Part 13 (1/2)

All the time Forster was absolutely unconscious of having given offence, and when his attention was called to the fact that he had wounded someone by his manner, he was filled with distress. One day an eminent publicist who had cruelly misjudged and misrepresented Forster came to me in the Reform Club and asked if I had ever stayed at Wharfeside. I replied in the affirmative. ”Then,” said my friend, ”you can perhaps tell me if what I hear is true. I am told that, rude and bearish as he is to people who meet him casually, it is nothing in comparison with his brutality in his own house, and especially to his wife.” Angry as I was at this charge against my friend, I could not refrain from bursting into a roar of laughter at its absurdity. No woman that ever lived was treated with a more tender and chivalrous affection and reverence than that which Mrs.

Forster received from her husband. That she was eminently worthy of being wors.h.i.+pped by the man whose name she bore, all who knew her must admit.

She had inherited great intellectual qualities from her father, Dr.

Arnold, of Rugby. She shared the delicate critical spirit of her brother Matthew; and, above all, she was a delightful woman, gentle, refined, full of love for those of her own household, but full also of interest in, and sympathy with, all other men and women. Upon her Forster lavished the love of his whole heart, and to her judgment he deferred more constantly than to that of any other person. It always seemed to me that their marriage was an ideal union, both of brain and heart. When I was writing his biography, I felt it necessary to say something about the peculiarities of his manner. Mrs. Forster objected to what I said, not on the ground that it hurt her feelings to remember those peculiarities, but because, in her opinion, they had never existed. ”I do not understand what you mean by the peculiarities of his manner,” she said to me one day. ”His manner was always delightful, especially to women.” This was the one point on which she was blind with regard to her husband. She did not see how great was the tribute paid to his sterling qualities by the fact that so many men loved him and honoured him in spite of his rough exterior. Often when I was with him I thought of Browning's line, ”Do roses stick like burrs?” It was his very angularities that seemed to make Forster's friends cling to him so closely.

In the years which followed his retirement from office he remained a thorough-going Liberal, but he claimed for himself the right of independent judgment as a member of his own party. The Ministry never got over the blow it received when he resigned. On the day of his resignation, when he left the Cabinet, Lord Selborne, who sympathised altogether with him, rose directly after he did, and said, ”If Forster goes, I must go too.” He was actually on his way to the door when someone--I believe Sir William Harcourt--following him threw his arms round him, and forcibly detained him till he was brought to a more docile state of mind.

That, however, was, as everybody knows, a Cabinet of many resignations.

It was said, when it at last came to an end, that there was no man in it who had not resigned once at least, and that one or two had resigned many times. The fact is that the disruption of the old Liberal party had already begun. The new wine provided by Chamberlain and Company fermented in the old bottles. n.o.body felt very happy in the presence of the member for Birmingham. He was the reverse of conciliatory, and seemed anxious to let everybody know that he recognised no superior. This would not have mattered so much if his conduct had been more consistent with the traditions of Cabinets. Sir William Harcourt was not unversed in intrigue, and one wonders now how a Cabinet which contained those two men held together as long as it did. It was the leakiest Cabinet, so far as its secrets were concerned, that I have known. It is amusing now to recall the fact that at that time an innocent public, which still regarded Mr. Chamberlain as a man with more self-a.s.sertion than intellect or force of character, pictured him to itself as the tool of Mr. Morley.

It was Mr. Morley, we were told, who found the policy and the brains, and Mr. Chamberlain was but the instrument of his will. This is not the only point upon which the public fell into error, but it is one that deserves to be noted.

The ugly wrench which was given to the Ministry by Forster's retirement and the Phoenix Park tragedy that immediately followed it, was aggravated by the revelations at the trial of the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke. Whilst Mr. Forster was still Chief Secretary it was vaguely known that he had been the object of murderous conspiracies.

The _Pall Mall Gazette_ had sneered at the rumours of plots against his life, and had pleasantly hinted that they were all a myth, concocted by Forster's friends in his interests. When James Carey, the infamous ringleader of the a.s.sa.s.sins, told his dreadful story in the witness-box in order to save his neck, the truth was made known, and the world learned that for months Forster, whilst meeting slander and hostile criticism in England, had been in constant danger of murder in Ireland. I have told elsewhere the story of his last week in Dublin, and of the daily attempts that were made by Carey and his confederates to compa.s.s his death. Some of my readers may remember how at the last he only escaped the knives of the a.s.sa.s.sins by something like a miracle. He was leaving Dublin for the last time, though he himself was not aware of the fact, and he had arranged to go from Westland Row Station by a certain train in order to catch the night boat for Holyhead. In the afternoon his work at the Castle was got through rather sooner than had been expected, and his private secretary, Mr. Jephson, suggested to him that instead of waiting for the train they should drive together to Kingstown, and dine at the club there. The inducement held out to Forster was that in this way he would have time for a game of whist before going on board the steamer. He fell in with Jephson's suggestion, and thus escaped from Ireland safely. That very night the whole gang of Invincibles, as the murderers had called themselves, had a.s.sembled at Westland Row for the purpose of killing him. Thrice they searched the train, vainly looking for the man whose death-sentence they had p.r.o.nounced. Mrs. Forster was in one of the carriages, but her husband was not there. ”If he had been,”

said Carey, in telling the story, ”he would not have been alive now.”

