Part 8 (1/2)

Gladstone's Resignation--Election of his Successor--Birth of the Caucus--The System Described--Its Adoption at Leeds--Its Effect upon the Fortunes of the Liberal Party--The Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation.

It was in the autumn of 1873 that I undertook a formidable task as a journalist. I had long been of opinion that the provincial daily papers, if they were properly organised, might make themselves independent of the London dailies, and prevent the latter from competing with the local press. Having convinced the proprietors of the _Mercury_ of the soundness of my views, I looked out for allies elsewhere. The _Manchester Guardian_ was the chief rival in those days of the _Leeds Mercury_ in the great district comprising East Lancas.h.i.+re and Yorks.h.i.+re. The _Guardian_ was conducted with spirit and energy, and I had been annoyed to find that it was gradually pus.h.i.+ng its way into that which we regarded as the territory of the _Mercury_. I accordingly proposed to the local rival of the _Guardian_, the _Manchester Examiner_, that it should enter into an alliance with the _Leeds Mercury_ for the improvement of both newspapers. My proposal was rejected with great prompt.i.tude by the managers of the _Examiner_. They declared that they regarded the costly efforts that were being made by the _Guardian_ to establish its preeminence in Lancas.h.i.+re as a ridiculous waste of money, and plainly intimated that they would never attempt to enter into a compet.i.tion which, in their opinion, savoured of stark lunacy.

Long afterwards I remembered my negotiations with the _Examiner_ when I saw that newspaper, after pa.s.sing through a lingering decline, finally absorbed by its successful rival, the _Guardian_. Baffled at Manchester, I turned my eyes to another quarter. The _Glasgow Herald_ suffered in Scotland from the spirited management of the _Scotsman_ as we were suffering from the enterprise of the _Manchester Guardian_. I went to Glasgow and laid my proposals before the proprietors and editor of the _Herald_. After some negotiations they were accepted, and a working alliance was established between the _Leeds Mercury_ and the _Glasgow Herald_, which only came to an end in 1900. We established a joint London office, with special wires to Leeds and Glasgow respectively. (I ought to say that the _Herald_, like the _Scotsman_, already had its special wire from London.) We formed a thoroughly efficient editorial staff to do the work of the London office, and we entered into an arrangement with one of the London daily papers by which we secured access to all the information it received. In this way I was able to guarantee the readers of the _Leeds Mercury_ as good a supply of important London news as they could obtain in one of the London dailies. I went further than this, however, and took a step of the wisdom of which I am not now so fully convinced as I was in 1873. This was the installation of a night editor in our office in Fleet Street, whose business it was to secure the earliest copies of the London morning papers and to telegraph from them over our private wires any special items of news that those papers contained, and that were not supplied by the ordinary agencies. The _Times_ was hostile to this new departure, and we had some difficulty in getting copies of the paper for the purpose of our ”morning express,” as we called the new service. The other London dailies did not object. The result was that a great part of each day's issue of the _Leeds Mercury_ contained all the special items of news published in the chief London newspapers of the same morning. It was a bold and audacious innovation in the methods of English journalism, and I need not say that it was one that was quickly imitated by others.

Besides making arrangements for a special report of Parliament, I extended the old London letter of the _Mercury_ by securing for it a number of contributors who were interested in different fields of activity. Hitherto it had only been political. I now gave it a social and literary character as well. It was in carrying out this part of my work that I first became the intimate friend of William Black. I had met him years before, but our friends.h.i.+p was of the slightest until I induced him to take a leading part in the London correspondence of the _Mercury_. He was at that time a.s.sistant-editor of the _Daily News_, but he did not like the work, and was anxious to be relieved of the drudgery of nightly attendance at the office in Bouverie Street. I was able to offer him terms which justified him in relinquis.h.i.+ng his connection with the _Daily News_. He was just beginning his career as a brilliantly successful novelist. ”A Daughter of Heth” had won the favour both of the critics and the public, and this he had followed up with ”The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton.” The arrangement he made with the _Leeds Mercury_ enabled him to devote his time and strength to fiction, and, as I have said, it brought us into a relations.h.i.+p which quickly ripened into one of affectionate intimacy.

