Bucharest, when we reached it, was still in the occupation of the Russian army. The war with Turkey had ended many months before, but the Russian troops had not yet been withdrawn from the Danube, while thousands of Turkish prisoners of war were still under detention in Roumania. It was interesting to observe the unveiled hostility of the Russian and Roumanian officers when they met in the streets and cafes. The only salutation that passed between them was a scowl. I heard many stories as to the jealousies and dissensions which had broken out during the war between the Russians and their allies. The siege of Plevna, in particular, had left bitter memories behind it. The Roumanians openly accused the Russian officers of having selfishly sacrificed the soldiers of the little principality in order to save the lives of Russians. Great fear was felt in Bucharest that the Russians meant to stay there, and their swaggering and domineering attitude certainly seemed to justify the dread felt by those who were entertaining them so unwillingly. The only happy and smiling people I encountered during my stay in Bucharest were the Turkish prisoners of war and the gipsies. The prisoners were cheerful and good-natured fellows. Most of them were eager to eke out their scanty allowance for food by doing work of any kind, and I was told that when Prince Charles returned in triumph at the head of his army after the close of the war, these Turkish prisoners had begged for and obtained the work of erecting a triumphal arch in his honour. As for the gipsies, they abounded in Bucharest now that winter had begun to close in upon the country, and the stirring strains of their quaint melodies were to be heard in every cafe and at almost every street corner.

Brofft's Hotel was at that time the chief place of entertainment in Bucharest. The principal bedrooms were occupied by ladies who purported to be the wives of the leading Russian officers, but about whom there was a strong smack of the boulevards. In the restaurant the officers themselves dined and drank freely at numberless small tables, Roumanians and Russians taking care to keep apart from each other. You could dine very well at Brofft's, but you had to pay for your dinner at a rate which cast into the shade the highest charges of Paris or Vienna. It was here that I had experience of an amusing piece of effrontery on the part of the proprietor. On our first evening in Bucharest my two friends and I—for Mr. Greig had been joined by another member of his firm—dined very well, but we were somewhat startled when we had to pay the bill, which amounted to more than a pound a head. The next evening, determined to be economical, we ordered a very moderate repast. Whilst we were eating it, Brofft himself appeared at our table. "I am sorry you are having so poor a dinner to-night, gentlemen," he said. "I do hope you will let me add something to it, for, you know, the price will be the same, whatever you have." And, sure enough, we again had to pay more than a pound apiece for this very unsatisfactory dinner. After that experience, we always took care to order the rarest and most costly viands on the carte du jour.

I made one interesting acquaintance at Bucharest. This was Mr. White, the English Consul. Few at that time anticipated that he was destined to rise to a height never before attained by a member of the Consular Service, and to end his career as Sir William White, her Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople. Yet all who are acquainted with the facts are aware that Sir William was better qualified than almost any other man for this high position, and that his death was nothing less than a national misfortune. At Bucharest in 1878 he was living in the simplest fashion in the rambling Consulate. When I first went to call upon him he himself opened the door in response to my knock. We had a long conversation upon Eastern politics, in the course of which he explained his own perfect knowledge of affairs in the Balkan Peninsula by telling me that he knew all the languages spoken in that part of the world, and was consequently able to study the local newspapers for himself. White was a big, powerful man, with an air of unpolished frankness and good-nature that seemed to belie his character as a diplomatist. His was one of the most interesting careers in the public service of this country. In diplomacy he climbed from the very bottom of the tree to the very top, and he did so without having any special personal influence. The Russians both hated him and feared him, and there was nothing he enjoyed so much as a game of diplomatic bowls with Prince Gortschakoff or his successor. Some years before he went to Constantinople Lord Salisbury offered to make him our Minister at Pekin, and rumour has it that he recommended the new position to White on the ground that it was at Pekin that the battle between England and Russia would have to be fought out. But White's great ambition was to be her Majesty's Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, and he declined the post at Pekin, where he might have been of even greater service to us than he was at Constantinople.

On my return to England I wrote some account of my trip in the Fortnightly Review, then under the editorship of Mr. John Morley. My journey had undoubtedly opened my eyes to the economic possibilities of Eastern Europe, and it had also proved to me that, at that time, at all events, England was well able to hold her own in the race for commercial supremacy even against Germany. Again and again, in visiting German workshops, I found that the practical direction of the establishment was in the hands of some Englishman or Scotsman, and the intensely practical character of the English workman, his readiness of resource, and his reliance upon himself in difficulties, were themes upon which my German friends were never tired of dilating. I am afraid that the case is somewhat different now, and that we are not so well able to compete, even on their own ground, with the artisans and business men of Germany as we were in 1878.



CHAPTER XII.

A CHAPTER OF MISFORTUNES.

Death of my Sister's Husband and of my Brother James—An Accident on Marston Moor—Sir George Wombwell's Story of the Charge of the Light Brigade—His Adventure on the Ouse—Editing a Daily Newspaper from a Sick Bed—Reflections on Death—Death of my Mother—Serious Illness of my Only Daughter.

There is a great deal of truth in the lines which declare that sorrows and troubles do not come alone—"they come not single spies, but in battalions." I have had experience of the fact more than once in my own life; but never was it presented to me in such overwhelming force as in the year 1880. On January 1st in that year I attended the funeral of my only sister's husband at Kilmarnock. He, the Rev. William Bathgate, D.D., was a Scottish minister, a man of culture and refinement, and the author of some theological works which had attained considerable popularity. His death is associated in my mind with a great public calamity, the fall of the Tay Bridge, when a train with all its passengers was destroyed. The wind that toppled over the Tay Bridge proved fatal to my brother-in-law. It was on a Sunday night—the last Sunday of 1879—and he had gone to visit one of the Sunday schools attached to his church. The furious gale, which about the same time destroyed the Tay Bridge, burst in its full fury upon him soon after he had left his house, and after battling against it for some time he found himself so much exhausted that he was unable to move. It was only with the assistance of a kindly passer-by that he was enabled to return home. Half an hour later he died in my sister's presence, without a sound or a movement. I began the year, consequently, in melancholy circumstances, in attendance at his funeral.

A few weeks later, at the beginning of February, a loss which I felt still more keenly fell upon me. My elder brother, James, who had been my constant companion from boyhood, and who had spent the closing years of his life in intimate association with me at Leeds, died after a lingering illness. The loss of one who had been for so many years my closest companion and my most confidential friend, with whom I consulted over almost every step of my life, was irreparable, and to this hour I continue to feel the lack of his sympathy and advice in moments of personal perplexity. Always more or less of an invalid, he lived much in the life of his brothers, and his cheery fortitude, kindly humour, and unfailing sympathy made his loss keenly felt in our family circle. He died, by a strange coincidence, on the tenth anniversary of the death of my first wife.

Three months later, I myself met with an accident which not only entailed great suffering upon me, but almost cost me my life. It was in the month of May, when, after the severe exertions imposed upon me by the General Election—of which I shall speak fully later on—I had left Leeds for a few days' rest and change. Sir George Wombwell, of Balaclava fame, had invited a small party—of whom I was one—to join him on a driving tour among the abbeys and ruins of the East Riding. The other members of the party were William Black, Bret Harte, who had not long before taken up his residence in England, and C. O. Shepard, the American Consul at Bradford. Our rendezvous was at York, on a certain Saturday, and we had agreed to spend that afternoon in visiting the battlefield of Marston Moor. We drove out to the field in the highest spirits. I, in particular, was elated at the thought of my escape from the drudgery of my office, as well as by the prospect of the agreeable companionship of Black and Harte, not to speak of Shepard, who was an admirable teller of American stories, of which he possessed an inexhaustible fund.

We were crossing the battlefield on foot when we found our way stopped by a hedge. It was a long way round to the gate of the field, and the hedge did not seem very formidable. At all events, Black and Shepard cleared it at a bound, and laughingly challenged Harte and me to follow their example. But we were prudent men, and openly congratulated ourselves upon that fact when we discovered a gap, through which it seemed possible to pass quite easily. Harte passed through without difficulty, and I followed his example. I had to jump about eighteen inches from the bank of the hedge into the field. Nothing seemed simpler. Yet when I landed on my feet one of them was caught in some mysterious way in a hole in the ground, and whilst it was held as in a vice, my body was wrenched round on the axis of my knee. To this day I do not understand how it happened. All I knew at the moment was that something had given way in the knee-joint, and that when I attempted to put my foot to the ground after extricating it from the hole in which it had been caught "the pains of hell gat hold upon me." I suppose I must, up to that time, have been fairly free from physical torments of any kind. I had certainly no conception, before that moment, that it was possible for a human being to suffer such torture as I had then to endure.

