Part 3 (1/2)

In subsequent years Mr Gladstone publicly et it

I had nothis memorable speech It was the first occasion on which I had ever heard Mr Gladstone speak, and it is even fresher in ht of hiure, the handsome, open countenance, aseye that inbrown-black hair I have seldoain the beautiful voice, so sonorous, so varied in tone, so eht of this great historic figure was a revelation

He see from another world I suppose that my admiration of Mr Gladstone, which some have considered idolatrous, is to be dated froarded 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, stearess was like that of a conqueror returning fros, the cheering of thousands, acclaie down the coaly streaaily decorated, followed in his wake At different points of the journey his steaht to a standstill, in order that addresses of welcoht be presented to him by different public bodies He ht 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 classes was more than counterbalanced by his hold upon the affections of the people As ere 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 illustrious husband which was one of the sweetest and noblest traits of her character Exactly twenty years later, on October 8th, 1882, I sat beside Mrs Gladstone at dinner at Leeds, where the Pri a series of memorable speeches, and had received a welcome which even surpassed that at Newcastle in 1862 I recalled ouron 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 ofto 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 ht 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 , and has turned out ood 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 thatthe 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

So, and sometimes I had even to write a leader My first atte for the _Journal_ was on a momentous occasion--the death of the Prince Consort This was an event which for a tihtened my duties considerably All public festivities were suspended; s of every kind were put off, and for a space of so 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 tile shaft, so that there was only one possible ress for the le shaft collieries, and on theof Thursday, January 17th, 1862, more than two hundred s by the blocking of this shaft The beaine erected directly over the mouth of the pit broke, and one half of the bea some fifteen tons--fell down the shaft It tore down the sides in its descent, and finally lodged at a point above the sea, with an immense mass 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 enals had been exchanged between the buriedthe forht be able to sustain life in the vitiated ater 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 becaic realities of life For a full week in that bitter January weather I may be said to have lived on the pit platforht I re 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 snatched a few hours' sleep before returning to the post of duty But sohts it was impossible to leave the mouth of the pit even for a ht be reached; so I sat with the doctors, the ues before the fire which gave us a partial warh it did not shi+eld us fro sleet and snohich often effaced my ”copy” more quickly than I wrote it It was a tiotten; 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 froh experience

For a full week the work of re-opening the shaft went on by night and day, and there ives 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 ers 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 , just one week after the accident had happened, ere suddenly aroused by an urgent signal fro far below We thought that the ierly aited till the first ht to the surface

Alas! when he was raised to the mouth of the shaftthat he was one of the sinkers, and was unconscious--apparently, indeed, dead Whilst the doctor in attendance was seeking to restore hiht up, nearly all in the saaged 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 reas--carbon dioxide--had at once ascended fros, and we knew that theto 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 soht yet be alive But it see to certain death, and we never expected to see hiht He did coht with him the terrible story of what he had seen All the two hundred i rows in the workings adjoining the shaft Most had their heads buried in their hands, but here and there friends sat with intertwined ar 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 notof the shaft One of the over-men had kept a diary of events It told how some had succumbed to the fatal atmosphere before others, and how, in the depths of thehad been held, and ”Brother Tibbs” had ”exhorted” his fellow-sufferers There was so of a life of toil and danger It affected the whole country profoundly It drew from the Queen, who herself had been but a feeeks a , a letter of sympathy which touched the heart of the nation A subscription was raised for the s and orphans on so liberal a scale that all their wants werea subscription for Coulson and his heroic felloorkers in the shaft, which realised a handsome sum; and I was present in the Town Hall at Newcastle when they were decorated with the reat disaster affected my own career My accounts, written at the pit hout the country, and it was desired that I should reprint thely republished for the benefit of the fund raised for the sinkers, and had a large sale As averenown in journalistic circles, and materially aided me in my future professional life

Charles dickens, as I have alreadymy reportershi+p on the _Journal_ I was, of course, an enthusiastic adh, as I have said, Thackeray was my chief hero as a novelist I have already spoken of the boyish eulogium which I wrote upon dickens in anticipation 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, likeexcluded A forht in, and placed directly beneath the platform, so close to it that we had to incline our heads at an uncole in order to see the reader's face Suddenly, before the reading had proceeded very far, the heavy proscenium, which dickens always carried about with his, fell with a crash over me and the three ladies on the form We were so near that the top of the prosceniuht Years afterwards I was amused to read, in one of the published letters of dickens 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--assu the Editorshi+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 Abrahahter

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 er should rise in the th, was then in force I had, therefore, to start at five o'clock in theI can still recall some of the emotions of that journey London was to oal of the journalist's ambition I took short views of life even then, but ht 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 intheall 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 ed for th of the streets I had studied a plan of London, and thought from it that I could, in case of need, find 's Cross to Brompton Now I discovered, to er than those hich I was fath that was apparently interhfare I was rattled in h squares and streets innumerable, the names of none of which had I been able to read upon ht at the fidelity hich 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 passing through the Blooht, the very houses, porticoes, and areas that Leech had nificent flunkeys and neat parlour-ier and dirtier in 1862 than they are to-day, and they were certainly vastly noisier The wooden pavehfares was positively deafening The -boxes filled with the flowers that are now so common and so pretty a feature of the London sus and outside blinds now alhfares Hyde Park was untidy and neglected, flower-beds being practically unknown The fine open space at Hyde Park Corner did not exist, and Piccadilly Circus was a circus really, and one of very narrow extent But though far fronificence of which it can now boast, London forty years ago had certain advantages over the city of to-day There were no enorht from the streets, where both are so much needed Few of the houses were ular architecture which then prevailed in Piccadilly--that htful of all the streets of the world--added to its attractiveness But I reat and wonderful that a voluht easily be filled with the story of the associations it holds in my memory

On the day afterof 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 e, then in the pri 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 beco cerened upon the das set apart for the official notabilities I was aht, chairorously sweeping the carpet in front of the State chairs only a few moments before he had to rush off to receive the Duke of Ca cere 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 Co speeches froe Cornewall Lewis, and where I gazed with longing eyes upon the occupants of the reporters' gallery, fills up ht, indeed, have included in them soht of his glory in the famous part of Lord Dundreary But it was at Newcastle, not in London, that I actually le character so famous as this part of Dundreary was made by Sothern When he came to Newcastle on his first provincial tour I s with hiood 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 so along Piccadilly or Oxford Street, and, rushi+ng up to hi-lost uncle The more strenuously the victim denied the relationshi+p, the nant became Sothern A croays collected quickly, and more than once the police were summoned to relieve the putative uncle from the presence of his unwelcome nephew

Sothern toldrun 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 ,” in order to ae measure to escape from them that he made his provincial tour In one of his conversations on the stage with the fair Georgina, as endeavouring to entrap hie, he used soht 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 htway 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 ure 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 Enified capacity of dramatic critic; but neither then, nor at any subsequent period of my life, did I fall a victim to that passion for the drama to which so many Pressmen succu the well-ed 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 association with dramatic authorshi+p One of the Davises had written a play which he had called _Wild Flowers_ He asked ested that it should be entitled _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 anticipated The chief feature ofof the British association 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