There never was a man who stood the sharp test of prosperity better than did Black. When we first became intimate he was just beginning to be known, but within a year or two from that time he had become the most popular of English novelists, and had become famous throughout the civilised world. Obscure or famous, he was just the same. To a rare simplicity of manner he added a chivalrousness of spirit that was almost an inspiration to those who were brought into contact with him. As a friend he scarcely had an equal. In all the affairs of life he would make his friend's cause his own, and fight for it with an energy and enthusiasm that few men are capable of showing, even on behalf of their own interests. At a time, for example, when he was deep in the writing of one of his own greatest novels, he voluntarily undertook the work of a dying friend as a contributor to the Press, in order to ensure the payment of his salary to the end of his life. I remember meeting him once on his way to that friend's room, carrying in one hand a hare and in the other a can containing some soup or other delicacy. He was very particular about his appearance, always smart in his dress, and rigorously observant of the social _convenances_; yet these characteristics did not prevent his walking through the streets of London on a summer afternoon laden in this fas.h.i.+on. My first dinner with him was at the Pall Mall Club, in Waterloo Place, at the end of 1873. He had another young man of our own age to share the entertainment, and behind his back he spoke of this young man--who was, like himself, a Scotsman--with an enthusiastic admiration. He was an artist who had just come up to try his fortune in London, and that fortune, Black declared, could be nothing less than the Academy. He was right, for the man who made the third at that little dinner-party was the late Colin Hunter, A.R.A.

Black lived in those days in a roomy, old-fas.h.i.+oned house in Camberwell Grove; and here, in course of time, I spent many a pleasant evening with him. His second wife, a charming North-country lady, was, as most now know, the original of ”The Princess of Thule,” the heroine of the book of that name, and the portrait was far more true to life than most sketches of heroines drawn from reality are. Black's mother, a kindly old Scotswoman, justly proud of her son, was another inmate of the house. It was from her I learned that Coquette, the bewitching creature who plays the chief part in ”A Daughter of Heth,” had for her original Black's first wife. I discovered for myself that the author was the original of ”The Whaup,” and when I taxed him with it he did not deny the fact. One evening, after dinner at Camberwell Grove, we went for a walk together.

When we reached the top of the Grove he drew my attention to a pleasant little villa standing in its own ground. ”James Drummond,” he said, ”lives there.” I wondered who James Drummond was, but said nothing.

By-and-bye, as we pursued our way, he pointed out other houses, and told me the names of their occupants, all utterly unknown to me. At last I said, ”Who are these people, Black? I don't know one of them.” ”You soon will know them, though, my boy,” he answered. ”Just wait and see if you don't.” And sure enough, when ”Madcap Violet” appeared, all the unknown personages of that night-walk at Camberwell were straightway revealed to me.

Black had an artist's eye and the soul of a poet. In general company he was shy and ill at ease. If he talked at all to strangers, he talked with nervous volubility, and too often perhaps with little meaning. In this respect he reminded one of Goldsmith. But when he was with a friend, and could open his heart freely, he gave you glimpses of a most beautiful nature, a n.o.ble sense of chivalry, and the keenest eye in the world for catching those gleams of spiritual light that sometimes illuminate even the dullest of the bare realities of life. He was always sketching his friends, and making them figure in his stories; but he did it in such a fas.h.i.+on that the person drawn never recognised his portrait. He once admitted that he had made use of me as a lay-figure in his literary studio, but I was never able to discover by what character I was supposed to be represented. As a rule, he was much too kind to his friends when drawing their portraits, for he liked to think the best and say the best of a man. Only once in my long friends.h.i.+p with him did I know him to exercise his power of making a man whom he disliked appear odious in his pages. But this particular person was so odious in reality that everybody felt that Black had only done him justice. Of course, Black was careful to give no clue to the ident.i.ty of the disagreeable man which could be of the slightest use to the general reader. A few of us knew perfectly well who was meant, but that was all. Unfortunately, the particular story in which this person figured was first published serially in an ill.u.s.trated magazine, and by some extraordinary chance--or mischance--the artist, in depicting the disagreeable man, drew a portrait of the actual original that was positively startling in its likeness. No one who knew him opened the magazine without saying at once, ”Why, here's a portrait of So-and-so.” And yet the likeness was absolutely accidental. Black a.s.sured me that the artist knew nothing of the original disagreeable man, and had never even seen him. It was all a freak of the long arm of coincidence.

