Part 13 (1/2)

All the tiiven 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 eed 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 whoin comparison with his brutality in his own house, and especially to his wife” Angry as I was at this charge againstinto 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 fro worshi+pped by the man whose name she bore, all who knew her reat intellectual qualities froby She shared the delicate critical spirit of her brother Matthew; and, above all, she was a delightful woentle, 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 seee was an ideal union, both of brain and heart When I riting his biography, I felt it necessary to say so about the peculiarities of his round 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 htful, especially to woard to her husband She did not see how great was the tribute paid to his sterling qualities by the fact that so h exterior Often when I ith hi's line, ”Do roses stick like burrs?” It was his very angularities that see to him so closely

In the years which followed his retire Liberal, but he claiot over the blow it received when he resigned On the day of his resignation, when he left the Cabinet, Lord Selborne, who syether with hioes, I o too” He was actually on his way to the door when so him threw his arht to a more docile state of mind

That, however, was, as everybody knows, a Cabinet of nations

It was said, when it at last caned 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 neine provided by Chamberlain and Company fermented in the old bottles nobody felt very happy in the presence of the ham He was the reverse of conciliatory, and seenised no superior This would not have mattered so much if his conduct had been more consistent with the traditions of Cabinets Sir Williaue, and one wonders no a Cabinet which contained those twoas it did It was the leakiest Cabinet, so far as its secrets were concerned, that I have known It is a now to recall the fact that at that tiarded Mr Chamberlain as a man with more self-assertion than intellect or force of character, pictured him to itself as the tool of Mr Morley

It was Mr Morley, ere 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 retireedy that iravated 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 ruainst his life, and had pleasantly hinted that they were all a myth, concocted by Forster's friends in his interests When Jaleader of the assassins, told his dreadful story in the witness-box in order to save his neck, the truth was made known, and the world learned that forslander and hostile criticiser 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 compass his death Some of my readers may remember how at the last he only escaped the knives of the assassins by so Dublin for the last tih he hio 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 hiether to Kingstown, and dine at the club there The inducement held out to Forster was that in this way he would have ti on board the steaestion, and thus escaped fro of Invincibles, as the murderers had called themselves, had asse hi for the man whose death-sentence they had pronounced 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 beca of the ainst 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 hih the streets fro loudly No wonder that a Govern caused by the treatmentIt was soon after the exposure of the Invincibles that Forster addressed his constituents in St George's Hall, Bradford A nuallery, and persistently interrupted hiht to a standstill Gathering hiether, he waited for ahis antagonists, cried, in a voice which rang through the hall, ”Since you didn't kill ot to listen toas 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, verythese was Mr Gladstone, who thought that his forypt 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 hiht 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 knoas floundering in those days Even those of us ere 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 oat behind whoelad to hide thenation and contempt by the confused utterances of the Ministry, and by Mr Gladstone's elaborate atteh 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 ot out of hand It was in connection with one of his apologies for the Ministry that Mr Forster charged hi, and hi 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 terues wider than ever There was no truth in the charge ainst 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 , he said to hiht, 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 caland 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 cas, and he was full of theories as to the possibility of Gordon having escaped, after all, fro hireat, powerful h so many years of fierce conflict on his own account, broken down by sorrow for one of whoe, but whose character and fate appealed to all that was best and truest in his nature Looking back upon my years of friendshi+p with Forster, there are no incidents that touch my sympathies rief for Gordon, the great victi 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-countryreatness of their Imperial position, and of the duties which it iue, he put hilish statesmen whose names will be identified with the union of Great Britain and her Colonies in the Eot very little help fro politicians on either side Mr Chah the foundation-stone of the Eave him no aid at all, nor did the active spirits of the Opposition It seearded Forster's strenuous advocacy of Imperial Federation as an attempt on his part to keep his na 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 his the lion's share of the credit for the creation and developreat 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 our and of an enthusiasm that was al life of work before his were not as they seelishman was by noin Switzerland, he had accidentally injured the nail of his great toe, and it was necessary to reht one, and was anxious that cocaine should be used as an anaesthetic, so that hethe actual operation When the time came, however, it was found to be a much more serious matter than Forster had supposed The operation was perforentleman 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 ti 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 no the public with the fact that a new and original force had entered English public life ”I a 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 poith all the zest of a schoolboy who has suddenly been called to sit on the throne of an autocrat He caln 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 ho first advised the 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 Khartoue 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 tiht not to be able to sleep inof all the men who have lost their lives over this business” If at any tiovernment 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 Lu--About Sad Endings--Iinary Characters and Characters Drawn from Life--Visits from William Black and Bret Harte--Black as an After-Dinner Sneaker--How Bret Harte saorth Parsonage, and was Roughly Entreated by a Yorkshi+re Adraph

I now propose to hark back a little in order to bring together soraver political events hich I have been dealing To begin with, Iin 1883 Perhaps my friendshi+p with Willia me to revert to a kind of hich in reatly I had already, as I have said, written one novel, ”The Luazine_, and long since forgotten by everybody, including its author I had begun half-a-dozen different stories at various tiress with them One or two short stories that had appeared in Christazines 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 reat 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 toon the strength ofItthat everybody nowadays either writes a novel or thinks that he or she can do so My own experience taught , as in most descriptions of work, there is a particular knack to be acquired before success can be attained I think I an 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 woot the knack, and if I were ever to write another I have no doubt that I could e the conversation fairly well

Of course, even without the knack a writer reat success; but to do so he must _feel_ his story; that is to say, itthat had actually happened Undoubtedly I had this feeling about ”Gladys Fane,” and this, I iree of success that it attained I re chapter, in which the hero ical death, I was under the influence of as poignant an e by the deathbed of my dearest friend

Great was enerous 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 ees of the book

The sad ending which is so hateful to the ordinary reader is regarded by so popular attention, andbeen used unnecessarily

There may be so their stories to a tragical conclusion, but if such persons exist they must be very bad artists Inwhen I began to write my novel; but week by week, as I wrote, I beca that the dooet away from this morbid conclusion, and to wrench the story into another channel, but I failed utterly in the atteh, as I have said, I did so with keen regret Willia with , 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 fashi+on with the ringing ofnovelist ants his novels to sell, ought carefully to avoid the tragical _denouereat many readers who deliberately refuse to read any book which ends sadly

Therefore, though art , froe mistake Mr Forster came to me at the time when ”Gladys Fane” was in the flush of its first success, and toldto read it ”My wife has read it, and likes it, but I a 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”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 wo the story in a letter, remarked that the further the heroine was reinal, thewas the fact that reed that the most real characters in the book, those that struck theinary creations of hton ”He is the ure in the book Wherever did you meet him?” As a ehis portrait from anybody whom I knew or had heard of Soly described by critics as portraits evidently drawn frole instance had they been so drawn I had i 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 itof the secrets of the workshop of even the humblest literary artist

There is just one other point that I maythe book, I was doing my full work as editor of the _Leeds Mercury_, and was not only editing the paper, but riting for it an average of twelve colu 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 i pen of the typical lady novelist usually attains Before beginning any chapter which had not shaped itself clearly inthe course of which I found that I could beat out the whole narrative, and solve any small problem in the construction that had troubled ood deal of st others, Willia recollections of both visits Black caht, on his way to Scotland It was his first visit to Leeds, and I thought he was entitled to souest Not many writers of distinction had found their way to Leeds whilst I was living there, and it was reeting that would satisfy them that even business coly, I gave a large dinner party at the Liberal Club in Black's honour, and invited to it a nu citizens They were all anxious to couest