I turned away my face from my companions so that they might not see that I was suffering, and they went on unconscious of anything having happened. I set off to follow them, supporting myself as best I could with an umbrella which I chanced to be carrying. When they saw that I limped they inquired the cause, but I reassured them by saying that it was nothing more than a slight sprain. I was determined that I would not spoil sport, or cast a shadow over the good spirits of our party. But, Heavens, how that knee tortured me! I suppose I was a fool. Indeed the doctor told me so the next morning, with some heat and quite unnecessary emphasis. But I went on at the moment as if nothing had happened, crawling with the aid of my umbrella across field after field, and even climbing up some steps in order to see the room where Cromwell slept the night before—or was it the night after?—the battle. Then I walked on to the place where our carriage was waiting for us. It was standing at a little country public-house. "I am going in here to get a drink," said I to Black. "What!" cried he. "Drink anything here? Why, they'll poison you!" "So much the better," I retorted, and then my friends began to realise that I was hurt. They consulted together as to the stimulant that was most likely to be innocuous, and finally decided upon gin. I had never drunk gin in my life before. I now tossed off three glasses in quick succession. It was very nasty, and it did not take away the pain, but it made me feel rather less like dying than I had done before.

Somehow or other I got back to York, and, with the aid of the hotel porter, undressed and got to bed. By this time my knee was enormously swollen, but I was so ignorant of the actual position of affairs that I honestly thought that all that was necessary to put me right again was a rest of a few hours. Unfortunately, I was not allowed even that homoeopathic remedy. We were to dine with Sir George Wombwell at the Yorkshire Club that evening. I proposed to stay in bed at the hotel, but to this Black demurred. He hated to meet strangers, and he declared that if I did not go with him to the club he would not go at all. So once more the porter was requisitioned, and with his help I managed to get into evening clothes. Arrived at the club, the quick, soldierly eye of Sir George Wombwell instantly detected my condition, and diagnosed it more accurately than either I or my companions had done. I remained to dinner, but a leg-rest was provided for me, and everything done to make me feel comfortable, whilst Sir George sent a messenger to Mr. Husband, an eminent surgeon of York, asking him to see me at the hotel as early as possible next morning.

The evening passed like a nightmare, but I still have a vivid recollection of the account which Sir George Wombwell gave me of his famous ride with the Light Brigade at Balaclava. His horse was shot under him whilst they were charging for the guns, and, being left behind whilst the brigade thundered onward, he was made prisoner by the Russian cavalry, which closed in behind our English horse. His captivity lasted, however, for but a few minutes. The cry was raised that the English were returning from their mad but heroic enterprise, and instantly the Russians scattered and fled. As Lord Cardigan, who was riding in front of the remnant of the shattered brigade, passed Wombwell, he shouted, "Catch a horse, you d—d young fool, and come with us!"—advice which Wombwell promptly took. He found the charger of a Russian officer, and, mounting it, came back in safety with the few survivors of the awful day.

That was not, however Wombwell declared, the occasion on which his life had been in greatest peril. Years afterwards, he and Sir Charles Slingsby and a number of the members of the York and Anisty Hunt were crossing the Ouse in a ferryboat, when some of the horses were seized with panic, and the boat was upset. Sir Charles Slingsby and a number of others—twelve, I believe, in all—were drowned, Wombwell being one of the few who escaped. This he regarded as a much more dangerous adventure than the charge of the Light Brigade. Someone at the dinner-table told a story about this tragedy which Wombwell, I thought, hardly liked. The ferry-boat was upset in the river adjoining Sir Charles Slingsby's estate. One of his tenants who had heard of the disaster, and had been told that only one of the baronets had escaped, was hurrying to the scene of the catastrophe, when he met Sir George Wombwell riding home. As soon as the man saw Sir George he flung up his hands, and in accents of dismay cried, "Eh! but they've drowned t'wrang baronet!"

On the morning after this dinner, Mr. Husband visited me and inspected my knee. I told him that I meant to stay in bed during the day, but hoped he would allow me to keep an engagement I had made to dine at the Cavalry Barracks in the evening. Eyeing me with great severity, the good surgeon said: "You are a man of intelligence, or at least you ought to be, considering the position you hold. You must surely know that you have met with an injury that will keep you in bed for weeks, at least." And he hinted, not obscurely, that still worse things than prolonged confinement to bed would certainly befall me if I did not take the greatest care of my injured leg. So there ended all my hopes of a pleasant holiday. The next day I was taken back to Leeds in a state of absolute helplessness, and, being got to bed in my own house, had to remain there for nine mortal weeks.

Some of the experiences of that time were curious. Phlebitis had set in, and for a time I was in serious danger from the formation of a clot of blood in one of the arteries. As is pretty generally known, whilst this state of things exists death may occur at any moment from the stoppage of the heart through the clot getting free and passing into the central organ. It was curious to lie in this condition for several days, never knowing at night whether I should see the sun rise again. But I was very much struck by the fact that I became easily reconciled to my state, and did not feel the slightest apprehension with regard to the course of the disease. I was almost free from pain, and was able to carry on my work as regularly as if I had been in attendance at the Mercury office. Every evening I dictated my leading article to a shorthand writer. A telephone—at that time a great novelty—was put up by the side of my bed and connected with my room at the Mercury office, and by this means I was kept in constant communication with the members of my staff.

Thus my time passed pleasantly enough. When I was not dictating I was reading, and during my confinement I re-read the whole of the Waverley novels. It was when I was once more enjoying the romantic adventures of "Ivanhoe" that I was seized, one afternoon, with the premonitory symptoms which my doctors had told me would indicate the approach of death. At my urgent request they had enlightened me upon this point, and I had learned that death from the accidental stoppage of the heart would be without pain, and would simply be preceded by a feeling of faintness. It was a feeling of this kind which suddenly stole over me as I was reading "Ivanhoe." I felt it deepening, and laid aside my book under the firm conviction that I would never again read printed page. Asking for some stimulant, I was given some brandy and water, but it seemed to have no effect in checking the ever-increasing faintness. So I closed my eyes in the drowsy belief that I should never open them again in this world. I felt no pain, no agitation, no fear. Half an hour later I awoke from a placid sleep, and, to my great surprise, found that I was decidedly better than I had been for some time. This seemed, indeed, to have been the crisis of my illness, and from that point I slowly recovered. My doctors conjectured that a minute clot of blood had really passed through my heart, producing the faintness from which I had suffered, but not causing death.

I have dwelt at unconscionable length upon this incident of my accidental injury and subsequent illness, but I have done so for the very reason that, sooner or later, experiences of this kind come to most of us, and it may be of some use to state exactly, not only the wonderful rapidity with which a man by the simplest misadventure may imperil his life, but the sensations with which he greets the apparent approach of death. All who have suffered from severe illness must know how readily the invalid accustoms himself to seclusion from the world, and how quickly the panorama of passing life seems to fade into insignificance. The outside world becomes, at such a time, a mere passing show which has but a secondary interest for the man who can take no part in it. As for the approach of death, I believe, from my own experience, that there is nothing to which a sick man more easily reconciles himself. Certainly, since those days in 1880 I have lost any fear I may have had before of that inevitable end which awaits us all. It is the recovery from a severe illness of accidental injury that is the really trying thing. For many weeks after I left my bed I was a cripple, compelled to use crutches in moving about, and suffering from extreme weakness. I went to Bridlington, a watering-place on the Yorkshire coast, to recruit, and, hiring a small trawling boat, I spent every day upon the sea, beating up and down the fine bay trawling for fish. In this way I got plenty of fresh air without bodily fatigue, whilst I had the enjoyment of one of my favourite pursuits.

