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Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842 1885

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




Of course, the newspapers were full of the war from the moment of its
breaking out. The arrangements for special correspondents and news from
the front were more complete than they had ever been before, and as the
astounding drama swiftly advanced from the trivial overture at Saarbruck
to the overwhelming catastrophe at Sedan, the civilised world had eyes
and ears for nothing else. Barely seven weeks elapsed between the
declaration of war and the surrender of the Emperor and the fall of his
empire. During those seven weeks, public opinion in this country seemed
to be equally divided between the two belligerents; but after the
collapse of the Imperial army and the fall of the empire, the balance
swung round in favour of France. That wholesome human sentiment which
leads most men to take sides with the weak against the strong acted upon
us, and drew our sympathies to unhappy France. The French have never
given us credit for this fact, but have continually reproached us for not
having espoused their side in a quarrel with which we had absolutely no
concern. On the other hand, the Germans have never openly resented our
sympathy with France in her day of immeasurable misfortune. I do not
think, however, that they have forgotten it.

It was after Sedan, when it became evident that Paris was about to be
invested by the victorious troops, that the war entered upon a new phase.
At first nobody believed in a possible siege of Paris, any more than
people now believe in a possible siege of London. I remember one of the
sub-editors of the _Leeds Mercury_, who happened to take the
Prussian side in the quarrel, bursting into my room one day in a furious
passion to denounce the conduct of those wretched Frenchmen, who were
positively cutting down the woods outside the city barriers in order to
prevent their affording shelter to the enemy. My friend had once visited
Paris, and had been struck by the beauty of these woods. Apparently he
thought that, even for their own salvation, the French had no right to
disfigure scenes of beauty that had delighted the eyes of sentimental
tourists.

The newspapers, when it became evident that the siege of Paris was, after
all, destined to take place, had to adopt measures to secure
correspondents who were prepared to endure the hardships of that siege in
order to furnish information to the British public. The most famous of
these correspondents was Mr. Labouchere, who furnished the _Daily
News_ with the most entertaining journal of a siege ever written by a
besieged resident. On behalf of the _Leeds Mercury_ I engaged the
services of another well-known journalist to act as our representative
during the siege. This gentleman very naturally required a considerable
sum of money in advance for his maintenance during the investment. He had
written one or two admirable letters in anticipation of the siege, and I
cheerfully sent him the amount for which he asked. He received it just
before the Prussian lines closed round Paris, and I do not remember that
I ever heard from him again. The letters which it is to be presumed he
wrote to the _Leeds Mercury_ never reached that journal.

When the investment began, and Paris was cut off from the outer world, we
onlookers with the strip of sea between had certain visible signs of the
reality of the siege offered to us in our very midst. The front page of
the _Times_ furnished one of these signs. Day after day, for weeks
at a stretch, the whole of that page was occupied by messages from the
French outside Paris to their friends and relatives within the walls. At
first English readers were puzzled by this phenomenon. The investment of
the city was very strict, and it was difficult to understand how the
newspaper could be smuggled inside the barriers; but presently the truth
was made known. This page of the _Times_ was part of the machinery
of the famous pigeon post which connected the outside world with Paris
during its long beleaguerment. The page was photographed on a microscopic
scale. The film on which the photograph was printed was carried into
Paris by a pigeon, a magic-lantern was used to enlarge the photograph,
and the messages it contained were copied by Post Office officials, and
forwarded to their different destinations. Such a postal service was, I
imagine, unique. It was certainly most ingenious.

Another sign of the siege of Paris was presented during those bright
autumn days by the appearance of Piccadilly, especially on a Sunday
afternoon. I generally spent Sunday in London, and during that autumn,
when walking on a Sunday in Piccadilly, I noticed more than once that the
majority of the well-dressed persons promenading on the northern side of
the street were Frenchmen--most of them wearing the ribbon of the Legion
of Honour. They were chiefly Imperialists, for whom there was no place in
France under the new _régime_, and they had flocked to London
literally in thousands, so that the great West End thoroughfare resounded
at times with the French tongue.

One feature of that autumn was the unwonted magnificence of the displays
of the aurora borealis. I never saw such fine auroras before or since.
Night after night the sky was lighted up by the brilliantly coloured
shafts of quivering flame. It is hardly surprising that the vulgar should
have associated the phenomenon with the wonderful tragedy which was being
enacted so near to our shores. The most ignorant, however, did not regard
it as an omen. They honestly believed that they saw in the heavens the
reflection of the glare from burning Paris.

