This revelation of the blunder which "the classes" had committed in their estimate of Lincoln had an even greater effect in softening the asperities which the war left behind it than had the exposure of the egregious miscalculations of English statesmen as to the comparative military strength of North and South. One must not blame Englishmen too severely, however, for their lack of appreciation of Lincoln. It is doubtful if even now he is appreciated at his true worth by Americans themselves. Some years ago I had the privilege of taking in to dinner a charming young lady who was Lincoln's direct descendant. I said to her, "You can hardly understand how pleased I am to have met you. There is scarcely any man whose name is familiar to me whom I honour as I honour the memory of your grandfather." The young lady opened her eyes in innocent amazement, and confessed subsequently that she had been very much surprised by my little speech. "At home they never say anything about grandpapa." Lowell, however, has said something about him which will live for ever in the elegiac poetry of the world.

My stay at Preston came to an end in January, 1866. I had become engaged whilst staying there, and, feeling stronger in health, was anxious to obtain a more active position than the editorship of a newspaper published only twice a week. My wishes were realised when I received an offer from the proprietors of the Leeds Mercury of a position on that journal, which had long been one of the most important of provincial newspapers. I accepted the offer, and left Preston at the beginning of 1866 with feelings of nothing but goodwill and respect for my old chief, Mr. Toulmin.



CHAPTER V.

WORK ON THE LEEDS MERCURY.

My New Duties—Betrothal—The Writing of Leading Articles—The Founder of the Leeds Mercury—Edward Baines the Second—Thomas Blackburn Baines—Patriotic Nonconformists—Another Colliery Explosion: A Story of Heroism—An Abortive Fenian Raid at Chester—Reminiscences of the Prince of Wales's Visits to Yorkshire—Mr. Bright and the Reform Demonstrations of 1866—The Closing Speech at St. James's Hall—The Tribune of the People Vindicates the Queen.

I did not know, when I arrived in Leeds one wintry day in the beginning of 1866, how long my connection with that town was to last, and how closely I was to become associated with its public life. Beyond one or two members of the Mercury staff, I knew nobody in Leeds, so that once more I found myself amongst strangers. But whereas at Preston I had remained a stranger and a wayfarer during the whole period of my sojourn in the place, I had not been long in Leeds before I began to feel that I had found a second home. This was, no doubt, due in part to the fact that old friends of mine were already employed on the Mercury staff, through whom I speedily made a number of acquaintances among the townspeople. But I think that the sense of being at home which I acquired so soon was chiefly due to the character of the inhabitants of Leeds. Whatever may be the case now, at that time the Leeds people were typical representatives of the best characteristics of Yorkshire. They were frank, outspoken, warm-hearted, and hospitable. They were not, indeed, so refined in speech as they might have been, and to the stranger their blunt utterances were at times rather disconcerting. They criticised one's work freely, and never hesitated to say when they did not like it. They had strong prejudices and prepossessions, to both of which they gave free expression. But if they never hesitated to criticise, they were just as ready, when they were pleased, to utter words of praise and encouragement; and it was not long before I had the gratification of finding that my humble efforts on the Leeds Mercury had made for me many friends whom I did not know in the flesh.

Next to the delight of a first appearance in print, there is nothing that brings so much joy to the heart of a young writer as the discovery that something which he has written has won the sympathy and secured for him the friendly approval of some unknown reader. It is in this that there lies, after all, the highest reward of the journalist. No honours, no money, no fame can ever satisfy him as does the knowledge that by means of his pen he is influencing the thoughts, and winning the affections, of some at least of that vast unknown public whom it is his duty to address. A sheet of paper is but a flimsy thing, yet, as a rule, when used by the journalist it cuts off the electric current of sympathy which passes between speaker and auditor when they are visible to each other. The discovery that it may sometimes be a conductor, instead of an obstruction, to the current warms the heart of a young writer in a wonderful fashion, and is the best stimulus that he can have in the pursuit of his profession. To my dying day I shall think of Leeds with pleasure and gratitude, in remembrance of the fact that it was there that I first enjoyed this delightful experience.

My duties on the Leeds Mercury were, in the first instance, both varied and modest. I had to superintend the work of the reporting staff, taking part myself, when necessary, in the reporting of large meetings and important speeches. I had to do all the descriptive work of the journal, and in those days more importance was attached to the work of the descriptive writer than appears to be the case at present. Russell, of the Times, the illustrious "pen of the war," furnished the model for descriptive journalism in the 'sixties. There was none of that slap-dash statement of bare facts, embellished by the more or less impertinent personal impressions and opinions of the reporter, to which we have become accustomed in recent times. It was expected that a descriptive article should be in the nature of an essay, and that it should actually describe, more or less vividly, the scene with which it dealt. If anyone cares to search the files of our leading newspapers between 1860 and 1870, he will come upon some pieces of descriptive writing of astonishing literary merit.

In addition to acting as descriptive writer, I had, when required, to contribute leading articles to the Mercury. At first I did this at rare intervals. It was an innovation for anyone connected with the reporting staff to contribute to the leading columns, and I remember the alarm and indignation of the older members of the staff when they learned that work of this character was to be entrusted to me. But I had practised leader-writing at Preston; I liked it (though my preference was for descriptive writing), and it was not long before I found that I had got into the regular leader-writer's stride. I was barely four-and-twenty, and I had, therefore, a consuming sense of the value of my lucubrations and the importance of my opinions. It is emphatically true, as Sir William Harcourt once wrote to me, that "Youth is the age of Wegotism." When I wielded that magnificent editorial "we," and was able to back up my own crude ideas with all the authority of a great daily newspaper, I felt that I, too, was somebody in the world of affairs, and that though I might live in modest lodgings and possess but narrow means, I was not without a distinct place and influence of my own in the great commonwealth. Such are the illusions of the youthful leader-writer— foolish, perhaps, but not ignoble.

Some of my early leaders pleased the proprietors of the paper, one of whom was also the editor. It was arranged that I was to contribute regularly the chief article for Monday's paper. Now, as I have said, I had become engaged, and my cousin, Miss Kate Thornton, to whom I was betrothed, lived at Stockport, at a distance of more than two hours from Leeds. I had been in the habit of visiting Stockport almost every Saturday, returning to my duties on Monday morning. This leader-writing for Monday's paper threatened to interfere with this arrangement. Fortunately for me, the proprietors of the Mercury—of whom I shall have more to say presently—had a great reverence for Sunday. The Leeds Mercury, indeed, had not become a daily paper until long after this change in its character was expected by the public, simply because an ordinary daily newspaper entailed a certain amount of Sunday work upon those engaged in producing it. It was not until the proprietors had satisfied themselves that it would be possible to produce a Monday morning's newspaper, and at the same time to keep the office closed from midnight on Saturday till midnight on Sunday, that they resolved to publish daily. The arrangement was costly; it was vastly inconvenient to everybody concerned. I am afraid that it did not conduce to the keeping of the Sabbath, seeing that the compositors, who were not allowed to enter the office until midnight of that day, were tempted to spend an hour or two in some public-house before commencing their belated work. But with all its drawbacks, the plan had at least the advantage of keeping the office doors shut for the whole of the twenty-four sacred hours, and thus the appearance of evil, if not the evil itself, was avoided. As a consequence of this system, the greater part of Monday's paper had to be set on Saturday, and the leader, in particular, was always furnished to the printers on that day. So far, therefore, there was nothing to prevent my writing the Monday's leader, and still paying my usual weekly visit to Stockport. All that was necessary was that the editor should give me my subject early enough on Saturday morning.

This, however, was what I could not induce him to do. He was supposed to be at the office shortly after eleven o'clock, and my train for Stockport did not leave until half-past one. If the editor had been punctual, and if he had given me my subject at once, I should have had ample time in which to write my leader. But unfortunately he was not punctual, and too often when he came he was occupied with other business, whilst I hung about miserably counting the minutes until I was summoned to his presence. Then, when at last I had received my subject, or had got leave to write upon some topic suggested by myself, I hurried to the sub-editor's room, and, sitting at a corner of a table upon which I laid my watch, dashed off my precious article at the top of my speed. When I began my practice as a leader-writer I took from an hour and a half to two hours to write my fifteen hundred words; but, under the pressure of that terrible half-past one o'clock train, I gradually improved my pace, until at last, if I took more than an hour in the production of an article, I felt dissatisfied. Mere speed in writing is a very small accomplishment. It is not necessarily a virtue, and it may even be a vice; but it is undoubtedly an accomplishment that I possess. In later days my regular time for turning out an article of the length I have named was from forty to fifty minutes. I could write my leaders with people talking around me, and felt no difficulty in joining in the conversation. I am told that many journalists regard it as incredible that an article of fifteen hundred words could be written in from forty to fifty minutes. All I can say is that it is a fact, and I attribute this speed in writing to the pressure of that half-past one o'clock train on Saturdays in the good old days of my first residence in Leeds.

