The year 1873 was memorable to me in another and more personal sense. On the 26th of March I married again. My second wife, who, I am glad to say, still survives, was Miss Louisa Berry, of Headingley, Leeds. This union brought with it settled domestic happiness, and gave me once more what I needed—solace and sympathy under my own roof. Here perhaps, as I have touched upon private affairs, is the right place to speak about my children. The eldest, John Alexander, was born in London, and is the only child of my first marriage. The other two, my daughter Eleanor and my younger son Harold, were born at Headingley, during my later Leeds life. Surely nothing to a man immersed in public work can be more helpful than the loving devotion—it was never denied to me—of those who turn what would otherwise be a mere dwelling place into a home.



CHAPTER IX.

A NEW ERA IN PROVINCIAL JOURNALISM.

Bringing the Leeds Mercury into Line with the London Dailies—Friendship with William Black—The Dissolution of 1874—The Election at Leeds—Mr. Chamberlain's Candidature for Sheffield—Mr. Gladstone's Resignation—Election of his Successor—Birth of the Caucus—The System Described—Its Adoption at Leeds—Its Effect upon the Fortunes of the Liberal Party—The Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation.

It was in the autumn of 1873 that I undertook a formidable task as a journalist. I had long been of opinion that the provincial daily papers, if they were properly organised, might make themselves independent of the London dailies, and prevent the latter from competing with the local press. Having convinced the proprietors of the Mercury of the soundness of my views, I looked out for allies elsewhere. The Manchester Guardian was the chief rival in those days of the Leeds Mercury in the great district comprising East Lancashire and Yorkshire. The Guardian was conducted with spirit and energy, and I had been annoyed to find that it was gradually pushing its way into that which we regarded as the territory of the Mercury. I accordingly proposed to the local rival of the Guardian, the Manchester Examiner, that it should enter into an alliance with the Leeds Mercury for the improvement of both newspapers. My proposal was rejected with great promptitude by the managers of the Examiner. They declared that they regarded the costly efforts that were being made by the Guardian to establish its preeminence in Lancashire as a ridiculous waste of money, and plainly intimated that they would never attempt to enter into a competition which, in their opinion, savoured of stark lunacy.

Long afterwards I remembered my negotiations with the Examiner when I saw that newspaper, after passing through a lingering decline, finally absorbed by its successful rival, the Guardian. Baffled at Manchester, I turned my eyes to another quarter. The Glasgow Herald suffered in Scotland from the spirited management of the Scotsman as we were suffering from the enterprise of the Manchester Guardian. I went to Glasgow and laid my proposals before the proprietors and editor of the Herald. After some negotiations they were accepted, and a working alliance was established between the Leeds Mercury and the Glasgow Herald, which only came to an end in 1900. We established a joint London office, with special wires to Leeds and Glasgow respectively. (I ought to say that the Herald, like the Scotsman, already had its special wire from London.) We formed a thoroughly efficient editorial staff to do the work of the London office, and we entered into an arrangement with one of the London daily papers by which we secured access to all the information it received. In this way I was able to guarantee the readers of the Leeds Mercury as good a supply of important London news as they could obtain in one of the London dailies. I went further than this, however, and took a step of the wisdom of which I am not now so fully convinced as I was in 1873. This was the installation of a night editor in our office in Fleet Street, whose business it was to secure the earliest copies of the London morning papers and to telegraph from them over our private wires any special items of news that those papers contained, and that were not supplied by the ordinary agencies. The Times was hostile to this new departure, and we had some difficulty in getting copies of the paper for the purpose of our "morning express," as we called the new service. The other London dailies did not object. The result was that a great part of each day's issue of the Leeds Mercury contained all the special items of news published in the chief London newspapers of the same morning. It was a bold and audacious innovation in the methods of English journalism, and I need not say that it was one that was quickly imitated by others.

Besides making arrangements for a special report of Parliament, I extended the old London letter of the Mercury by securing for it a number of contributors who were interested in different fields of activity. Hitherto it had only been political. I now gave it a social and literary character as well. It was in carrying out this part of my work that I first became the intimate friend of William Black. I had met him years before, but our friendship was of the slightest until I induced him to take a leading part in the London correspondence of the Mercury. He was at that time assistant-editor of the Daily News, but he did not like the work, and was anxious to be relieved of the drudgery of nightly attendance at the office in Bouverie Street. I was able to offer him terms which justified him in relinquishing his connection with the Daily News. He was just beginning his career as a brilliantly successful novelist. "A Daughter of Heth" had won the favour both of the critics and the public, and this he had followed up with "The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton." The arrangement he made with the Leeds Mercury enabled him to devote his time and strength to fiction, and, as I have said, it brought us into a relationship which quickly ripened into one of affectionate intimacy.

There never was a man who stood the sharp test of prosperity better than did Black. When we first became intimate he was just beginning to be known, but within a year or two from that time he had become the most popular of English novelists, and had become famous throughout the civilised world. Obscure or famous, he was just the same. To a rare simplicity of manner he added a chivalrousness of spirit that was almost an inspiration to those who were brought into contact with him. As a friend he scarcely had an equal. In all the affairs of life he would make his friend's cause his own, and fight for it with an energy and enthusiasm that few men are capable of showing, even on behalf of their own interests. At a time, for example, when he was deep in the writing of one of his own greatest novels, he voluntarily undertook the work of a dying friend as a contributor to the Press, in order to ensure the payment of his salary to the end of his life. I remember meeting him once on his way to that friend's room, carrying in one hand a hare and in the other a can containing some soup or other delicacy. He was very particular about his appearance, always smart in his dress, and rigorously observant of the social convenances; yet these characteristics did not prevent his walking through the streets of London on a summer afternoon laden in this fashion. My first dinner with him was at the Pall Mall Club, in Waterloo Place, at the end of 1873. He had another young man of our own age to share the entertainment, and behind his back he spoke of this young man—who was, like himself, a Scotsman—with an enthusiastic admiration. He was an artist who had just come up to try his fortune in London, and that fortune, Black declared, could be nothing less than the Academy. He was right, for the man who made the third at that little dinner-party was the late Colin Hunter, A.R.A.

Black lived in those days in a roomy, old-fashioned house in Camberwell Grove; and here, in course of time, I spent many a pleasant evening with him. His second wife, a charming North-country lady, was, as most now know, the original of "The Princess of Thule," the heroine of the book of that name, and the portrait was far more true to life than most sketches of heroines drawn from reality are. Black's mother, a kindly old Scotswoman, justly proud of her son, was another inmate of the house. It was from her I learned that Coquette, the bewitching creature who plays the chief part in "A Daughter of Heth," had for her original Black's first wife. I discovered for myself that the author was the original of "The Whaup," and when I taxed him with it he did not deny the fact. One evening, after dinner at Camberwell Grove, we went for a walk together. When we reached the top of the Grove he drew my attention to a pleasant little villa standing in its own ground. "James Drummond," he said, "lives there." I wondered who James Drummond was, but said nothing. By-and-bye, as we pursued our way, he pointed out other houses, and told me the names of their occupants, all utterly unknown to me. At last I said, "Who are these people, Black? I don't know one of them." "You soon will know them, though, my boy," he answered. "Just wait and see if you don't." And sure enough, when "Madcap Violet" appeared, all the unknown personages of that night-walk at Camberwell were straightway revealed to me.

Black had an artist's eye and the soul of a poet. In general company he was shy and ill at ease. If he talked at all to strangers, he talked with nervous volubility, and too often perhaps with little meaning. In this respect he reminded one of Goldsmith. But when he was with a friend, and could open his heart freely, he gave you glimpses of a most beautiful nature, a noble sense of chivalry, and the keenest eye in the world for catching those gleams of spiritual light that sometimes illuminate even the dullest of the bare realities of life. He was always sketching his friends, and making them figure in his stories; but he did it in such a fashion that the person drawn never recognised his portrait. He once admitted that he had made use of me as a lay-figure in his literary studio, but I was never able to discover by what character I was supposed to be represented. As a rule, he was much too kind to his friends when drawing their portraits, for he liked to think the best and say the best of a man. Only once in my long friendship with him did I know him to exercise his power of making a man whom he disliked appear odious in his pages. But this particular person was so odious in reality that everybody felt that Black had only done him justice. Of course, Black was careful to give no clue to the identity of the disagreeable man which could be of the slightest use to the general reader. A few of us knew perfectly well who was meant, but that was all. Unfortunately, the particular story in which this person figured was first published serially in an illustrated magazine, and by some extraordinary chance—or mischance—the artist, in depicting the disagreeable man, drew a portrait of the actual original that was positively startling in its likeness. No one who knew him opened the magazine without saying at once, "Why, here's a portrait of So-and-so." And yet the likeness was absolutely accidental. Black assured me that the artist knew nothing of the original disagreeable man, and had never even seen him. It was all a freak of the long arm of coincidence.

I do not know whether I may not be boring my readers in telling these little stories about works of fiction which they may never have read or have cared to read. Yet those of us who can recall the refreshment and delight which Black's earlier books spread amongst us will never allow that the shadow of eclipse that now lies upon his literary fame is either deserved or likely to prove lasting. No novelist of his century—alas! this new century has begun without William Black—had his power of painting a woman's heart and soul, or his deft grace in making the portrait at once real and ideal. I do not wish to overpraise, but the man who could draw Coquette, and Sheila, and Madcap Violet was, I hold, a master in his craft. That he was, in a very literal sense, an artist in words, is universally admitted. There are passages in his writings which, in their power of conjuring up before the mind of the reader the scenes they describe, are not surpassed by anything that Ruskin himself ever wrote. The fact is that Black's sympathies drew him more strongly to art than to literature. If he could have had his way, I think he would rather have been a great painter than a great writer, and certainly he always loved the company of artists better than that of journalists and men of letters. He was most at his ease in the studios of his friends. He was never so full of an eager, effervescent happiness as at the private view at the Academy, when, seizing you by the arm, he would lead you from picture to picture, pointing out the merits of each, and ending up by introducing you to the artist. The artists, on their side, held him in no common esteem, and long regarded him as first of those among the writers of the day who had a real appreciation of and sympathy with art.