I did not settle down to my editorial work in Leeds easily. Everything
drew me back to London, and I told the proprietors of the _Mercury_
that I did not mean to retain my post after the war came to an end. But
at this point a fresh piece of good fortune came to me, though it arose
out of a deplorable calamity. The _Captain_, the experimental vessel
built by Captain Cowper Coles on designs that many high naval authorities
had declared to be dangerously unsound, capsized in the Bay of Biscay,
and sank with nearly every soul on board, including her designer, Captain
Coles himself. There had been a great newspaper discussion about the
_Captain_, and the _Times_ had taken a vigorous part in it
against the Admiralty authorities and in favour of Captain Coles. On the
morning on which the news of the disaster was announced, the _Times_
in its leading article maintained that the catastrophe was in no sense
due to the instability of the ship, and urged that another _Captain_
should be forthwith built. The _Leeds Mercury_, on the other hand,
took what I regarded as the commonsense view, and insisted that for the
future the opinions of the trained experts of the Admiralty should be
preferred to those of irresponsible enthusiasts, even though they
happened to be, like Captain Cowper Coles, men of genius.

Mr. Edward Baines, like most old journalists, had a profound respect for
the wisdom of the _Times_, and he was very much disturbed when he
found that the _Leeds Mercury_ took a directly opposite view of the
disaster to that of "the leading journal." He expressed to me, in his
usual friendly and courteous manner, his regret that I had expressed
myself so strongly, and evidently felt that what the _Times_ said
must be true. But on the following day the _Times_, after an
interval for reflection, completely changed its position, admitted that
the design of the _Captain_ must have been at fault, recalled the
fact that the catastrophe had been foreseen by the highest authorities,
and protested against the building of any more ships of the same
character. There was nothing surprising in this change of front, for the
first views of the paper had been obviously inconsistent with the facts
and with commonsense. But Mr. Baines was immensely impressed by the fact
that the _Leeds Mercury_ had grasped the essential truth before the
_Times_. He greatly exaggerated the merit of his editor in the
matter, came to the conclusion that I had become indispensable to the
paper, and would not rest until I had entered into a new and binding
agreement with him to continue my editorship on conditions that were
greatly to my own advantage.

Thus this grave disaster to an English ship led to my final
relinquishment of the idea of returning to London as a literary free
lance, and to my settling in Leeds as permanent editor of the
_Mercury_. Gradually my life in the town of my adoption became more
agreeable to me. I made friends who were kind to me with the
characteristic kindness of Yorkshire. I began to feel the power, as well
as the responsibility, of my position; and I learned before long that,
even in connection with the local affairs of a great community, a man can
render services to his fellow citizens quite as important as any that he
can render on the larger platform of public life.

It was at the close of 1870 that I first made the personal acquaintance
of a man to whom I was afterwards to be deeply and permanently indebted.
This was Monckton Milnes, first Lord Houghton. There was no better known
figure in London society in those days than Lord Houghton. But he was
much more than a figure in society. Delightful as host, _raconteur_,
poet, and man of letters, he was more admirable still as the generous and
willing servant of those who needed help. He had his foibles, his likes
and his dislikes; but he was not one of those philanthropists who wait to
be asked for their help. Where he was attracted towards anyone he was
eager to aid, not only without solicitation, but at times even against
the will of the beneficiary himself. I have known many kind men, many
true friends, in the course of my life; I have known none whose kindness
was more unstinted, more constant, or more generous than that of Lord
Houghton. He had come to Leeds in December, 1870, to attend some public
meeting, and he was entertained as his guest by Mr. Baines, whose son, as
I have already explained, was my predecessor in the editorship of the
_Mercury_.

At the dinner-table at Mr. Baines's house, Lord Houghton was as vivacious
and as full of good talk as usual. The conversation happened to turn upon
slips of the tongue. Houghton said that the most amusing he remembered
was that of the lady who, meeting a friend in the street, exclaimed,
"Have you heard of the dreadful thing that has happened to my poor
brother John? He has become a Yarmouth Bloater." The good lady meant, of
course, to say "Plymouth Brother." To Houghton's surprise, his story was
received in embarrassed silence, and someone, as he told me afterwards,
trod heavily upon his foot. Monckton Milnes was not a man to be easily
disconcerted, and he speedily restored the party to a proper mood of
geniality; but after dinner he took someone aside, and asked the meaning
of the cold reception of his joke. He received the explanation which the
reader will anticipate. It was because Mr. Tom Baines had become a
Plymouth Brother that he had been compelled to retire from the editorship
of the _Mercury_, to the great distress of his father. My name as
his successor in that position was unknown until then to Lord Houghton,
but he had no sooner heard it than he invited me to visit him at Fryston.