The story of the Leeds Mercury is an honourable one in the annals of English journalism. It was first established, if I remember aright, in the year 1718. In the editor's room at Leeds a file of the paper is preserved, dating from the year 1727. This file is complete for more than 170 years, with one melancholy exception. In the volume for 1745 the numbers of the paper published during the second Jacobite Rising are omitted. But in spite of this omission, these volumes, extending over so long a period, are of immense value and interest. In its earliest days the Mercury, though published in a provincial town, sought to reproduce in its columns not so much the news of the locality as the humour of the Metropolis; and the very first leading article in the earliest volume preserved at Leeds bears the quaint title, "To the Ladies who affect showing their stockings."

Comparatively early in the Georgian era the Mercury became distinguished for the excellence of its news, both local and general. It was not, of course, a large newspaper in those days, but the four pages of which it consisted were full of meat. There was no descriptive reporting; but what could be more expressive than the announcement of a marriage in such terms as these:—"On Tuesday se'n-night, Squire Brown of Bumpkin Hall was married to Miss Matilda Midas of Halifax, a handsome young lady with ten thousand pounds to her dowry"? We are much more florid nowadays, but by no means so precise. The leader-writer did not spread himself abroad a hundred years ago. Indeed, soon after the Leeds Mercury gave up discussing the amiable weakness that it attributed to ladies with well-turned ankles, it ceased for a time to discuss anything at all. It was only in the beginning of the nineteenth century that it resumed its leading articles. But what leading articles they were! Fine writing and redundancy of style were both discarded, and when the news of Waterloo arrived, the editor's comment upon the great epoch-making victory was expressed in a dozen lines. One sighs at the thought of the miles of "long primer" that would be expended if we had the opportunity of commenting upon such a theme to-day. Yet the twelve-line article in the Leeds Mercury of June, 1815, really said everything that was to the point on the subject with which it dealt.

It was in the year 1800 that the Mercury took that new stand in its history which was to place it in the front rank among English provincial journals. Three or four years earlier a young journeyman printer, named Edward Baines, had tramped across the moors which form the dividing line between Lancashire and Yorkshire, and after walking the whole distance from Preston to Leeds, had found employment in the small printing office in which the Leeds Mercury was produced. Edward Baines, the first, was undoubtedly a man of great ability and remarkable character. Very soon after he began his humble work as a compositor in Leeds he attracted the attention not only of his employer, but of some of the gentry of the town. He was seen to be a person of uncommon intelligence, strict integrity, and distinct political sagacity. The Leeds Mercury, at the close of the eighteenth century, was still a mere news-sheet, professing no opinions of its own, and consequently making no attempt to mould the opinions of its readers. The Whig party in the West Riding felt that they needed an organ of their own to support their cause in that great district. Accordingly, they subscribed funds sufficient to acquire the Mercury and to provide capital for carrying it on, and they placed the paper in the hands of Edward Baines, the young printer who, but a few years previously, had made his first appearance in Yorkshire.

The trust they reposed in Mr. Baines was more than justified. Under his direction the Mercury became in a few years the leading journal in the north of England. The money that had been advanced to him for its purchase he speedily repaid, and by the time that Wellington was dealing his death-blow at French Imperialism, Edward Baines had made himself a power, not only in Leeds but in Yorkshire. I remember being told by very old men that when the news of Waterloo reached him a chair was taken out of his office in Briggate to the street, where an eager crowd had gathered. Mounting upon this chair, Mr. Baines read the despatch announcing the great victory to his enthusiastic fellow townsmen. An earnest Liberal, he fought by the side of the Liberal leaders both with his pen and his tongue during the long struggle for Parliamentary Reform, and he was in due time rewarded by being elected to represent Leeds in the House of Commons. His may fairly be described as an ideal career. He gained friends, influence, wealth, in the town he had entered as a penniless workman. But, better than all, he witnessed the triumph of nearly all the great political and social movements to which he had lent his powerful aid. Having represented his fellow-townsmen in three successive Parliaments, he was honoured at his death, at a ripe age, in 1848, with a public funeral, which people in Leeds still recall as a unique demonstration of gratitude and esteem. In Yorkshire, where his career was better known than elsewhere, the name given to him by the generation that followed him was that of "the English Benjamin Franklin."

It was Mr. Baines's good fortune to leave behind him in his sons men who were worthy to succeed him. His eldest son, Matthew Talbot Baines, went to the Bar. After his father's death he entered Parliament, where he had a distinguished career, becoming eventually a Cabinet Minister under Lord Palmerston. He died at a comparatively early age, and it was well known to the initiated that, if he had not died thus young, it was the intention of the Government to propose him for the Speakership. The second son of the man who really founded the fortunes of the Leeds Mercury was, like his father, called Edward. He, too, attained distinction in the public service. From his youth he was his father's chief assistant in the editorship of the Mercury, and by his enterprise, sagacity, and fine abilities as a journalist he greatly extended the influence and reputation of the paper. As a boy he was present at the so-called Battle of Peterloo—the riot which took place at Manchester in 1819, when a political meeting was being held on the site of the present Free Trade Hall. Young Edward attended the meeting as a reporter for the Mercury. He observed everything that happened, and it was his evidence, given subsequently at Lancaster Assizes, that saved many innocent persons, who had been hunted down by the cruel authorities of the day, from the punishment of transportation.

Edward Baines the second edited the Mercury down to 1859, when, on the death of his brother, he was chosen by his fellow-townsmen to succeed him as their representative in Parliament. He had there a most honourable career. He was, like his father, a Nonconformist, and he was also a strict teetotaller. When he entered the House of Commons there was only one other teetotaller in that body. A generous and cultured man, filled with enthusiasm for the public good, he succeeded during his Parliamentary career in winning the respect of the House, not only for himself personally, but for those Nonconformist and teetotal principles which Society, at that time, held in such low esteem. Strangely enough, this life-long advocate of temperance reform lost his seat in the General Election of 1874 through an outburst of teetotal fanaticism on the part of the advocates of the Permissive Bill. As he refused to vote for that measure, they ran an intemperate temperance advocate named Lees against him, and by doing so gave the seat to a local brewer. On his eightieth birthday, in 1880, he was knighted by Queen Victoria in recognition of his life-long devotion to the public service.

I am not, however, telling the story of the Baineses. I have not even referred to it at such length merely because I feel it to be an honourable and instructive chapter in English local history, but because it throws light upon the peculiar position and authority enjoyed by the Leeds Mercury when I first became connected with it in 1866. At that time, the son of the second Edward Baines, Thomas Blackburn Baines, was editor of the paper, but his father took as active a part in its political direction as was consistent with the performance of his duties in Parliament. While Tom Baines edited the paper, the management was in the hands of his uncle, Frederick Baines, a man for whom I retain to this day something of the affection and respect of a son for a father. The paper, it will be seen, was thus the exclusive possession of the Baines family. It represented the views to which they had clung so tenaciously from the first. It was the great organ of Nonconformity in the English Press, and it was at the same time the advocate of a pronounced, though not an extreme, Liberalism. Its influence in the politics of Yorkshire was great, but no small part of that influence was due to the fact that the character of its conductors was known to the world, and that they were everywhere recognised as high-minded men, to whom journalism was something more than a trade. It was, indeed, a fortunate accident that brought me, whilst still in my youth, into intimate association with so high-minded a family.

They had their peculiarities. I have spoken already of their strict regard for the Sabbath. In other matters also they clung to many of the notions of the Puritans of an older generation. They never allowed the Mercury to publish betting news, or to pander to the national passion for gambling sport in any manner whatever. It would have been a good thing for the Englishman of to-day if, in this respect, their action, instead of being the exception, had been the rule among newspaper proprietors. The love of sport and of betting which has had so bad an effect upon the national character during the last thirty years would have been greatly curbed if other newspaper proprietors had been as mindful of their responsibilities as were the Baineses. As it was, they met with no reward for the heavy sacrifice they made in refusing to cater for the tastes of the sport-loving populace.

Another peculiarity which marked the Mercury in those days, though founded upon equally admirable motives, was not so happy in its character as this exclusion of betting news. Edward Baines the second regarded the theatre from the old Nonconformist point of view. He looked upon it, as so many did, as being an agent for the demoralisation of the young, and he refused to allow any notice of it to appear in the columns of his paper. This naturally excited the anger and ridicule of a large section of the public, who were not insensible to the change that was gradually taking place on the British stage. But no arguments and no ridicule could move the sturdy old Nonconformist. I remember once pleading with him for some relaxation of this rule. He heard all I had to say with courteous attention, but when I had exhausted my stock of arguments he delivered himself as follows: "My dear Mr. Reid, I feel sure that you are quite sincere and conscientious in the views you hold, but you do not know the theatre as I do. I speak from personal experience when I say that both in itself and in its surroundings it is immoral and demoralising." I stared aghast at this utterance. I knew that I went to theatres occasionally, but until then I had believed that Edward Baines had never crossed the threshold of a playhouse. He saw my look of surprise, and continued, "Yes, I am sorry to say that between the years 1819 and 1822 I attended the theatre frequently in London, and I can never forget the shocking immorality I witnessed both on the stage and among the audience." Dear, simple, high-principled, and most scrupulous soul! It was impossible to make way against his sixty-year-old memories.