I must leave Black for the present, however, and return to Leeds, and the events of 1874. My special wire and London arrangements had not been long in existence before they received a most unexpected justification. One night in February, 1874, when seated in my editor's room, I received over the private wire a telegram that took my breath away. It was from our London sub-editor, announcing that Parliament was to be dissolved immediately, and that Mr. Gladstone had written a long address to the electors of Greenwich, explaining his policy and intentions. My informant added that this startling news was still a profound secret in London, and that in all probability no other newspaper in Yorkshire would get possession of it. Everybody interested in our political history now knows the story of that bolt from the blue. It came with absolute unexpectedness, and some even of Mr. Gladstone's own colleagues in the Cabinet were taken by surprise. I know, at all events, of one member of the Ministry who was staying at the time in a country house in Yorkshire, and who, when the Leeds Mercury, with its announcement of the dissolution and the long address of Mr. Gladstone to the Greenwich electors, was brought to him, insisted that the paper must have been hoaxed. Mr. Gladstone had kept his secret so well that at six o'clock on the evening of the day on which he penned his manifesto there were not twenty people in all England who knew what was about to happen. So far as the Leeds Mercury was concerned, this startling step ensured for it a great success. No other newspaper in Yorkshire—and, if I remember rightly, only one other provincial paper in England—was able to announce the great event. The Mercury accompanied the manifesto with a "double-leaded" leader, and of course made the most of so precious a piece of news. Those who doubted the wisdom of the increased expenditure to which I had induced the proprietors of the paper to consent, doubted no longer.

The General Election which followed immediately upon the dissolution was a short but very bitter contest. It ended in the rout of the Liberal party, a rout almost as signal and complete as that which befel it twenty-one years later, in 1895. Mr. Disraeli, who had been nowhere at the polls in 1868, was suddenly swept into the highest place by those "harassed interests" which Mr. Gladstone's great administration had offended by a policy that Disraeli described as one of "plundering and blundering." It was, in reality, a policy which preferred the interests of the nation to those of the privileged classes. In Leeds, where I had now, for the first time as editor of a daily newspaper, to taste the doubtful joys of a General Election, a fight of extraordinary vehemence was waged.

Leeds was one of the three-cornered constituencies created by the Reform Bill of 1867, and its representatives at the time of the dissolution were Sir Edward Baines, Mr. Carter, an advanced Radical, very popular with the working-classes, and Mr. Wheelhouse, a Conservative barrister. Sir Edward Baines was the only one of the three who had achieved a Parliamentary reputation. He had represented Leeds for fifteen years, and he was recognised as its principal citizen by the community at large. He was a total abstainer and an ardent advocate of temperance reform, but in the eyes of the fanatical supporters of the Permissive Bill he had committed the unpardonable sin in giving his adherence to Mr. Bruce's measure. So, in spite of his character and his public services, they brought out against him one of the agents of the United Kingdom Alliance. The Tories had brought out a local gentleman named Tennant as their second candidate. He was a man of many occupations, including that of a brewer. The fight which followed was the most bitter in which I have ever been engaged. Practically, Edward Baines stood alone, getting no help from Carter. The Liberal party had fallen to pieces, and Edward Baines, as a supporter of the Government, had to bear the weight of the offence given both to the Radical Nonconformists and to the rabid teetotallers. The Alliance candidate must have known that he had no chance of winning the seat, but he persisted in his opposition to Sir Edward Baines, though the effect of defeating him would be to secure the election of the local brewer. Such are the extremes to which men allow themselves to be carried at times of excitement. The end of the struggle was the defeat of Sir Edward Baines, and the return of Carter, Wheelhouse, and Tennant. What happened in Leeds happened in a great many other places. The teetotallers deliberately wrecked the only Government which was prepared to reform the licensing system. They have had more than a quarter of a century in which to repent their folly.

It was, of course, in the Leeds election that I felt the deepest personal interest; but the Mercury had to take note of all the elections in Yorkshire, and some of these were of special interest. At Sheffield a candidate came forward in the extreme Radical interest whose speeches attracted some notice in Yorkshire, though they passed unobserved by the larger public beyond. This was Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who now made his first attempt to win Parliamentary honours. Up to that moment I had only known Mr. Chamberlain as a young Birmingham politician who was fond of saying things both bitter and flippant, not only about his political opponents, but about the older members of his own party. He had made himself one of the buglemen in the cry raised against Mr. Forster, towards whom he seemed to entertain a feeling of almost personal antipathy. At Sheffield he made himself conspicuous by his sneers at Mr. Gladstone and almost all the recognised leaders of Liberalism. His own political opinions appeared to be based upon a crude and intolerant Radicalism of the Socialistic type. He evidently believed that promises of material benefits would enable him to win the support of the mass of the electors, and he conceived also that the best method of displacing his seniors in the party of which he was a member was to assail them with a rather coarse invective. These methods did not commend themselves to the electors of Sheffield, and Mr. Chamberlain was soundly beaten. But he had great ability, accompanied by great force of character, and all the world knows how his ability and forcefulness have since carried him to one of the highest places in political life. It is, however, not as a Radical, but as a militant Tory that he now figures before the world.

I should not have dwelt upon the Sheffield election of 1874 but for the fact that it was this election which made me one of Mr. Chamberlain's political opponents. I did not like the way in which he spoke of men who had been serving the country before he himself was born; and, without questioning his honesty, I came to the conclusion that personal ambition played a large part in his political professions. It followed that from 1874 onwards the Leeds Mercury was never friendly to Mr. Chamberlain, and never gave him its confidence, even at a time when he was the idol of English Radicalism. For years I had to suffer because of this attitude towards the Birmingham politician; and many a time, when I have been sitting on the platform at a political meeting in Leeds, some speaker has inveighed fiercely against me because of my want of faith in Mr. Chamberlain. I had my revenge in 1885, when the Leeds Liberals swung round to my view of that gentleman, and I was hailed—quite undeservedly—as a prophet because I had always distrusted one whom they now not only distrusted, but disliked and despised.

Let me say, before leaving Mr. Chamberlain, that I still consider that the worst blot upon his political career was the manner in which he treated Mr. Forster. No doubt his dislike of Mr. Forster was in the first instance inspired by his repugnance to the Education Act; but I cannot help saying that in later years it degenerated into what, at any rate, looked like a feeling of antipathy towards the man who, at that time, was regarded as standing high in the succession to Mr. Gladstone as leader of the Liberal party. When I come to deal with the events of 1882, I shall have something to say of the part which Mr. Chamberlain played towards Mr. Forster in the painful events which issued in the latter's withdrawal from Mr. Gladstone's second Administration.

The Liberals of England were naturally very despondent after the unexpected debacle of 1874. They had believed that the good works of a Government which had wrought so much for the public benefit would have been appreciated by the great mass of the electors, and they were unfeignedly astonished at the verdict returned by the country. They had not taken into account that swing of the pendulum which has so large an influence in popular constituencies. Nor had they noted the extent to which the unity of the Liberal party, and its consequent strength, had been impaired by the action of advanced sections, who were so passionately bent upon carrying the measures in which they were themselves most deeply interested that they did not stop to count the cost of their proceedings on the fortunes of the party as a whole. It took some little time to recover our spirits after that heavy blow, but soon some of us began to feel that in time "the lopped tree would grow again." I was helped in coming to this conclusion by some words addressed to me by a shrewd old Yorkshire Tory, which I have remembered gratefully ever since. "I suppose you Liberals really think, as the fools of the Tory newspapers seem to do, that your party is finished for ever and a day. Don't make any such mistake. A Ministry no sooner begins to live than it begins to die. Our people are in the full flush of triumph just now, but already they are beginning to die." The shrewd good sense of my friend has often struck me since, and many a time I have had occasion to notice how quickly the process of decay sets in after the formation of even the strongest Governments.

The chief event in the history of the Liberal party in the year succeeding its great defeat was the unexpected resignation by Mr. Gladstone of his post of leader. I am not concerned either to defend or to blame this episode in the career of a very great man whom I followed with enthusiasm and an unfaltering devotion for many years, but who had, as I was always conscious, some of the defects of his qualities, and whose action in a given case could never be predicted with confidence. There is no doubt that Mr. Gladstone, old Parliamentary hand as he was, even in 1875, had a very real dislike for those personal intrigues and jealousies which play so large a part behind the scenes in our public life. It is a curious fact that for nearly forty years no intrigues were more active, and no jealousies more bitter, than those which had relation to Mr. Gladstone himself. There was always someone ready to intrigue against him. There were always those who thought that, if only he could be got out of the way, there might possibly be room for themselves upon the top of the mountain. In 1868 the representatives of this class had protested against his being allowed to become Prime Minister. In 1874 they, or their successors, were still louder in their protests against his being allowed ever again to form an administration. He was a defeated Minister, and some of them took care to bring this fact home to him in as unpleasant a way as possible. One, at least, had good reason to repent of his audacity. No one who was in the House of Commons on the memorable afternoon when Sir William Harcourt tried a fall with Mr. Gladstone, and met with such terrific punishment, is ever likely to forget the scene. It was said at the time by a humorous observer describing the debate that when Sir William—"my own Solicitor-General, I believe," as Mr. Gladstone said in describing him—had listened to the speech in which his late chief inflicted due chastisement upon him, like one of Bret Harte's heroes "he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more." Mr. Gladstone's resignation of the leadership at the beginning of 1875 was not, I think, unconnected with the fact that he knew that there were certain active spirits in the Liberal party who, believing themselves fully equal to any position to which they might be called, were unfeignedly anxious that they should have at least a chance of arriving at the front place.