Shortly after my return from Bridlington, and whilst I was still crippled, another great misfortune befell me. This was the death, on the 5th of August, of my mother, a woman of distinct culture and intellectual power, to whom her children had been indebted for many things in addition to the motherly love which she lavished upon them all so freely. It was, I think, the shock of her death, and the exertion of the railway journey to my brother Stuart's house at Wilmslow, Cheshire, which I took in order that I might see her before she died, that brought about a relapse in my condition. In the hope that I should benefit by it, my doctors ordered me a long sea voyage. It was the first I had ever undertaken. I sailed from Liverpool on the Sidon, one of the Cunard Company's steamers, for a round trip through the Mediterranean to Constantinople and back. The Sidon was a slow old boat, and we took ten days to reach Malta, the first place of stoppage. I never enjoyed ten days so much before or since. The novelty of life at sea charmed me, whilst the freedom from all work and anxiety was delightful. Every day I seemed to have acquired a fresh stock of vigour, and by the time we reached Malta I could no longer pretend to be an invalid. It was fortunate for me that my health had undergone this wonderful improvement, for we had no sooner cast anchor in the busy harbour of Valetta than a telegram was put into my hands, announcing that my only daughter Nellie had been struck down by typhoid on the very day on which I sailed from England.

There was no opportunity at the moment of getting back from Malta to England direct, and I had consequently to continue my voyage to Syra, Smyrna, and Constantinople, getting telegrams, of course, at each place as to the condition of the invalid. At Constantinople I had an urgent summons from my daughter's medical attendants, and started at an hour's notice for home by the overland route, such as it then was. Leaving Constantinople on a Tuesday at two o'clock by the Austrian Lloyd steamer for Varna, I reached my own house in Yorkshire shortly after midnight on the following Sunday. I believe I established on that occasion a record in travelling from the Bosphorus to Leeds. I have described this overland journey in "Gladys Fane." It was an experience worth remembering, especially in these days of trains de luxe, when the traveller passes from Calais to Constantinople without a change of carriage. From Constantinople to Varna I had an exceedingly rough passage in the Austrian boat, and at Varna the weather was so bad that it was with difficulty that I persuaded the captain to allow me to land in time to catch the through train. The whole of the following day we were passing through the gloomy uplands of Bulgaria. Crossing the Danube at Rustchuk in the evening, we reached Bucharest by nine o'clock at night. Here was the only opportunity I had during my journey of obtaining a night's rest, and I eagerly availed myself of it. Remembering Brofft's extortions on the occasion of my previous visit to Bucharest, I went to a new hotel which had just been opened, one of the advertised attractions of which was its moderate charges.

The next morning, when I was preparing for my early start by train, the proprietor of the hotel came to have a chat with me, and I explained to him the reason why I had chosen his house in preference to Brofft's. "Quite right, sir!" he exclaimed with great heartiness. "Everybody says the same thing. Take my word for it, sir, Brofft is a thief." At that moment my bill was handed to me. It was more extortionate than anything I had known at Brofft's. "That is as it may be." I said, turning to the landlord, "but I think you will agree with me that if Brofft is a thief, he is not the only one in Bucharest." Things, I hope, have changed since then. If they have not done so I am sorry for the tourist who unwittingly includes Bucharest in the round of the holiday vacation. From Bucharest to London, and thence to Leeds, I came practically without a break, and on reaching my own home once more, in the dead of the night, I had the joy of knowing that the crisis of my daughter's illness was passed, and that she was spared to me. Here ends the chronicle of my misfortunes during the year 1880. It is but a trivial tale, and one that, I fear, will have small interest for the reader, but I have ventured to tell it as an illustration of the adage that troubles never come singly. In the quarter of a century that has elapsed since then I have not had to encounter such a series of misfortunes as came upon me in the first nine months of that ill-omened year.



CHAPTER XIII.

THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1880.

Mr. Gladstone's Position in 1879—His Decision to Contest Midlothian—How he came to be Adopted by the Leeds Liberals—The Conversation Club—A Visit from John Morley—The Dissolution of 1880—Lecture on Mr. Gladstone—His Triumphant Return for Leeds—His Election for Midlothian—Mr. Herbert Gladstone Adopted as his Successor at Leeds—Mr. Gladstone's Visit to Leeds in 1881—A Fiasco Narrowly Avoided—A Wonderful Mass Meeting—Mr. Gladstone's Collapse and Recovery—My Introduction to Him—An Excursion to Tunis—"The Land of the Bey"—Mr. A. M. Broadley's Prophecies—Howard Payne's Grave—A Series of Coincidences.

The misfortunes described in the last chapter befell me in 1880; I must now retrace my steps and go back to the year 1879. That year was largely spent in preparations for the General Election. Party spirit ran very high. Lord Beaconsfield retained his great popularity in London and among the classes, and the Press and the clubs in consequence believed that the General Election, when it came, would provide him with another victory. Mr. Gladstone was hated more than ever by the London journalists, and by all who had been attracted by the showy foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield. I am afraid that he was not at this time over popular in the inner circle of his own party. He had resigned the leadership in 1875, and had ostensibly gone into retirement. He had emerged from that retirement in 1876, in order to be the voice of the nation in its outburst of indignation against the Sultan.

From that time forward he had occupied a curious position. He was neither leader nor follower, but a great force, acting independently of other persons, and disconcerting them visibly by the unexpectedness of his movements.

I had access, years afterwards, to the records of the meetings of the leading members of the Liberal party during the period between 1874 and 1880. It was easy to gather from these secret and confidential memoirs that Mr. Gladstone was found to be an uneasy bedfellow by his old colleagues. When he was moved by any strong impulse he was very apt to forget that Lord Hartington was the nominal leader of the Opposition, and to take some line of action without waiting to consult his ostensible chief. He did, I believe, consult Lord Granville with frequency, if not with regularity. Lord Granville was, in his opinion, the leader of the whole party, whilst the only post held by Lord Hartington was that of leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. The result of his frequent interventions in public affairs was undoubtedly to throw the Opposition into some confusion. The Times, and the other chief organs of the London Press, constantly poured ridicule upon his speeches, and did their best to accentuate the differences between himself and his former colleagues. It followed—not unnaturally, perhaps—that there were those among the leaders of the Liberal party who desired to prevent Mr. Gladstone's return to power. But whilst the great chief was thus assailed and intrigued against in London, his position in the country was every day becoming stronger.

It was known that he meant to retire from the representation of Greenwich when the Parliament elected in 1874 came to an end. A score of different towns contended for the honour of securing him as the Liberal representative. Leeds, amongst other great constituencies, sent a deputation to Harley Street, where Mr. Gladstone was living. To all these offers he turned a deaf ear, and to the amazement of everybody it was announced that he had decided to contest Midlothian, at that time represented by Lord Dalkeith, whose father, the Duke of Buccleuch, was the recognised leader of Conservatism in Scotland. Many years afterwards I learned from Mr. Gladstone himself that before accepting the candidature for Midlothian he consulted Lord Granville and Lord Hartington, pointing out to them that if he were to enter into a colossal struggle like that involved in the fight for the great Tory stronghold of Midlothian, instead of accepting one of the safe seats offered to him elsewhere, his position in the party would of necessity be altered. In short, he could only fight Midlothian as a leader. Lord Granville and Lord Hartington, undeterred by this consideration, still pressed him to stand for Midlothian. From the moment he consented to do so Mr. Gladstone undoubtedly regarded himself as the leader in the great campaign upon which the country was about to embark.

In Leeds great efforts were made by the Liberals in preparation for the conflict. My own position in the party was now very different from what it had been in 1874. I had been taken into the innermost circle of the caucus, and now exercised a considerable amount of direct influence over its proceedings. Having formed an intimate friendship with the honorary secretary of the Liberal Association, Mr. Mathers, I was consulted upon every step that was taken. It was at my suggestion that Mr.—now Sir James—Kitson was invited to become our president, and I believe I am correct in saying that it was by my arguments that he was induced to accept the office. From the moment when he did so, the organisation of the party in Leeds—where in 1874 we had met with so cruel a disaster—began to advance by leaps and bounds. Kitson was a man of great sagacity and shrewdness, and of much strength of character. Mathers was simply the best organiser and wire-puller I ever met in the course of my life. He was a master of detail, one of those rare men who can retain within their grasp the full knowledge of every fact in the most complicated of problems. He was also, like myself, an enthusiastic Gladstonian. Unkind people in Leeds said in those days that the Liberal party consisted of three persons, Kitson, Mathers, and Reid. This may not have been absolutely correct, but it was certainly not very far from the truth.