But I must not omit to mention one characteristic of the proprietors of the Mercury which had a marked influence upon their manner of conducting that paper. This was their intense love of country. Both Edward Baines and his brother Frederick, though they never called themselves patriots, were among the most patriotic men I have ever known. They were Nonconformists and Liberals, and consequently, in the belief of their ignorant political opponents, they ought also to be Little Englanders of the huckster class. Instead of being Little Englanders, they were all through their lives the advocates of a sane but ardent Imperialism. They loved their country, and they believed in it—believed in it not only as the foremost nation of the earth, but as a great instrument for good among the peoples of the world. It followed that, whilst the Mercury advocated advanced Liberal opinions on most domestic questions, it was always in foreign affairs the supporter of an enlightened and reasonable Imperialism, and on any question affecting international policy it resolutely refused to take the mere partisan point of view. I have dwelt at this length upon some of the characteristics of the Leeds Mercury and its proprietors when I first became acquainted with them because they had a great and abiding influence upon my own character and opinions. At Preston I had learned to sympathise with the democracy, and to believe ardently in the cause of political reform. At Leeds I came in contact with a wider and loftier standard of Liberalism, and, whilst retaining my faith in the principles of my party on domestic questions, I added to it a conviction, not less profound, of the duty of advancing the interests of the British Empire throughout the world by every means in my power. In later years, when I was myself the editor of the Leeds Mercury, some of my excellent friends in London—and notably Mr. Stead—were wont to deplore my tendency in favour of Imperialism in foreign affairs, and to attribute it to the influence upon me of the Pall Mall clubs. As a matter of fact, I was led in this direction by the influence of these two estimable Yorkshire Nonconformists.

My first stay in Leeds in the somewhat anomalous position I have described lasted for little more than eighteen months. During that period I found plenty of work to do as a descriptive writer and reporter, and was brought into contact with some notable and interesting persons. Some months after I had become connected with the Mercury, I renewed my acquaintance with the tragical vicissitudes of colliery life. An explosion occurred at the Oaks Pit, near Barnsley, which led to the sacrifice of three hundred lives. Such a loss of life, exceeding that on many an historic battlefield, was in itself terrible, but the circumstances attending the accident at the Oaks Pit added to the grimness of the tragedy. When I reached the colliery a few hours after the explosion occurred I found that some two hundred of the men who had been working in it were known to have been killed, but that many more were believed to be still alive in the distant workings, and that a large rescue party had gone below to recover them. Having sent my last despatch to Leeds, I went to an inn at Barnsley to snatch a few hours of sleep before resuming work at daybreak. In the morning, as I was hastening back to the colliery to learn what progress had been made during the night, I suddenly saw a dense volume of black smoke shoot out of the mouth of the pit, and, rising high in the air, spread in a fan-shaped cloud of enormous size. Immediately afterwards the dull reverberation of an underground explosion fell upon my ear. A rough collier was walking beside me, and when he heard that ominous sound he turned white, and staggered against the wall which lined the road. "God have mercy on us!" he cried, "she's fired again." It was an awful moment. Both I and the pitman knew that, in addition to any survivors of the first explosion, there were twenty or thirty brave men risking their lives in a work of mercy when this new catastrophe took place.

We ran to the pit at our utmost speed, and when we reached the bank we found ourselves in the midst of a distressing scene. The engineers and workmen who had been engaged at the mouth of the pit were completely unnerved by this unexpected disaster, and were weeping like children. The second explosion had driven the "cage" completely out of the shaft, and it hung in a wrecked condition in the gallows-like scaffolding which surmounted the pit. There was thus no means of descending the shaft, even if anyone had been courageous enough to do so. This renewed explosion was, I ought to say, almost unprecedented in the long story of colliery accidents. In a few minutes the wives and friends of the search party below came thronging around us with agonised inquiries as to the safety of those whom they loved. For a time all was confusion and despair; but very quickly the voice of authority was heard, and the pit platform was cleared of all except the small party that remained on duty and myself. It was, as a matter of fact, a place of danger, for, as a second explosion had occurred, it was quite possible that it might be followed by a third. In spite of this risk, it was resolved to communicate, if possible, with the bottom of the shaft.

By order of the engineer in charge, we all lay down at full length on the platform, and one of our number was pushed forward until his head and shoulders protruded over the black chasm of the pit, from which a thin column of smoke was still rising. He was armed with a hammer, and with this he struck one of the metal guiders of the ruined cage, giving the pitman's "jowl" or signal, "three times three, and one over." Lying breathless, we listened, hoping for some response. But there was only the silence of death. Thrice the brave man repeated the signal, but no answering sound came from the depths of the pit, and sadly we came to the conclusion that all had perished. The signal man was dragged back from his post of peril, and we were consulting eagerly as to the next step to be taken, when a third explosion suddenly took place, shaking the platform on which we stood, and covering us with fragments of burning wood. Several of us were slightly hurt, but no one sustained any serious injury. The painful fact that was forced upon us, however, by this new explosion was that nothing could for the present be done to ascertain the fate of the gallant fellows who had apparently been lost in their attempt to rescue their comrades. It was clear that the pit was making gas, and that a fire was burning somewhere in the workings, which in due time might—and, as a matter of fact, did—cause fresh explosions. In these circumstances nothing could be done except to pour water into the pit in the hope of extinguishing the fire. Sorrowfully the band of workers abandoned the pit-heap, leaving only a couple of young mining engineers to keep watch above the scene of death.

In the middle of the following night—repeated explosions having taken place during the day—a remarkable incident occurred. One of the engineers left in charge—named, if I remember aright, Jeffcock—was suddenly startled by hearing a sound proceeding, apparently, from the depths of the pit. He went to the edge of the shaft, and then heard unmistakably, far below him, the "jowl" for which we had listened in vain on the previous morning. It proved that there was someone living in the pit, and Mr. Jeffcock instantly determined to save him if he could. The shaft was a very deep one. The cage which was the ordinary means of descent had, as I have already explained, been destroyed, whilst the pit-sides had been torn by the successive explosions, so that they were in a highly dangerous state. But undaunted by these difficulties and dangers, Jeffcock carried out his heroic task. Summoning assistance, he caused himself to be lowered at the end of a rope to the bottom of the shaft. Heaven only knows what were the terrors and dangers of that descent. He faced them all unflinchingly. At the bottom of the pit he discovered not any member of the search party, for they had all succumbed, but one of the men employed in the colliery, who, by some extraordinary chance, had escaped with his life not only from the original explosion, but from all those which followed it. With immense labour and risk he brought this man, the sole survivor of more than three hundred, to the pit's mouth, and the next night the thoughtless fellow for whom a brave man had risked so much, and whose own escape from death had been almost miraculous, was carousing in a public-house in Barnsley, and pocketing the coppers which hundreds of curious persons paid for the privilege of seeing him.

One evening, in the summer of 1866, when I was on duty in the Mercury office, I received a telegram which Mr. Baines had despatched from the House of Commons half an hour before. It stated that the Home Secretary had just received information that Chester Castle had been attacked by five hundred Fenians from Manchester, and that troops were being despatched from London to meet them. I saw that a train which left Leeds late in the evening would land me at Chester an hour or so after midnight, and I at once made up my mind to take it. When I reached Chester all was quiet at the station, and there were no signs of a Fenian rising. I asked the chief official on duty if he knew anything about the affair. All he could tell me was that during the early hours of the evening the waiting rooms, and even the platform itself, had been filled with crowds of "working men in their Sunday clothes," who had seemed to be waiting for somebody or something. There were many hundreds of them, and their unexplained presence had greatly puzzled the railway officials. Some time before I arrived they had disappeared.

I went out into the streets of the old city. The darkness of the summer night still brooded over me, but there was light enough to see that at every street corner and every open space a crowd was gathered. They were curious crowds. In every case the men were clustered in a circle, their faces all turned towards the centre. They seemed to be listening intently to someone who, in the middle of each little group, was speaking in low but earnest tones. I made my way to one of the small crowds, and, joining it, tried to hear what it was that the speaker in the middle was saying; but instantly a strange thing happened. The crowd fell apart, melted away into the gloom, and I suddenly found myself standing alone. Thrice did I thus attempt to learn what was passing in these mysterious groups, and every time the result was the same. I accosted individuals in the streets, and questioned them as to the meaning of the curious scene, so unusual in the dead of night in a quiet cathedral city. No man answered me, except in some unintelligible syllable. I was not molested, nobody was uncivil, but from no one could I get a word of explanation. Gradually, as morning began to break, the throng became thinner. It was dispersed like the mist by the sunshine.

