Part 11 (1/2)

When the associationthe whole of the candidates whose claierly discussed beforehand were swept ruthlessly aside, and nothing was talked of but the proposal of the _Leeds Mercury_ After soentle the candidature of Mr Gladstone was probably written by the editor of the _Mercury_ hi majority that Mr

Gladstone should be one of the two Liberal candidates for Leeds at the next election And yet, at the very time when this proof of his extraordinary hold upon the affections of a great co of Mr Gladstone as a politician who no longer possessed either reputation or influence We, who had to live at a distance froment upon this point

I may interpolate here an account of one of the institutions of Leeds that helped to reconcile me to my sojourn in that city I do so because it has always seemed to me to be a model institution of the kind This was the Conversation Club It consisted of twelve members ere supposed to be more or less representative of the intellectual life of the town Thehis fellow-members once a year in his own house After dinner the host acted as president, and the members present talked upon soement it was impossible that anyone should know beforehand what the subject of conversation on any particular evening would be In this way the preparation of set argu about it of the debating society Speeches, of course, were strictly prohibited We lihtful talk we had after dinner in those Leeds drawing-rooained in conversation I feel that I owe to the club, as I owe to it alsoour limited numbers, and the fact that we met in a provincial toe counted in our e nust the members were William Edward Forster, Sir Edward Baines, the Bishops of Ely (Woodford), Truro (Gott), Chester (Jayne), and Rochester (Talbot); Clifford Allbutt, Regius Professor of Medicine at Cae; Professor--now Sir Arthur--Rucker, who has been secretary of the Royal Society and President of the British association, and is now Principal of the University of London; Professor Thorpe, the chemist and Government analyst, and Dr Edison This is not a bad list for so sive many other names, in addition, of e and attainments In the year 1900 the club celebrated its jubilee, and its members can look back with satisfaction upon the influence which it has had on the social and intellectual life of Leeds Politics and religion were forbidden thereat importance for the developin in our conversations, whilst the intellectual stiotten by at least one grateful member of the club

I may here mention a visit I received from John Morley about this period

He was one of the ood offices of Lord Houghton It is an acquaintanceshi+p that has lasted over a considerable stretch of years, and that has from time to time been of a close and almost confidential character The charhtness of his talk, have been felt and acknowledged by all who have been brought into contact with hi about his literary reputation But I have always felt that neither his fine gifts nor his peculiar teh and tumble of political warfare I have felt this whether I have been, as has often happened, h unison with his opinions, or, as has also occurred at times, directly opposed to him and to his policy He ca undertaken to deliver an address to the Trades Union Congress, he ishful to learn soreat industrial community I made hi He discussed with the the relations of labour and capital, and in their coreat industrial establishments over which they presided At that tiun his editorshi+p of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ I re day, spent in the works of the Kitsons, Morley expressed his conviction that the great captains of industry, like Kitson and Greig, were not only of greater importance to the world than a ed upon much more laborious and responsible tasks I do not know if he still adheres to that opinion

I must now turn back to the course of public events, or at least of those hich I had some personal connection The dissolution of 1880 came very unexpectedly, al, as I was preparing to go down to the office, a ra that the intention to dissolve Parlia Kitson, Mathers, and I had n was already settled On getting the telegrahbour of ether we drove off to Kitson's to take the first steps in the battle The nextthe people of Leeds awoke to discover every dead wall in the town placarded with an address, signed by the president of the Liberal association, announcing the dissolution, and appealing to the electors to support the Liberal candidates, Mr Gladstone and Mr Barran By ten o'clock in the forenoon our co order, and bands of willing workers, e had su despatched to all quarters of the town to begin the indispensable canvass Our opponents were taken coe in all contests, the first start As it began, so it continued All through the great struggle the Conservatives were hopelessly behind us As the enthusiastic Mathers afterwards reht on the top of the and Hoave unalloyed satisfaction, for all through the great fight there was the a tide was on the side of Liberalise of fighting without our chief candidate Not by a word nor a sign did Mr Gladstone, as deep in his own struggle in Midlothian, show that he was conscious that an election in which he was personally concerned was going on in Yorkshi+re Naturally, our opponents made the most of this, and we had constantly tothe electors to vote for a s, and ould never, as a matter of fact, sit as the representative of Leeds in the House of Commons In ordinary times we should undoubtedly have suffered fro true But in 1880 the ti majority of the people of Great Britain seemed to be possessed by an alenerations will find it difficult to understand the extent of the fascination that he seemed, at that period in his career, to exercise over the minds and hearts of a majority of his fellow countrymen Whilst London, and the London press, still refused to admit that he could ever return to power, there was not a public gathering in the provinces at which the mention of his na, so that, at last, men were almost afraid to name hi for the inevitable applause If there was one town in the country where this enthusiasher than in any other, it was Leeds