When I first entered the hospitable door of Fryston, I suffered from a
distinct feeling of trepidation. It was new to me to meet men of Lord
Houghton's social rank and fame on terms of friendly intimacy, and I
confess that I was miserably shy when I made my first appearance among
the company assembled in that pleasant morning room, where, long years
before, Thomas Carlyle had been first introduced to the amenities of
English country-house life. Carlyle has told the world, in a letter
written to his wife, how much he was confounded by what seemed to him to
be the splendours of a society that he had hitherto viewed only from the
outside. His description of his bedroom--it was much larger and grander
in the letter than any bedroom that really existed at Fryston--of the
servants in livery, the menu of the dinner-table, and of the valet who
made unlawful and undesired investigation of the contents of his pockets
when he intruded himself upon him in the morning, all bespoke the
absolute novice. I do not think, however, that he was a greater novice in
1842 than I was in 1870. A very brief experience enables any person of
ordinary intelligence to grasp the essential details of country-house
life; but many persons--including Carlyle and myself--would have been
spared a certain spell of nervous discomfort if there had existed some
simple written code explaining those usages and customs in which
country-house life differs from the ordinary life of the English
middle-classes. But kindness puts an end to all difficulties of the shy
guest, and certainly there never was a kinder hostess than Lady Houghton.

From 1870 down to 1885 I had the good fortune to be a frequent visitor at
Fryston. Lord Houghton's kindness to me at our first meeting only
increased as time passed; and writing of him now, long after he has
passed away, I must relieve my heart by saying that I owe more to him and
to his unceasing efforts, not merely to draw me out, but to push me
forward, than to any other friend I have ever made. There was a whimsical
side to his character which, naturally enough, attracted more attention
than was given to his more sober qualities. The eccentricities of his
youth, embalmed by Sydney Smith and the other humorists of the 'thirties
and 'forties, had disappeared when I made his acquaintance; but to the
last he was absolutely careless as to public opinion, except on such
points as those on which he himself shared that opinion. The truest thing
that was ever said of him was said by William Edward Forster at the
Cosmopolitan Club one night, when Houghton was leaving it. Someone said,
referring to Houghton, "He's a good man to trust when you're in trouble,
for he'll stand by you." "He'll do more than that," responded Forster;
"he'll stand by a man not only in trouble but in disgrace, and I know
nobody else who will." This was where the finer trait in Houghton's
independence of character came in. He was always ready to espouse the
cause of a man upon whom the world was frowning, but happily this quality
is not uncommon among our nobler natures. That which was most uncommon in
Houghton's character was his willingness to befriend a man even when he
knew that the disgrace into which he had fallen was not undeserved. He
could be severe--as severe as anybody I have ever known--upon vice and
meanness; but if the sinner needed help he pitied him at once, and was
ready to aid him to the best of his power.

His talk in his own house was delightful. It was altogether different
from the talk that men heard when they met him at London dinner-tables.
Strangely enough, it was at the breakfast-table that he talked best. Most
Englishmen are not roused to conversational brilliancy until the day is
far spent; but Houghton was at his best at breakfast and immediately
afterwards. And how good that best was! He was a walking encyclopaedia,
although no man was ever less of "a book in breeches." Whenever I wished
to clear up some obscure point in history or politics, in literature or
in the personal life of our times, I went to him, and seldom was it that
I failed to get the light I wanted. As a judge of character he had no
equal among the men I have known, and in the years that have flown since
his death I have had the happiness of seeing his forecast of the future
of not a few men strikingly realised. The first time I ever heard the
name of Lord Rosebery was from his lips, in 1874 or 1875. I had seen the
name in print, of course, but to me it was a name, and nothing more. "You
don't know Lord Rosebery?" said he one day. "Then mark him well. He is
the ablest young man in England, and, I believe, will be Prime Minister
before he dies."