When the truth became known, and it was seen that there was nothing of the mythical in the conspiracy against Forster's life, public indignation flamed up afresh at the treatment he had received. When he next came to Leeds, after the trial of the Invincibles, a crowd followed him through the streets from the railway station to the _Mercury_ office, cheering loudly. No wonder that a Government which had to confront the feeling caused by the treatment meted out to Forster was neither very happy nor very strong. It was soon after the exposure of the Invincibles that Forster addressed his const.i.tuents in St. George's Hall, Bradford. A number of Irishmen had got into the gallery, and persistently interrupted him, so that at last his speech was brought to a standstill. Gathering himself together, he waited for a moment's silence, and then, with outstretched arm menacing his antagonists, cried, in a voice which rang through the hall, ”Since you didn't kill me in Ireland, you've got to listen to me here!” The shout that went up from the meeting as a whole acclaimed this sentiment with such emphasis that the Irishmen were reduced to silence, and there was no more trouble. Some persons were, however, very much shocked by Forster's characteristic bluntness. Among these was Mr. Gladstone, who thought that his former colleague had shown very bad taste.

Egypt and Gordon were the topics which I chiefly discussed with Forster during our years of intimacy after 1882. The fate of Gordon, in particular, excited in him a degree of emotion of which few would have thought him capable. More than once I have seen the tears in his eyes when he was speaking of Gordon, surrounded by his savage foes in his desert capital. The Ministry, as everybody knows, was floundering in those days. Even those of us who were the warm friends and admirers of Mr. Gladstone were troubled and perplexed. Some of us knew, indeed, that Mr. Gladstone was not the only, nor the chief, sinner in the matter of Gordon; but he was the scapegoat behind whom those who had a greater responsibility for the mismanagement of the Soudan business were only too glad to hide themselves. Forster was filled with indignation and contempt by the confused utterances of the Ministry, and by Mr. Gladstone's elaborate attempts to prove that though General Gordon was ”hemmed in” he was not surrounded. Poor Mr. Gladstone! It was sad indeed that he should have to undertake this thankless task, and should be compelled to make out a case for a Cabinet which had practically got out of hand. It was in connection with one of his apologies for the Ministry that Mr. Forster charged him with being able to persuade most people of almost anything, and himself of everything. This chance phrase, used in the heat of debate, was treated by Lord Hartington as being a direct imputation upon Mr. Gladstone's sincerity, and Forster was lectured and denounced in terms which made the breach between himself and his old colleagues wider than ever. There was no truth in the charge made against him. He always had, and always expressed, a profound admiration for Gladstone's character, and he had never for a moment doubted his honesty. He felt the violent invective of Lord Hartington keenly. When he met the latter in the lobby on the same evening, he said to him, ”You were very unfair to me to-night, and you knew it, but you had such a d----d bad case that I forgive you.”

Again and again, in those days, Forster would come over to Leeds to see me, to talk about Gordon, or he would ask me to his own house in order to discuss the same topic. The fascination which it had for him was extraordinary. If Gordon had been his own brother he could not have been more deeply interested in his fate. When at last the end of the long tragedy came, and the news reached England of the failure of the expedition to Khartoum, and Gordon's death, Forster was affected by it in the keenest manner. He could hardly speak when he came to me to discuss the fatal tidings, and he was full of theories as to the possibility of Gordon having escaped, after all, from his enemies. Apparently he could not bring himself to accept the truth. It was strange to see this great, powerful man, who had pa.s.sed through so many years of fierce conflict on his own account, broken down by sorrow for one of whom he had comparatively little personal knowledge, but whose character and fate appealed to all that was best and truest in his nature. Looking back upon my years of friends.h.i.+p with Forster, there are no incidents that touch my sympathies more keenly than those which relate to his heartfelt grief for Gordon, the great victim of ministerial muddling and administrative incapacity.