We had no reason, therefore, to fear the taunts of our opponents We knew that ere being swept on an irresistible current to an assured victory

On the Saturday before the polling-day a greatwas held in the Albert Hall, presided over by Kitson The chief business of thewas to listen to a lecture on Mr Gladstone which I had prepared for the occasion Never before had I addressed so large an audience, nor one possessed by so boundless an enthusias cheers that I delivered ht that I had gone as far as any h for my audience, and the only sounds of dissent I heard hen I ventured mildly to hint that at soreat man had not shown himself to be infallible I dwell upon this state of public feeling because it ought to be understood by those ish to appreciate aright the history of our country at that period I do not think I go too far when I say that the feeling entertained towards Mr Gladstone in 1880 by the greatless than idolatrous Any se of the feeling he had thus aroused It says ns of intoxication or personal exultation, froard his hold upon the masses of the people simply as one of the assets in the cause of which he had made himself the champion

After I had finishedman, then unknown to me, and as described as an Oxford don, was called upon to address theThis was Mr Arthur Acland, subsequently a member of Mr Gladstone's last Cabinet The next day I wrote to Mrs Gladstone--for all direct co her how the contest was going, and predicting that not less than twenty thousand electors would vote for her husband on the polling day My prediction was more than fulfilled, for when the votes were counted it was found that Mr Gladstone's stood at the remarkable number of 24,622, whilst Mr

Barran came next to him with 23,674 Mr W L Jackson (afterwards Chief Secretary for Ireland), the successful Conservative candidate, was more than ten thousand below the number secured by Mr Gladstone It was, indeed, a famous victory; and when I parted from Kitson and Mathers after the declaration of the poll, whilst we all felt more than repaid for the toil and anxiety of months, we admitted, with a certain amount of sadness, that we could never hope to repeat such a success ”Whatever happens, we shall never see 1880 again,” said Kitson, and he spoke truly

Mrs Gladstone, on receipt ofher war, but she said not a word about her husband, nor did we receive a sign or acknowledgered the whole country, and opened the eyes even of the London clubs to Mr Gladstone's real position--whilst the Midlothian contest remained in suspense We heard, indeed, from a private source, that the company assembled with Mr

Gladstone under Lord Rosebery's roof at Dal the Leeds result had arrived But that was all

A few days later Midlothian also spoke, and in turn elected Mr Gladstone as its representative Within an hour of the declaration of the poll in Edinburgh, Kitson received a telegra Leeds for all that it had done It was characteristic of the great man's businesslike habits and careful attention to sram was so worded as to co rate which was then the es A day or two later Mr Gladstone wrote fully and reat services which had been rendered to him and to the Liberal cause by the party in Leeds But his real thanks were given to us more than a year after, when he paid a memorable visit to the town, of which I shall have occasion to speak later

A feeeks afterwards, when the Gladstone Ministry had been for Liberal e the unique and astounding position of supre his fellow countrymen He had, as from the first was anticipated, elected to sit for Midlothian, and there was consequently a vacancy for Leeds All the heart had been taken out of the Tories of the borough by the beating they had received, and their leaders courteously inforht elect We had, it need hardly be said, many applicants for this safe seat, but we--I speak of the recognised leaders of the Liberal party in the town--had fixed upon one man to fill the vacancy This was Edward Baines, who had been, as I have told on a previous page, so scurvily treated by the teetotallers in 1874 The executive coreed by a unanimous vote to propose Mr Baines to the Four Hundred as the new candidate in place of Mr Gladstone But we reckoned without our host, and, above all, we had failed to give due weight to the overwhelth of the Gladstone cult

When we met the Four Hundred, and Mr Baines was duly proposed and seconded in the name of the executive committee, we found that the proposition was but coldly received; nor e long left in doubt as to the reason Soot up and proposed that Mr

Herbert Gladstone should be the Liberal candidate Herbert Gladstone was at that tier to me, and I believe to every other man in the room All that we knew of hiest son, that he enty-five years of age, and that he had just been defeated by Lord George Hamilton in the contest for Middlesex No ested Herbert's name to us, and we had naturally felt that the first claim to the vacant seat lay with our old representative and honoured fellonsla broke away fronised leaders, and adopted with enthusias back, I cannot pretend to regret its decision Though we knew nothing of Herbert Gladstone at the tiet to know hi reat amiability of character The Liberals of Leeds ratified the verdict of the Four Hundred, and he was elected almost by acclamation to be the representative of the town in Parliament--a position which he still holds The incident of his election when personally quite unknown is, however, conclusive as to the extent of his father's influence a the electors of the country

