve--one might almost say the repose--of his style. Of gesture he made absolutely no use. He never let his magnificent voice rise above a certain pitch; he never poured out his words in a tumultuous torrent; he was always deliberate and measured in his utterances, and it was only as you grew accustomed to him that you noted those wonderful inflections of the voice which expressed so clearly the emotions of the orator.

In 1865 the country was much agitated on the question of the cattle plague. It was a question that particularly affected Ches.h.i.+re and the rural parts of Lancas.h.i.+re. The action taken by the Government, of which Mr. Gladstone was a prominent member, was strongly opposed by the representatives of the agricultural interest. A county meeting was held at Preston to consider the subject and to denounce the Ministry. If I remember aright, the Earl of Derby, the famous ”Rupert of debate,” was in the chair, and he was surrounded by half the magnates of Lancas.h.i.+re. It was a notable and imposing gathering. One t.i.tled speaker after another got up and abused Ministers, and it was notable that Mr. Gladstone fell in for the hottest measure of abuse. When some resolution was about to be put a man seated in the body of the hall got up and asked if he might say a few words. He was a tall, thick-set person, and his dress was so plain that most of us took him for a farmer, if not a farm-labourer. The meeting, which was enjoying the eloquence of earls and aristocrats of every degree, turned with anger upon the unknown intruder, and shouted ”Name, name!” with all its might. ”My name is Gladstone,” said the stranger, in a clear and powerful voice. Everybody burst into a roar of laughter. It seemed so curious that immediately after listening to unmeasured vituperation of _the_ Gladstone, this humble person who had obtruded himself unexpectedly upon the scene should happen to be of the same name. But before the laughter had subsided Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, who was on the platform, shouted out the explanation of the mystery. ”Mr. Robertson Gladstone, of Liverpool.” It was the brother of the much-hated Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had gone to the meeting to defend his ill.u.s.trious relative; and defend him he did, with so much force and eloquence that he not only made some of the n.o.ble speakers look rather foolish, but convinced one, at least, who heard him that if he had adopted a Parliamentary career, he too might have been one of the great figures of the House of Commons.

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