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Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842 1885

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




I must stay my hand, however, in these rambling recollections of my kind
and brilliant friend and benefactor. No doubt I shall have more to say
about him before my task is finished; but for the present I must take up
again the thread of my narrative.



CHAPTER VIII.

MY FIRST CONTINENTAL TOUR.

A Generous Scot--Paris after the Commune--An Uncomfortable Journey
Home--Illness of the Prince of Wales--Revived Popularity of the
Throne--Death and Funeral of Napoleon III.--Burial of the Prince
Imperial--Forster's Educational Policy--Bruce's Incensing Bill--My Second
Marriage.


With the opening of 1871 came the armistice before Paris, quickly
followed by the conclusion of peace. Then took place the ghastly upheaval
of the Commune, and the eyes of the world were once more riveted upon the
great city which has been the theatre of so many tragedies. It shocked
everybody to think that the heavy sufferings through which unhappy France
had passed, instead of uniting all classes of the people together in the
bonds of a common sorrow, had only intensified the conflicts of parties
and social grades. But in due time the Communist rising itself was
suppressed, and peace at last fell to the lot of distracted France.

In September of this year, 1871, I went abroad for the first time in my
life. Passing through Belgium and by the Rhine to Switzerland, I visited
the Italian lakes before returning to England by way of Paris. There is
no need to dwell upon the incidents of a commonplace tour like this,
though one can never forget the delightful sense of exhilaration produced
by a first experience of the living grandeur of the Alps. Switzerland was
not so completely hackneyed in those days as it is now, and to me, of
course, as a newcomer, it did not seem to be hackneyed at all. I was too
young, I think, fully to realise the indescribable charm of Italy, a
charm which is felt more strongly by most of us with each successive
visit to that land of dreams and beauty. At Milan I was the victim of a
not unusual incident in travel. I found myself stranded at the old Hôtel
de la Ville for want of money. I had arranged for a remittance to reach
me there; but in those days there were no tunnels through the Alps, and
Italy was, in consequence, still a long way from England. My remittance,
therefore, took longer to reach me than I had anticipated. The result was
that I spent certain miserable days in a state of almost complete
impecuniosity. I shall never forget the weary hours during which I
tramped the streets, and the endless visits to the post office in search
of the letter which I awaited so anxiously.

But whilst in this unpleasant position, I was fortunate enough to meet
with an instance of genuine kindliness that really raised my opinion of
my fellow-creatures. An old Scotsman used to sit beside me at the
_table d'hôte_ at the Hôtel de la Ville. He was a man of
intelligence, and I found his conversation very pleasant. With the pride
and sensitiveness of youth, I was, of course, resolute in my
determination to conceal from him my unpleasant fix; but one night at
dinner he startled me by asking when I was going to leave Milan. I feebly
evaded the question by saying that I must first of all see all the sights
of the place. "Hoots, man!" he retorted, "ye've seen all the sights, and
ye're jist wasting your time and losing your holiday stopping here. I ken
weel what it is ye're waiting for. Ye're short of money--that's it, isn't
it?" I murmured something to the effect that I was expecting remittances
which would, no doubt, reach me almost immediately. "Weel, I'm not going
to let a young fellow like you lose your holiday," said my friend, in a
very positive manner, "and ye'll just have to make me your banker for
what ye want, and get away out of this hole as soon as ye can, for there
are better sights to be seen than Milan." I could only prevent his
forcing money upon me on the spot by promising that if my remittance did
not come next day I would avail myself of his generous offer. Happily,
the next day relief came, and I was no longer in pawn at Milan. But
blessings on the head of that worthy old Scot, who must long ago have
gone over to the majority! At least he nobly redeemed the character of
his countrymen from the libel which makes the name of a Scotsman
synonymous with meanness.

Paris in September, 1871, presented a strange sight to the eyes of a
visitor. The shadow of the double ordeal of the siege and the Communist
rising still lay heavily upon it. In the streets traces of the conflict
between the Versaillists and the Communards were everywhere visible.
Lamp-posts twisted by the shell fire, plate-glass windows perforated by
bullets, columns chipped and shattered, and the pavement ripped up for
the erection of barricades, were the common sights of the streets; whilst
the blackened ruins of the Tuileries, and the other public buildings
destroyed by the rebels, remained to attest the desperate character of
the civil war that had been waged in the capital. The inhabitants had not
yet recovered from the privations of the siege and the horrors of the
Commune. There were few who smiled, and there were many who could not
speak of the past without tears. That which was specially noticeable was
the fact that all the fury of the Parisians seemed to be turned against
the Communards. Many of them, speaking of the Prussians, referred warmly
to the contrast between their conduct and that of their own lawless
fellow-citizens.