On another occasion he shocked me for the moment by a deliverance about
Mr. Gladstone. It was in 1880, when the great statesman, having won the
most brilliant triumph of his life, and finally defeated his great rival,
Lord Beaconsfield, was struck down by serious illness a few weeks after
he had regained power. "I am so sorry to see that Gladstone is getting
better," Houghton said to me as we sat in the library at Fryston. I could
hardly believe my own ears, and expressed my surprise at hearing such a
sentiment from the lips of one of Mr. Gladstone's greatest admirers.
"Don't you see," responded Houghton, "that if he dies now he will be one
of the greatest figures in English history? He has just won the greatest
triumph a statesman ever enjoyed. It is impossible that he can remain at
this dazzling height. _Now_ is the time for him to die." Those who
only knew Lord Houghton as a genial cynic would have been surprised if
they had known that in his opinion the greatest Englishman of his own
time was Lord Shaftesbury, and the greatest Englishwoman Florence
Nightingale. Those who were acquainted with his poetry would not have
felt this surprise. There is much in his verse, neglected though it now
be, which deserves a high place in our national literature. But in his
later days--or, rather, throughout his life--the world refused to see his
more serious side, and treated him as the humorist and the wit, the
cynic, and the kind-hearted but eccentric peer who made it his mission in
life to try to fuse the two worlds of society and intellect.

He certainly had wonderful success in bringing together men who stood at
opposite poles both of position and opinion. In the days when Mr. John
Morley was only known as a promising writer of the most terrible
heterodoxy, he dined with Houghton, and was placed next the Archbishop of
Canterbury. "Who is that clever-looking young man sitting next the
Archbishop?" asked Lord Selborne, who was also at the table. When he was
told that it was Mr. Morley, the editor of the _Fortnightly Review_
and the author of the famous "little g," he threw up his hands in
absolute consternation. But Houghton had a rare discrimination in
bringing men together. He never brought people who disliked each other
into juxtaposition, as some notorious hostesses of our own time are fond
of doing. What he did was to gather round his table men of talent and
worth who would have had little chance of meeting but for his kindly and
hospitable intervention, and many a lifelong friendship has thus been
begun beneath his roof.

One of the earliest lessons a man learnt on being admitted to Houghton's
cosmopolitan society was the great need of care in the selection of
topics in addressing a stranger. Most persons one met at Fryston had
either done something or were somebodies, and occasionally their fame was
not of the kind that commends itself to everybody. It was necessary,
therefore, to walk delicately, like Agag, in opening a conversation with
a stranger. A terrible experience of my own will illustrate this fact. As
boy and man I had adored Thackeray, and made him the hero of my literary
dreams. There was one incident in his early life about which I was quite
unreasonably curious. I wanted to know which of his schoolfellows it was
who broke his nose and disfigured him for life, and I had made up my mind
that if ever I met a man who had been at school with him I would question
him on this point. During one of my earlier visits to Fryston I found
that George Venables, the well-known Parliamentary counsel and Saturday
Reviewer, was staying there. Venables was one of the most distinguished
men of his day. His ripe judgment commanded universal confidence, whilst
the somewhat austere manner which veiled a warm heart inspired chance
acquaintances with a certain feeling of awe. During dinner I heard
Venables talking about his early days at the Charterhouse, and felt at
once that my long-sought chance had come. Accordingly, when I was walking
with him in the Fryston woods on the following morning, I plucked up my
courage, and asked him if he had been at the Charterhouse with Thackeray.
"Certainly I was," replied the eminent publicist; "we entered on the same
day, and were great friends all the time we were at school." "Then," said
I, rushing blindly upon my fate, "you can tell me what I have long wanted
to know. Who was it that broke Thackeray's nose?"

It was winter, and we were walking in Indian file through the woods. As I
put this question to Venables, he suddenly stopped, and, turning round,
glared at me in a manner that instantly revealed the terrible truth to my
alarmed intelligence. He continued to glare for several seconds, and
then, apparently perceiving nothing but innocent confusion, not unmixed
with alarm, on my face, his own features became relaxed into a more
amiable expression. "Did anybody tell you," he said slowly, and with
solemn emphasis, "to ask me that question?" I could truthfully say that
nobody had done so. My answer seemed to mollify Venables at once. "Then,
if nobody put you up to asking me that question, I don't mind answering
it. It was _I_ who broke Thackeray's nose. We were only little boys
at the time, and quarrelled over something, and had the usual fight. It
wasn't my fault that he was disfigured for life; it was all the fault of
some wretched doctor. Nowadays a boy's nose can be mended so that nobody
can see that it has ever been broken. Let me tell you," he continued,
"that Thackeray never showed me any ill-will for the harm I had done him,
and I do not believe he felt any." Nor, I must add, did Venables show any
ill-will to me for the _gaucherie_ which had caused me to rake up
this painful episode in his career.