I do not know whether I may not be boring my readers in telling these little stories about works of fiction which they may never have read or have cared to read. Yet those of us who can recall the refreshment and delight which Black's earlier books spread amongst us will never allow that the shadow of eclipse that now lies upon his literary fame is either deserved or likely to prove lasting. No novelist of his century--alas!

this new century has begun without William Black--had his power of painting a woman's heart and soul, or his deft grace in making the portrait at once real and ideal. I do not wish to overpraise, but the man who could draw Coquette, and Sheila, and Madcap Violet was, I hold, a master in his craft. That he was, in a very literal sense, an artist in words, is universally admitted. There are pa.s.sages in his writings which, in their power of conjuring up before the mind of the reader the scenes they describe, are not surpa.s.sed by anything that Ruskin himself ever wrote. The fact is that Black's sympathies drew him more strongly to art than to literature. If he could have had his way, I think he would rather have been a great painter than a great writer, and certainly he always loved the company of artists better than that of journalists and men of letters. He was most at his ease in the studios of his friends. He was never so full of an eager, effervescent happiness as at the private view at the Academy, when, seizing you by the arm, he would lead you from picture to picture, pointing out the merits of each, and ending up by introducing you to the artist. The artists, on their side, held him in no common esteem, and long regarded him as first of those among the writers of the day who had a real appreciation of and sympathy with art.

I must leave Black for the present, however, and return to Leeds, and the events of 1874. My special wire and London arrangements had not been long in existence before they received a most unexpected justification. One night in February, 1874, when seated in my editor's room, I received over the private wire a telegram that took my breath away. It was from our London sub-editor, announcing that Parliament was to be dissolved immediately, and that Mr. Gladstone had written a long address to the electors of Greenwich, explaining his policy and intentions. My informant added that this startling news was still a profound secret in London, and that in all probability no other newspaper in Yorks.h.i.+re would get possession of it. Everybody interested in our political history now knows the story of that bolt from the blue. It came with absolute unexpectedness, and some even of Mr. Gladstone's own colleagues in the Cabinet were taken by surprise. I know, at all events, of one member of the Ministry who was staying at the time in a country house in Yorks.h.i.+re, and who, when the _Leeds Mercury_, with its announcement of the dissolution and the long address of Mr. Gladstone to the Greenwich electors, was brought to him, insisted that the paper must have been hoaxed. Mr. Gladstone had kept his secret so well that at six o'clock on the evening of the day on which he penned his manifesto there were not twenty people in all England who knew what was about to happen. So far as the _Leeds Mercury_ was concerned, this startling step ensured for it a great success. No other newspaper in Yorks.h.i.+re--and, if I remember rightly, only one other provincial paper in England--was able to announce the great event. The _Mercury_ accompanied the manifesto with a ”double-leaded” leader, and of course made the most of so precious a piece of news. Those who doubted the wisdom of the increased expenditure to which I had induced the proprietors of the paper to consent, doubted no longer.

The General Election which followed immediately upon the dissolution was a short but very bitter contest. It ended in the rout of the Liberal party, a rout almost as signal and complete as that which befel it twenty-one years later, in 1895. Mr. Disraeli, who had been nowhere at the polls in 1868, was suddenly swept into the highest place by those ”hara.s.sed interests” which Mr. Gladstone's great administration had offended by a policy that Disraeli described as one of ”plundering and blundering.” It was, in reality, a policy which preferred the interests of the nation to those of the privileged cla.s.ses. In Leeds, where I had now, for the first time as editor of a daily newspaper, to taste the doubtful joys of a General Election, a fight of extraordinary vehemence was waged.