Outside Paris the traces of the siege were everywhere visible, and
driving along the country roads near St. Cloud--where the people were
still living in tents and wooden sheds, almost every house having been
destroyed--one came constantly upon little groups of graves of German
soldiers who had been buried where they fell, each grave marked by its
wooden cross with its simple inscription. These monuments spoke
eloquently of the tragic character of the struggle. At Versailles, where
the National Assembly was sitting, the great bulk of the Communist
prisoners were confined in the orangery in front of the palace. Loaded
cannon commanded this improvised prison, where many hundreds of men and
women were herded promiscuously. Standing on the terrace above the
orangery, I leant over the balustrade in order to look on the prisoners
beneath. I had to withdraw hastily, for from the miserable crowd there
came up an unbearable stench, such as might emanate from a cage of wild
animals. Now and then one saw Communists being escorted by soldiers to
meet the swift vengeance of the court-martial which was sitting to try
them. These unhappy prisoners, who had little chance of escaping the
penalty of death, bore themselves with firmness, and manifestly believed
that they were sufferers in a holy cause. Not even the sight of the
destruction they had wrought in Paris could wholly stifle one's feelings
of sympathy with them in their wretched plight.

I had a second experience of the disadvantages of impecuniosity before I
reached London. During the latter part of my trip I had found a pleasant
travelling companion in the person of Mr. Charles Townsend, of Bristol, a
gentleman who subsequently represented that city in Parliament. As we
were travelling straight through from Paris to London, and had, as we
believed, ample funds for the journey, we signalised the close of our
trip on the Continent by a specially good dinner on the evening of our
departure, for which we had to pay a price in accordance with its merits.
We were returning by the Dieppe route. The journey by rail was delayed
because all the bridges near Paris were broken, and we had to creep
across temporary wooden structures. Before we were allowed to board the
steamer at Dieppe, all passports were carefully examined. The police were
on the search for escaped Communists, and whilst it was easy enough to
get into France, it was much more difficult to get out of the country.
Our passports, however, were in order, and we were soon lying down to
sleep in the cabin of the steamer in the full belief that we should find
ourselves in England in a few hours. I slept soundly, and only awoke when
the sun was well up in the heavens. The steamer was at rest, and I
thought we were in the harbour of Newhaven; but, to my dismay, when I
went on deck I found that we were still moored to the quay at Dieppe. A
terrific northwesterly gale was blowing, and the captain had not ventured
to put out. All that day we lay at Dieppe, the result being that the
money which would have taken us, under ordinary circumstances, in comfort
to London, was expended before we quitted France. When we reached
Victoria Station our united capital consisted of a halfpenny. We could
not even tip the porter who attended to us. I felt it was the meanest
moment of my life. We drove straight to a bank, however, and in a few
minutes had each a pocketful of gold. The double lesson I received during
this first Continental trip has made me careful ever since to take
sufficient funds on every journey to carry me safely through to the end.

The great public event of the autumn of 1871 was the illness of the
Prince of Wales. He had been staying in November with Lord Londesborough
at Scarborough, and on his return to Sandringham he was attacked by
typhoid fever. For a time no anxiety was felt, because it was believed
that the illness was a slight one. But suddenly the news was flashed
through the country that his Royal Highness had taken a turn for the
worse. This was followed a few hours later by the announcement that the
Queen and the other members of his family had been suddenly summoned to
his bedside; and yet a little later came the tidings that his case was
hopeless, and that he was rapidly sinking. December 14th, the day which
had proved fatal to his father exactly ten years before, was at hand, and
everybody believed that it would see another heavy blow dealt at the
Royal Family. It is impossible to describe the emotion produced by the
most unexpected news of the Prince's condition. The telegrams from
Sandringham were of so positive a nature that they forbade hope. On
Friday, December 13th, the gloom deepened hourly. At midnight a telegram
reached the office of the _Leeds Mercury_ saying that the family
were gathered round the Prince's bed awaiting his dissolution. That
telegram was received in every other newspaper office in the kingdom.
Everywhere Lives of the Prince were hurriedly prepared, and articles
written announcing the event which appeared to be imminent.