Venables himself had been the victim of another mistake, which he
resented more strongly than he did my indiscretion. He told the story to
me and to Mrs. Procter one day in the drawing-room at Fryston, with keen
indignation. A certain noble lord had approached him at an evening party
with an air of extraordinary deference. Venables knew the peer very
slightly, and was surprised by the salaams with which he was greeted. His
surprise changed to fury when he discovered that his lordship had
mistaken him for a notorious millionaire of somewhat dubious reputation
who had just blossomed into a baronetcy. "Think of it!" he said with
lofty scorn. "The fellow came cringing to me as if I were a prince of the
blood, merely because he thought I was that odious adventurer, and had
money in my pocket." Mrs. Procter sprang from her seat, and, hobbling
across the room with extended forefinger, cried to Venables, in tones of
dramatic intensity, "Does that noble lord still live?"

It was from Venables that I heard a delightful story about our host
which, years afterwards, I repeated in writing Lord Houghton's life. It
was the story of Carlyle's remark when Tennyson's friends were trying to
procure a pension for him from Sir Robert Peel. "Richard Milnes," said
Carlyle, taking his pipe out of his mouth, "when are ye gaun to get that
pension for Alfred Tennyson?" Milnes tried to explain to Carlyle that
there were difficulties in the way, and that possibly his constituents,
who knew nothing about Tennyson, might accuse him of being concerned in a
job if he were to succeed in getting the desired pension for the poet.
"Richard Milnes," replied the sage, "on the Day of Judgment, when the
Lord asks ye why ye didna get that pension for Alfred Tennyson, it'll no
do to lay the blame on your constituents. It's _you_ that'll be
damned." I always had a half impression that, for some reason or other,
Lord Houghton did not like to hear that story told in his presence. All
the world knows, of course, that he did get the pension for the poet, and
thus escaped the penalty anticipated by the philosopher.

But if Lord Houghton was sensitive on some points, he was frank and
courageous in acknowledging his own youthful follies and the punishment
which they brought upon him. I shall never forget his taking me to a
particular corner in that vast library at Fryston--which, like some
vegetable parasite, seemed to have spread itself over every inch of
available wall-space in the house--and taking down from the shelves a
volume of the "Life of Sydney Smith." His object in doing so was to show
me the original manuscript of the pungent and witty letter in which
Sydney Smith rebuked him sharply for having written a somewhat peppery
note to ask the Canon if it was true that he had dubbed him "the cool of
the evening." "What a young fool I was!" said Lord Houghton, when he had
read the letter to me. "And how good it was of Sydney Smith to set me
down in that fashion!"

Everybody knows that Lord Houghton was the most tolerant of men in all
matters of faith and opinion; but he did not allow mere carelessness or
idleness to serve as an excuse for the disregard of religious
observances. My usual time for visiting Fryston was on Saturday, when I
was free from the charge of my paper for four-and-twenty hours. My kind
friend always insisted on Sunday morning that instead of going to church
I should spend the morning in strolling in the park, either alone or in
his delightful company. This, he would say, was necessary in the
interests of my health. I spent more Sundays at Fryston than I can count,
but I never entered the little church hard by the park gates until the
sad day when I went there to attend his funeral. One Sunday evening, when
there was a rather large party at the Hall--including John Morley--we
were summoned by the old butler--himself a character not unworthy of
commemoration--to prayers in the morning room. Lord Houghton was good
enough to intimate to Morley and myself that we should not be expected to
attend, and we accordingly remained in the drawing-room in conversation.
A certain young Yorkshire baronet, who was also of the party, influenced
by our bad example, stayed behind with us. In a couple of minutes,
however, the butler reappeared, and going up to the baronet, said, "Sir
Henry, his lordship is waiting for you before he begins prayers." The
liberty accorded to the philosophic writer and the editor was not
permitted to the country gentleman. I think I ought to add, in justice to
Mr. Morley at least, that he and I accompanied the unwilling young man to
the scene of the family devotions.

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