Leeds was one of the three-cornered const.i.tuencies created by the Reform Bill of 1867, and its representatives at the time of the dissolution were Sir Edward Baines, Mr. Carter, an advanced Radical, very popular with the working-cla.s.ses, and Mr. Wheelhouse, a Conservative barrister. Sir Edward Baines was the only one of the three who had achieved a Parliamentary reputation. He had represented Leeds for fifteen years, and he was recognised as its princ.i.p.al citizen by the community at large. He was a total abstainer and an ardent advocate of temperance reform, but in the eyes of the fanatical supporters of the Permissive Bill he had committed the unpardonable sin in giving his adherence to Mr. Bruce's measure. So, in spite of his character and his public services, they brought out against him one of the agents of the United Kingdom Alliance. The Tories had brought out a local gentleman named Tennant as their second candidate. He was a man of many occupations, including that of a brewer.

The fight which followed was the most bitter in which I have ever been engaged. Practically, Edward Baines stood alone, getting no help from Carter. The Liberal party had fallen to pieces, and Edward Baines, as a supporter of the Government, had to bear the weight of the offence given both to the Radical Nonconformists and to the rabid teetotallers. The Alliance candidate must have known that he had no chance of winning the seat, but he persisted in his opposition to Sir Edward Baines, though the effect of defeating him would be to secure the election of the local brewer. Such are the extremes to which men allow themselves to be carried at times of excitement. The end of the struggle was the defeat of Sir Edward Baines, and the return of Carter, Wheelhouse, and Tennant. What happened in Leeds happened in a great many other places. The teetotallers deliberately wrecked the only Government which was prepared to reform the licensing system. They have had more than a quarter of a century in which to repent their folly.

It was, of course, in the Leeds election that I felt the deepest personal interest; but the _Mercury_ had to take note of all the elections in Yorks.h.i.+re, and some of these were of special interest. At Sheffield a candidate came forward in the extreme Radical interest whose speeches attracted some notice in Yorks.h.i.+re, though they pa.s.sed un.o.bserved by the larger public beyond. This was Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who now made his first attempt to win Parliamentary honours. Up to that moment I had only known Mr. Chamberlain as a young Birmingham politician who was fond of saying things both bitter and flippant, not only about his political opponents, but about the older members of his own party. He had made himself one of the buglemen in the cry raised against Mr. Forster, towards whom he seemed to entertain a feeling of almost personal antipathy. At Sheffield he made himself conspicuous by his sneers at Mr.

Gladstone and almost all the recognised leaders of Liberalism. His own political opinions appeared to be based upon a crude and intolerant Radicalism of the Socialistic type. He evidently believed that promises of material benefits would enable him to win the support of the ma.s.s of the electors, and he conceived also that the best method of displacing his seniors in the party of which he was a member was to a.s.sail them with a rather coa.r.s.e invective. These methods did not commend themselves to the electors of Sheffield, and Mr. Chamberlain was soundly beaten. But he had great ability, accompanied by great force of character, and all the world knows how his ability and forcefulness have since carried him to one of the highest places in political life. It is, however, not as a Radical, but as a militant Tory that he now figures before the world.

I should not have dwelt upon the Sheffield election of 1874 but for the fact that it was this election which made me one of Mr. Chamberlain's political opponents. I did not like the way in which he spoke of men who had been serving the country before he himself was born; and, without questioning his honesty, I came to the conclusion that personal ambition played a large part in his political professions. It followed that from 1874 onwards the _Leeds Mercury_ was never friendly to Mr.

Chamberlain, and never gave him its confidence, even at a time when he was the idol of English Radicalism. For years I had to suffer because of this att.i.tude towards the Birmingham politician; and many a time, when I have been sitting on the platform at a political meeting in Leeds, some speaker has inveighed fiercely against me because of my want of faith in Mr. Chamberlain. I had my revenge in 1885, when the Leeds Liberals swung round to my view of that gentleman, and I was hailed--quite undeservedly--as a prophet because I had always distrusted one whom they now not only distrusted, but disliked and despised.