Yet, when Mr. Gladstone did resign the leadership, no one named any of these intriguers as his possible successor; and it may be noted here that none of the intriguers has even yet secured the reward he coveted. The two names mentioned as those of possible leaders in 1875 were those of Mr. Forster and Lord Hartington. I name them in this order because Mr. Forster was first suggested, and the suggestion came not from any wire-pullers or clique, but from the body of Liberals as a whole. But Mr. Forster's enemies on the Opposition benches, though not very numerous, were very bitter, and they at once put forward as the strongest card they could play against Mr. Forster the name of Lord Hartington. Lord Hartington was, like Forster himself, a man of high character, to whom no taint of intrigue attached. He had not offended any section of the party in the way in which Forster had offended the Nonconformists, and, above all, he was the son and heir of the Duke of Devonshire. Social influence counts for a great deal in political life in this country, but there was another factor that also counted in favour of Lord Hartington. This was the fact that he could not sit in the House of Commons after his father's death, and that, consequently, if he were chosen, he would be more or less of a stopgap. A stopgap is, of course, always popular with the intriguer who knows that he himself has not yet arrived.

A tremendous effort was made on behalf of Lord Hartington. I am doubtful whether it would have succeeded if the struggle had been carried to the end. Mr. Forster's friends were in earnest, and they comprised the majority of what might be called the Moderate party on the Opposition benches. But Forster himself settled the question by withdrawing from the candidature, and thus prevented an unseemly contest. It is now known that Lord Hartington himself would have taken this course if Forster had not done so. They were two straightforward, honourable rivals, and they acted throughout this business like English gentlemen. That which made the election of Lord Hartington to the leadership bitter to those who, like myself, had strongly advocated the claims of Mr. Forster, was our knowledge of the fact that he had really been defeated by the opposition of the Birmingham League, and of those Radicals who were prepared to sacrifice the larger interests of Liberalism to their own personal antipathies and sectional views.

Indeed, it may be said that with this election of Lord Hartington to the Liberal leadership the reign of the caucus commenced. The dejected Liberals were resolved, if possible, to organise victory, and at Birmingham men were found who were not only prepared to assist them in the task, but who were quite ready to assume the lead of the Liberal forces throughout the country. All the talk that one heard in political circles in those days was of caucuses on the Birmingham plan, and of the rise of the National Liberal Federation, the existence of which people were just dimly beginning to recognise. I am not writing the history of the National Liberal Federation, and I pretend to no special knowledge on the subject of its origin. Popular opinion credits Mr. Schnadhorst, the famous organiser, of Birmingham, and subsequently of London, with the authorship of the scheme. But I doubt the truth of this. I knew Mr. Schnadhorst well, and had a great respect for him as a man at once honest, sagacious, and of much simplicity of character. But he was not intellectually great, nor was he the astute and unscrupulous Machiavelli his opponents believed him to be. The Birmingham caucus, which became a model for all other Liberal constituencies, was probably founded by the joint efforts of several men, among whom Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Powell Williams, as well as Mr. Schnadhorst, were to be counted.

The plan of the caucus was delightfully simple. A constituency—and those were the days of big constituencies—was divided into districts, and the Liberals of each district were allotted a certain number of seats on the Central Liberal Association. This Association generally consisted of so many hundreds of persons, and it thus came to pass that the Association became known as the Huddersfield Two Hundred, the Leeds Four Hundred, the Birmingham Six Hundred, and so on. On a given day in each constituency, the Liberal electors in the various districts met, and elected their representatives on the Central Association. Every known Liberal had a vote, so that the constitution of the central body was, in theory at all events, delightfully democratic. These associations were designed to sweep away the old system of Liberal committees, influenced by local magnates, which had prevailed ever since the passing of the Reform Bill. There was a strong belief among the inventors of the caucus that by means of this plan they would secure the predominance of the advanced Radical party. The old privileges of wealth and rank were henceforth to count for nothing in the councils of Liberalism. Every man was to have a vote, not merely for a member of Parliament, but for the local body which was to select candidates, manage local political affairs, and generally determine the character of the Liberalism professed by the constituency. Every year the different Hundreds were to elect representatives who were to act as their delegates at the conferences of the National Liberal Federation; and the Federation itself was to be regarded as the legitimate and indisputable representative of the Liberalism of the country as a whole.

It was a bold and far-reaching scheme, and whatever its effect may have been in temporarily restoring the fortunes of Liberalism, its influence upon the political life of England has been great, and—I fear I must say—has not been beneficial. The founders of the caucus professed to resent the intrusion of the influence of money into political affairs. Within certain limits this was an admirable attitude. But its practical effect has been to drive the greater proportion of the moneyed classes out of the Liberal party. They further professed to wish to put an end to the influence exercised by cliques and privileged classes or persons in the party. The majority was to rule under all conceivable circumstances. Those who, like myself, have had an active and intimate association with the caucus and the Federation know that in practice the new system, so far from destroying the rule of cliques, merely substituted one set of cliques for another. The active busybody, who had little business of his own to attend to, or to whom the position of member of a local committee was one to be striven after for the sake of the dignity attaching to it, became the ruling spirit of the caucus. In thousands of cases the older and more sober Liberals were driven out of the councils of their party in disgust, and more and more the extreme men, who were fighting in earnest for some special object or fad, became the predominant powers in Liberalism. This was the change that was gradually wrought in the Liberal party between 1875 and 1885.

At the outset I was vehemently opposed to the new methods, and protested stoutly against them in the Leeds Mercury. It was not very long, indeed, before I had personal experience of the way in which the caucus system worked. Mr. Carter, the Radical, who had been returned for Leeds in 1874, retired from Parliament two years later. It would have been the natural and proper course for the Liberal party to invite its former representative, Sir Edward Baines, to become a candidate for the vacancy. He was the man who undoubtedly had the chief claim upon the Liberal party in the town. A meeting of the newly-formed Liberal Association was called to consider the question of choosing a candidate. As editor of the chief Liberal paper, I had been taken into the counsels of the local Liberal leaders ever since assuming that post, had been invited to attend the meetings of their committee, and found that they were at all times desirous of securing my support. When I spoke to one of the officials of the new Association of the meeting that was to be held to choose a candidate, and mentioned my intention of attending, I was bluntly told that I should not be admitted. I had not, it appeared, been elected a member of the Four Hundred. As a matter of fact, very few persons in Leeds had known anything about the election of this body when it took place. It was a startling revelation of the change that had taken place to be thus refused admittance to a body which, in former times, would have been only too anxious to secure my support.

The President of the Association, to whom I went to demand admittance, stood upon the strict letter of the law. I had not been elected by my district committee, which held its meetings in a local public-house, and it was therefore impossible that I should be allowed to attend the deliberations of the sacred body. Looking back, I can see that the president was absolutely justified in the line he took. It might seem absurd to shut out from a meeting of Liberals the person who, by reason of his position, had more political influence in Leeds than any other man. But "logic is logic," and under the new system any claim founded upon mere influence, or even upon past services, was inadmissible. I was too young, however, to acknowledge this fact at the time, and I bluntly delivered an ultimatum to the President of the Association. "You may hold your caucus meeting," I said, "but if it is to be private so far as I am concerned, it shall be private so far as the reporters of the Leeds Mercury are concerned also. I shall simply ignore your proceedings, and to-morrow the Leeds Mercury will make its own nomination for the vacancy." This was all very wrong, I fear, and most irregular. Indeed, remembering what power the caucus system subsequently attained, I look back with something like astonishment at my own audacious action. But the caucus was still in its infancy, and my worthy friend the President, after a hurried consultation with his fellow-officials, capitulated. I was invited to be present at the meeting of the sacred body.

It was the first meeting of that description I had ever attended, but it was typical of many that I have attended since then. As I expected, it was proposed by those who had long been recognised as the leaders of the Liberal party in Leeds that Sir Edward Baines should be the candidate. Forthwith a most violent opposition was offered to the proposal by men who had never before been heard of in Leeds politics, and some of whom had only been resident in the town for a few months. I remember that the most violent of these gentlemen was a schoolmaster from Birmingham, who denounced Sir Edward Baines for the assistance he had given in the passing of that iniquitous measure, the Education Act. Another gentleman denounced him with equal violence because he was the proprietor of the Leeds Mercury, a journal which had dared to speak disrespectfully of the truest and most honest Liberal of the day, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. That was the first occasion on which my fellow-Liberals in Leeds belaboured me with the name of Mr. Chamberlain. On all sides I heard extreme opinions expressed by men whose faces and names were quite unfamiliar to me, and I found to my dismay that the more extreme the opinions, the warmer was their reception by these representative Liberals. They would hardly listen to their old leaders, who had grown grey in fighting the battles of Liberalism. They treated with contumely any words of soberness or moderation. They applauded even speakers who were palpably selfish and insincere. As I listened to that debate, my eyes were opened, and I realised the fact that a great revolution had been suddenly and silently wrought, and that the control of the Liberal party had, in a great measure, passed out of the hands of its old leaders into those of the men who managed the new "machine." If I have been tedious in telling this story of the caucus, it is still, I feel, one that is worth telling, for it illustrates one, at least, of the great changes in the political conditions of this country that have happened during my lifetime.