When the time approached for the _Mercury_ to be sent to press,
though we had made every preparation in case of the Prince's death, the
fatal news had not yet arrived. I consequently wrote an article upon his
illness and the emotion it had caused, to be inserted if his death had
not taken place when we went to press. Needless to say, it was this
article, and not that in which the national calamity was bewailed, that
appeared in the _Leeds Mercury_ next morning. The only other daily
newspaper that had a leading article on the Prince's illness was the
_Times_. In every other newspaper office the conviction that he was
at the very point of death was so strong that no preparation had been
made for his possible survival. When the morning of the fateful 14th came
it was announced that the Prince, though still in grave danger, had
rallied. For several days he hung between life and death, and then began
rapidly to mend, thanks to his own good constitution and to the
extraordinary care and skill with which he was nursed by Sir
William--then Dr.--Gull.

The revived popularity of the Throne in England may be dated, I believe,
from that period. The Queen's long withdrawal from the public eye,
consequent upon her widowhood, had led the multitude, ignorant of the
manner in which she devoted herself to the heavy duties of her position,
to regard her as being little more than a figurehead. Certain
politicians, in the autumn of 1871, had taken advantage of this state of
feeling to begin a crusade against the monarchy, and a section of the
extreme Radicals really seemed to believe that the glorious Throne of
England was about to be overthrown. But the sharp touch of personal
sorrow changed all this, and revealed to the English people their true
sentiments towards the Queen and her family. The grief, universally felt
when it was believed that we were about to lose the heir to the Crown,
and the affectionate sympathy with which his slow recovery was followed,
convinced us all, as they convinced the outside world, that the bonds
between the English Throne and the English people were far closer and
stronger than most persons had imagined. The trumpery campaign against
the monarchy died in a single night, and from that day to this the mutual
love and trust of monarch and people have gone on steadily increasing.

The announcement that the Queen proposed to attend St. Paul's Cathedral
in state to return thanks for the recovery of her eldest son touched the
heart of the nation afresh, and evoked the first great popular
demonstration of loyalty that had been witnessed since the early days of
the reign. I was present in the Cathedral at that solemn and stately
service on the 27th February, 1872, the precursor of the still more
stately service held at Westminster on the 21st June, 1887. Except on the
occasion of the Jubilee of the last-mentioned year, and of that of 1897,
London has never witnessed a more remarkable outburst of loyal
enthusiasm. At night the whole town was illuminated, St. Paul's Cathedral
being lighted up after the fashion of St. Peter's at Rome on Easter Day.
The crowds which filled the streets were enormous, and as the London
police had not then acquired the art of marshalling vast multitudes,
there was terrible crushing, and several lives were lost. Three persons
were suffocated at Temple Bar, which was already marked for removal. I
myself had the narrowest escape from death on Ludgate Hill, where the
multitude was packed in one dense, immovable mass for hours. The people
in the houses on the hill passed down water in buckets to the fainting
crowd, and now and then some woman or child was positively hauled out of
it by ropes, and thus placed in safety. It was not a sight that could
ever be forgotten, and it impressed forcibly upon one's mind the strength
of the hold which the monarch has upon the hearts of the people of this
country.

Among those who watched the passage of the Queen and the Prince of Wales
from Buckingham Palace to St. Paul's there was one notable and historic
personage. This was Napoleon the Third, at that time living in exile at
Chislehurst. Within twelve months the ex-Emperor was dead. His death was
the cause of a singularly picturesque demonstration on the part of the
ruined Imperialist party. I went to Chislehurst to see the lying-in-state
which preceded the funeral. The train which took me down from Charing
Cross was crowded with Frenchmen wearing the rosette of the Legion of
Honour, and on every side I heard men called by names that for twenty
years had been part of the history of Europe. The poor Emperor lying in
his coffin, guarded by men who but recently had been the great officers
of an Imperial household, was a pathetic object. I noticed that his hair
had turned grey; and the shortness of stature that he had been so anxious
to conceal when living was now plainly apparent. His funeral, which took
place on the following day, fittingly symbolised the fall of the Second
Empire. Preceding the hearse walked a body of French workmen in blue
blouses, the foremost of whom bore the tricolour, rudely fastened to a
branch which had been hastily torn from one of the fine trees at Camden
Place. Behind the hearse the young Prince Imperial walked alone, a pale,
thoughtful, delicate youth, who seemed little fitted to bear the burden
of the Pretendership. Behind him, in a single line, were four of his
father's cousins, of whom the most conspicuous was Prince Napoleon. His
likeness to the great Emperor was startling, and, as he walked
bareheaded, one could see that it was emphasised by the way in which he
had trained a solitary lock of hair upon his massive brow.