By four o'clock Chester was apparently deserted by its strange visitors. I went to the castle, and found that all was quiet there. I went to the police office, and here I was told that the men were undoubtedly Fenians, but that they had been guilty of no violence, and had given no excuse to the police to interfere with them. They had apparently come to Chester from every quarter, Liverpool, Manchester, and Stafford having each contributed a contingent. But few had come by rail, most having entered the city on foot. What it all signified the police declared they could not understand, though they had no doubt that it had meant mischief. At five o'clock I returned to the station, and saw two special trains arrive within a few minutes of each other. These brought down a full battalion of the Guards from London. It was a fine sight to see the regiment marching with fixed bayonets from the station to the Castle. When the last man had disappeared within the Castle gates, we knew that, whatever plot had been hatched, it had miscarried.

The next day I gave in the Leeds Mercury a full account of what I had seen at Chester, and stoutly upheld the theory that a Fenian raid, which had somehow or other miscarried, had been intended. But, on the same morning, almost every other newspaper in the United Kingdom published an account of the affair that had been supplied by a Liverpool news agency. In this account the whole matter was turned into ridicule, and the authorities were said to have been hoaxed, or carried away by their own excited imaginations. But I had seen those strange, mysterious groups, planted so thickly in the streets of Chester under the silent night, and I could not accept the explanation of the Liverpool reporter. Still, for the moment his story was that which was generally believed, and I had to submit to the suspicion of having allowed myself to be befooled. Not until more than twelve months later was the truth revealed. It came out in the course of the trial of certain Fenian prisoners that there really had been a plot to seize, not Chester Castle, but the arms it contained. The conspirators knew that the guard in the Castle was very weak. They hoped to get into the place by stratagem, and to seize the contents of the armoury. Then they meant to capture a train, and, having destroyed the telegraph wires, to carry their booty to Holyhead, where they expected to find a steamer which would land them in Ireland. It was about as mad a plan as was ever devised—as mad as John Brown's seizure of the arsenal at Springfield. But desperate men attempt daring deeds. Fortunately for the peace of the realm, the plot against Chester was revealed to the Government in time, and when the little army of Fenians knew that they had been betrayed, they silently dispersed without striking a blow. It was, I confess, a satisfaction to me when the informer—Corydon, if I remember the name aright—confirmed the truth of my interpretation of that strange scene at Chester; and I had the additional satisfaction of feeling that I was one of the few living men who had, with his own eyes, actually seen a hostile army assembled on English soil.

A reporter's life brings him into contact both with tragedy and comedy. I have an amusing recollection of a visit paid by Edward VII., when Prince of Wales, to Upper Teesdale during my stay in Leeds, for the purpose of shooting on the Duke of Cleveland's moors. I travelled in the special train which took the Prince and his party to the little station of Lartington, then the terminus of the line which now connects the east and west coasts. No royal personage had visited that beautiful valley before. It was Sunday, and the whole population seemed to have turned out to see the train, in which the heir to the throne travelled, fly past them. Everywhere it was greeted with the waving of hats and handkerchiefs; but I saw one old man, apparently an agricultural labourer, who was not content with uncovering his head when the train went by. Reverently he sank down upon his knees, and remained in that position until long after we had sped past him. From Lartington the Prince and his party were to drive to the inn at High Force, a dozen or fourteen miles away. I, and a companion, representing a Sheffield newspaper, were to take up our quarters for the night at the little village of Middleton-in-Teesdale, halfway to High Force. A country omnibus had been provided for the Prince and his friends, and in this they drove off. We had to walk, as no vehicle was to be got.

When we had tramped a mile or more on our way, we met two men who were walking quickly towards Lartington. One of them, who from his appearance might have been a village schoolmaster, accosted us politely. "Can you tell me if his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has arrived at Lartington station yet?" "Yes," I replied, "he got there more than half an hour ago." "Then where is he?" said my interlocutor in an injured tone of voice. "He surely cannot be stopping there?" I told him that this was not the case, and that he had already preceded us along that very road. "Impossible!" retorted the schoolmaster. "I've been on this road ever since the morning, and I can assure you that his Royal Highness has not passed this way." "Did you not see a small omnibus pass," I asked, "with some luggage on the roof?" The schoolmaster's companion, who was younger, admitted that he had done so. "Well, then," I continued, "you must have seen a gentleman in a brown felt hat sitting beside the driver, and smoking a cigar. That was the Prince of Wales." "Don't attempt to make a fool of me, you impertinent jackanapes!" roared my schoolmaster friend in a mighty rage, and, setting off again at full speed, he proceeded on his way towards Lartington, in search of the kingly vision he expected to discover.

There was another occasion, during those early Yorkshire days, when I had a little experience connected with the Prince. He and the Princess were about to be received as the guests of a great—a very great—dignitary. It was the first occasion on which this really eminent man had entertained their Royal Highnesses, and he had specially furnished certain rooms in his stately abode for their use. He gave a polite intimation that he would be glad to see one representative of the Press of the United Kingdom, in order that he might show him these apartments, with a view to their being properly described in print. My colleagues of the Yorkshire Press unanimously selected me to represent them on this great occasion, and were good enough to warn me that they would expect at least a column of descriptive matter detailing the glories of the upholstery provided for the Royal apartments.

To my surprise, when I got to the house I was at once brought face to face with the Great Man himself. He was mighty affable, and most desperately anxious that I should do justice to his newly bought furniture. I shall never forget my tour of the bedrooms and boudoirs to which I was expected to do justice. The Great Man pounded the beds to prove their elasticity. He turned down the bedclothes to convince me of the fineness of the linen. He lifted up chairs in order that I might satisfy myself of the solidity of their construction, and he expatiated upon the beauties of curtains, window-hangings, and carpets in periods as sonorous as any with which he had thrilled the House of Lords. I frankly confess that I was astounded, and not a little shocked. I could see that the Great Man was disappointed at my somewhat stolid reception of a florid eloquence of which George Robins, the auctioneer, might have been proud. I do not think, however, he was half so much disappointed as my colleagues were when I returned to them and dictated a dozen lines of severe catalogue as the only "description" I was capable of giving of the furniture of two commonplace bedrooms. I never met the Great Man in after life without seeing him, in my mind's eye, flourishing a chair upside down, or lovingly patting with his mighty hand an embroidered coverlet.

Upon the whole, the most important of the events in which I took part as reporter and descriptive writer during this period at Leeds was the series of Reform demonstrations in which Mr. Bright played the leading part in the autumn of 1866. I remember no public meetings in the course of my life that equalled them in enthusiasm. The Russell administration had been defeated in the previous session on the question of Parliamentary Reform, the defeat having been brought about by the action of the Adullamites, so-called, under the leadership of Lord Grosvenor and Mr. Lowe. John Bright, to use a phrase that has since become historic, "took off his coat" at the end of that session, and went to the country with the avowed determination of raising such a movement in favour of Parliamentary Reform that even the Tory Government, which was now in office under the Premiership of Lord Derby, would be compelled to yield to it. His plan of campaign was as simple as are most great plans. He arranged to address meetings in the chief cities of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Each meeting was to be preceded by a Reform demonstration held on some open piece of ground in or near the city where the meeting was to be held. These demonstrations took place at Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Dublin, and London. I was present at all of them.

Never were such open-air gatherings held in England before. On more than one occasion the attendance exceeded a hundred thousand. The gatherings were without exception orderly and enthusiastic. All the smaller towns and villages near the scene of meeting sent deputations. There were great processions through the streets, headed by bands and political banners. At the place of meeting many different platforms were erected, and resolutions calling upon the Government to introduce a measure of Parliamentary Reform were put simultaneously from all the platforms. Nothing could have been more impressive as a demonstration of national feeling than these wonderful gatherings, so vast, so resolute in their bearing, and yet so orderly. They made even Ministers feel that the time had passed for trifling with the question of Reform. The Government were compelled to yield, and, as everybody knows, the session of 1867 witnessed the passing of the Household Suffrage Act. But by far the most important factor in each of these successive gatherings was the evening meeting that followed the open-air demonstration. At this Mr. Bright was always the chief speaker. I do not think he ever made better speeches than those which he delivered during this autumn of 1866. I have recorded the first occasion on which I heard Bright speak, and have said that his oratory was not so impressive on a first hearing as people might suppose. For my own part, I found that the spell of his magic grew stronger every time that it was renewed, and before I had listened to the last of this wonderful series of orations I had become what I remained to the end—the most enthusiastic of his admirers.

The opening speech of the series was delivered at Birmingham, and it contained one passage that, after all these years, is still stamped upon my memory. It was a brilliant vindication of Mr. Gladstone, as the apostle of Parliamentary Reform, from the sharp attacks made upon him by the Adullamites. Even then the intrigues against Mr. Gladstone's leadership of the Liberal party—intrigues which did not cease until the day of his final retirement nearly thirty years later—had begun. Bright treated them with characteristic contempt. He inveighed with all his force against the men who were going about declaring that Mr. Gladstone was unfit to be the leader of the party, and, with that accent of withering scorn which was one of his most formidable weapons as an orator, he cried, "If they have another leader who can take Mr. Gladstone's place, why do they not let us see him? Where have they been hiding him until now?" That single sentence fell like a hammer upon the heads of the intriguers of the Cave. In face of it they could not continue their absurd attempt to rob Mr. Gladstone of his appointed place.