On every side we witnessed, during this year 1879, the revival of Liberal feeling, and the rapid growth of a strong hostility to Lord Beaconsfield's adventures in the domain of foreign affairs. The current had turned with a vengeance, and the flowing tide was indeed with us. We three organisers of Leeds Liberalism were determined that at the coming General Election we would win a victory that should fully redeem the character of our town and give it a leading place in the political world. We were, however, somewhat hampered for want of a good candidate to stand along with Mr. Barran, the sitting member. I had found a thoroughly suitable man who would have been a credit to the constituency, but there were other candidates in the field, and it seemed as though one of these would be chosen by the Liberal Four Hundred. For the adoption of a candidate was a matter which rested solely with the Four Hundred, and they clung to this prerogative of theirs with great tenacity.

On the eve of the meeting at which they were to make their final selection of a colleague for Mr. Barran, I learned that my fears were well founded, and that the choice was likely to fall upon a gentleman whom I did not regard as suitable. In order to prevent this, I proposed in the Leeds Mercury of the next morning that, in spite of Mr. Gladstone's acceptance of the candidature for Midlothian, we should make him our candidate at Leeds also. It was true that he had already refused the invitation of the Leeds Liberals, but I pointed out that the fight for Midlothian would notoriously be a severe one, and that it was quite possible that Mr. Gladstone might be defeated. In such a case, if the Liberal Association adopted my suggestion, Leeds would secure the high honour of being represented by Mr. Gladstone, whilst, in any event, our adoption of him as a candidate would enable him to conduct the contest in Midlothian without feeling any anxiety as to a possible interruption in his Parliamentary career. To my great delight, the Liberal Association not only adopted my suggestion, but did so with enthusiasm. I had consulted nobody before making it, but I had the satisfaction of finding that everybody approved of it—everybody, that is to say, except the gentleman who had won over to his own candidature a considerable proportion of the Four Hundred.

When the Association met that evening the whole of the candidates whose claims had been so eagerly discussed beforehand were swept ruthlessly aside, and nothing was talked of but the proposal of the Leeds Mercury. After some discussion—in the course of which one gentleman shrewdly pointed out that the anonymous letter suggesting the candidature of Mr. Gladstone was probably written by the editor of the Mercury himself—the Association resolved by an overwhelming majority that Mr. Gladstone should be one of the two Liberal candidates for Leeds at the next election. And yet, at the very time when this proof of his extraordinary hold upon the affections of a great community was made public, the London newspapers were speaking of Mr. Gladstone as a politician who no longer possessed either reputation or influence. We, who had to live at a distance from Fleet Street, were at least able to form a sounder judgment upon this point.

I may interpolate here an account of one of the institutions of Leeds that helped to reconcile me to my sojourn in that city. I do so because it has always seemed to me to be a model institution of the kind. This was the Conversation Club. It consisted of twelve members who were supposed to be more or less representative of the intellectual life of the town. The meetings were held monthly, each member entertaining his fellow-members once a year in his own house. After dinner the host acted as president, and the members present talked upon some selected subject. By an ingenious arrangement it was impossible that anyone should know beforehand what the subject of conversation on any particular evening would be. In this way the preparation of set arguments was prevented, and the club had nothing about it of the debating society. Speeches, of course, were strictly prohibited. We limited ourselves to real conversation, and many a delightful talk we had after dinner in those Leeds drawing-rooms in which we met. Any facility I may have gained in conversation I feel that I owe to the club, as I owe to it also many happy and instructive hours. Considering our limited numbers, and the fact that we met in a provincial town, we counted in our membership an usually large number of men who have made some mark in the world. Amongst the members were William Edward Forster, Sir Edward Baines, the Bishops of Ely (Woodford), Truro (Gott), Chester (Jayne), and Rochester (Talbot); Clifford Allbutt, Regius Professor of Medicine at Cambridge; Professor—now Sir Arthur—Rucker, who has been secretary of the Royal Society and President of the British Association, and is now Principal of the University of London; Professor Thorpe, the chemist and Government analyst, and Dr. Edison. This is not a bad list for so small a club, and one might easily give many other names, in addition, of men who would have been welcomed anywhere for their knowledge and attainments. In the year 1900 the club celebrated its jubilee, and its members can look back with satisfaction upon the influence which it has had on the social and intellectual life of Leeds. Politics and religion were forbidden themes; but many public movements of great importance for the development and improvement of Leeds have had their origin in our conversations, whilst the intellectual stimulus which those conversations afforded cannot be forgotten by at least one grateful member of the club.

I may here mention a visit I received from John Morley about this period. He was one of the many men whose acquaintanceship I owed to the good offices of Lord Houghton. It is an acquaintanceship that has lasted over a considerable stretch of years, and that has from time to time been of a close and almost confidential character. The charm of John Morley's manner, and the brightness of his talk, have been felt and acknowledged by all who have been brought into contact with him, and it would be superfluous on my part to say anything about his literary reputation. But I have always felt that neither his fine gifts nor his peculiar temperament were suited for the rough and tumble of political warfare. I have felt this whether I have been, as has often happened, marching behind him in thorough unison with his opinions, or, as has also occurred at times, directly opposed to him and to his policy. He came to see me at Leeds because, having undertaken to deliver an address to the Trades Union Congress, he was wishful to learn something on the spot of the relations of master and men in a great industrial community. I made him acquainted with my friends James Kitson and David Greig. He discussed with them the problems concerning the relations of labour and capital, and in their company visited the great industrial establishments over which they presided. At that time he was not in Parliament, nor had he begun his editorship of the Pall Mall Gazette. I remember that, after a fatiguing day, spent in the works of the Kitsons, Morley expressed his conviction that the great captains of industry, like Kitson and Greig, were not only of greater importance to the world than a mere Secretary of State, but were engaged upon much more laborious and responsible tasks. I do not know if he still adheres to that opinion.

I must now turn back to the course of public events, or at least of those with which I had some personal connection. The dissolution of 1880 came very unexpectedly, almost as unexpectedly as that of 1874. One evening, as I was preparing to go down to the office, a messenger arrived in hot haste with a telegram that had come over the Mercury private wire stating that the intention to dissolve Parliament had been announced in the House of Commons that evening. Kitson, Mathers, and I had made all our preparations, so the plan of campaign was already settled. On getting the telegram I crossed over to the house of Mathers, who was a neighbour of mine, and told him the news, and together we drove off to Kitson's to take the first steps in the battle. The next morning the people of Leeds awoke to discover every dead wall in the town placarded with an address, signed by the president of the Liberal Association, announcing the dissolution, and appealing to the electors to support the Liberal candidates, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Barran. By ten o'clock in the forenoon our committee rooms were open, and in full working order, and bands of willing workers, whom we had summoned the night before, were already being despatched to all quarters of the town to begin the indispensable canvass. Our opponents were taken completely by surprise, and we had gained that great advantage in all contests, the first start. As it began, so it continued. All through the great struggle the Conservatives were hopelessly behind us. As the enthusiastic Mathers afterwards remarked, "We were right on the top of them the whole time." It was a stirring and Homeric contest. To a staunch Liberal it was one that gave unalloyed satisfaction, for all through the great fight there was the amplest evidence that the flowing tide was on the side of Liberalism.

In Leeds we had, of course, to face the disadvantage of fighting without our chief candidate. Not by a word nor a sign did Mr. Gladstone, who was deep in his own struggle in Midlothian, show that he was conscious that an election in which he was personally concerned was going on in Yorkshire. Naturally, our opponents made the most of this, and we had constantly to meet the taunt that we were asking the electors to vote for a man who had refused to countenance our proceedings, and who would never, as a matter of fact, sit as the representative of Leeds in the House of Commons. In ordinary times we should undoubtedly have suffered from this taunt, especially since it had the merit of being true. But in 1880 the times were the reverse of ordinary. The overwhelming majority of the people of Great Britain seemed to be possessed by an almost passionate admiration for Mr. Gladstone. Future generations will find it difficult to understand the extent of the fascination that he seemed, at that period in his career, to exercise over the minds and hearts of a majority of his fellow countrymen. Whilst London, and the London press, still refused to admit that he could ever return to power, there was not a public gathering in the provinces at which the mention of his name was not received with enthusiastic cheering, so that, at last, men were almost afraid to name him in their speeches, lest they should be accused of bidding for the inevitable applause. If there was one town in the country where this enthusiasm ran higher than in any other, it was Leeds. We had no reason, therefore, to fear the taunts of our opponents. We knew that we were being swept on an irresistible current to an assured victory.

