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 for been of opinion that the provincial daily papers, if they were properly organised, ht make themselves independent of the London dailies, and prevent the latter fro 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 co East Lancashi+re and Yorkshi+re The _Guardian_ was conducted with spirit and energy, and I had been annoyed to find that it was gradually pushi+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 ireat proers of the _Exaarded the costly efforts that were being made by the _Guardian_ to establish its preeminence in Lancashi+re as a ridiculous waste of money, and plainly intimated that they would never attempt to enter into a competition which, in their opinion, savoured of stark lunacy

Long afterwards I reotiations with the _Exah a lingering decline, finally absorbed by its successful rival, the _Guardian_ Baffled at Manchester, I turned ow Herald_ suffered in Scotland froe froow and laid my proposals before the proprietors and editor of the _Herald_ After so 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 frohly 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 inforuarantee 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 raph 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 so copies of the paper for the purpose of our ” 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 sa It was a bold and audacious innovation in the lish journalism, and I need not say that it was one that was quickly iements for a special report of Parliament, I extended the old London letter of the _Mercury_ by securing for it a number of contributors ere 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 htest until I induced hi part in the London correspondence of the _Mercury_ He was at that time assistant-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 hi 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 hith to fiction, and, as I have said, it brought us into a relationshi+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 beca to be known, but within a year or two frolish novelists, and had becohout 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 alht into contact with him As a friend he scarcely had an equal In all the affairs of life he would ht for it with an energy and enthusias, even on behalf of their own interests At a ti 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 pay hi 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 sorously 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 fashi+on My first dinner with him was at the Pall Mall Club, in Waterloo Place, at the end of 1873 He had another young e to share the entertain man--as, 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 Acadeht, for the man who made the third at that little dinner-party was the late Colin Hunter, ARA

Black lived in those days in a roomy, old-fashi+oned house in Camberwell Grove; and here, in course of ti with hi North-country lady, was, as inal 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 fro creature who plays the chief part in ”A Daughter of Heth,” had for her original Black's first wife I discovered for inal of ”The Whaup,” and when I taxed hi, after dinner at Caether

When we reached the top of the Grove he drew round ”James Drummond,” he said, ”lives there” I wondered who Ja

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 theh, 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 Cahtway 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 littleIn this respect he reminded one of Goldsmith But when he ith a friend, and could open his heart freely, he gave you glimpses of a most beautiful nature, a noble sense of chivalry, and the keenest eye in the world for catching those gleaht that sometimes illuminate even the dullest of the bare realities of life He was always sketching his friends, and ure in his stories; but he did it in such a fashi+on that the person drawn never recognised his portrait He once adure in his literary studio, but I was never able to discover by what character I was supposed to be represented As a rule, he wastheir portraits, for he liked to think the best and say the best of afriendshi+p with hi a es But this particular person was so odious in reality that everybody felt that Black had only done hiive no clue to the identity of the disagreeable eneral reader A few of us knew perfectly as meant, but that was all Unfortunately, the particular story in which this person figured was first published serially in an illustrated azine, and by some extraordinary chance--or reeable inal that was positively startling in its likeness No one who knew hi at once, ”Why, here's a portrait of So-and-so” And yet the likeness was absolutely accidental Black assured reeable man, and had never even seen hi arm of coincidence

I do not knohether Ithese 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 refreshst us will never allow that the shadow of eclipse that now lies upon his literary fa No novelist of his century--alas!

this new century has begun without Willia a wo 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 ads which, in their power of conjuring up before the mind of the reader the scenes they describe, are not surpassed by anything that Ruskin himself ever wrote The fact is that Black's syly 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 Acade you by the ar out theyou to the artist The artists, on their side, held hiarded hi 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 arrange in existence before they received a ht in February, 1874, when seated in ram that tookthat Parliament was to be dissolved i address to the electors of Greenwich, explaining his policy and intentions My infor neas still a profound secret in London, and that in all probability no other newspaper in Yorkshi+re would get possession of it Everybody interested in our political history nos the story of that bolt from the blue It came with absolute unexpectedness, and soues in the Cabinet were taken by surprise I know, at all events, of oneat the time in a country house in Yorkshi+re, and hen the _Leeds Mercury_, with its announce 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 land who kneas about to happen So far as the _Leeds Mercury_ was concerned, this startling step ensured for it a great success No other newspaper in Yorkshi+re--and, if I reland--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 alnal 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 ”harassed 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 classes 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 veheed