Everybody knows that Forster was the reverse of a Little Englander. In the days when Mr. Chamberlain was still the parochial politician, and the Manchester School a power in the land, Forster never lost an opportunity of trying to inspire his fellow-countrymen with the sense of the greatness of their Imperial position, and of the duties which it imposed upon them. As founder of the Imperial Federation League, he put himself at the head of those English statesmen whose names will be identified with the union of Great Britain and her Colonies in the Empire which we know to-day. He got very little help from the leading politicians on either side. Mr. Chamberlain, who now talks as though the foundation-stone of the Empire was laid in the suburbs of Birmingham, gave him no aid at all, nor did the active spirits of the Opposition. It seemed as though most of his old colleagues and opponents regarded Forster's strenuous advocacy of Imperial Federation as an attempt on his part to keep his name before the public eye. There was one rising young politician, however, who took a different view of Forster's action, and who not only sympathised with his motives, but threw himself into the cause of which he was the leader. This was Lord Rosebery, and to him and to Forster belongs the lion's share of the credit for the creation and development of that sense of Imperial unity which is to-day so great a factor in the life of the Empire.

At that time Forster's friends had no suspicion that his public career was drawing to a close. He was many years younger than Mr. Gladstone, was full of vigour and of an enthusiasm that was almost youthful in its exuberance, and he seemed to have a long life of work before him. But a trivial incident revealed to me the fact that things were not as they seemed, and that this great st.u.r.dy Englishman was by no means in the state of health that men supposed. When walking in Switzerland, he had accidentally injured the nail of his great toe, and it was necessary to remove it. Forster regarded the operation as a slight one, and was anxious that cocaine should be used as an anaesthetic, so that he might, as he said to me, ”have the fun” of witnessing the actual operation. When the time came, however, it was found to be a much more serious matter than Forster had supposed. The operation was performed under chloroform by an eminent surgeon, and this gentleman told me after the operation that he had discovered that Forster's health was in a very unsatisfactory condition. Indeed, this little accident was the beginning of the end, though few at the time suspected the fact.

Before closing this chapter, I may make some further reference to my friend Mr. Stead. The retirement of John Morley from the P_all Mall Gazette_ had led to Mr. Stead's promotion, and he had become the virtual, if not the nominal editor of the paper. He was not long in impressing the public with the fact that a new and original force had entered English public life. ”I am riding on the crest of the wave,” he wrote to me one day, and such was indeed the fact. The influence of the paper which he controlled became for a time almost paramount, and Mr.

Stead revelled in his power with all the zest of a schoolboy who has suddenly been called to sit on the throne of an autocrat. He calmly undertook the direction of the foreign policy of Great Britain, and ordered Ministers to do his bidding with an audacity which would have been absurd but for the fact that Ministers seemed ready to take him at his word. He it was who first advised them to the evil course of sending Gordon to Khartoum. ”Sarawak the Soudan” was the cry he raised, his proposal being that Gordon should be sent to found an empire of his own on the upper Nile. Ministers yielded to his vehemence, and Gordon was sent to Khartoum, with what results everybody knows. Mr. Stead had the courage of his opinions, and he was not in the least disconcerted when he found that his advice had involved the country in the tragical and disastrous expedition for Gordon's relief. Talking to me one day at that time, he said, ”John Morley told me yesterday that I ought not to be able to sleep in my bed at nights for thinking of all the men who have lost their lives over this business.” If at any time in my life I had been inclined to believe in government by newspapers, I should certainly have been cured of that delusion after seeing what a mess even so brilliant a journalist as Stead made of the attempt to control the policy of a nation from an editor's desk.

CHAPTER XVI.

NOVELS AND NOVELISTS.

”The Lumley Entail”--”Gladys Fane”--My Experience in Novel Writing--About Sad Endings--Imaginary Characters and Characters Drawn from Life--Visits from William Black and Bret Harte--Black as an After-Dinner Sneaker--How Bret Harte saw Haworth Parsonage, and was Roughly Entreated by a Yorks.h.i.+re Admirer--A Candid Opinion on the Bronte Monograph.

I now propose to hark back a little in order to bring together some reminiscences and experiences that lie apart from the graver political events with which I have been dealing. To begin with, I made a serious attempt at novel-writing in 1883. Perhaps my friends.h.i.+p with William Black and James Payn had some influence in leading me to revert to a kind of work which in my youth had attracted me greatly. I had already, as I have said, written one novel, ”The Lumley Entail,” published in the _St. James's Magazine_, and long since forgotten by everybody, including its author. I had begun half-a-dozen different stories at various times, but had always failed to make much progress with them. One or two short stories that had appeared in Christmas Numbers of the _Leeds Mercury_ and sundry magazines had not been wholly unsuccessful, and so, after long cogitation, in the year 1883 I wrote ”Gladys Fane: A Story of Two Lives.” Of its merits I cannot speak, but it gave me great pleasure to write it, and it had a friendly reception both from the critics and the public. In this country it had a very large sale, and in the United States a still larger. The strange thing is that here the book still sells, and once a year I receive from the publisher, Mr. Fisher Unwin, a modest sum in payment of the royalties due to me on the sales.