Let me say, before leaving Mr. Chamberlain, that I still consider that the worst blot upon his political career was the manner in which he treated Mr. Forster. No doubt his dislike of Mr. Forster was in the first instance inspired by his repugnance to the Education Act; but I cannot help saying that in later years it degenerated into what, at any rate, looked like a feeling of antipathy towards the man who, at that time, was regarded as standing high in the succession to Mr. Gladstone as leader of the Liberal party. When I come to deal with the events of 1882, I shall have something to say of the part which Mr. Chamberlain played towards Mr. Forster in the painful events which issued in the latter's withdrawal from Mr. Gladstone's second Administration.

The Liberals of England were naturally very despondent after the unexpected _debacle_ of 1874. They had believed that the good works of a Government which had wrought so much for the public benefit would have been appreciated by the great ma.s.s of the electors, and they were unfeignedly astonished at the verdict returned by the country. They had not taken into account that swing of the pendulum which has so large an influence in popular const.i.tuencies. Nor had they noted the extent to which the unity of the Liberal party, and its consequent strength, had been impaired by the action of advanced sections, who were so pa.s.sionately bent upon carrying the measures in which they were themselves most deeply interested that they did not stop to count the cost of their proceedings on the fortunes of the party as a whole. It took some little time to recover our spirits after that heavy blow, but soon some of us began to feel that in time ”the lopped tree would grow again.” I was helped in coming to this conclusion by some words addressed to me by a shrewd old Yorks.h.i.+re Tory, which I have remembered gratefully ever since. ”I suppose you Liberals really think, as the fools of the Tory newspapers seem to do, that your party is finished for ever and a day. Don't make any such mistake. A Ministry no sooner begins to live than it begins to die. Our people are in the full flush of triumph just now, but already they are beginning to die.” The shrewd good sense of my friend has often struck me since, and many a time I have had occasion to notice how quickly the process of decay sets in after the formation of even the strongest Governments.

The chief event in the history of the Liberal party in the year succeeding its great defeat was the unexpected resignation by Mr.

Gladstone of his post of leader. I am not concerned either to defend or to blame this episode in the career of a very great man whom I followed with enthusiasm and an unfaltering devotion for many years, but who had, as I was always conscious, some of the defects of his qualities, and whose action in a given case could never be predicted with confidence.

There is no doubt that Mr. Gladstone, old Parliamentary hand as he was, even in 1875, had a very real dislike for those personal intrigues and jealousies which play so large a part behind the scenes in our public life. It is a curious fact that for nearly forty years no intrigues were more active, and no jealousies more bitter, than those which had relation to Mr. Gladstone himself. There was always someone ready to intrigue against him. There were always those who thought that, if only he could be got out of the way, there might possibly be room for themselves upon the top of the mountain. In 1868 the representatives of this cla.s.s had protested against his being allowed to become Prime Minister. In 1874 they, or their successors, were still louder in their protests against his being allowed ever again to form an administration. He was a defeated Minister, and some of them took care to bring this fact home to him in as unpleasant a way as possible. One, at least, had good reason to repent of his audacity. No one who was in the House of Commons on the memorable afternoon when Sir William Harcourt tried a fall with Mr. Gladstone, and met with such terrific punishment, is ever likely to forget the scene. It was said at the time by a humorous observer describing the debate that when Sir William--”my own Solicitor-General, I believe,” as Mr. Gladstone said in describing him--had listened to the speech in which his late chief inflicted due chastis.e.m.e.nt upon him, like one of Bret Harte's heroes ”he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.” Mr. Gladstone's resignation of the leaders.h.i.+p at the beginning of 1875 was not, I think, unconnected with the fact that he knew that there were certain active spirits in the Liberal party who, believing themselves fully equal to any position to which they might be called, were unfeignedly anxious that they should have at least a chance of arriving at the front place.

Yet, when Mr. Gladstone did resign the leaders.h.i.+p, no one named any of these intriguers as his possible successor; and it may be noted here that none of the intriguers has even yet secured the reward he coveted. The two names mentioned as those of possible leaders in 1875 were those of Mr. Forster and Lord Hartington. I name them in this order because Mr.

Forster was first suggested, and the suggestion came not from any wire-pullers or clique, but from the body of Liberals as a whole. But Mr.