The Emperor was buried in a temporary vault in the Catholic chapel of
Chislehurst. The building was too small to admit a tithe of the crowd of
French people who were present, but those who could not enter the chapel
knelt throughout the service on the damp grass of the churchyard. When
the funeral party returned to Camden House, I witnessed an unexpected and
dramatic scene. The mourners had come back, as they went, in absolute
silence. From highest to lowest, all seemed to be suffering from the
deepest depression. The young Prince was the first to step within the
door of the house. As he did so, he turned and bowed to the great company
of Frenchmen--the wreckage of his father's empire. Instantly every hat
was raised, and a tremendous cry went up, "_Vive Napoléon le
Quatre!_" The suddenness and unexpectedness of this acclamation of the
youth as the inheritor of the Napoleonic legend startled and impressed
all those of us who were present as spectators.

Alas! in how brief a space of time I attended another funeral at Camden
Place, and saw the body of the boy, who had thus been hailed as Emperor,
carried across the breezy common to rest by his father's side. But now it
was with the sad music of military bands and the pomp and glitter of an
army in motion that the body was carried to the tomb. The Prince Imperial
was buried with the honours due not merely to a royal prince, but to an
English soldier. The Union Jack lay side by side with the tricolour upon
his coffin, and four English princes acted as pall-bearers. The Queen
herself watched from a pavilion erected above the wall of Camden Place
the passage of the funeral party from the house to the place of burial.
It was strange to think that this display of heartfelt sorrow, which was
shared alike by the highest and the lowest, had been drawn forth by the
death of the last representative of the Napoleonic Empire. But one could
not forget the opening words of the young Prince's will, in which he
declared that he died with a heart full of gratitude to the Queen of
England and her family. If that could have been the end of the Napoleonic
legend it would have been a fitting one; but even on the day of the
funeral of the Prince the truth that peace is seldom to be found in the
houses of the great was painfully illustrated. The chief mourner was
Prince Napoleon, to whom had fallen the second place only at the burial
of the Emperor. When the party came out of church the Prince took a
ceremonious farewell of the members of our Royal Family, and then,
disregarding the entreaties of the officials that he would return to
Camden Place and meet the greatly bereaved mother, leapt into his
carriage and in a harsh voice cried imperiously to the driver, "_A
Londres!_"

After the curtain had fallen on the great drama of the Franco-German War
there was an interval during which this country was chiefly occupied with
questions of domestic interest. The Gladstone Ministry had completed its
great achievements. It had disestablished the Irish Church, abolished
purchase in the Army, established vote by ballot, reformed the Irish land
system, and, above all, had created a national system of education. To
Mr. Forster had fallen the high honour of carrying this last-named
measure, and it is an honour which seems even greater now than it did at
the moment when the Royal assent was given in 1870 to the Education Bill.
At that time, indeed, Forster met with criticism and abuse, rather than
admiration and gratitude, for his great achievement. As older persons
will remember, he excited the bitter hostility of the Dissenters and a
section of the Radicals because of his refusal to make a hopeless crusade
against the Church schools the basis of his educational policy. Even if
he had believed such a step to be just, he would have committed the
gravest of errors if he had yielded to Nonconformist clamour. It would
have been impossible, even in the Parliament of 1868, to have carried
such a Bill as the Birmingham Education League demanded, and there has
been no Parliament since then that would even have looked at such a task.
Remembering this fact, the injustice of the bitter attacks made upon Mr.
Forster by a certain section of the Radicals, among whom a young
Birmingham manufacturer named Joseph Chamberlain was now beginning to
make himself conspicuous, is manifest.