In those days, it is no reflection upon Herbert Gladstone's abilities to say that one of the most powerful influences in his favour was his appearance The young wohest estiood looks, and whenever he appeared in public a crowd of theathered to feast their eyes upon his pleasant and handso my residence at Leeds I always accoh his constituency on the polling day Wherever our carriage stopped, a group of young women flocked round it, and Gladstone had to listen to their so coht to say, that were uniformly favourable In the 1885 election, which took place in November, we had drawn up in front of one of the Liberal clubs, and he had gone inside the building to interview his co women burst forth in their usual praise of his appearance ”Eh, but isn't he good-looking? Shouldn't I like to kiss hi at my elbow ”Would you really?” I said, anxious for soirl repeated her declaration ”Then when he coive hireat amusement, when the candidate reappeared, a pair of buxo girl kissed him heartily The crowd cheered with enthusiasm, all the more because of the blush which spread over the features of the ingenuous candidate thus taken by surprise But kisses, as we learnt long ago, are not to be despised as electioneering weapons

It was in October, 1881, that the Prime Minister came to Leeds to thank us for his election in the previous year As, that I remember, I can call to mind none like this For weeks before the event we of the Liberal Co for it Mr Gladstone was to arrive on the Thursday evening, and to leave on Saturday evening Into the forty-eight hours of his visit a series of engageht well have been devoted On the first evening he was formally welcomed to the tohich had been decorated for the occasion as though for a royal visit Afterwards a large dinner party was held at the residence of his host, Mr (now Sir James) Kitson On the Friday he received an address from the Mayor and Corporation, and another from the Chamber of Coth A little later in the day a greatwas held in the Victoria Hall, at which addresses were presented to him from all the Liberal associations of Yorkshi+re, and he responded in a very fine speech that lasted an hour In the evening he attended a great banquet at which thirteen hundred persons sat down to dinner in a noble hall specially erected for the occasion, whilst the day's work ended with a vast torchlight procession fro-hall in the heart of Leeds to Kitson's residence at Headingley

On the Saturday, after soet, but which involved a certain a, Mr

Gladstone was entertained at luncheon in the Victoria Hall by the Leeds Liberal Club, of which I was the honorary secretary; and after speaking there he went direct to the te erected in the Cloth-hall yard, and there addressed aof e dinner party at the house of Mr Barran, and at ten o'clock departed from Leeds by special train for Hawarden It will be seen that the burden of work laid upon hi the fact that he was already in his seventy-second year Yet his wonderful constitution and untiring energy enabled hiramme not only with apparent ease, but with an exuberant vitality that seeements had been twice as numerous he would have been equal to theh soin the course of a couple of days

As I look back now, after the lapse of many years, upon that memorable time--for the Leeds visit was memorable, not only in Mr Gladstone's career, but in the political history of the country--the two speeches which stand out in greatest prominence are those which he delivered at the banquet on the Friday evening, and theon the Saturday afternoon The banquet narrowly escaped being a terrible fiasco For the first time in my association with thearding the arrange-hall was, of course, very considerable I proposed that it should be uineas for the dinner tickets My friends, on the other hand, prepared an elaborate plan by which the tickets were to be charged at different rates fro to the position of the seats

In this way more money was to be obtained, but it was at the cost of extra labour on the part of the executive, and of a good deal of gru from those local Liberals who had helped us most earnestly in the 1880 election, but who could not afford to pay the very high price demanded for the best seats The allotment of these variously priced seats at the banquet was a heavy task, and it was undertaken by Mathers

Somehow or other he was delayed in his work until two days before the dinner was to take place, and then he was seized with sudden illness

I was called in to take his place, and discovered an alarht, Mr Gladstone was to arrive on Thursday, and his heavy round of engage More than thirty thousand tickets had to be sent out to all parts of the country for the various ht not one ticket had been despatched Moreover, Mathers had prepared so elaborate a scheistration of all the tickets applied for, that a rapid calculation satisfied me that we could not possibly despatch the last of the tickets until at least two days after Mr Gladstone's departure from Leeds This was rather a terrible discovery to be made on the eve of the Pre unravelled I put aside the elaborate and irreproachable volu the tickets at the time when he was seized with illness, and, with the help of a sixpenny memorandum book and half a dozen s the whole of the thirty thousand tickets between ten o'clock on Wednesday night and eight o'clock on ThursdayI never worked harder in my life, but when my as done, and the tickets had all passed beyond my control, I fell into a terrible state of panic I was firmly convinced that in my rapid allotment of seats to the five different orders of banqueters I hadless than a riot when the coned astonishment, my fears proved to be utterly unfounded There was a seat for everybody, and everybody got a seat, though to this day I have a shrewd suspicion that uineas for his place found hiuinea seat But what did itas they succeeded in this they were indifferent to everything else