The most florid and poetical of Bright's Reform speeches was that which he delivered at Glasgow. It consisted, for the most part, of a noble appeal to ministers of religion, and to all interested in the social welfare of the people, to try what a Reformed Parliament could do to remove the burdens laid upon the shoulders of common humanity. "The classes have failed, let us try the nation." The speech closed with a fine peroration in which the speaker, after referring to the effect already produced by the public movement in favour of Reform, declared that he could see "as it were upon the hill-tops of Time, the glimmerings of the dawn of a new and a better day for the country and the people that he loved so well." It was with this peroration still ringing in my ears that I hurried from the meeting to the telegraph office. I was palpitating with excitement under the influence of Bright's magic eloquence. Judge of my astonishment when I heard two worthy citizens of Glasgow who had just left the hall comment upon the speech in these words. First Citizen: "A varra disappointing speech!" Second Citizen: "Ou aye! He just canna speak at all." This extraordinary incident at least bears out what I said as to the disappointing character of Bright's eloquence upon people who listened to it for the first time. A man needed to grow into an appreciation of it. There was, by the way, an amusing incident in connection with the reporting of this Glasgow speech. Bright, as I have said, had referred to the influence of the great popular demonstrations in favour of Reform, and had spoken of them as "those vast gatherings, sublime in their numbers and in their resolution." Some unhappy reporter, by a very slight slip, made him speak of the meetings as sublime in their numbers and their resolutions—a very different matter.

His last Reform speech in 1866 was delivered in London, in St. James's Hall. It was preceded on the previous day by the usual procession through the streets and an open-air demonstration at Lillie Bridge. The poor Londoners were very much alarmed at the prospect of the gathering. The editors of the morning papers opened their respective Balaam boxes and gave the asses a holiday, to borrow a phrase of Christopher North. Innumerable letters were published, declaring that the mob of reformers, led by the wild man from Birmingham, would probably sack the town; and fervent entreaties were addressed to the Government to line the streets with troops for the protection of peaceful and law-abiding householders. The Government, which had received its lesson in Hyde Park in the preceding summer, did nothing of the sort; but I believe that a good many houses and even shops in the West End were actually closed and barricaded by their perturbed and nervous proprietors. There was one notable and significant exception to this rule. Miss—now the Baroness—Burdett-Coutts not only did not close her house in Piccadilly, but assembled a party of friends at it, and, seated in the midst of them in the great bay-window overlooking Piccadilly, saluted in friendly fashion the great army of the unenfranchised as they passed along the road. She was cheered vociferously, and must have felt a thrill of satisfaction at the thought that she was recognised as the worthy representative of that stout old Radical reformer, Sir Francis Burdett. I took up my position to see the procession pass in Pall Mall, opposite the Reform Club. I had never before seen that famous building. It struck me at the time as having a cold and gloomy exterior, yet I gazed upon it with reverence as the home of the most distinguished of the men who espoused the cause of liberty. I little thought, on that dull winter day, how many years I was destined to spend within its walls, or how large a part I was to take in its affairs.

Of course, all the fears of the alarmists were falsified. The only untoward incidents were the raids of the pickpockets upon the crowds. I myself was one of their victims, in a somewhat curious fashion. I was riding with another reporter in a cab at the tail of the procession. The crowd, as we approached Lillie Bridge, was very dense, pressing upon us on all sides. Suddenly a hand was put in at the open window of the cab, and, before I had the presence of mind to grasp the situation, the pin I wore had been removed from my scarf, literally under my very eyes. It was one of the neatest and most impudent robberies I ever saw.

Bright's speech at St. James's Hall was a very fine one. It contained a memorable passage in which he described men dwelling in fancied security on the slopes of a slumbering volcano. He demanded if those who warned them of the peril to which they were exposed were to be accused of being the cause of that peril. It was a brilliant and telling retort upon those who charged him with having stirred up a seditious movement for his own personal ends. But his best speech at St. James's Hall was a brief and unpremeditated utterance at the close of the meeting. Mr. Ayrton, the well-known member for the Tower Hamlets, an advanced Radical, and a man who subsequently made himself notorious as a Minister of the Crown by his aggressive and unconciliatory utterances, was one of the speakers who followed Bright. He referred to the demonstration in front of Miss Burdett-Coutts's house on the previous day, and made some remarks comparing her with the Queen, who was just then in Scotland, by no means to the advantage of the latter. Bright's loyalty, which was strong and real, was outraged by Ayrton's language. In burning words, evidently born of genuine emotion, he repudiated and rebuked the want of respect shown to her Majesty, and declared that any woman, be she the wife of a working man or the queen of a mighty realm, who was capable of showing an intense devotion to the memory of her lost husband was worthy of the respect and reverence of every honest heart. Years afterwards, I have reason to know, that utterance was borne in mind in high quarters. It laid the foundation of the high personal regard and friendship which her Majesty extended to the old tribune of the people when he became a Minister of the Crown.



CHAPTER VI.

LIFE IN LONDON.

Appointed London Correspondent of the Leeds Mercury—My Marriage—Securing Admission to the Reporters' Gallery—Relations between Reporters and Members—Inadequate Accommodation for the Press—Reminiscences of the Clerkenwell Explosion—The Last Public Execution—The Arundel Club—James Macdonell—Robert Donald—James Payn—Mrs. Riddell and the St. James's Magazine—My First Novel—How Sala Cut Short an Anecdote—Disraeli as Leader of the House in 1868—A Personal Encounter with him at Aylesbury—Mr. Gladstone's First Ministry—Bright and Forster—W. E. Baxter—Irish Church Disestablishment Debate in the House of Lords—Mr. Mudford—Bereavement.

In 1867 a change unexpectedly took place in my position. The London representative of the Leeds Mercury, my old friend Mr. Charles Russell, now editor of the Glasgow Herald, retired from his post, and I was appointed to succeed him. In addition to the duties which had been discharged by Mr. Russell, it was arranged that I was to act as London correspondent of the Mercury and to continue to be an occasional contributor of leaders. On September 5th in this year I was married at Cheadle Congregational Church, Cheshire, to my cousin, to whom I had long been engaged, and I at once went to London to spend my honeymoon in the delightful occupation of house-hunting. The London suburbs wore a different aspect in 1867 from that which they now present. In the far west of London, at all events, the reign of the semi-detached villa, with its private garden, was still maintained. There were no lofty "mansions" comprising endless suites for the accommodation of persons of limited means, and the system of a common garden for the residents in a particular street or square was practically unknown outside the central district of the metropolis. Notting Hill, Kensington, Shepherd's Bush, and Hammersmith offered to the man of moderate means the choice among an infinite number of pleasant little villas, each boasting its own garden and lawn secluded from the public eye. My choice fell upon a house of this description in Addison Road North, and there I spent two happy years, the garden, with its fine old tree casting a welcome shade over the lawn, making me forget the fact that I was, at last, an actual dweller in the world's greatest city.

Almost my first business in London was to secure admission to the Reporters' Gallery in the House of Commons. There was an autumn session in that year, 1867, and I was anxious to get access to the Gallery when it began. In order to obtain the coveted Gallery ticket I proffered my gratuitous services as an occasional reporter to the Morning Star. My offer was accepted, and after an interview with Mr. Justin McCarthy, who was then editor of the Star, I was introduced to Mr. Edwards, the chief of the reporting staff, as a new member of that body. Edwards, who was one of the veterans of the Gallery, was a character in his way. He was an Irishman possessed of a delicious brogue, a devout Roman Catholic, intensely proud of the fact that he had a son in the priesthood. His mind was stored with reminiscences of the Gallery in the days when the status of a Parliamentary reporter was hardly recognised even in the House of Commons itself. Like so many of the Gallery men of this time, his world seemed to be limited to the little society of which he was a conspicuous member. Nothing appeared to interest him that lay outside the immediate duties of a Parliamentary reporter. His sole reading seemed to be the reports of debates, his sole pleasure listening to Parliamentary speeches. Many amusing stories were told of him by his colleagues. Not long before I made his acquaintance, Mr. Bright, in one of the debates on the Liberal Reform Bill, had made his famous reference to the Cave of Adullam which caused the anti-reformers in the Liberal party to be nicknamed "Adullamites." Mr. Bright was interested in the Morning Star, and that newspaper's report of this passage in his speech was obviously confused and defective. The day after it was printed the manager of the Star summoned Edwards to his presence in order to complain of this fact. "Do you think our fellows understood the allusion to the Cave of Adullam?" he inquired of Edwards. "Of course they did," replied the latter, hotly. "They're an ignorant lot, I know, but there isn't one of them so ignorant as not to have read the Arabian Nights!"