On the Saturday before the polling-day a great meeting was held in the Albert Hall, presided over by Kitson. The chief business of the meeting was to listen to a lecture on Mr. Gladstone which I had prepared for the occasion. Never before had I addressed so large an audience, nor one possessed by so boundless an enthusiasm. It was amid an almost incessant accompaniment of rolling cheers that I delivered my hour-long eulogium upon the Liberal leader. I had thought that I had gone as far as any man could in his praise, but I found I had not gone far enough for my audience, and the only sounds of dissent I heard were when I ventured mildly to hint that at some period or other in his career the great man had not shown himself to be infallible. I dwell upon this state of public feeling because it ought to be understood by those who wish to appreciate aright the history of our country at that period. I do not think I go too far when I say that the feeling entertained towards Mr. Gladstone in 1880 by the great majority of the people of these islands was nothing less than idolatrous. Any smaller man must have been intoxicated by the knowledge of the feeling he had thus aroused. It says much for Mr. Gladstone that, so far from showing any signs of intoxication or personal exultation, from first to last he seemed to regard his hold upon the masses of the people simply as one of the assets in the cause of which he had made himself the champion.

After I had finished my lecture in the Albert Hall a young man, then unknown to me, and who was described as an Oxford don, was called upon to address the meeting. This was Mr. Arthur Acland, subsequently a member of Mr. Gladstone's last Cabinet. The next day I wrote to Mrs. Gladstone—for all direct communication with her husband was forbidden—telling her how the contest was going, and predicting that not less than twenty thousand electors would vote for her husband on the polling day. My prediction was more than fulfilled, for when the votes were counted it was found that Mr. Gladstone's stood at the remarkable number of 24,622, whilst Mr. Barran came next to him with 23,674. Mr. W. L. Jackson (afterwards Chief Secretary for Ireland), the successful Conservative candidate, was more than ten thousand below the number secured by Mr. Gladstone. It was, indeed, a famous victory; and when I parted from Kitson and Mathers after the declaration of the poll, whilst we all felt more than repaid for the toil and anxiety of months, we admitted, with a certain amount of sadness, that we could never hope to repeat such a success. "Whatever happens, we shall never see 1880 again," said Kitson, and he spoke truly. Mrs. Gladstone, on receipt of my letter, had written to me expressing her warm thanks for what "the dear people of Leeds" were doing, but she said not a word about her husband, nor did we receive a sign or acknowledgment of the stupendous victory—a victory which had staggered the whole country, and opened the eyes even of the London clubs to Mr. Gladstone's real position—whilst the Midlothian contest remained in suspense. We heard, indeed, from a private source, that the company assembled with Mr. Gladstone under Lord Rosebery's roof at Dalmeny had "jumped for joy" when the telegram announcing the Leeds result had arrived. But that was all.

A few days later Midlothian also spoke, and in turn elected Mr. Gladstone as its representative. Within an hour of the declaration of the poll in Edinburgh, Kitson received a telegram from Mr. Gladstone, thanking Leeds for all that it had done. It was characteristic of the great man's businesslike habits and careful attention to small details that the telegram was so worded as to come within the limits of the shilling rate which was then the minimum charge for telegraphic messages. A day or two later Mr. Gladstone wrote fully and most cordially in acknowledgment of the great services which had been rendered to him and to the Liberal cause by the party in Leeds. But his real thanks were given to us more than a year after, when he paid a memorable visit to the town, of which I shall have occasion to speak later.

A few weeks afterwards, when the Gladstone Ministry had been formed, and the new Parliament, with its overwhelming Liberal majority, had met, we had fresh reason to acknowledge the unique and astounding position of supremacy which Mr. Gladstone had secured among his fellow countrymen. He had, as from the first was anticipated, elected to sit for Midlothian, and there was consequently a vacancy for Leeds. All the heart had been taken out of the Tories of the borough by the beating they had received, and their leaders courteously informed us that they would not oppose any candidate whom we might elect. We had, it need hardly be said, many applicants for this safe seat, but we—I speak of the recognised leaders of the Liberal party in the town—had fixed upon one man to fill the vacancy. This was Edward Baines, who had been, as I have told on a previous page, so scurvily treated by the teetotallers in 1874. The executive committee of the Association agreed by a unanimous vote to propose Mr. Baines to the Four Hundred as the new candidate in place of Mr. Gladstone. But we reckoned without our host, and, above all, we had failed to give due weight to the overwhelming strength of the Gladstone cult.

When we met the Four Hundred, and Mr. Baines was duly proposed and seconded in the name of the executive committee, we found that the proposition was but coldly received; nor were we long left in doubt as to the reason. Someone in the body of the hall got up and proposed that Mr. Herbert Gladstone should be the Liberal candidate. Herbert Gladstone was at that time a stranger to me, and I believe to every other man in the room. All that we knew of him was that he was Mr. Gladstone's youngest son, that he was twenty-five years of age, and that he had just been defeated by Lord George Hamilton in the contest for Middlesex. No member of Mr. Gladstone's family had suggested Herbert's name to us, and we had naturally felt that the first claim to the vacant seat lay with our old representative and honoured fellow-townsman. But it was useless to struggle against the glamour of the name of Gladstone. The whole meeting broke away from its recognised leaders, and adopted with enthusiasm the candidature of Herbert Gladstone. Looking back, I cannot pretend to regret its decision. Though we knew nothing of Herbert Gladstone at the time, when we did get to know him, a few weeks later, we found him to be a young man of the highest promise, of exceptional talents, and of great amiability of character. The Liberals of Leeds ratified the verdict of the Four Hundred, and he was elected almost by acclamation to be the representative of the town in Parliament—a position which he still holds. The incident of his election when personally quite unknown is, however, conclusive as to the extent of his father's influence among the electors of the country.

In those days, it is no reflection upon Herbert Gladstone's abilities to say that one of the most powerful influences in his favour was his appearance. The young women of Leeds of the working-class formed the highest estimate of his good looks, and whenever he appeared in public a crowd of them gathered to feast their eyes upon his pleasant and handsome features. In the later elections that took place during my residence at Leeds I always accompanied him in his drive through his constituency on the polling day. Wherever our carriage stopped, a group of young women flocked round it, and Gladstone had to listen to their somewhat embarrassing comments upon his appearance—comments, I ought to say, that were uniformly favourable. In the 1885 election, which took place in November, we had drawn up in front of one of the Liberal clubs, and he had gone inside the building to interview his committee. As he disappeared from view, the young women burst forth in their usual praise of his appearance. "Eh, but isn't he good-looking? Shouldn't I like to kiss him!" said one of the girls who was standing at my elbow. "Would you really?" I said, anxious for some relief to the grave business of the day; and the girl repeated her declaration. "Then when he comes out of the club," said I, "you may give him a kiss if you like." And, to my great amusement, when the candidate reappeared, a pair of buxom arms were suddenly thrown round his neck, and a good-looking girl kissed him heartily. The crowd cheered with enthusiasm, all the more because of the blush which spread over the features of the ingenuous candidate thus taken by surprise. But kisses, as we learnt long ago, are not to be despised as electioneering weapons.

It was in October, 1881, that the Prime Minister came to Leeds to thank us for his election in the previous year. Among the many political meetings, or series of meetings, that I remember, I can call to mind none like this. For weeks before the event we of the Liberal Committee were engaged in preparing for it. Mr. Gladstone was to arrive on the Thursday evening, and to leave on Saturday evening. Into the forty-eight hours of his visit a series of engagements was packed to which a week might well have been devoted. On the first evening he was formally welcomed to the town, which had been decorated for the occasion as though for a royal visit. Afterwards a large dinner party was held at the residence of his host, Mr. (now Sir James) Kitson. On the Friday he received an address from the Mayor and Corporation, and another from the Chamber of Commerce, to both of which he replied in speeches of some length. A little later in the day a great meeting was held in the Victoria Hall, at which addresses were presented to him from all the Liberal Associations of Yorkshire, and he responded in a very fine speech that lasted an hour. In the evening he attended a great banquet at which thirteen hundred persons sat down to dinner in a noble hall specially erected for the occasion, whilst the day's work ended with a vast torchlight procession from the dining-hall in the heart of Leeds to Kitson's residence at Headingley.