Perhaps I may say something on the strength of my limited experience on the subject of novel-writing. It may seem presumptuous to do so, seeing that everybody nowadays either writes a novel or thinks that he or she can do so. My own experience taught me that in novel-writing, as in most descriptions of work, there is a particular knack to be acquired before success can be attained. I think I must have been absolutely without this knack when I began to write ”Gladys Fane.” I was a good descriptive writer, and could describe either scenery or action sufficiently well, but when I tried my hand at conversation I was utterly at sea. I could not make my men and women talk as men and women do in real life. Before I had finished the story I had got the knack, and if I were ever to write another I have no doubt that I could manage the conversation fairly well.

Of course, even without the knack a writer may achieve, under certain conditions, a great success; but to do so he must _feel_ his story; that is to say, it must be as real to him as if it were something that had actually happened. Undoubtedly I had this feeling about ”Gladys Fane,” and this, I imagine, was the one merit which secured for the book the degree of success that it attained. I remember that when I wrote the closing chapter, in which the hero meets with a tragical death, I was under the influence of as poignant an emotion as I should have experienced if I had been standing by the deathbed of my dearest friend.

Great was my joy, after the story was published, to read a generous review of the book in the _Standard_, in which the reviewer said that he did not envy the man who could read that last chapter with a steady voice and an undimmed eye. I saw that others had been infected by the emotion which almost overwhelmed me as I penned the closing pages of the book.

The sad ending which is so hateful to the ordinary reader is regarded by some reviewers as a cheap device for enlisting popular attention, and many complaints have been made of its having been used unnecessarily.

There may be some writers who deliberately make up their minds to bring their stories to a tragical conclusion, but if such persons exist they must be very bad artists. In my own case I certainly did not contemplate a sad ending when I began to write my novel; but week by week, as I wrote, I became more and more forcibly impressed with the feeling that the doom of my hero was sealed. I tried to get away from this morbid conclusion, and to wrench the story into another channel, but I failed utterly in the attempt, so that at last I had to yield, though, as I have said, I did so with keen regret. William Black, when discussing with me one day the question of the sad ending, said, ”People may say what they like, but I know, as a matter of experience, that a book which ends sorrowfully is always remembered far more vividly than one that winds up in the usual fas.h.i.+on with the ringing of marriage-bells.” This is quite true, but the young novelist who wants his novels to sell, ought carefully to avoid the tragical _denouement_, for there are a great many readers who deliberately refuse to read any book which ends sadly.

Therefore, though art may require such an ending, from the commercial side of literature it is a huge mistake. Mr. Forster came to me at the time when ”Gladys Fane” was in the flush of its first success, and told me with his usual kindly bluntness that he was not going to read it. ”My wife has read it, and likes it, but I am not going to make myself miserable by reading any story that ends sadly. You must write another that I _can_ read.” And it was this chance remark that led to my next essay in fiction, of which more hereafter.

I had one curious experience in writing ”Gladys Fane” that may or may not be common to most novelists. Certain of the characters were founded upon real men and women. I painted no portraits, of course, but I undoubtedly took hints from people whom I knew. My heroine, for example, had a prototype in real life, who served for the first sketch, but as I wrote I made her character develop until she was a wholly different woman from her model. Black, criticising the story in a letter, remarked that the further the heroine was removed from all likeness to the original, the more natural and real she became. But still more striking was the fact that most of my critics agreed that the most real characters in the book, those that struck them as being most lifelike and individual, were purely imaginary creations of my own. ”I like your villain,” wrote Lord Houghton. ”He is the most impressive figure in the book. Wherever did you meet him?” As a matter of fact, I had met him nowhere, and could not charge myself with having taken even a hint in drawing his portrait from anybody whom I knew or had heard of. Some of the minor characters were unhesitatingly described by critics as portraits evidently drawn from life. In no single instance had they been so drawn. I had imagined them simply. It would be interesting to know if this is the experience of other writers of romance. I am bound to speak with modesty and diffidence, because of my very limited experience in this kind of work. I have only touched upon the subject, indeed, because I think it may interest my readers to know something of the secrets of the workshop of even the humblest literary artist.

There is just one other point that I may mention in connection with ”Gladys Fane.” Whilst I was writing the book, I was doing my full work as editor of the _Leeds Mercury_, and was not only editing the paper, but was writing for it an average of twelve columns a week. ”Gladys Fane”

is a long story, containing a hundred and sixty thousand words. I wrote it during my scanty leisure in exactly sixteen weeks, or at the rate of ten thousand words a week. This, I imagine, is a speed which only the unfaltering pen of the typical lady novelist usually attains. Before beginning any chapter which had not shaped itself clearly in my mind, I used to take a long country walk, during the course of which I found that I could beat out the whole narrative, and solve any small problem in the construction that had troubled me.