Edwards was very kind to me. He seemed to feel a profound respect for a man who undertook to do any work for nothing, and he did his utmost to make my somewhat anomalous position personally agreeable. One bit of good advice he gave me. That was that I should not let anyone know that I received no salary. The truth is that in those days the Parliamentary reporters were a very clannish set—almost, indeed, a close corporation. To my youthful eyes, most of them appeared to be men who had attained an almost incredible age. They could talk of the days in the old House of Commons when no Reporters' Gallery existed, and the unfortunate shorthand writers had to take their notes on their knees, at the back of the Strangers' Gallery. In the House of Lords they had to stand in a kind of gangway, and I have heard a venerable man tell how a certain distinguished peeress, who had to pass along this gangway when she went to hear the debates, used deliberately to brush against the reporters as she did so, and knock the note-books out of their hands. It was, I suppose, her Grace's manner of displaying her peculiar affection for the Press. The reporters looked with suspicion upon any newcomer, and for a time after I entered the Gallery I was viewed with unconcealed dislike by most of my new colleagues.

A somewhat untoward incident that happened on the first night on which I took my seat as one of the Star staff added to this feeling. Worthy Edward Baines, sitting on the Opposition benches below me, no sooner recognised me in the Gallery than he felt it to be his duty to come up and have a chat with me. Accordingly he made his way to one of the side galleries adjoining the reporters' seats, and conversed with me for several minutes, pointing out the leading members and officials of the House and making himself generally agreeable, as was his wont. I little knew what offence I was unconsciously giving to my colleagues. In those days a gulf that was regarded as impassable divided the members of the Press from the members of the House. Occasionally the white-haired, or rather white-wigged, Mr. Ross, the head of the Times Parliamentary corps, might be seen holding a mysterious colloquy in some gloomy corner behind the Gallery with some politician; but the overwhelming majority of the reporters had never exchanged a word with a Member of Parliament in their lives, and, to do them justice, they evidently had no desire to do so. The caste of reporters neither had, nor wished to have, any relations with the Brahmins of the green benches below them, and I found subsequently that if by any chance a reporter were detected in conversation with even the most obscure Member of Parliament he thought it necessary to give some explanation of his conduct to his Gallery friends afterwards. It may be imagined, then, with what feelings the veterans of the Gallery saw a newcomer, on his very first appearance in the Gallery, talking on friendly and confidential terms with a well-known Member of the House. Some of the old hands positively snorted at me in their indignation, and one of the few friends I had in the Gallery earnestly warned me that the recurrence of such an incident would prove fatal to my career as a Parliamentary reporter. Who would have imagined then that the relations of journalists and Members would ever assume their present intimate character?

The accommodation for reporters outside the Gallery was very different then from what it is now. There were two wretched little cabins, ill-lit and ill-ventilated, immediately behind the Gallery, which were used for "writing out." But one of these was occupied exclusively by the Times staff, and the other was so small that it could not accommodate a quarter of the number of reporters. One of the committee rooms on the upper corridor—No. 18, if I remember aright—was given up after a certain hour in the afternoon to the reporters, and here most of the work of "writing out" was done. As for other accommodation for the Press, it consisted only of a cellar-like apartment in the yard below, where men used to resort to smoke, and of the ante-room to the Gallery, where the majestic Mr. Wright presided.

Mr. Wright was one of the characters of the Gallery. Like most of the officials of the House in those days, he was a protege of the Sergeant-at-Arms, Lord Charles Russell. Rumour declared that he had originally been a boat-builder on the Thames, and had secured the favour of Lord Charles by his services in teaching his sons to row. He certainly looked more like a boat-builder, or the captain of a barge, than the keeper of the vestibule to the Reporters' Gallery. He was permitted to purvey refreshments of a modest kind to the reporters. He always had a bottle of whisky on tap, a loaf or two of stale bread, and a most nauseous-looking ham. I never, during my career in the Gallery, tasted that ham. The tradition was that every night, when Mr. Wright, at the close of his duties, retired to his modest abode in Lambeth, he took with him the ham, wrapped in a large red bandana which he had been flourishing, and using, during the evening, and for greater security placed it under his bed during the night. I do not vouch for the truth of this story, universally believed by the Gallery men of my day.

I simply repeat that I never in the course of my life tasted one of Mr. Wright's hams. The sole refreshment I ever consumed in his filthy den consisted of eggs and tea. The tea I drank with unfeigned reluctance, but the eggs, however stale, inspired me with a confidence I felt in none of the other viands provided by the ex-boat-builder. The reporters nowadays have a dining-room of their own, as well as reading-room, smoking-room, and tea-room. The status of the Press is changed indeed.

One of Mr. Wright's characteristics was his love of talking Johnsonese. I can see him in my mind's eye now, as I emerged from the Gallery after a heavy "turn," reclining on the wooden bench which was his favourite place of rest. His head half covered with the famous red bandana; his boots off, and a pair of dirty worsted stockings exposed to view, he twiddled his thumbs, and through half-closed eyes cast a disparaging glance at the young member of the Gallery who had not yet patronised either his whisky or his ham; then, with a grunt, he would wake up and begin to speak. "I hope, sir, that you are intellectual enough to appreciate the grandeur of the debate to which you have just been privileged to listen. Sir, it fills me with an amazement that is simply inexpressible to listen to those two men, Gladstone and Disraeli, when they are a-conducting themselves as they 'ave been this evening. What I want to know, sir, is, where do they get it from? You and me could never do such a thing—no, not a moment. In my opinion they are more than mortal." But enough of Mr. Wright, who is dead now, though he lived to see the twentieth century born, and to mourn over the changed times which no longer made the hungry reporter dependent upon his famous ham.

The first night of that autumn session of 1867 was a memorable one. Mr. Disraeli sat on the Treasury Bench as leader of the House. Opposite to him sat Mr. Gladstone, now the recognised leader of the Liberal party. Mrs. Disraeli had been seriously ill; was, in fact, still ill when Parliament met. Mr. Gladstone, who never overlooked the courtesies of debate, in opening his attack upon the Government after the speech had been duly moved and seconded, made touching reference to the personal anxieties of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Disraeli was visibly moved. He suddenly covered his face with his hands, and one could see that his eyes were filled with tears. Nearly thirty years later there was a similar scene in the House, in which Mr. Gladstone was again the moving cause. This was when, referring to a speech by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, he spoke of it in terms that made Mr. Chamberlain himself flush with emotion, and caused the tears to gather in the eyes of that hardened political fighter. Strange are the links which bind the generations together!

It was in the late autumn of 1867 that one of the most remarkable of the outrages committed by the Fenians in London took place. This was the explosion at the Clerkenwell House of Detention. The object of the crime was the rescue of two Fenians who were confined in the prison. The authorities at Scotland Yard had got wind of the plot, and sought to put the governor of the prison, and the magistrates who controlled it, on their guard. The latter declared themselves quite able to look after their prisoners, and declined the proffered assistance of the police. Instead of keeping guard, as they should have done, round the walls of the House of Detention, they contented themselves with keeping the prisoners—whose names, if my memory does not fail, were Burke and Casey—in their cells at the hour when they usually took their daily exercise in the yard. A wheelbarrow, laden with powerful explosives, was deliberately wheeled up to the prison wall, outside the exercise ground, at the time when Burke and Casey were supposed to be walking there. An orange was thrown over into the yard, this being the signal that had been agreed upon with the captives, and the fuse attached to the barrel of explosives was lighted. Then the conspirators quietly retired, nobody molesting them. A terrific explosion followed.

I had just left the reading-room of the British Museum that afternoon, and was crossing the quadrangle, when I heard a sound which my experience of the Oaks Pit enabled me at once to recognise as that of an explosion. I thought that some kitchen boiler in an adjoining house must have burst; but nothing was to be seen, and I went my way, merely making a note, with the reporter's instinct, of the exact moment at which the explosion took place. The next morning the London papers were full of the details of the great crime. Several persons, including some children, had been killed outright, and many more had been injured. A breach had been made in the prison wall, but the Fenian prisoners, of course, had not escaped, owing to the precautions taken by the authorities. The whole country was roused to a violent state of indignation by this crime, which followed close upon a similar attempt to rescue other Fenian prisoners who were being carried in a prison van through the streets of Manchester. The Manchester crime resulted in the death of a police sergeant named Brett, and for that murder three men—Allen, Larkin, and Gould, who are still famous in Irish history as "the Manchester martyrs"—were hanged.

On the day following the Clerkenwell explosion I attended the inquest upon some of the victims, and, curiously enough, I was the only person who could inform the coroner of the exact hour at which the outrage was committed. The police were soon in hot pursuit of the culprits. Five men were arrested, and after a tedious investigation at Bow Street were committed for trial at the Old Bailey. If I remember aright, they were Irishmen hailing from Glasgow. I made my first acquaintance with Bow Street Police Court at the examination of these men. It was the old police court—a dismal, stuffy, ill-ventilated room—where justice had been administered for several generations. I have a lively recollection of the fact that whilst I was reporting the proceedings I suddenly fainted, for the first time in my life; and I still remember gratefully the kindness of the police, who removed me from the court room into the fresh air, and tended me with the utmost care until I had recovered. This sympathy with illness is one of the best characteristics of our London police.