On the Saturday, after some minor engagements, the character of which I forget, but which involved a certain amount of speech-making, Mr. Gladstone was entertained at luncheon in the Victoria Hall by the Leeds Liberal Club, of which I was the honorary secretary; and after speaking there he went direct to the temporary building erected in the Cloth-hall yard, and there addressed a mass meeting of many thousands of persons. Afterwards he attended a large dinner party at the house of Mr. Barran, and at ten o'clock departed from Leeds by special train for Hawarden. It will be seen that the burden of work laid upon him was enormous, especially considering the fact that he was already in his seventy-second year. Yet his wonderful constitution and untiring energy enabled him to go through the whole programme not only with apparent ease, but with an exuberant vitality that seemed to suggest that if his engagements had been twice as numerous he would have been equal to them all. I doubt if any other statesman ever before got through so much work and speech-making in the course of a couple of days.

As I look back now, after the lapse of many years, upon that memorable time—for the Leeds visit was memorable, not only in Mr. Gladstone's career, but in the political history of the country—the two speeches which stand out in greatest prominence are those which he delivered at the banquet on the Friday evening, and the mass meeting on the Saturday afternoon. The banquet narrowly escaped being a terrible fiasco. For the first time in my association with them, I had a difference of opinion with Kitson and Mathers regarding the arrangements for the dinner. The cost of erecting the special dining-hall was, of course, very considerable. I proposed that it should be met by a uniform charge of two guineas for the dinner tickets. My friends, on the other hand, prepared an elaborate plan by which the tickets were to be charged at different rates from one guinea up to five, according to the position of the seats. In this way more money was to be obtained, but it was at the cost of extra labour on the part of the executive, and of a good deal of grumbling from those local Liberals who had helped us most earnestly in the 1880 election, but who could not afford to pay the very high price demanded for the best seats. The allotment of these variously priced seats at the banquet was a heavy task, and it was undertaken by Mathers. Somehow or other he was delayed in his work until two days before the dinner was to take place, and then he was seized with sudden illness.

I was called in to take his place, and discovered an alarming state of affairs. It was Wednesday night, Mr. Gladstone was to arrive on Thursday, and his heavy round of engagements was to begin on Friday morning. More than thirty thousand tickets had to be sent out to all parts of the country for the various meetings, and on Wednesday night not one ticket had been despatched. Moreover, Mathers had prepared so elaborate a scheme for the allotment and registration of all the tickets applied for, that a rapid calculation satisfied me that we could not possibly despatch the last of the tickets until at least two days after Mr. Gladstone's departure from Leeds. This was rather a terrible discovery to be made on the eve of the Premier's arrival. The knot had to be cut instead of being unravelled. I put aside the elaborate and irreproachable volumes in which Mathers and his staff had been entering the tickets at the time when he was seized with illness, and, with the help of a sixpenny memorandum book and half a dozen smart bank clerks, succeeded in allotting and posting the whole of the thirty thousand tickets between ten o'clock on Wednesday night and eight o'clock on Thursday morning. I never worked harder in my life, but when my work was done, and the tickets had all passed beyond my control, I fell into a terrible state of panic. I was firmly convinced that in my rapid allotment of seats to the five different orders of banqueters I had made the most hideous blunders, and I expected nothing less than a riot when the company assembled in the dining-hall. To my unfeigned astonishment, my fears proved to be utterly unfounded. There was a seat for everybody, and everybody got a seat, though to this day I have a shrewd suspicion that more than one gentleman who had paid five guineas for his place found himself relegated to a one guinea seat. But what did it matter? People had come to hear Mr. Gladstone, and so long as they succeeded in this they were indifferent to everything else.

Mr. Gladstone's speech at the dinner was the famous one in which he discussed the Irish question, warned Mr. Parnell of the dangers of the course upon which he had embarked, and declared emphatically that the resources of civilisation were not exhausted. He did not take his seat at the high table in the hall where Sir James Kitson presided until dinner was over and the speeches were about to begin. I observed that when he did so, after having gazed with admiration upon the brilliant scene, he leant forward, and, covering his face with both hands, remained for some time in that attitude. On the following evening I sat next to Mrs. Gladstone at dinner at Sir John Barran's house. She asked me if I had observed this action of her husband's, and on my answering in the affirmative, she said to me, "He was praying. You know, he always prays before he makes an important speech, and he felt that speech very much. What do you think he said to me last night after he had gone to his dressing-room? 'My dear, if I were twenty years younger, I should go to Ireland myself as Irish Secretary.'" The speech was a great oratorical success, and at the close of the banquet, as I have said, an immense torchlight procession, which had been carefully organised by the local committee, conducted the Premier and his wife from the banqueting hall to the residence of Kitson at Headingley. The procession had to pass across Woodhouse Moor, and I do not think I ever witnessed a more effective spectacle of the kind.

The speech which, to my mind, ranked next in importance and interest to this at the dinner was that which Mr. Gladstone delivered on the following day to the mass meeting of Leeds working men. Fully thirty thousand persons attended this meeting, which, like the dinner, took place in a temporary building. It was crowded to suffocation—literally to suffocation. When I arrived, shortly before the proceedings began, I found that the whole thirty thousand people were gasping for breath, and that many were fainting. We had quite forgotten to arrange for the ventilation of the vast hall! Things looked very serious. The hubbub was indescribable, and the sufferings of the crowd were so great that it was clearly impossible that, under the conditions prevailing, any meeting could be held. Fortunately, there were active and willing workers on the spot, and a band of young men was organised who, mounting to the temporary roof of the hall, tore the planking open, and quickly relieved the pressure upon the sufferers beneath. But even when they had been supplied with air the thirty thousand were anything but comfortable. They were tightly packed together in a sweltering mass, and in no condition to listen patiently to speeches. The noise and hubbub was little short of deafening.

The Chairman, having briefly addressed the meeting in dumb show, called upon one eminent Liberal after another to move the preliminary resolutions. Not a word that any one of these gentlemen said could be heard a yard beyond the limits of the platform. It seemed that nothing could be done to reduce the vast audience to silence, and we were in despair at the thought that Mr. Gladstone would have to face so severe an ordeal. When at last his turn came, and he stepped to the front of the platform, thirty thousand throats sent up such a shout that it seemed to shake the building. Again and again for a space of some minutes it was renewed, whilst the orator stood, pale and motionless. What could one voice have done against thirty thousand? Then, just as the cheering seemed to be subsiding, someone started "For he's a jolly good fellow," and the whole thirty thousand joined in the song. After that it took some minutes for them all to settle down again, and still there went on that undercurrent of murmuring talk which seemed to make the attempt of anyone to address the gigantic meeting hopeless. But suddenly Mr. Gladstone raised his hand, and it was almost as if a miracle had happened. In an instant there was a deathlike silence in the hall, and every man in it seemed to be holding his breath. The speaker's voice rang out, clear and musical as of old, and it reached to the furthest corners of the mighty apartment. But he had not got further than the conventional opening words when his audience seemed to go mad with delight. A frenzied burst of cheering, far exceeding that which had welcomed him on his first appearance, proclaimed the joy with which they had heard the voice of the man they adored.

Again it was some minutes before Mr. Gladstone was allowed to proceed, but once more his uplifted hand ensured silence, and from that moment until he had reached the end of an hour's speech, every syllable that he uttered was heard distinctly by his thirty thousand listeners. It was, I think, the passionate eagerness of the audience to hear his voice, and their outburst of delight when its notes first fell upon their ears, that formed the most striking feature of that great meeting. Perhaps there was something almost idolatrous in the reception given to the statesman. It would have turned the heads of most men. The wonder is that it affected Mr. Gladstone so slightly. Yet I must say again that one must have been present at scenes like this in order to appreciate the real position of this remarkable man at this the very zenith of his political career. I remember that this speech, which was received with so intense an enthusiasm by all who heard it, contained the speaker's defence of what is known as the Majuba Hill policy. To those of us who were under the wand of the magician it seemed that no other defence was needed.

