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Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842 1885

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 cafés. 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 café 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.

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