It was not, of course, Sir Edward Baines who was chosen as the Liberal candidate. The choice of the caucus fell upon the worthy President of that body, the late Sir John Barran, an amiable man and a good citizen, though his claims to Parliamentary distinction at that time were certainly unequal to those of Sir Edward Baines. The revolution had taken place, however, and the Liberal party found itself under the command of new masters. For some time after the establishment of the caucus, it pursued a distinctly aggressive course, and inspired all of us with alarm. In course of time, however, I realised the fact that there were certain severe limitations upon its power. It could not stand against the country when the country was in earnest. It could not give that inspiration to a party without which victory cannot be achieved. No amount of organisation, however skilfully devised, could supply the place of a great popular movement. I became reconciled to the caucus when I grasped these facts, and for a time I not only looked upon it as harmless, but gave my assistance to it, locally in Leeds and, in its national work, in the office of the National Liberal Federation. Yet I am compelled to confess now that, though I have not altered my view as to the limitations of the power of the party machine, I no longer regard it as harmless.

It is, I think, impossible to deny that very great harm has been done, not merely to the spirit of Liberalism, but to the actual fortunes of the Liberal party, by the new system. It has brought a new spirit into the direction of our party, a spirit which is too apt to regard the catching of votes as the one great object to be pursued and attained, no matter by what means. It has given the mere machine man, the intriguer and wire-puller, far greater power than it is right that he should possess, seeing that as a rule his power is not accompanied by a corresponding degree of responsibility. Above all, it has lowered the status of a member of Parliament, and made him more or less of a delegate who is bound to yield to the wishes, not of his constituents as a whole, but of the party organisation which seeks to usurp the place of the constituency. The story of the struggles of Mr. Forster with the Bradford caucus is familiar to political students. I was mixed up with all those struggles, and always on the side of Mr. Forster, who stoutly refused to accept the dictation of the caucus and the theory that a member of Parliament was no more than a delegate. He was victorious in his prolonged struggle with the Bradford Radicals, but he only succeeded in virtue of his own strength of character and dogged courage. Weaker men went to the wall by scores, and, as they did so, the caucus, of which Mr. Chamberlain was at this time the ruling spirit, gained strength, and became the predominant factor in the Liberal party.

In the early autumn of 1876 the most remarkable political agitation I ever witnessed broke over the country with startling suddenness. Parliament was just on the point of rising when the Daily News published its first account of the hideous crimes which became known as the Bulgarian atrocities. Mr. Disraeli, when questioned in the House of Commons, sneered at the reports in the Daily News as being based upon "coffee-house babble." If he really believed this, he must have been strangely ill-informed. The terrible tale which shocked the civilised world was communicated to the Daily News by its Constantinople correspondent, Mr. Edwin Pears. The man who supplied Mr. Pears with the terrible facts which he gave to the world was Dr. Washbourne, the head of the Robert College at Constantinople. I know both Mr. Pears and Dr. Washbourne. They are men of the highest honour and integrity, whilst Dr. Washbourne, who is by birth an American, has been for many years the best authority on the question of the treatment of the Christians of the Ottoman Empire by the Sultan. No one who knew the source from which the Daily News stories emanated could dream of dismissing those stories as coffee-house babble. Mr. Disraeli, as a matter of duty, should have made himself acquainted with the authority on which these stories rested before he took it upon himself to denounce them as sensational fables. But in spite of Mr. Disraeli, who at this very moment blossomed into the Earl of Beaconsfield, an official investigation took place. Mr. Walter Baring, who was attached to our Constantinople Embassy, was directed to proceed to the scene of the alleged outrages, and to inquire into the truth of the allegations made in the Daily News. Mr. Baring was an English official of the best stamp. He not only ascertained the truth, but he reported it in plain language to the Home Government. It was then found that the Daily News had, if anything, understated the case. The ruffianly Bashi-Bazouks, employed by the Sultan to keep down the Christians of European Turkey, had been let loose upon the people of certain villages in Bulgaria and Roumelia, as a pack of wolves might have been let loose upon a flock of sheep.

The crimes that were committed do not admit of description. Thousands of innocent people had been murdered in circumstances of atrocious cruelty. Neither age nor sex had been respected. Indeed, children, old men, and women seemed to be the favourite victims of the savages. Upon the women every conceivable outrage was perpetrated before the knife of the assassin cut short their misery. It was a story which, when told in the dry, official language of a Foreign Office report, was still sufficient to arouse a passion of righteous rage in the breast of any person endowed with the ordinary instincts of humanity. The old fear of Russia as our rival in Eastern Europe still constituted the chief influence in determining our foreign policy, and the old idea of the Turk as our friend and ally was still popular amongst us. But these revelations for the moment reversed the national feeling on both these points. Mr. Gladstone, roused to action by his sympathy with the victims of so cruel an oppression, left his retirement at Hawarden and issued a pamphlet on the Bulgarian horrors which raised the feeling of the country to a higher point than I have ever known it reach before or since, except in some crisis affecting our very existence as a State.

That month of September, 1876, saw England and Scotland convulsed with a terrible emotion. The old divisions of parties were effaced, and the Government, because of its suspected sympathy with the Sultan, found itself the object of almost universal execration. Naturally, the less discreet politicians of the day were unable to control themselves under the influence of the prevailing excitement. Many foolish and many dangerous things were uttered at the meetings at which every town and village gave expression to the horror inspired by the Sultan's crimes. Mr. Gladstone's strongest utterances were seized upon by his fervent admirers and were carried to an extreme from which he himself would have shrunk. It was a whirlwind, a tornado of political passion that swept over the country during those sunny September weeks. The impulse from which it sprang was just and noble in itself; but who can hold a whirlwind in check? It is not wonderful that this great outbreak of national indignation did almost as much harm as good.

The whole condition of our domestic politics was changed by this Bulgarian atrocities agitation, as it was called. It riveted the attention of the country upon a great question of foreign policy. It weakened enormously, for the moment, the power of the Tory Government, which still enjoyed so commanding a majority in Parliament. Domestic affairs lost their savour for the ordinary elector, and, writing nearly a quarter of a century after this episode, I am inclined to believe that they have never since regained all that they then lost. In the late autumn, a Conference on the subject of our relations with Turkey was held in St. James's Hall. This was no demonstration on the part of a caucus, but a gathering of the notables of all the great towns of England. No doubt the majority of those present were Liberals, but a very considerable minority were Conservatives who had hitherto supported the Government. It was my good fortune to be present at that wonderful meeting in St. James's Hall. Never was there such a political platform seen at a public meeting before. Mr. Gladstone, Lord Shaftesbury, the Dukes of Westminster and Argyll, Mr. Freeman, the historian, the Bishop of Oxford, Henry Fawcett—these are but a few of the names that occur to my memory as I recall the memorable scene. Great Tory noblemen like the Marquess of Bath sat side by side with Radicals from Birmingham, and the passionate earnestness, amounting to something more than enthusiasm, that inspired the whole gathering was remarkable. It may be said to have marked the high tide of political agitation in my own experience.

A simple accident had saved me from the full force of the contagion of passion that swept over the country in September. I had left Leeds to spend some weeks with my family in a house on the Clyde, where I was far from the sounds of political tumult. Possibly, if I had stayed in Leeds at my post at the Mercury office, I might have gone with the tide, and might have been just as extreme and as reckless as anybody else. But I looked on from a distance, and, as it happened, I was absorbed at the time in other work. The consequence was that I could see the evil, as well as the good, of this extraordinary upheaval of popular emotion, and when I returned later on to my work at Leeds I took a cooler view of the whole question than most Liberal journalists did, and dealt with it, not from the merely emotional standpoint, but from that of our duty and interests as a people. Of course, I was blamed for this by the more fervent, and was suspected of being at heart little better than a philo-Turk. I had, in short, to meet the usual fate of the man who will not cry either black or white when it is his misfortune to see only a confusion of colours. By-and-by, however, when the popular passion subsided, and the old alarm about Russia again became rampant, I found myself blamed for precisely the opposite reason. I was no longer assailed as a philo-Turk, but as a Russophil.



CHAPTER X.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO BRONTE LITERATURE.

A Visit to Haworth—Feeling Against the Brontes in Yorkshire—Miss Nussey and her Discontent with Mrs. Gaskell's "Me"—Publication of "Charlotte Bronte: a Monograph"—Mr. Swinburne's Appreciation—An Abortive Visit to the Poet—Lecture on Emily Bronte and "Wuthering Heights"—Miss Nussey's Visit to Haworth after Charlotte's Marriage.

I have said that during the stormy days of the atrocities agitation I was engaged in other work than that of political writing. This was the completion of a little book in which I gave my impressions of Charlotte and Emily Bronte to the public. The story of Charlotte Bronte, as told by Mrs. Gaskell, had always possessed a great fascination for me. I had been moved to write to Mrs. Gaskell when her biography of Charlotte appeared, and I had received from her more than one letter filled with interesting details about Charlotte's father, and his life after his daughter's death. When I went to Leeds in 1866, the first pilgrimage I made was to Haworth. That was less than eleven years after Charlotte's death, and at a time when there were, of course, many persons still living in the village who had a perfect recollection of the wonderful sisters. But, strange to say, Haworth was not in those days a popular "shrine." "Whiles some Americans come to see the church, but nobody else," was the statement made to me when I asked the sexton if there were many visitors to the home of the Brontes.