The trial at the Old Bailey resulted in the acquittal of all the prisoners except one, a man named Barrett. He was convicted, and sentenced to death. Great interest in his case was felt in Glasgow, and I was asked by one of the Glasgow newspapers to telegraph to it a full account of the execution. It was in one respect to be a remarkable occasion, for an Act had just received the assent of Parliament putting an end to public executions, and Barrett's was to be the last event of the kind. I and an old newspaper friend named Donald, who was also commissioned to describe the scene, agreed to stay up all night in order that we might witness the gruesome preliminaries of a hanging at the Old Bailey. We were on duty in the Reporters' Gallery up to a late hour of the night, and I remember that Mr. Bright, rising from his seat below the gangway, made an appeal to the Home Secretary to spare the condemned man's life. It was very unusual for such an appeal to be made in that fashion, and it was still more unusual to make it within a few hours of the time fixed for the execution. The Home Secretary was, of course, unable to comply with Mr. Bright's prayer, but this scene in the House of Commons was undoubtedly a solemn one, more solemn and impressive than the tragedy to which it was the prelude. Donald and I, when the House at last rose, sauntered slowly through the streets, taking note of that night side of London, which was novel to both of us. In the early hours of the morning we found ourselves at Covent Garden, where we watched the unloading of the vegetable carts and the unpacking of the great hampers filled with sweet spring flowers. Before six o'clock we had reached the Old Bailey, where already a large crowd was gathering.

Rumours of an attempted rescue, even on the scaffold, had been freely circulated. Calcraft, the executioner, had received a number of threatening letters, which had frightened him greatly. The police, knowing what the Fenians had already attempted in the way of rescuing their friends, were very much on the alert, and more than a hundred officers, in private clothes and armed with revolvers, had been placed outside the barriers amongst the crowd. At six o'clock the great gates leading to the yard of the Old Bailey courthouse were thrown open, and with a heavy, rumbling sound the grim old scaffold which had figured in so many scenes of horror was for the last time drawn forth from its resting-place and wheeled to its position in front of the small, iron-barred door, which, as late as 1900, was still seen in the middle of the blank wall of Newgate Prison. The noise of the workmen's hammers as they made the scaffold fast was almost drowned by the roar of the quickly gathering crowd. All the scoundreldom of London seemed to have assembled for the occasion. It was the last Old Bailey execution crowd. The windows of the public-house opposite the scaffold had been thrown open, and at every window men and women were crowded together, eagerly waiting for the grim approaching spectacle. It was not an edifying sight, this execution crowd.

There was one strange incident connected with it that has never been put on record. Shortly after the scaffold had been placed in position I saw four men, whose faces were familiar to me, trying to force their way through the crowd, and I was greatly startled when I recognised them as the four men who had been tried at the same time as Barrett, but who had been acquitted by the jury. Not knowing what sinister purpose they might have in view, I felt it my duty at once to warn the chief inspector of police of their presence. He was greatly disturbed, and quickly pushed his way through the crowd towards the place I had indicated to him. I followed close at his heels until we reached the front of the scaffold. As we did so he quickly put his hand upon my shoulder to stop me, and at the same time uncovered his head. It was a strange sight that we saw in the middle of that obscene and blasphemous mob. The four men, who had so narrowly escaped the fate of Barrett, were kneeling, bare-headed, on the stones of the Old Bailey in front of the scaffold on which their friend was about to die, praying silently but earnestly. For several minutes they continued to kneel and pray, and then, suddenly rising, they hurriedly left the crowd and disappeared. "Did you ever see anything like that?" said the inspector to me; and I do not know which of us was the more moved by this strange incident.

Of the execution itself I have only one thing to say: that is, that Barrett died in a very different fashion from any other murderer whom I had seen hanged. He faced death, in fact, like a hero, with undaunted mien, and a smile upon his pallid lips. I observed that his trousers were all frayed and worn at the knees, and remarked upon the fact to one of the warders who was standing beside me. "Yes," he replied, "he has been on his knees, praying, ever since he was sentenced." I came away from the spot rejoicing in the thought that I should never again be called upon to witness that abominable thing a public execution.

It was in 1868 that I gained my first experience of London club-life. This was when I became a member of the Arundel Club. The club is still, I believe, in existence, and has a home somewhere in the Adelphi. In 1868 it occupied a house at the bottom of a street, running from the Strand to the river, which was swept away when the Hotel Cecil was built. This house had once been the residence of John Black, the well-known editor of the Morning Chronicle, a journalist who used to boast that his readers would follow him wherever he liked to lead them. The members of the club were, for the most part, journalists, actors, and artists. It was a delight to me to find admittance to the society I had hitherto regarded with wistful eyes from afar. I could feel at last that I had got a foothold, however humble, in the literary life of London. The man who introduced me to the club was my old friend James Macdonell. We had become intimate at Newcastle, in the days when he was editing the Northern Daily Express. His brilliant writing had attracted the attention of the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph, and they had brought him to London to act as assistant editor of that paper.

Macdonell was a typical journalist, of very fine character. He was an enthusiast, more than commonly perfervid, even for a Scot. Whatever he believed, he believed with all his heart and soul. He was always in earnest, and always striving to give effect to his opinions. His leaders were really polished essays, of remarkable point and brilliancy. His conversation was as striking and epigrammatic as his writing. He was inspired by generous impulses, and his soul was clean. One of his colleagues on the Telegraph declared that Macdonell evidently believed that his chief business in life was to frame syllogisms and apply them. He had a good deal of the temperament of the French man of letters, and to the enthusiasm of the Gaul he added a fine taste for style. In those early days in London he was full of the possibilities that lay before the penny Press, and predicted that the day was not far distant when the Daily Telegraph would supersede the Times as the chief organ of English opinion. He greatly admired the shrewdness of the proprietors of the paper, who, having no knowledge of literary quality themselves, had yet an unerring instinct for what was good in journalism. He delighted in one story which I have heard him relate more than once. He had been telling Alexander Russel, of the Scotsman, of the shrewd manner in which Mr. Levy, the principal owner of the Telegraph, had been criticising an article of which he did not quite approve. The writer had pleaded that the reasoning of the article was perfectly sound. "We don't want sound reason; we want sound writing," was Mr. Levy's response. When Macdonell repeated this to Russel, the great Edinburgh editor slapped his thigh, and cried, with an oath, "The Lord knew what He was about when He chose that people for His own!"

It was not to be Macdonell's fate to convert the Telegraph into a second Times. On the contrary, after a few years in Fleet Street, he himself went to Printing House Square, where he became, in the closing days of Delane's editorship of the Times, the principal political leader writer. He made a great mark in that capacity, and drew the Times a good deal further in the direction of advanced Liberalism than it has ever been drawn before or since. He was a strong hater of Mr. Disraeli's Imperial policy, and for a time the leading journal lent no countenance to that line of action. But the curb was put upon the enthusiastic leader writer, with his strong humanitarian views, and he had to see the paper with which he was identified taking a course of which he could not approve. To a man who threw his whole heart into his work, nothing could be more galling than this. Poor Macdonell fairly wore himself out with his ceaseless expenditure of nervous and intellectual force, and he died suddenly and prematurely in 1878. His death was, I think, the greatest blow to English journalism that it has received in my time. In 1868, however, Macdonell was still in the heyday of his physical and mental powers. We used to meet at the Arundel Club in the society that I have described. Sala, Tom Robertson, Swinburne, and others hardly less eminent, formed the company; and to these Macdonell, when he was moved to talk—as he frequently was—would pour out the epigrams in which he delighted. I can recall some of them that were very brilliant, but they are too personal to be repeated here.

Another friend of those days never attained to anything like fame. He died, as he had lived, a simple working journalist, and he is now remembered only by a handful of personal friends. Yet even now, more than twenty years after his death, I feel that Robert Donald was in many ways one of the most gifted men I have ever known. He had come from Edinburgh to fill a place in the Reporters' Gallery, and he added to his work as reporter that of London correspondent of the Glasgow Herald. With the rest of his intimate friends, I had an almost unbounded admiration for his gifts, and an unqualified belief in his future. We knew from constant and intimate intercourse the wealth of intellect and of feeling that he possessed, and we were convinced that when he revealed these riches to the world he would impress others as much as he had impressed us.