Forster's enemies on the Opposition benches, though not very numerous, were very bitter, and they at once put forward as the strongest card they could play against Mr. Forster the name of Lord Hartington. Lord Hartington was, like Forster himself, a man of high character, to whom no taint of intrigue attached. He had not offended any section of the party in the way in which Forster had offended the Nonconformists, and, above all, he was the son and heir of the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re. Social influence counts for a great deal in political life in this country, but there was another factor that also counted in favour of Lord Hartington. This was the fact that he could not sit in the House of Commons after his father's death, and that, consequently, if he were chosen, he would be more or less of a stopgap. A stopgap is, of course, always popular with the intriguer who knows that he himself has not yet arrived.

A tremendous effort was made on behalf of Lord Hartington. I am doubtful whether it would have succeeded if the struggle had been carried to the end. Mr. Forster's friends were in earnest, and they comprised the majority of what might be called the Moderate party on the Opposition benches. But Forster himself settled the question by withdrawing from the candidature, and thus prevented an unseemly contest. It is now known that Lord Hartington himself would have taken this course if Forster had not done so. They were two straightforward, honourable rivals, and they acted throughout this business like English gentlemen. That which made the election of Lord Hartington to the leaders.h.i.+p bitter to those who, like myself, had strongly advocated the claims of Mr. Forster, was our knowledge of the fact that he had really been defeated by the opposition of the Birmingham League, and of those Radicals who were prepared to sacrifice the larger interests of Liberalism to their own personal antipathies and sectional views.

Indeed, it may be said that with this election of Lord Hartington to the Liberal leaders.h.i.+p the reign of the caucus commenced. The dejected Liberals were resolved, if possible, to organise victory, and at Birmingham men were found who were not only prepared to a.s.sist them in the task, but who were quite ready to a.s.sume the lead of the Liberal forces throughout the country. All the talk that one heard in political circles in those days was of caucuses on the Birmingham plan, and of the rise of the National Liberal Federation, the existence of which people were just dimly beginning to recognise. I am not writing the history of the National Liberal Federation, and I pretend to no special knowledge on the subject of its origin. Popular opinion credits Mr. Schnadhorst, the famous organiser, of Birmingham, and subsequently of London, with the authors.h.i.+p of the scheme. But I doubt the truth of this. I knew Mr.

Schnadhorst well, and had a great respect for him as a man at once honest, sagacious, and of much simplicity of character. But he was not intellectually great, nor was he the astute and unscrupulous Machiavelli his opponents believed him to be. The Birmingham caucus, which became a model for all other Liberal const.i.tuencies, was probably founded by the joint efforts of several men, among whom Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Powell Williams, as well as Mr. Schnadhorst, were to be counted.

The plan of the caucus was delightfully simple. A const.i.tuency--and those were the days of big const.i.tuencies--was divided into districts, and the Liberals of each district were allotted a certain number of seats on the Central Liberal a.s.sociation. This a.s.sociation generally consisted of so many hundreds of persons, and it thus came to pa.s.s that the a.s.sociation became known as the Huddersfield Two Hundred, the Leeds Four Hundred, the Birmingham Six Hundred, and so on. On a given day in each const.i.tuency, the Liberal electors in the various districts met, and elected their representatives on the Central a.s.sociation. Every known Liberal had a vote, so that the const.i.tution of the central body was, in theory at all events, delightfully democratic. These a.s.sociations were designed to sweep away the old system of Liberal committees, influenced by local magnates, which had prevailed ever since the pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill.

There was a strong belief among the inventors of the caucus that by means of this plan they would secure the predominance of the advanced Radical party. The old privileges of wealth and rank were henceforth to count for nothing in the councils of Liberalism. Every man was to have a vote, not merely for a member of Parliament, but for the local body which was to select candidates, manage local political affairs, and generally determine the character of the Liberalism professed by the const.i.tuency.

Every year the different Hundreds were to elect representatives who were to act as their delegates at the conferences of the National Liberal Federation; and the Federation itself was to be regarded as the legitimate and indisputable representative of the Liberalism of the country as a whole.