Leeds was one of the three-cornered constituencies 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-classes, 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 principal citizen by the coe He was a total abstainer and an ardent advocate of temperance reform, but in the eyes of the fanatical supporters of the Per his adherence to Mr Bruce's measure So, in spite of his character and his public services, they brought out against hidoentleman named Tennant as their second candidate He was athat of a brewer

The fight which folloas the ed 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 Governiven both to the Radical Nonconformists and to the rabid teetotallers The Alliance candidatethe 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 tile 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 Govern 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 Yorkshi+re, and some of these were of special interest At Sheffield a candidate came forward in the extreme Radical interest whose speeches attracted soh they passed unobserved by the larger public beyond This was Mr Joseph Chamberlain, who now made his first attempt to win Parliamentary honours Up to that has both bitter and flippant, not only about his political opponents, but about the older leainst Mr Forster, towards who of almost personal antipathy At Sheffield he made himself conspicuous by his sneers at Mr

Gladstone and alnised 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 mass of the electors, and he conceived also that the besthis seniors in the party of which he was a member was to assail them with a rather coarse invective These methods did not commend themselves to the electors of Sheffield, and Mr Chareat ability, accoreat force of character, and all the world kno his ability and forcefulness have since carried hihest places in political life It is, however, not as a Radical, but as a ures 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 ofthe country before he hi his honesty, I cae part in his political professions It followed that from 1874 onwards the _Leeds Mercury_ was never friendly to Mr

Chaave hilish Radicalism For years I had to suffer because of this attitude towards the Bir on the platforhed fiercely against me because of e in 1885, when the Leeds Liberals swung round to entleman, 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

LetMr 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 h in the succession to Mr Gladstone as leader of the Liberal party When I co 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 Adland were naturally very despondent after the unexpected _debacle_ of 1874 They had believed that the good works of a Governht so much for the public benefit would have been appreciated by the great nedly astonished at the verdict returned by the country They had not taken into account that swing of the pendulue an influence in popular constituencies 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, ere so passionately 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 sorow again” I was helped in co to this conclusion by some words addressed to me by a shrewd old Yorkshi+re Tory, which I have reratefully 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 ins to live than it begins to die Our people are in the full flush of triu 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 forest 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 blareatdevotion for many years, but who had, as I was always conscious, soiven 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 hiainst hiht that, if only he could be got out of the way, there ht possibly be room for themselves upon the top of the mountain In 1868 the representatives of this class 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 so this fact home to hiood reason to repent of his audacity No one as in the House of Commons on the memorable afternoon when Sir William Harcourt tried a fall with Mr Gladstone, and et the scene It was said at the ti 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 chastisement 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 hination of the leadershi+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 theht 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 leadershi+p, no one nauers as his possible successor; and it uers 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 naested, and the suggestion came not from any wire-pullers or clique, but from the body of Liberals as a whole But Mr

Forster's eneh not very numerous, were very bitter, and they at once put forward as the strongest card they could play against Mr Forster the naton was, like Forster hiue 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 Devonshi+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 ap is, of course, always popular with the intriguer who knows that he himself has not yet arrived

A treton I ale had been carried to the end Mr Forster's friends were in earnest, and they coht be called the Moderate party on the Opposition benches But Forster hi from the candidature, and thus prevented an unseeton 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 gentleton to the leadershi+p bitter to those who, like ly advocated the claie of the fact that he had really been defeated by the opposition of the Birue, and of those Radicals ere prepared to sacrifice the larger interests of Liberalism to their own personal antipathies and sectional views

Indeed, it ton to the Liberal leadershi+p the reign of the caucus commenced The dejected Liberals were resolved, if possible, to organise victory, and at Birham men were found ere not only prepared to assist them in the task, but ere quite ready to assuhout the country All the talk that one heard in political circles in those days was of caucuses on the Birham plan, and of the rise of the National Liberal Federation, the existence of which people were just di 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 faham, and subsequently of London, with the authorshi+p of the scheme But I doubt the truth of this I knew Mr

Schnadhorst well, and had a great respect for hiacious, and of reat, nor was he the astute and unscrupulous Machiavelli his opponents believed hiham caucus, which became a model for all other Liberal constituencies, was probably founded by the joint efforts of severalwhom Mr Chamberlain and Mr Powell Williams, as well as Mr Schnadhorst, were to be counted