My visit furnished me with a theme for a descriptive article which was printed in Chambers's Journal in 1867, and, having written it, I believed that my connection with the Brontes was at an end. But when I went back to Leeds in 1870, I was struck by the fact that throughout the West Riding of Yorkshire there prevailed a widespread feeling that was nothing less than one of positive antipathy to the works and the story of the Brontes. Their books, though they dealt with local scenes and characters, were no longer read. In that respect, however, the West Riding hardly differed from the rest of England. What was peculiar to Yorkshire was the fact that, if you mentioned the name of Bronte in any average company, the chances were in favour of your being met with an indignant snort from someone who protested that Charlotte's stories were a disgraceful libel upon the district, and that "Wuthering Heights" was a book so dreadful in its character that its author would only have met with her deserts if she had been soundly whipped for writing it. I met more than one lady who had known the Brontes, and who, in reply to my eager questioning, spoke of them with undisguised contempt. I was assured that they were not ladies, that they were not even successful as governesses, that their father and brother were a pair of reprobates, and that they themselves, being embittered by the fact that they were not admitted to the good society of their neighbourhood, had deliberately revenged themselves by writing scurrilous libels and caricatures in order to bring Yorkshire men and women into contempt. It all seems incredible now; yet this was the actual state of feeling prevalent in Yorkshire with regard to the Brontes thirty years ago.

I was asked to deliver a lecture before some literary society in Leeds, and it seemed to me that I could not do better than tell the story of the Brontes; and defend them against the aspersions cast upon them by their old neighbours. Accordingly, I wrote a lecture which was the foundation of the little book I subsequently published on the same subject. Miss Nussey, Charlotte's schoolfellow and bosom friend, and the "dear E." of Mrs. Gaskell's "Life," was then living at Birstall, near Leeds. She heard of my lecture through some mutual friend, and expressed a desire to be allowed to read it. After having done so, she asked me to visit her—a request with which I gladly complied. I found her a cheerful, neat, and well-preserved woman, who, though she was well advanced in middle life, retained a good deal of the charm of manner with which Caroline Helstone, in the delightful story of "Shirley," is endowed.

I am well aware that the identity of Ellen Nussey and Caroline Helstone has been questioned by some recent writers, and that Mr. Nicholls, who was for a few months Charlotte Bronte's husband, is quoted in support of this denial. All I can say is, first, that Miss Nussey acknowledged to me the truth of the statement that she had served as a model for Caroline Helstone, just as Emily Bronte served as a model for Shirley herself; and secondly, that it was impossible for anyone to know Miss Nussey in those days without seeing how vivid and truthful Charlotte's portrait of her was. Almost her first words to me when I met her expressed her regret that Mrs. Gaskell had not done justice to Charlotte's life and character in her famous Memoir. To me this was rank heresy, for, like most other persons, I was indebted to Mrs. Gaskell for nearly all the knowledge I then possessed of the Bronte story. But, in reply to my defence of Mrs. Gaskell, Miss Nussey entered into particulars. She explained to me that Mrs. Gaskell had mixed up the sordid and shameful story of Branwell Bronte with that of his sisters; and she protested against the way in which local traditions, that had nothing to do with the character of the gifted sisters, in whom there was not a single drop of Yorkshire blood, had been imported into Mrs. Gaskell's narrative, as though these traditions were in some way connected with the lives of the Brontes. Finally, she declared that she would not rest satisfied until a book had been written about Charlotte which toned down the over-colouring of Mrs. Gaskell's narrative, and she asked me if I was prepared to write such a book.

It was a flattering proposal, but I felt compelled to decline it. I was well aware that I could not put myself into competition with Mrs. Gaskell, even if I desired to do so, and I had no wish to appear to attack a book which I regarded as one of the masterpieces of English biography. But Miss Nussey was persistent, and she offered me the use of all Charlotte's correspondence with her, including the letters relating to her courtship and marriage, which Mrs. Gaskell had never even seen. After I had read these letters and other documents with which Miss Nussey furnished me, I suggested that, if I could not write a book, I might still make one or two interesting magazine articles out of the materials in my possession. Miss Nussey embraced this idea with enthusiasm, protesting that so long as she could see Charlotte "set right" in the eyes of the world, she would be perfectly satisfied with anything I chose to do. Accordingly, in the spring of 1866, I wrote three articles which appeared in Macmillan's Magazine. I wrote them with fear and trembling, and I must add that I wrote them without any kind of encouragement from outside, other than that which I received from Miss Nussey herself. The general impression among the editors and critics of the day was that there was nothing new to be said about the Brontes, and that, even if there were, the public would not care to hear it. The kind and genial editor of Macmillan's Magazine himself—Sir George Grove—shared this conviction, and it was only at the urgent request of William Black, through whom I approached him, that he agreed to look at my articles. However, having seen them, he liked them, and wrote to me warmly in their praise. Nor did the public like them less, if Sir George Grove was correct in his statement that these contributions of mine about the author of "Jane Eyre" had done more to increase the sale of the magazine than any article since Mrs. Stowe's famous defamation of Lord Byron.

Nor did the matter end, as I thought it would have done, with the publication of my articles in Macmillan's. I received a summons from the famous head of that firm of publishers, Mr. Alexander Macmillan; and, attending him in the deferential manner in which authors in those days waited upon important publishers, was asked with characteristic gruffness if I could add enough to the articles to make a book. "The public," said Mr. Macmillan, in tones which made me feel my own insignificance, "seems to want something more of the stuff; I really don't know why. But if you can do something more, we'll make a book of it." Then he named the honorarium I was to receive in payment both for the magazine articles and the volume. It was a modest sum—only a hundred pounds, and of this I felt that Miss Nussey was entitled to a considerable share. But a hundred pounds was not to be despised. Besides, I loved my subject, and knew that I had still something left to say about it. So I closed with Mr. Macmillan's offer, and a few months later my little book, "Charlotte Bronte: a Monograph," was duly published.

It will be seen that it was by accident rather than design that I wrote the book. Miss Nussey moved me to the writing of the magazine articles; Mr. Macmillan urged me to expand them into a volume. Otherwise I should have written nothing on the subject, and it would have been left to somebody else to start that Bronte cult which has since spread so widely. The appearance of the volume marked an important epoch in my life. Yet, in the first instance, "Charlotte Bronte" was very coldly received by the critics. Most of them seemed to think that the book was entirely superfluous. They evidently shared Mr. Macmillan's surprise that anybody should think such a volume was needed. Most of them also agreed that I had no special qualifications for the task I had undertaken, and that the new matter I had brought to light was of little value. One of my critics, the Athenaeum, poured contempt upon me for having spoken of "the scent of the heather." The ingenuous writer evidently had seen heather nowhere save on the slab of a fishmonger's shop. But, in spite of the critics, the book sold, and sold rapidly. It went through three editions in this country within a few weeks of its publication. It was republished in America by arrangement with the Macmillans, and had so large a sale there that it was speedily pirated, the pirates not even having the decency to give my name upon the title-page.

Snubbed as I felt myself to be, I still had my reward. People who had read the book wrote to me in enthusiastic terms, and they were not all Americans who did so. I speedily became aware that I had, almost by accident, tapped a vein of pure and rich sentiment. Best of all was the fact that my kind friend, Lord Houghton, forwarded to me a letter he had received from Mr. Swinburne which contained the following passage: "Has anyone told you I am just about to publish a 'Study' on Charlotte Bronte, which has grown out of all proportion to the thing it was meant to be—a review of (or article on) Mr. Wemyss Reid's little jewel and treasure-casket of a book?" Need I say that I was more than consoled for the coldness of the reception which the Press had given to my first literary essay by such words as these; nor had I long to wait before I saw the Bronte cult a great and growing factor in our literary life. The critics could not ignore Mr. Swinburne, and when his "Note" on Charlotte Bronte appeared, they were compelled to discuss seriously the question which they had previously regarded as superfluous or trivial.

At Mr. Swinburne's request I subsequently went to see the distinguished poet at the rooms he occupied in Great James Street. My reception was not what I had expected, though Mr. Swinburne cannot be blamed for the fact. I was kept waiting on the doorstep, after ringing the bell, for an unusually long time, and during the interval of waiting a tradesman's boy arrived, basket on arm. He was more impatient than I was, and rang the bell violently to quicken the movements of those within, evidently careless as to whether he might be disturbing a poet's daydream. A terrible old woman, with landlady written large all over her face and person, opened the door, and, without paying the slightest attention to me, began to rate the shopboy in no measured terms. He retaliated in the same fashion, and I found myself quite unheeded in the midst of this war of words. At last, tired of waiting, I interposed between the boy and the landlady, and asked the latter if Mr. Swinburne was at home. She looked at me with withering contempt for a few seconds, and then ejaculated, "No, he ain't, and it would be a good thing for him if he never was when the likes of you come to call on him." Having delivered herself of this hospitable sentence, she slammed the door in my face, and left me a sadder man. I never dared to face that lady again, and in consequence I missed the pleasure of making Mr. Swinburne's acquaintance at that time.