I had an opportunity, when the meeting was over, of seeing what effect the physical effort of making an hour's speech to an audience of thirty thousand had upon Mr. Gladstone. When I went into the committee room he was half reclining in an armchair, wrapped in a large cloak. His eyes were closed, his face was deathly pale, his whole aspect that of a man who was absolutely exhausted. Mrs. Gladstone brought him a cup of tea, but even as he drank his eyes were shut. To me, who had never seen him in this state before, it was alarming to observe him in a condition of positive collapse. Yet a few hours later he was the life and soul of a large dinner party. That dinner is memorable to me, because it was the first occasion on which I met Mr. Gladstone in private. I had a good opportunity of seeing that charming personal courtesy which distinguished him in all his social relationships. I was introduced to him by our host across the dinner-table, and he immediately plunged into a discussion about newspapers and distinguished journalists who were known to me personally. I remember he paid a great compliment to the Standard, saying that it was a newspaper he always liked to read because he always found it to be fair and honest. "When I read a bad leader in the Standard," he said, "I say to myself, Mr. Mudford must be taking a holiday." I duly reported this saying to Mudford afterwards, and I know that this praise from one whom he had often criticised so severely afforded that distinguished editor intense pleasure.

When Mr. Gladstone left Leeds after his stay of little more than forty-eight hours, he might safely have used the words of Julius Caesar. He had conquered everybody. Even his political opponents were for the moment subdued by the magic of his eloquence; whilst those who, like myself, had for the first time enjoyed direct personal intercourse with him were completely subjugated by the fascination of his manner, and those remarkable social and intellectual gifts which made him so long the foremost figure in English society. Of course, to one who had been a Gladstonian ever since those early days in the 'sixties at Newcastle of which I have spoken in a previous chapter, the joy of knowing the great man in the flesh was very great. Yet not even the strength of my admiration for one so supremely gifted, so ardent in his faith, and so strenuous in his actions made of me a blind follower of his leadership. Not many months after that meeting with him at Leeds I found myself sharply separated from him in a political controversy of which I shall soon have to speak.

I found refreshment after the fatigues connected with the Leeds gatherings in an excursion to Tunis. In 1881 the French, upon a distinctly fraudulent pretext, had invaded the territories of the Bey of Tunis. Their professed purpose was to punish a certain tribe of "Kroumirs," who, it was alleged, had committed outrages in Algeria. The Kroumirs, as it turned out, were a product of the imagination of M. Roustan, the diplomatic agent of France in Tunis. No such tribe was known to the Tunisians, but the pretext served, and Tunis was invaded. The truth, as the world now knows, was that France was resolved to have some compensation for our ill-starred acquisition of Cyprus. She dared not move in the direction of Morocco, because of the jealousy of the other Powers of Europe; but she had obtained the tacit consent of Prince Bismarck to the Tunisian expedition. Of the pledges she gave as to the objects and the limitations of that expedition I need not speak. Yet one is entitled to remember that if the force of circumstances has compelled our neighbours to break their word with regard to Tunis, we are equally justified in alleging the same reason for the breach of our own promises concerning Egypt.

My friend Mudford gave me a commission to act as special correspondent of the Standard in Tunis, and I went there accordingly to spend a few interesting weeks in studying on the spot one of the burning questions of the day. I shall not inflict upon my reader the story of my trip. I feel the less inclined to do so because I was ill-advised enough after my return to publish that story in a volume called "The Land of the Bey." The most interesting fact connected with that volume is one that happened in quite recent years. A gentleman from the Inland Revenue Office called upon me, and in a most courteous manner drew my attention to the fact that I had not, in my income-tax returns, included the profit I had received from this book. It had taken the department just nineteen years to discover the existence of this precious volume. The discovery, though belated, did great credit to the zeal and industry of somebody connected with the Inland Revenue, for I am convinced that he is the only person, myself excepted, who knew that the book had been written. I had clean forgotten its existence myself when it was recalled to my memory in this amusing fashion. My visitor from the Inland Revenue Office smiled sweetly when I explained to him why no profits from this publication had ever swelled my meagre income-tax returns. It was a case of the Spanish Fleet over again. I had never seen those literary profits even to the amount of sixpence, and I could not therefore be expected to cause the collectors of her Majesty's Revenue to succeed where I had failed.

My stay in Tunis was not only interesting but somewhat adventurous. There was only one Englishman besides myself resident in the city of Tunis while I was there. This was Mr. A. M. Broadley, who was at that time acting as the correspondent of the Times, and whose ability had enabled him to create a diplomatic question, which he called the Enfida Case, out of a trumpery lawsuit in which he acted for a rich Arab, called, if I remember aright, General Benayid. Mr. Broadley subsequently became known to fame for the active part he took in defending Arabi Pasha at Cairo. I only mention him now because of the remarkable forecast which he made on the first evening on which I met him in his house in Tunis. Producing a map of the Eastern Hemisphere he pointed out to me what he called the zone of disturbance, and assured me that within the next ten years the eyes of the world would be riveted upon that zone. Roughly speaking, the zone was the belt of the Mahommedan races, extending from Morocco in the west to India in the east. The disturbances which he predicted would come he traced in the first instance from our annexation of Cyprus, and the consequent invasion of Tunis by France. He foretold with great precision the rise of the Mahdi, and the growth of religious fanaticism in the Soudan; and he indicated that through Asia Minor, Persia, and Afghanistan a wave of unrest was running which must have serious consequences for the Christian Powers in the near future. Many times in later days I had occasion to remember the wonderfully clear and precise predictions of Mr. Broadley, as he delivered them to me in his old Arab house in Tunis.

One charming friend I made during my visit. This was the English Consul-General, Mr. Reade, who entertained me in his beautiful house at the Marsa, close to the site of Carthage. A pleasant, rather grave, and thoughtful man, Mr. Reade was a mine of information regarding earlier days in Tunis, when the Bey was a real ruler and the slave-market in the old Bazaar was still the scene of a merchandise in flesh and blood. His father had been Consul-General in Tunis when the influence of Great Britain was supreme, and he had inherited his father's popularity and personal prestige. Too clearly he foresaw that the result of the French foray upon the unoffending principality must be its absorption into French territory, and the consequent loss of England's position and influence in that part of the Mediterranean. All his fears have been more than realised. In 1881 it was the English Consul-General who was the most important person in Tunis—more important in many respects than the Bey himself. In the Bazaars every shop was filled with English goods, whilst many wealthy Tunisians had found protection by securing their recognition as English subjects. In the old Consulate at the gates of the city an English, or at least a Maltese, judge administered justice under the red ensign daily. The travelling Englishman hardly seemed to have left the shelter of his own flag when he found himself in the land of the Bey. All this is changed now. France has elbowed England out of Tunis. Our Consul—he is no longer Consul-General—is a subordinate official. English commerce has dwindled away to comparative insignificance. French shops supply the residents with all they require, and Great Britain has become of no account. This is the direct result of Lord Beaconsfield's action in taking possession of Cyprus in 1878. Would to Heaven that this were the whole of the price we have had to pay for that fatal piece of folly!

Whilst I was in Tunis I went to the little English graveyard, which lies enclosed by houses in the heart of the old city. Here are the graves of some Englishmen who were the captives of Tunisian pirates in the old days when Barbary rovers were still the curse of the Mediterranean. I found there also, in that lonely and neglected spot, the grave of Howard Payne, the author of "Home, Sweet Home." It seemed cruel that he, who had touched so deep and true a chord in the hearts of millions, should himself be fated to rest so far from home. I wrote to the newspapers to draw attention to this fact. Whether my letters had in themselves any effect I do not pretend to say, but I am glad to know that since then Payne's body has been removed to America and buried in his native place.

