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Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842 1885

S >> Stuart J. Reid, ed. >> Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842 1885




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But, as I have said, Mrs. Riddell, apart from her imperfect observance of
editorial customs, was a delightful woman. She and her husband lived in a
rambling old house in the Green Lanes, Tottenham. Here she entertained
many of the notable men of letters of her time, and here I had the
pleasure of making the acquaintance of not a few of them. The
establishment was a somewhat primitive one. The workshop in which Mr.
Riddell carried on the manufacture of his patent stoves was at the back
of the house, and a rather large central hall, dividing the dining-room
and the drawing-room, was used as a kind of show-room in which choice
specimens of Mr. Riddell's wares were displayed. The special feature of
these patent stoves was that they were ornamental as well as useful. They
were made to look like anything but what they were. One stove appeared in
the guise of a table, richly ornamented in cast-iron; another was a vase;
a third a structure like an altar, and so forth. But whatever their
appearance might be, they all were stoves. One winter's night, when there
was an inch of snow on the ground, I went out to the Green Lanes to
attend one of Mrs. Riddell's literary parties. It was bitterly cold, and
one of the stoves in the hall had been lighted for the comfort of the
guests. We were a merry company, including, if I remember aright, George
Augustus Sala, and some other well-known journalists. In the course of
the evening Mrs. Riddell asked a well-known barrister, who at that time
dabbled a little in literature, and who has since risen to fame and to a
knighthood, to favour us with a song. He was an innocent young man in
those days, and tried to excuse himself. "Now, Mr. C----," said Mrs.
Riddell, "I know you have brought some music with you, so you must get it
and do as I wish." The young man admitted that he had brought music, and
blushingly retired to the hall in quest of it. Suddenly, those of us who
were standing near the door heard a groan of anguish, and, looking out,
we saw Mr. C---- holding in one hand the charred remains of a roll of
music, and in the other the remnants of what had once been an excellent
overcoat. He had laid his coat, when he arrived, on what was apparently a
hall table. Unluckily for him, it happened to be the patent stove that
had been lighted that evening to cheer and warm us when we escaped from
the storm outside. I draw a veil over the subsequent proceedings.

I believe it was on this very evening that I heard Sala utter one of
those jocosely brutal sentences for which he was celebrated. The literary
men who frequented Mrs. Riddell's house were not, I am sorry to say, so
respectful to her husband as they might have been. They made it very
clear, in fact, that it was the novelist and not the inventor of stoves
whom they came to see, and they were impatient when the latter attempted
to intrude his views upon them. A party of us were gathered in the
dining-room, smoking and otherwise refreshing ourselves. We had been
listening to story after story from some of the best talkers in the
Bohemia of those days, and again and again the attempts of Mr. Riddell to
contribute to our entertainment by some long-winded narration had been
vigorously and successfully repulsed. At last the unhappy host found an
opening, and had got so far as "What you were saying reminds me of an
interesting anecdote I once heard," when Sala, striking his fist upon the
table, thundered a stentorian "Stop, sir!" Mr. Riddell looked at him,
half frightened, half indignant. "If the story you propose to tell us,"
continued Sala, "is an improper one, I wish to tell you that we have
heard it already; and if it is not improper, we don't want to hear it at
all." Yes, clearly one had wandered into Bohemia in those days.

My work in the Gallery of the House of Commons was of great interest. I
watched Disraeli during his first brief premiership in 1868, when he had
to hold the reins of authority in a House in which his party was really
in a minority, and when he had nightly to confront the fierce attacks of
Mr. Gladstone, who was rallying his own followers, both in the House and
in the country, for their successful onslaught upon the Government. It
was a unique and most valuable experience to watch these two great men in
their gladiatorial combats across the table of the House: Gladstone
wielding the mighty broadsword of his powerful eloquence, and seeming as
if at every moment he would annihilate his antagonist; Disraeli, with
marvellous skill and exquisite adroitness, bringing the rapier of his wit
to bear upon his opponent, and again and again pinking him with some
stinging epigram or smart retort that set all the Tory benches roaring
with delight. It made one's young blood grow warmer to watch the struggle
from the impartial height of the Reporters' Gallery.

I was in the House on that memorable occasion when Disraeli made a speech
which astounded his followers so much that they were only able to account
for it by the hypothesis that he had taken too much to drink. This is a
harsh way of stating the case, but there is no doubt a measure of truth
in it. Disraeli was not a self-indulgent man, but in those days his
devotion to his duties in the House was so great that he would sometimes
sit all the evening listening to a debate without taking any food, and in
his dinnerless condition the stimulant he took before making his speech
in reply occasionally got into his head. Certainly, in the memorable
speech on the Irish Church question, to which I allude, he was betrayed
into excesses for which some justification was necessary. I remember
seeing him, at the close of that speech, draw his handkerchief from his
pocket and wave it round his head, before he sank back exhausted on the
Treasury bench; and I can still see the pale and angry face of Mr.
Gladstone as he sprang to his feet to reply, and hear the stern tones in
which he referred to "the excitement--the too obvious excitement--of the
right honourable gentleman."

Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff has recently furnished the world with many
volumes of personal reminiscences. He does not include among those
reminiscences any reference to a scene which I witnessed in the House of
Commons during Disraeli's first brief premiership, although Sir
Mountstuart was himself the hero of the occasion. It was one Wednesday
afternoon. There was an empty House and a dull debate, but Disraeli was
in his place on the Treasury Bench, so that anything might happen. It
pleased the Mr. Grant Duff of those days to deliver himself of a
philippic, at once voluminous and violent, against the Prime Minister. He
quoted the opinions of foreign critics to the disadvantage of Mr.
Disraeli; he emphasised them by fine flights of his own imagination; and
he illustrated his speech with a wealth of gesticulation and a variety of
intonation that convulsed his scanty audience with laughter. People
wondered mildly what punishment was in store for the audacious man who
was thus breaking one of the unwritten canons of the House, for in those
days it was regarded as bad form on the part of a man not himself in the
front rank to attack one in the position of Mr. Disraeli. As the speech
proceeded, the Prime Minister sat in his favourite attitude, his arms
folded, his head slightly bent forward, and his vacant eyes fixed upon
the points of his boots. He might have been carved in stone for any trace
of emotion that he displayed. We in the Gallery anticipated that this air
of absolute indifference was to be the punishment of his rash assailant.
But to our surprise, when Grant Duff sat down, Disraeli instantly sprang
to his feet. As he did so, he raised his single glass to his eye, and
looked fixedly across the House to the spot where the member for Elgin
was slowly composing himself after his mighty effort. For some seconds
Disraeli, with an air of cold, cynical aloofness, continued to gaze at
the unfortunate man. Then, with a favourite action, he suddenly dropped
the glass from his eye, and, waving his hand with an airy gesture of
contempt, said, "I shall not detain the House, sir, by referring to
the--the _exhibition_ we have just witnessed; but I merely wish to
say in reply to an honourable member below the gangway," and so on. This
was, I think, the most cruel speech I ever heard Disraeli make, and for
the moment it seemed to have a crushing effect upon its subject.

In those days Disraeli was not the Tory idol he subsequently became. I
well remember, on the historic evening when Mr. Gathorne Hardy moved the
adjournment of the House because of the absence of Mr. Disraeli at
Windsor, and the news instantly spread that Lord Derby had resigned and
Mr. Disraeli had become Prime Minister in his place, that there was a
hubbub--not merely of excitement, but of disapproval--in the Lobby. Tory
members of the old school were furious at having "that Jew," as they
contemptuously styled him, set over them. I walked from the House that
evening with Sir Edward Baines and Mr.--afterwards Sir Charles--Forster.
They were both full of the dislike felt on the Tory side for the change
in the leadership of their party. It is strange to note how quickly the
views of a party change with regard to its leaders. I remember the time
when the idea that Mr. Gladstone would ever be Prime Minister was treated
with ridicule by not a few of those who sat beside him in Parliament. I
have myself heard Mr. Disraeli assailed in scornful and sarcastic terms
by Lord Salisbury, and have listened to his sneering retort. Even after
Disraeli became Prime Minister in 1868 it is notorious that the Duke of
Buccleuch refused to entertain him as his guest when he visited Scotland
to rally the party before the General Election of that year. It was on
the occasion of this visit that he gave such offence to the graver
section of the Tories by the speech in which, explaining the genesis of
the Household Suffrage Act, he used the words, "I educated my party." A
few years later the whole party was proud of having been educated by him;
but when he made this speech his words were regarded as an insolent
display of vanity on the part of an upstart who had elbowed his way to
the front at the expense of better men.

My only personal encounter with the great Tory leader was connected with
this same speech at Edinburgh. I went to Aylesbury, during the course of
the 1868 election, in order to report a speech of his. He spoke in the
Corn Exchange, which was crowded to excess. The accommodation for the
reporters was quite unequal to their demands, and I had to stand among
the crowd and take my notes as best I could. A good-natured farmer in
front of me invited me to use his back as a desk, against which I placed
my note-book. Disraeli had not proceeded very far with his speech before
I found that my friend was not by any means in agreement with the
illustrious speaker. Again and again he interrupted him with exclamations
and questions. For a long time Disraeli took no notice of these
interruptions, but at last one stung him into action. The orator had
paused for a moment, and my farmer friend, seizing his chance, bawled out
in a stentorian voice, "What about educating your party?" The Prime
Minister instantly turned round, raised his glass to his eye, and with an
angry and contemptuous glare, transfixed--me! The farmer's courage had
given way when he found that his shot had told, and, to my unutterable
disgust, he dropped upon his knees, and left me to face the music.
Disraeli looked at me for a perceptible space of time, and then, dropping
his glass, said, in those chilling tones of which he was a master, "I
shall certainly not try to educate _you_, sir." Everybody stared at
me; everybody groaned at me; and it was only the consciousness of my own
innocence that kept me from dropping on my knees beside the treacherous
author of my humiliation.

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