I was elected about this time a member of the Savile Club, which then had its home in Savile Row. My proposer was Mr. J. F. McLennan, the author of "Primitive Marriage," and I owed my immediate election chiefly to his good offices, but partly to the fact that my book on Charlotte Bronte had found favour with the reading public. A great deal has been written since then about the Brontes. Some of our ablest literary critics have discussed their genius with a penetrating insight that has opened up for us the secrets of their wonderful laboratory, whilst industrious investigators have brought to light many facts which were unknown to Mrs. Gaskell at the time when she wrote her famous Memoir. A Bronte Society has been formed in Yorkshire, and no man would now be justified in maintaining either that the Brontes are not fully appreciated in the world of letters, or that in their own county their fame is neglected or despised. I myself have added very little to the literature which has been poured forth upon the subject since the appearance of Mr. Swinburne's "Note." I shrank from doing so, because I was not in sympathy with the public curiosity which aspired to know everything that there was to tell about the Brontes without regard to its intrinsic interest, or to that decent reticence which even the dead have a right to expect from us. I did not, for example, in my "monograph" publish the remarkable letters in which Charlotte told Miss Nussey the story of her strange love affair with Mr. Nicholls. Mr. Nicholls was still living, and I felt that these letters could not decently be published during his lifetime. Twenty years later, however, they were published by Mr. Shorter, not only during the lifetime of Mr. Nicholls, but with that gentleman's full consent.

My chief contribution to the Bronte controversy after the publication of the "monograph" was a lecture delivered at the Royal Institution in 1895 on Emily Bronte and the authorship of "Wuthering Heights," in which I set forth the theory that Emily had, in part, been inspired in her description of the mad Heathcliffe and his terrible ravings by the bitter experiences through which she passed as an eyewitness of her brother Branwell's last days. My theory has met with a certain amount of acceptance among Bronte students, and I still adhere to it as the most probable explanation of a literary problem of no common difficulty.

Once, somewhere between 1890 and 1896, I was compelled to take up the pen in my own defence. I read in the North American Review an article entitled "The Defamation of Charlotte Bronte," and to my great amazement found that it was a vicious attack upon my little book published more than twenty years previously! I was accused by the writer—an American lady whose name I had never heard before and have now forgotten—of having been the first to defame Charlotte Bronte, because I had been the first to point out the singular influence over her life and character which was exercised by her teacher in Brussels, M. Heger. It is now obvious to everybody that this gentleman was not only the original of the Paul Emanuel of "Villette," but was in many respects the inspiring influence in the whole of Charlotte Bronte's career as a writer. That he exercised a curious fascination over the untrained young woman who went to Brussels in order to improve her knowledge of French we know from her own declarations, nor is it surprising that a man of such genuine intellectual force should have exercised this influence over the mind of one who, until she met him, had known nothing whatever of intellectual society. It was not only my right, but my duty, as a critic to point out the important part which M. Heger had played in the development of Charlotte Bronte's genius, and there was most assuredly nothing in what I said that touched in the slightest degree the purity of her exalted character. Yet my critic in the North American Review professed to discover that I had invented the story that Charlotte had "fallen in love" with her teacher in Brussels, and abused me soundly for having degraded her by presenting her to the world in an odious light. Surely it is a mad world that can thus misconstrue obvious and innocent facts! I cannot but think, however, that the good lady of the North American Review was more anxious to figure in the great Bronte controversy than to contribute anything of value to our knowledge of the subject.

As I have said already, when I first wrote about the Brontes there were many still living who had known the sisters well. Of these Miss Nussey was the chief, and it may be of interest to repeat a few of the statements which from time to time she made to me with regard to Charlotte. One of the most striking of these was her account of the single visit which she paid to Haworth after Charlotte became the wife of Mr. Nicholls. Miss Nussey told me that she accompanied Charlotte and her husband one day on a walk over the moors. In the course of their conversation she asked Charlotte if she was writing another book. "No," replied Charlotte; "Arthur says I have no time for writing now, as I must attend to my duties as a clergyman's wife." She said it in such a tone as to convince her friend that she was not satisfied with her husband's decision, and Miss Nussey, plucking up her courage, remonstrated with him upon his refusal to allow Charlotte to exercise her great gift. Mr. Nicholls's response was short and to the point. "I did not marry Currer Bell, the novelist, but Charlotte Bronte, the clergyman's daughter. Currer Bell may fly to heaven to-morrow for anything I care." I do not vouch for the absolute truth of this story, but I give it as I heard it from Miss Nussey, and I am quite sure that when she told it to me she believed it to be true.

Charlotte must have been more attractive than the world at one time believed her to have been, for she had several offers of marriage before Mr. Nicholls appeared upon the scene as a suitor. Mrs. Smith, the mother of Mr. George Smith, her publisher, was somewhat alarmed at the possibility of her son's admiration for Charlotte's genius developing into an affection for her, and whilst very kind to the young authoress, she let her see that in her opinion Mr. Smith was much too young to become her husband. In one of her letters to Miss Nussey, Charlotte discussed this situation, and with her characteristic candour and good sense came to the conclusion that Mrs. Smith was altogether right. Her son was both too young and too brilliant, she declared, to make a fitting husband for the obscure parson's daughter. In "Villette," where the story of her own heart is told, Mrs. Smith and her son are to be found portrayed in the characters of Mr. John and his mother.

Charlotte Bronte's fame, her genius, her power, live after her in her books, and so long as those books are read will never be forgotten. But it is not her fame, her genius, her power, which are the most precious possessions she has left to us, but that sweetness and virtue, which like bright flowers bloom upon her grave and remind us of the life which lies beyond it.



CHAPTER XI.

VISITS TO THE CONTINENT.

Politics in Paris in 1877—An Oration by Gambetta—the Balloting—The Republic Saved—Gambetta's Funeral—A Member of the Reform Club—The Century Club—A Draught of Turpentine and Soda—The "Press Gang" at the Reform—James Payn and William Black—George Augustus Sala and Sir John Robinson—Disraeli's Triumph in 1878—A European Tour.

In the autumn of 1877 I went over to Paris, in order to watch the General Election of that year. It was a fateful moment in the history of France. The Royalists, and the whole of the anti-Republican forces, were bent upon overthrowing the Republic, and they looked upon President Macmahon as their tool. Thiers, the natural leader of the Republican party, had died, after a brief illness, within a few weeks of the election; and Gambetta, who had stepped into his place, was not only under prosecution for his famous "Ou se soumettre ou se demettre" speech, but was still regarded by a large section of moderate men as a wild man, a fou furieux, indeed, who could not be trusted with the fortunes of the party. Every morning the Parisians awoke to wonder whether the expected coup d'etat had taken place during the night. The drama had clearly reached an exciting moment, and I thought it well to witness the denouement for myself.

My kind friend Lord Houghton, on learning my intention, sent me a batch of introductions to many of the leading men in Paris. They included the Comte de Paris himself, M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, the bosom friend of M. Thiers, and M. Blowitz, of the Times. I did not see a revolution, because none took place; but I had an excellent opportunity of watching Paris pass through a political crisis, and of witnessing the triumph of the Republic over its numerous and formidable enemies. That year (1877) was indeed the best year in the history of the Republic. It still had the support of the great mass of the public. The middle-class gave it all their aid, and the combination of Thiers and Gambetta had made the Left and Left Centre parties immensely powerful. It was interesting to watch the beginnings of the clerical reaction, beginnings which found their outward expression in the propagation of the cult of the Sacred Heart. All Paris was singing in those days, either in the original or in a parody, the hymn with the refrain, "Heaven save poor France in the name of the Sacred Heart." On the whole, the parodists were in a majority, and their parodies were just as blasphemous as one expects them to be in France.

Through M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, a typical French statesman of the philosophical cast, I secured an invitation to the solitary meeting which Gambetta, as candidate for Belleville, was permitted to hold prior to the actual election. He was, as I have said, under remand in the prosecution by which the Government had sought to silence his voice in the Chamber of Deputies. They could not prevent his making this one speech to his constituents, for the law gave him the right to do so, and the meeting was therefore one of great importance. Gambetta spoke in a large circus which was crowded to excess. He was received with great enthusiasm, but before his speech was over he had wound up his audience to a still higher pitch of passionate fervour. He struck me as being, in some respects, the greatest of all the orators I had ever heard. He had that indispensable qualification of the orator, a voice at once clear, powerful, and melodious. His magnificent physique gave weight to the gestures in which he indulged so freely, and which enabled him to conceal the infirmity from which he suffered—blindness of one eye—whilst at the same time allowing him always to keep his living eye fixed on the crowd before him.

I trembled for him when he began his great speech, for, unlike any English orator I ever heard, he did not warm to his subject gradually, taking care to make his audience accompany him step by step, but sprang in a moment to a height of passionate and tempestuous eloquence from which it seemed inevitable that he must quickly fall to an anti-climax. But no anticlimax came. For more than an hour he continued to pour forth a torrent of burning words that seemed to keep the vast multitude before him in a state of excitement and enthusiasm hardly to be exaggerated. Never before and never since have I witnessed such an effect as this produced by an orator, and though he lacked the stately and sonorous delivery of John Bright, and had no pretension to the intellectual persuasiveness of Mr. Gladstone, I have always felt, since hearing that speech, that Gambetta was the greatest orator to whom I ever listened.

It was rumoured that Gambetta was to be arrested on leaving the meeting, and he himself believed this rumour to be true. Yet this did not cause him to moderate his defiance of the Government and the reactionary powers. I remember he closed his great oration with words to the following effect: "I said in the Chamber not long ago, 'Clericalism, that is the enemy.' I predict now that when this election is over, I shall say, 'Clericalism, that is the vanquished.'" I was introduced to him after his speech. He was lying on a couch in a little green room at the back of the stage of the circus, panting, and fanning himself furiously with his pocket-handkerchief, whilst one of his friends administered to him copious draughts of champagne. He talked to me of the probability of his arrest on leaving the building, but seemed absolutely confident as to the future. The Government made no attempt, however, to interfere with him, and but a few weeks later he was the ruling power in France.