One can only account for the acerbity with which Mr. Forster was attacked
on the ground that, both as a Radical and the son of Nonconformist
parents, he had excited the hope among the extreme party that he himself
would be as extreme as any of them. The wisdom with which he turned
existing institutions to account, and succeeded in masking the batteries
that the Church was ready to open upon any State system of education, was
denounced as cowardice and lukewarmness; and as a consequence of the
greatest triumph of his career--a triumph hardly excelled by any other
Minister of our time--he became the object of the undying suspicion and
hatred of a large number of the members of his own party. To the end of
my days it will be a cause of pride to me that, although myself an ardent
Liberal, and the son of a Nonconformist minister, I gave all the support
I could in the columns of the _Leeds Mercury_ to Mr. Forster. That
this support was of real importance to him was due to the fact that the
_Leeds Mercury_ circulated largely in Bradford, the town for which
Mr. Forster sat.

My championship of Forster and his educational policy, though it had the
warm support of Sir Edward Baines and of the majority of Yorkshire
Liberals, brought upon me the heavy displeasure of the advanced Radicals.
Like Mr. Forster, I was regarded as a traitor to my principles, and again
and again in those days, when I attended public meetings, I heard the
_Leeds Mercury_ and its editor denounced by those who declared that
the Liberalism propounded in its columns was a feeble, milk-and-water
product, scarcely better than open and undiluted Toryism. Here I must
pause to interject one word of grateful acknowledgment of the generous
manner in which the proprietors of the _Mercury_ stood by me in
those stormy days, and encouraged me to give free expression to the
independent opinions that I had formed. It was a time of trial for
Liberalism in general, and it was also a time of trial for the young
editor who, in supporting what he believed to be the truth, had thus to
run counter to the convictions of a very important section of his
readers. Yet, looking back, I cannot say that I suffered any substantial
injury from the ordeal through which I had thus to pass. It is true that
for many years I was regarded with suspicion as being only a half-hearted
Liberal by a considerable section of my party in Yorkshire; but I had the
compensation of being allowed to speak my own mind, and of knowing that
my words were not without influence upon others. No greater compensation
than this can be desired by any publicist.

It was not the education question alone that engaged the attention of the
public in the years 1872 and 1873, with which I am now dealing. The great
problem of the liquor traffic had been brought to the front, in a large
measure owing to the spirited but somewhat mischievous campaign
maintained at a great cost by the United Kingdom Alliance, in favour of
the measure known as the Permissive Bill. I have never been able to
understand why the promoters of the Permissive Bill should have made a
fetich of that very dubious measure. Yet for a whole generation it has
been their shibboleth, and, no matter what might be the aims or the
virtues of the man who refused to pronounce it, the supporters of the
Permissive Bill have regarded him as an enemy. They, at least, have not
laid themselves open to the charge of trimming. For more than thirty
years the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill, has been their
cry; and as a consequence they have seen these years pass without the
carrying of any real amendment of our licensing system.

In 1873 the Gladstone Government, now drawing towards the close of its
remarkable history, introduced a great measure of licensing reform, known
at the time as Mr. Bruce's Bill. It was a wise and statesmanlike scheme,
and if it had been carried it would have wrought a beneficent social
revolution in this country. But the Government, in their attempt to deal
in a practical way with the evils of our drink system, had to face not
only the opposition of the unholy alliance of the pulpit and the
beer-shop, but the hostility of the United Kingdom Alliance and its
supporters throughout the country. It was from the friends of the
Permissive Bill, rather than from the friends of the Tory party and the
publicans, that the Government scheme received its death-blow. The
fanatical opposition of extreme politicians had not proved fatal to Mr.
Forster's Education Bill, and as a consequence we have had for thirty
years a great national system of education at work in England, producing
results of immeasurable value. But the fanatics did kill Mr. Bruce's
Licensing Bill, and the thirty years that have followed have in
consequence seen no amelioration of the greatest of our social evils. The
_Leeds Mercury_ gave an uncompromising support to the Government
proposals with regard to the licensing system, and I thus roused against
myself the anger and ill-will of the adherents of the United Kingdom
Alliance, who were no less bitter against me than were the extreme
Radicals and Dissenters. I have no desire to fight my battles over again
in these pages, but the reader will understand that the editor of a
Liberal newspaper who was thus placed in a position of antagonism to more
than one important section of his party had not an altogether happy lot.
Yet I enjoyed it. I had my full measure of confidence in the soundness of
my own opinions, that great characteristic of the young journalist, and
in my many encounters with the foes of my own household I always tried
not to come off second-best.

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