He had been engaged for years in writing a novel—a novel that, we were convinced, would be a notable addition to the great treasury of English literature. He was very reticent on the subject of this magnum opus, but at last he consented to submit the manuscript to me and to another friend with whom he was equally intimate, Mr. Charles Russell. I can recall the thrill of expectancy and delight with which I first turned to the voluminous pages of Donald's book. I can remember how I read on far into the night, revelling in the freshness and vigour of the style, in the brilliancy of the dialogue which abounded throughout the story, and in the insight into character and the grasp of human motives that were everywhere revealed. After I had read a hundred pages I was convinced that all our anticipations as to Donald's future fell short of the mark. But I read on and on, and slowly, yet certainly, a deadly sense of disappointment crept into my heart. It was not that there was any falling-off in the quality of the work. Every page was as fresh and as strong as those which preceded it. But when I had read a thousand pages—large pages, closely written—and had come to the end of that part of the work that he had finished, I made the appalling discovery that the story he had to tell had not advanced a single step beyond the point he had reached in the first chapter. Apparently it would require thousands of pages more to complete the tale, and the work was already as long as "Middlemarch" itself.

Donald had the faculty of writing admirably—far better, I still think, than any but the greatest of his contemporaries; but he lacked the chief essential of a novelist, the power of making his story march. Russell, when he read the manuscript, compared it to an immense torso, heroic in its proportions, splendid in its workmanship, but nothing more than a fragment after all. "And yet what a quarry it is!" he said to me when we were discussing it. "If only some inferior writer were allowed to dig into it, and transfer its gold and marble to his own pages!" My poor friend's personal story was a real tragedy. He accepted the advice we gave him, and, laying aside the huge unfinished manuscript, began to write what he meant to be a short and simple story. He submitted the opening chapters to the editor of the Glasgow Weekly Herald. That gentleman was delighted with it, and at once accepted the novel for publication in his journal. The first few weekly instalments were read with the keenest pleasure by everybody, and the hope ran high that we had found a new writer who was destined to take his place in the first rank of English authorship. But by-and-by the readers of the Herald made the discovery that had been made by myself when I read Donald's unfinished manuscript. Each chapter of the tale was brilliant in itself, but no single chapter advanced the movement of the story by a hair's breadth.

For weeks and months the novel ran its course, until the murmurs of discontent on the part of the readers swelled into a positive roar. Mr. Stoddart, the editor, who was a warm friend of Donald's, again and again implored him to expedite the development of the plot, and again and again he undertook to do so. But it was beyond his power to fulfil his promise. Then, one day, a terrible thing happened. I was lunching with Donald in a club in St. James's Street, one of the proprietors of the Herald (now dead) being also his guest. This gentleman suddenly turned to Donald, and speaking not with intentional brutality, but simply in the frankness of unrestrained good-fellowship, asked him "when that d——d long-winded story of his was going to stop?" adding that it must be got out of the way in a week or two, as they wanted to begin the publication of another. I saw how my poor friend turned pale at the cruel thrust. He faltered out a promise that he would finish the tale at once, but I felt that his heart was broken. He went home and bravely did his best to keep his promise, but he only found once more that the task was beyond his strength; and the unfortunate editor was reluctantly compelled to call in an outsider to put an end in a summary fashion to a story which had escaped completely from the grasp of its author. Donald never recovered from the blow. His own ambition was crushed and mortified, and the ardent hopes of his friends were all destroyed. He did not long survive this tragical experience. And yet what a man he was! And what capacities he possessed, capacities which would have enabled him to delight the world, if only he had not lacked the poor faculty of the storyteller!

These were two of my great friends during my first residence in London, and they were friends of whom any man might have been proud. Others I held scarcely less dear, but they are still, happily, living, and I must refrain from dwelling upon them. I had not been long settled in London before I found work of different kinds accumulating on my hands. I wrote London letters every week for the Madras Times, under the editorship of an old friend, James Sutherland, and I contributed to various provincial papers. But that which chiefly attracted me was literary work for the magazines, and it was in connection with this work that I first became acquainted with one of the dearest and most honoured of the friends of my life, James Payn. I had been for some years an occasional contributor to Chambers's Journal, and had received more than one encouraging note written in a hand that it was difficult to decipher, and simply signed, "Editor, C.J." At last it occurred to me that a series of descriptive articles relating to the places and scenes with which I had become familiar as a Parliamentary reporter might be accepted by the editor. With much trepidation—for I was still a neophyte in London literary life—I addressed a personal note to Mr. Payn, asking for an interview. I got a cordial reply, inviting me to call upon him at the office of Messrs. Chambers in Paternoster Row. Though I entered his presence with fear and trembling, in two minutes I was at my ease, and talking freely to the kindest and most generous man that ever wielded the editorial pen. Neither of us then knew how dear we were to become to each other, and how close and affectionate was to be our intercourse during more than twenty years.

To Payn I was, of course, merely a very humble contributor to the journal he edited; but I was received in a most friendly and cordial fashion, and found, much to my delight and not a little to my astonishment, that the brilliant man of letters before me was eager to recognise the bond which a common calling created between us. There was no air of patronage in his treatment of my modest proposals. He did what he could to make me feel that we stood on an equality. This was Payn all over. Throughout his life he was one of those men of letters who, whilst never sinking into the boon companionship of Bohemia, show their respect for the calling they have adopted by treating all the other members of that calling with an unaffected respect and cordiality. Such men are the salt of our order. Payn's generosity to young and unknown writers has been attested by many men who in later life attained eminence, to whom he gave the first helping hand in their long struggle against fate. When, in later days, I read these tributes to the splendid and unselfish service which Payn had rendered to English literature, I always recalled him as I saw him in the dingy office in Paternoster Row on that day in 1868, when he first gave me the right hand of fellowship. I shall have much to say of him hereafter. At this point I need only record the fact that I became a frequent contributor to Chambers's Journal, writing for it a series of articles, descriptive of the work of the journalist, that were afterwards republished in a volume called "Briefs and Papers." In this little book I collaborated with my old friend and schoolfellow, Mr. W. H. Cooke, who was the author of the chapters describing the experiences of a young barrister.

By-and-by, as I extended my connection with magazine work, I was brought into contact with Mrs. Riddell, the gifted writer of that admirable novel "George Geith," and of other stories of equal merit. Mrs. Riddell was the editor and proprietor of the St. James's Magazine, and I became a regular contributor to its pages. Here I was brought into intimate association with a phase of literary life which belongs rather to the past than to the present. Mrs. Riddell had achieved sudden fame by her brilliant stories. In these days such fame would have meant for her a handsome income and a recognised position in society. But forty years ago fame as a writer was not necessarily rewarded in this way. My first interview with Mrs. Riddell, who was a lady of delightful manners and charming appearance, took place literally in a cellar beneath a shop in Cheapside. The shop was her husband's, and here certain patent stoves, of which he was the inventor and manufacturer, were exposed for sale. I had been greatly surprised when Mrs. Riddell, wishing to speak to me about certain contributions to the St. James's Magazine, had asked me to call, not at the office in Essex Street, but at this shop in Cheapside. I was still more surprised on finding this gifted woman, in whose brilliant pages I had found so much to delight me, acting as her husband's clerk, and engaged in making out invoices in the cellar beneath the shop.

I am afraid that, in spite of her husband's occupation, I cannot give Mrs. Riddell a testimonial as a business woman. She was, as I have said, delightful as a writer, and charming as a woman, but her editorship of the St. James's Magazine did not suggest that she had the aptitude necessary to success in business. She was very kind to me, and gave me the opportunity of writing on any subject, and at almost any length, in the pages she controlled. More than once I have had three long articles in one number of the magazine; but I was always harassed by the fact that the magazine was never "out" on the proper day, and that the editor was always in a hurry for the copy I had to supply. My chief contributions to the St. James's were a series of sketches of statesmen, subsequently republished in a volume, entitled "Cabinet Portraits," another series of sketches of London preachers, and a novel called "The Lumley Entail."

This novel was my first venture in fiction, and one curious incident, at least, was connected with it. I had submitted to Mrs. Riddell nothing more than the first two or three chapters, and a synopsis of the plot, when I offered it to her. With a courage that was undoubtedly rash, she accepted the story forthwith, and decided to begin its publication at once. I was very busy with my newspaper work at the time, and in consequence could only write my monthly instalment in bare time for its inclusion in the coming number of the magazine. One awful day, when the St. James's for the current month was already overdue, I received a telegram from the publisher bidding me send in my instalment immediately, as they were waiting for it in order to go to press. I rushed to the office in a state of consternation, and explained to the man that I had duly sent in my manuscript more than a week before. "I know that," he said quite coolly; "I got it myself, and gave it to Mrs. Riddell; but unfortunately she has lost it, so you will have to write it over again." Here was a pretty dilemma for a budding novelist! I did not take "The Lumley Entail" so seriously as I should have done, and I had a very vague recollection of the contents of the lost instalment; but there was no help for it. I had to sit down there and then in the office in Essex Street, and write another instalment of equal length. It was altogether different from that which it was meant to replace, and I have no doubt that it changed materially the fortunes of the more or less human beings who figured in my tale. Such, however, was the fate of a young contributor in the hands of an unbusinesslike editor.