The day on which the first ballot was taken was, according to French custom, a Sunday. This was the day on which the quidnuncs had fixed as the probable date of the coup d'etat. The Conservatives, on the other hand, pretended to believe that it would witness a fresh Communist rising, of which Belleville was to be the centre. It was a beautiful September day, and the excitement which possessed the whole French people was visibly reflected in the streets of Paris. I spent the whole day in driving from one polling station to another, accompanied by a friend who had resided for many years in the French capital. What struck one was the good order that was everywhere maintained, and the simplicity of the arrangements for voting. There was nothing like the tumult that would have been witnessed in any ordinary general election in England. It was obvious, too, that much less care was taken to preserve the secrecy of the ballot than is customary in this country.

As a newspaper correspondent I was freely admitted into every polling station. It was not until two o'clock in the afternoon that I reached Belleville, the reputed storm-centre. I had been warned that it would be dangerous to venture into that district in the handsome carriage provided for me by my friend. Yet when I climbed the steep hill leading to the polling station where the Maire presided, I found everything perfectly quiet. On entering the ballot-room, however, I was received in a somewhat curious fashion by the Maire. "So you have come at last to poor calumniated Belleville," he said. "You are the first journalist who has been here to-day, and yet for a week past every journal in Paris has declared that we were going to break out into a revolution. If they really believed it, why did they not come and see how we behaved ourselves? I call it infamous." The worthy Maire would hardly be pacified by the thought that I, at least, had not been guilty of staying away. But one could sympathise with his feelings, for in this spot, regarding which the wildest stories were current in the Parisian Press, dulness reigned supreme, and the polling station itself was as solemn and as silent as a Quakers' meeting house.

It was different at night, when the first news of the result of the election poured into Paris from the provinces, and it was seen that Gambetta had been a true prophet, after all, and that Clericalism, and all the other reactionary forces, had indeed been vanquished. Between ten o'clock and midnight the long line of the boulevards was crowded with the gayest multitude of men, women, and children that I ever met. They cheered, they shouted, they sang for joy. The Republic had triumphed, and France was saved. This was the burden of their song. Never did I see a more good-natured crowd; but things would have been different if that historic election had resulted otherwise. Paris was delighted and good-humoured because she had won.

Five years after that great victory for Gambetta and the Republic I found myself again in Paris on a cold January day. All the town was once more in the streets, but there was no gladness on the faces of the people who crowded the Place de la Concorde and the long avenue of the Rue de Rivoli. They had gathered together to witness the funeral of the hero of the fight of 1877. Gambetta, wounded, whether by accident or design none can tell, by his dearest friend, had died at the very zenith of his fame, and all France was prepared to render homage to one of her greatest sons. His body lay in state in the palace of the Chamber of Deputies, and I was fortunate enough to find myself standing at the foot of the coffin at the same moment as Victor Hugo. The great poet had his two grandchildren clinging to his hands, and as he stood there, explaining to the children something of Gambetta's story and achievements, I could not help feeling that there was a fine opening for a historical painter.

Gambetta's funeral was notable above everything else for the profusion of the display of flowers. Every department, every town and hamlet in France, had sent a deputation to swell the solemn procession, and every deputation brought a colossal funeral wreath. It was the first week in January, yet the air was heavy with the perfume of violets, lilies, and white lilac. It was computed at the time that twenty thousand pounds was expended on the flowers borne by the mourners, and I do not think that this calculation was exaggerated. Yet the funeral itself was extremely dull and unimpressive. Those long lines of men in evening dress impressed nobody. It was only when the picked troops went by in their glittering uniforms that any emotion was displayed by the watching crowd. For the rest, all our attention and admiration were given to the colossal wreaths and crowns and chaplets of which there was so barbaric a profusion, and the poor coffin itself passed almost unnoticed.

It was different a week later, when the statesman's real funeral took place. His father, a simple bourgeois of Provence, had agreed to allow this mock funeral to take place in Paris on condition that his son's body was subsequently given to him for burial among his own people at Nice. I was present also at this second funeral. There were no flowers and there was but little display; but behind the coffin in which the body of the ill-starred political leader lay walked his father, bare-headed, his white hair streaming in the breeze; and the women around me cried as he passed, "Ah, le pauvre papa!" and wiped the furtive tear from their eyes. If anything could have inspired me with a greater horror for the pomp of a public funeral, it would have been the contrast presented by this simple but pathetic ceremony at Nice with the gorgeous spectacle of a few days before in Paris.

In the spring of 1878 I became a member of the Reform Club, Mr. Forster and Mr. Childers being my sponsors. Then, as now, there was a black-balling clique in the club, and nobody could be absolutely certain of election; but my personal friends—among whom William Black was foremost—worked hard on my behalf, and secured my election in spite of the fact that I had a considerable number of black-balls. Personal influence, indeed, goes further than anything else in securing admission to a club like the Reform. It is a mistake to trust to the mere eminence of a man's proposer and seconder; unless he has some personal friend who is a popular member of the club, and who will take the trouble to exert himself on the day of the election, the mere eminence of his proposer and seconder will not save him. One of the traditions of the Reform Club relates to George Augustus Sala. When that well-known writer was proposed for election, the taint of Bohemianism still clung to him, and it was very doubtful whether he would pass the ordeal of the ballot. Thackeray, with whom Sala had been associated in the early days of the Cornhill Magazine, believed that election to a club like the Reform would be the salvation of the younger man; and on the day when the ballot took place he remained in the saloon at the head of the steps for four mortal hours, asking every member as he entered to vote for Sala as a personal favour to himself. In this way he defeated the black-balling clique, and secured Sala's admittance to society of a somewhat graver type than that to which he had heretofore been accustomed.

Even in 1878 I was not unversed in London clubs. I had been a member of the Arundel, where the dramatists and journalists of the last generation were wont to assemble; of the Thatched House, which in those days had an admirable chef; of the Savile, the home of cultured authorship; and of the Devonshire, founded after the Liberal defeat in 1874 as a kind of Junior Reform Club. I had, in addition, belonged to several more or less Bohemian clubs, of which the Century, in Pall Mall Place, is perhaps the only one that demands notice. The Century was founded on the model of the Cosmopolitan. The members met twice a week—on Wednesday and Sunday evenings. Tobacco, spirits, and aerated waters were provided out of the club funds. The members sat in a semicircle round the fireplace, and were expected to talk together without waiting for the formality of an introduction. The rules, in short, were the same as at the familiar "Cos.," and for a time the club was very successful. But it seems almost inevitable that clubs of this description should drift, sooner or later, into the hands of a clique. The same men went every night, and you had to listen to the same platitudes, or the same cheap cynicism. Once or twice the dulness of the evening at the Century was enlivened by something like a scene. One night, for example, Henry Fawcett, the blind politician and statesman, came into the club room after an absence of some months. He was warmly welcomed, and at the same time reproached for his prolonged absence. He explained himself. "I like to come here," he said, "but I can't stand Tom Potter. He talks too much." The identical Tom Potter, the well-known honorary secretary of the Cobden Club, was sitting in his favourite corner at the moment, and it need not be said that after Fawcett's remark the conversation of the little party was somewhat constrained.

But Tom Potter did not suffer so much as I did in that little room in Pall Mall Place. One night in 1877 or 1878 I got there late, after dining with Sir George Grove at his house at Sydenham. I was hot and thirsty, and William Black, whom I found there, immediately suggested to me the propriety of a whisky and soda. I accepted the suggestion. As the foaming glass was handed to me, it occurred to me that the Century Club must have been recently painted; but I was too thirsty to stop to make any remark on the subject, and hastily drank off the cool beverage with which I had been supplied. Directly I had done so, I knew that I had been poisoned. Whatever I had swallowed, it certainly was not whisky. I suppose I turned ghastly pale, for I felt a terrible nausea suddenly overcoming me. Black and my other friends in a state of consternation examined the bottle from which I had been served, and discovered that although it bore the label of a well-known brand of whisky, it contained turpentine. I confess I was relieved when I heard this, as I feared it might have been oxalic acid. But turpentine is bad enough as a beverage, and I do not think I ever spent a more uncomfortable four-and-twenty hours than that which followed this misadventure. There was no doctor present, but Black undertook to supply his place. "There is only one thing for you to do, my dear Reid. You must get drunk directly." I declared, with reason, that I had drunk too much already, and crept away to my bed, which happily was close at hand. For at least two days after that incident I smelt like a newly-painted lamp-post, but I have always felt grateful to the careless dog of a servant for not having served me up oxalic acid or vitriol in place of the turpentine. After that affair I do not think I ever went back to the Century Club. It was bad enough to be bored by the irrepressible Club Jorkinses, but to be poisoned also was more than flesh and blood could stand.

The Reform, as I soon discovered, differed in many respects from any of the clubs to which I had previously belonged. In those days, it was really the headquarters of a great political party, and amongst its members were to be counted many of the leading statesmen of the day. It contained, too, not a few men of letters, and many prominent men of affairs. A new member coming into the club saw these distinguished persons at lunch, or dinner, or taking their ease in smoking or reading rooms; but he had little chance of becoming acquainted with them unless he had some friend by whom he could be introduced. Fortunately for me, I already knew many of the politicians in the Reform, whilst Black was eager to introduce me to his own friends in the club. On the very first day on which I dined there as a member I was formally admitted to the little coterie the members of which lunched at the same hour every day at a particular table in the large coffee room. They were known as the "press-gang," and were the objects, I have always imagined, of the mingled hatred and envy of their fellow-members. They were hated because of their exclusiveness, and envied owing to the fact that there was more laughter at that one table than at all the others put together.