In returning from Tunis I came by way of Malta and Naples, where I got an Orient steamer which brought me to Plymouth. It was in sailing through the Straits of Messina on my way to Naples that I met with one of those strange—but by no means rare—coincidences that prove the smallness of the world, or, at least, of that part of it with which any one man is acquainted. I was sitting on the upper deck of the steamer, gazing at Etna, as its snow-shrouded peak was revealed in the brilliant moonlight, when a chance fellow-traveller began to talk about the coincidences so common in foreign travel. I told him that one of my strangest experiences of the kind was the following. In the previous September I was staying at the Hotel Belle Vue at The Hague, and after dinner one evening went into the reading room to get a peep at the Times. A pleasant-looking elderly gentleman was reading it when I entered. Perhaps he saw the look of disappointment on my face when I found that the coveted journal was engaged. At any rate, he very courteously offered it to me, and by way of opening a conversation drew my attention to an article it contained about the Liverpool docks. When I had glanced through the paper he resumed the conversation about Liverpool, and asked if I knew many persons in that city. I was compelled to admit that I knew only one, a Liverpool clergyman named Postance, my acquaintance with him being of the slightest. "Ah," said my friend, "if you know the Reverend Henry Postance, you have possibly heard him speak of his son Alfred?" I replied that I knew Alfred Postance better than I knew his father, and that I had, as a matter of fact, travelled to Malta with him shortly before his death, which took place in that island. "Then," pursued my interlocutor, "since you knew Alfred Postance, you might like to read a little sketch of his life that has been written by a friend. I think I could procure the loan of a copy for you." I thanked the gentleman for his offer, but explained that it was not necessary that I should avail myself of it, as Mr. Postance senior had already sent me a copy of the work in question. The old gentleman's eyes glistened when I said this, and with an air of some pride he said: "Since you have read that little book, you will, I am sure, be interested to know that it was I who published it." "Well, I am rather interested," I replied, "because it was I who wrote it."

This was the story which I chanced to tell on the deck of the steamboat to my unknown fellow-traveller. I had no sooner finished it than he said, "Then you are Mr. Wemyss Reid. Your account of Alfred Postance was the last thing I read before leaving my home in Malta." The double coincidence was certainly rather startling, and it was increased when I found that I and this second stranger had on the same day visited the grave of Alfred Postance at Valetta for the same purpose—to pluck a spray of flowers to send to his father in Liverpool. Yes, the world is small!



CHAPTER XIV.

CONCERNING W. E. FORSTER AND OTHERS.

The Beginning of Mr. Stead's Journalistic Career—His Methods—Birth of the New Journalism—Madame Novikoff and Mr. Stead—Mr. Stead's Attacks upon Joseph Cowen—How he dealt with a Remonstrance—W. E. Forster—Mr. Chamberlain's Antagonism—The Leeds Mercury's Defence of Forster—How he was Jockeyed out of the Cabinet—Forster's Resignation—News of the Phoenix Park Murders—Forster's Reflections—Mr. Gladstone's Pity for Social Outcasts—Mr. Chamberlain's Brothers Blackballed at the Reform—Failure of an Attempt to Crush the Leeds Mercury—Forster's Gratitude.

I now approach an episode in my life which not only had a strong and permanent influence on my own career, but is of interest in its bearing on the politics of my time. I refer to my intimate friendship with William Edward Forster, and to my close association with him in the stormy episodes which attended the close of his career as a Minister of the Crown. But before I enter into the story of my relations with this truly great and noble-minded man, I may say something about another distinguished person who shared my regard for Mr. Forster, though we had, perhaps, few other tastes in common. One day in 1871 or 1872—that is to say, soon after I became editor of the Leeds Mercury—I was told on returning home that a gentleman was waiting to see me who had brought a letter of introduction, which my servant placed in my hands. The letter was from my father, and its object was to introduce to me the son of his old friend, the Rev. William Stead, of Howden, near Newcastle. I need not say that an introduction from my father would in itself have sufficed to ensure for the bearer a warm reception; but in any case the story which young Mr. Stead had to tell me at once enlisted my interest and sympathy. Like myself, he was the son of a Nonconformist minister, and on leaving school he had entered upon a business career as a clerk on the quayside at Newcastle. But he had been irresistibly drawn towards journalism, just as I myself had been a dozen years earlier, and after contributing articles to various newspapers, he had received the offer of the editorship of the Northern Echo, a halfpenny newspaper which had been recently established at Darlington.

Strange to say, when this post was offered to and accepted by him, he was not only absolutely without editorial experience, but, as he himself told me, had never seen the inside of a newspaper office in his life. With that remarkable promptitude and directness of action which, as I afterwards discovered, was one of his great characteristics, he had no sooner accepted the editorship than he sought to qualify himself for it by making the acquaintance and obtaining the advice of someone who had actual experience in editorial work. It happened that I was the only editor to whom he could get a personal introduction, and so he came to me at Leeds to get what guidance and help I could afford him at the outset of his journalistic career. Remembering to what a height of fame he has since risen as a journalist, I confess that I look back upon the days when he thus approached me as a neophyte with some amusement. No doubt I was already, in his eyes, one of the old fogeys of the Press, and it must be admitted that there was something of the ugly duckling about his first appearance in my comparatively tame editorial establishment.

Stead interested me immensely during this first visit that he paid me. He was pleasingly distinguished by an entire lack of diffidence, and from the first made no concealment of his own views upon any of the subjects we discussed together. It is true that when I took him down to the Mercury office that evening, and wrote my leader whilst he sat at my desk beside me, he regarded me with the admiring eyes of the novice; but he had, even then, his own ideas as to how leaders ought to be written and newspapers edited, and he did not affect to conceal them. There was something that was irresistible in his candour, his enthusiasm, and his self-confidence. The Press was the greatest agency for influencing public opinion in the world. It was the true and only lever by which Thrones and Governments could be shaken and the masses of the people raised. In all this I was in strong sympathy with his opinions. But I was staggered by the audacity of the schemes for revolutionising English journalism which he poured into my ears on this the first evening on which he had ever entered a newspaper office. For hour after hour he talked with an ardour and a freshness which delighted me. If he had come to me in the guise of a pupil, he very quickly reversed our positions, and lectured me for my own good on questions of journalistic usage which I thought I had settled for myself a dozen years before I had met him.

Often I thought his ideas ridiculous: once or twice I thought that he himself must be mad; but even then I admired his splendid enthusiasm and his engaging frankness. Occasionally I said to him, "If you were ever to get your way, you would make the Press a wonderful thing, no doubt; but you would make the Pressman the best-hated creature in the Universe." At this he would burst into a roar of laughter, in which I was constrained to join. "I see, you think I'm crazy," he said once. "Well, not crazy, perhaps, but distinctly eccentric. You will come all right, however, when you have had a little experience." Thus, in my blind belief in my own superior experience and wisdom, I thought and spoke. Many a time since then I have recalled that long night's talk when I have recognised in some daring development of modern journalism one of the many schemes which Stead then flashed before my eyes. We had talked—or, rather, he had talked—for hours after getting home from work. I was far from being weary of his conversation, but I knew that the night had passed, and I rose and drew aside the curtains. Never shall I forget the look of amazement that overspread Stead's face when the sunshine streamed into the room. "Why, it is daylight!" he exclaimed, with an air of bewilderment. "I never sat up till daylight in my life before."

This was my first knowledge of one of the most remarkable and brilliant journalists of my time. We parted with, I think, mutual feelings of regard and goodwill, feelings which I, at least, have never lost. I recognised my visitor from the first as a man of remarkable gifts, of something that came near to genius. I recognised, too, his honesty and sincerity, though I had, even then, forebodings as to what might be the consequences of his impetuous ardour and reckless defiance of old customs and conventions.

After this, I heard a good deal from Stead during his remarkable editorship of the Northern Echo, nor was I long in discovering that he was really determined to put what I regarded as his wild theories of journalism into practice. Of course, it took time to enable him to make his personality felt in the little paper he edited, but he took care to keep me acquainted with all that he was doing. Whenever an article of special interest appeared in the Echo I received a copy of it, marked with a blue pencil by Stead. At the end of twelve months from his first engagement as editor, he wrote to me asking if I would give him my opinion in writing of his work during the year, and the capacity he had shown as a journalist. With great willingness I wrote to express my high opinion, not only of his ability, but of his growing aptitude as an editor. Back in a few days came a reply from this extraordinary man. It was to tell me that he had shown my letter to the proprietor of the Northern Echo, Mr. Bell, and on the strength of it had succeeded in obtaining an increase of salary, an increase which I am sure was fully deserved. For two years, if I remember aright, he went through this formality. I am confident that Mr. Stead himself, if he should read these lines, will not make any objection to my revelation of these little episodes in his early career. I have told them because, whilst they are so thoroughly characteristic of the man, they are not in any way derogatory to his reputation.