It was James Payn who was the chief cause of the laughter. He had himself the loudest laugh of any man I ever met, and he laughed incessantly. Again and again, when his ringing peal sounded through the room and we saw the scandalised faces of our fellow-members, some one amongst us would remind him of the line touching "the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind," but he only laughed the more loudly, and compelled us also to join in his infectious merriment. Looking back upon the years which I was destined to spend in constant association with that most delightful and lovable of men, I sadly realise the fact that since his death I have never laughed as I did in those happy days. The other members of the luncheon-table party at that time were William Black, George Augustus Sala, Sir John Robinson of the Daily News, E. D. J. Wilson of the Times, and J. C. Parkinson. There were others who came and went, but those I have named were the regular frequenters of the table. The real bond of union between us was Payn; but, as was only natural, the ties of friendship which united all became very close. To-day (1904) Parkinson and myself alone remain of the merry party of twenty years ago. Payn, Black, Robinson, and Sala are dead, and Wilson has sought the more august society of the Athenaeum. The luncheon table is still maintained, and we have found one or two recruits to fill the empty chairs; but I think it is with pity, rather than with envy, that we survivors of the original party are now regarded by our fellow-members.

However this may be, I shall always regard it as one of the great privileges of my life that for more than twenty years I was a member of this little society of friends, most of whom had kindred tastes, and who, though they might differ widely in ability, were at least alike in the keenness of their enjoyment of the humorous side of life. Many a time since Payn's death I have been asked to repeat some of his "good things," in order that others might understand the fascination that he had for his friends. I might as well be asked to repeat the song of the skylark. It was not in the mere form of words he used that Payn's power of touching and delighting his companions was to be found. He hated puns and verbal trickery of every kind, but he saw more quickly than any other man I have ever known the humorous side of any question or any incident, and he had a knack of making that humorous side perceptible to others which to my mind was absolutely unique. Day after day through the long years I have sat with him at that noonday meal, breathing an atmosphere of wit that was almost intoxicating. It was a wit that was never cruel, never coarse, never anything but kindly and humane. Even his cynicism was genial and good-natured, like that of Lord Houghton himself.

I have spoken already of William Black. He and I had become bound to each other by ties of warm affection. I had the greatest admiration for his genius, and a profound love for his pure and chivalrous character; but, like myself, he was a listener at the table at which Payn sat. He could say good things occasionally, but, as a rule, his conversation did not approach the excellence of his writing. Payn, on the other hand, was infinitely better in talk than in writing. He has written some essays which will hold their own side by side with some of Elia's, but no essay that he ever wrote had the delightful fascination that, to the very last, attached to his conversation. Sala talked almost as much as Payn, but in a very different fashion. He was an encyclopaedia of out-of-the-way knowledge, and had a story or an illustration for every topic that cropped up at the luncheon table. Sometimes his omniscience was almost overpowering; but I have heard innumerable good stories admirably told by him. Of Parkinson I must not speak, for he is happily still left to the luncheon table and to me. Robinson, from experiences which were as varied as they were abundant, was able to contribute much to our enjoyment at those bright gatherings of old, whilst he shared to the full in the affectionate admiration with which we all regarded Payn.

The summer of 1878 witnessed the meeting of the Congress at Berlin which followed the Russo-Turkish War. Despite all the scares through which we had passed during the winter and spring, we had escaped the war between ourselves and Russia with which we had been so often threatened, and the purpose of the Congress was to render such a war impossible in the immediate future. It was this summer of 1878 that also witnessed Disraeli's complete triumph over his enemies and his rivals.

He had secured his own way in the Cabinet, though in doing so he had to lose the services of Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon, and to convert Lord Salisbury to views which, up to that time, he had professed to abhor. He had brought the Indian troops to Malta, and had thereby given a significant hint to Europe as to the extent of our resources. He had got a vote of five millions from the House of Commons, and had spent a great part of it in the purchase of ships of war, some of which turned out to be wholly unfitted for the requirements of the English Naval Service. His picturesque and audacious policy had won the favour of the multitude, and, despite the criticisms of Mr. Gladstone, the Prime Minister was the undisputed master of the nation.

Looking back, I do not think I am unfair when I say that Disraeli's triumph seemed to be largely due to his power of playing to the gallery. He gave the crowd in the streets the scenic effects which they loved. He flattered their vanity, and he played upon their weaknesses, and thus he was able in a great measure to realise the florid dreams of his youth, and to strengthen English influence in that Eastern world which had always exercised so great a fascination over him. When he went to Berlin with Lord Salisbury as his companion, there was a great crowd at Charing Cross Station to see him depart. I was one of the spectators, and was struck by the deference which was paid to him by the many distinguished persons who had come to speed him on his journey. Lord Salisbury passed unnoticed by his side. At Berlin the same thing happened. In the great Congress in which all the European Powers were represented, Disraeli's figure outshone all others. Even Bismarck seemed to take a secondary place to that of the Jew adventurer, who had made so splendid a fight for his own hand, and had achieved so magnificent a success. The story of his life, the romance of his career, and his personal peculiarities seemed to have produced a deep impression upon people of all classes and of all nationalities, and it is no exaggeration to say that during his residence in Berlin the eyes of the whole world were fixed upon him.

When Disraeli came back from Berlin, having by an astute and not very creditable transaction secured the Island of Cyprus for the British Crown, besides compelling Russia to forego some of the fruits of her victory over Turkey, he met with a reception of extraordinary enthusiasm. A conqueror returning from the wars could hardly, indeed, have been acclaimed more loudly than was Lord Beaconsfield as he drove from Charing Cross Railway Station to Downing Street. If he had seen fit to dissolve Parliament then he would have swept the country, and would have been confirmed in the possession of power. But he had his own standard of honour, and it did not permit him to attempt to snatch a victory of this kind. His political opponents are bound to acknowledge their indebtedness to him in this matter.

Shortly after the close of the Berlin Congress I took a long holiday from my duties at Leeds, and made a most interesting tour through Europe in the company of a friend, Mr. Greig, the manager of the Leeds Steam Plough Works. Greig was engaged on a business tour, his purpose being to see the different estates on which the system of steam culture—of which his partner, Mr. Fowler, was the author—was employed. Our trip took us in the first place to Germany, where we visited Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Berlin, and Saxon Switzerland. Thence we went into Bohemia, staying at Prague some days, and visiting some remote parts of that picturesque but most unromantic country—for there is, alas! no kinship between the Bohemia of reality and that of romance. After Bohemia came Vienna, Budapest, and the Danube. Then at Orsova we turned north, and went by way of Bucharest, Roman, and Lemberg into Galicia, finally making our way back again to Vienna, and thence to Paris and home. In those days much of the ground I have mentioned was practically unknown to English tourists. The lower Danube, for example, and the great plains of Roumania, though they were within four days' rail of London, were not so well known to English people as the Nile, the Ganges, or the Mississippi. It seems strange, indeed, now to recall the fact that both in Hungary and in Roumania we visited places where Englishmen were regarded as rare and curious animals, people to be run after and stared at as they passed along the village street. All this, I presume, is changed now through the influence of the wonder-working Cook. Yet one cannot believe that even now there are not some nooks and corners of the Bukovina where my fellow countrymen have hardly penetrated, and where they are still regarded with eyes of curiosity, if not of fear.

At all events, in my own case, in this year 1878, I no sooner diverged from the beaten track than I had experience of the fact that there was still an unexplored world within the confines of Europe. The long journey down the Danube in a steamboat, now superseded by the railway, formed in itself an expedition of no common interest. It happened that my friend and I had to leave the steamer at Mohacs, famous in history, and in the pages of Thackeray, in order to visit the vast estates of the Archduke Albrecht, at that time the richest member of the Imperial family. It was then that I had the first experience of a genuine Hungarian town, with its streets knee-deep in mud, and swarming with huge dogs of ferocious temper. On quitting the steamboat for the inn, I seemed at one step to have passed from civilisation into savagery. Anything more atrociously filthy and repulsive than this establishment I never saw, and yet it was the best inn of a town of thirty thousand inhabitants.

When we reached our destination—a castle of the Archduke's—the next day, we found ourselves once more surrounded with the comforts and decencies of civilised life, but there were many evidences of the fact that we were here far from the world. The game of croquet, for example, had been for some ten years before this time practically extinct in England. At the Archduke's castle they seemed just to have heard of it, and were eagerly learning it when we arrived. At one of the outlying farms on the splendid estate, the manager, like all his colleagues, was of noble birth. When he found that we were Englishmen he suddenly disappeared from the room. In a few minutes he returned with a smiling and handsome young lady on his arm. "My wife speaks English," he declared, in accents of pride. It turned out that the lady, who had been educated at Budapest, had never spoken to any Englishman before. We seemed to be almost the first who had ever penetrated into that unknown land. When the husband found that his wife was able to converse with us he literally danced for joy, and invited all the rest of the company to witness the wonderful spectacle. The hospitality and friendliness of the Hungarians were delightful. However unpopular Englishmen might be elsewhere in Europe, at that time they were certainly loved in Hungary, and the mere fact of his nationality was sufficient to secure for the English traveller an unstinted hospitality.