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Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842 1885

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




It is impossible to cite the Press comments on the morrow of my brother's
death, but room at least must be found for one of them--the generous
tribute of his friend Mr. J. A. Spender in the _Westminster
Gazette_:--

"I well remember how bravely and serenely he bore his death-sentence and
how modestly he communicated it to his friends, as if an apology were
needed for speaking of anything so personal. And then he picked himself
up and started again, determined that his work should go forward and his
interests lose none of their edge, though his days were short. He was the
last man in the world to think of such a thing; and yet to many of us he
seemed the perfect example of how a man should bear himself in such a
strait. I have heard young men speak of him as old-fashioned, and, judged
by some modern standards, his virtues were indeed those of the antique
world. He loved his profession for its own sake, believed in its
influence and dignity, hated sensationalism--whether in politics or in
newspapers--would rather that any rival should gain any advantage over
him than that he should divulge a secret or betray the confidence of a
friend. And so he came to be the confidant and adviser of many eminent
men who were attached to him for his sterling qualities of head and
heart, for his knowledge, his integrity, his admirable common-sense. Of
all his qualities none was more attractive than the staunchness of his
friendship. To those whom he really liked, old or young, eminent or
obscure, Wemyss Reid was always the same, a champion who would brook no
slight, and whose help was readiest when times were worst. A literary
man, he was quite without literary jealousy, and never so happy as when
giving a hand-up to a new writer or a young journalist. All of us who
knew him are in his debt--_neque ego desinam debere_."

I will permit myself to make one other quotation, and only one. In
September, 1903, we lost our only sister. We three brothers had been at
her funeral in Scotland; it was the last time we were all together. I
lunched a day or two later with him at the Reform Club, and though, like
myself, he was naturally depressed, he spoke cheerfully, and there was
nothing to hint that he was more than tired. Three days later, September
19th, he wrote me a long letter, which began with the words, "Heaven
knows, I do not want to add to your anxieties at the present moment, but
I think I ought to tell you what has happened to me." He then went on to
say that his friend Mr. Malcolm Morris had met him at the Club on the
same day that I was there, and, startled by his appearance, had asked him
a number of questions. Mr. Morris had been abroad and had not seen him
for some time, but he insisted on an immediate visit to a specialist, and
this was arranged for the following Saturday, the day on which he wrote
the letter from which I am citing. He was told at that interview that his
condition was most serious, even critical--in fact, that he had not long
to live. So he wrote, "I have clearly to put my house in order, and to
wait as calmly as possible for what may happen. The thing has come upon
me very suddenly in the end, but I have had forebodings for some time
past. You remember what I said to you on my way to Kilmarnock last week?
I want nobody to worry about me personally. If my work is to come to an
end soon, it will at least have been a full day's work. I know I can
count on your brotherly love and sympathy."

Lady Reid and his children were at the moment from home. I went to him at
once; he was sitting alone in his house, and he received me with a smile.
He talked calmly and without a shadow of fear, and with no hint of
repining. He had gathered from the specialist that he had only a few
weeks at the most to live, and he told me that as he rode away in a
hansom from the house where he had received what he called his sentence
of death, he looked at the people in the street like a man in a dream,
and with a curious feeling of detachment from the affairs of the world.
But he rallied, and went about his work as usual, was as keenly
interested as ever in the politics of the hour, and gave to those who
knew how much he suffered an example of submission and fortitude which is
not common.

Naturally I saw much of him in his closing days, and in talk with me he
nearly always turned to the old sacred memories which we had in common.
When I was a mere youth and he at the beginning of his career as a
journalist, I remember his telling me never to forget that blood was
thicker than water. His letters to me during thirty years, and many
practical deeds as well, if I were to publish the one or to state the
other, would prove how constantly he himself bore that in mind. Others
can speak of his gift as a raconteur, his superb power of work, his moral
courage, his quick capacity in the handling of public questions; all this
I know, and I know besides, better perhaps than anyone else who is likely
to speak, his intense family affection, his real though unparaded loyalty
to conviction, and the magic of a kindliness which was never so apparent
as when the way was rough and the heart was sore.

All the letters which arrived after his death--and they came in
battalions--were quick with the sense of personal loss. They came from
all sorts of people--from school-fellows in the distant Newcastle days,
and obscure folk who had their own story to tell of his kindness, to
statesmen of Cabinet rank, and men whose names are famous in almost every
walk of life. Personally, I think I was most touched by the remark of a
poor waiter, "a lame dog" whom, it seems, he had helped over a difficult
stile in life, and who declared that he was "one in a thousand."
Assuredly, as far as courage and sympathy are concerned, those simple
words were true.

STUART J. REID.

_Blackwell Cliff, East Grinstead.
October 12th, 1905._




AUTHOR'S PREFACE


One who tries to tell the story of his life and of his personal
experiences, public and private, undertakes a task of rare difficulty.
Now that I have completed the work that I set myself to perform some
years ago, I recognise more fully than I did at the outset the greatness
of this difficulty, and I am only too conscious that, at the best, I have
succeeded but partially in overcoming it. The egotism which is
inseparable from a narrative written, as this necessarily is, in the
first person, is perhaps the most obvious of all the defects which it
must present to the reader. Quite frankly I may say that, on reading
these pages, I am filled with something like confusion by the extent to
which I have been forced to bring my own personality, my own sayings and
doings, even into those chapters which deal with public affairs. I can
only plead in extenuation of my offence that I do not see how it could
have been avoided in that which is neither more nor less than an
Autobiography. I may add that I have tried always to speak the truth, and
have never consciously magnified my own part in the transactions upon
which I have touched.

The closing chapters of the story have been written under what seemed to
be the shadow of approaching death. Indeed, at one time I had no hope
that I could live to complete my task. No man who writes thus, on the
verge of another world, would willingly swerve by so much as a
hair's-breadth from what he believes to be the truth. But human nature
and human limitations remain the same from the beginning to the end of
life, and I am fully conscious of the fact that the soundness of my
judgments upon affairs and my fellow-men is not less open to impeachment
to-day than when I was moving in the main current of human activity. If
in anything that I have written I have wronged any of my fellow-creatures
it has been absolutely without intention on my part, and I can only hope
that they will vindicate themselves, after the publication of these
pages, as quickly and completely as possible.

I have had no exciting story to tell, and no personal triumphs to
chronicle. My simple desire has been to write of the persons and events
of my own time in the light in which they appeared to my own eyes, and by
doing so to give possibly some information regarding them which may be
new to many of my readers. I have been always much more of a spectator
than of an actor in the arena; but it has been my lot to be very near,
for many years, to those who were actively engaged in that "high chess
game whereof the pawns are men"; and we have authority for the belief
that the onlooker sees more than the actual player of the drama he
describes.

I must add that nowhere, except in a few cases in which I make special
mention of the fact, have I trusted to mere hearsay evidence. I have
confined myself to that which I know to be the truth, either from my
personal observation or from documents of unimpeachable authority. My
opinions may be of very little value, but my facts are, I believe,
incontrovertible.

WEMYSS REID.

_26, Bramham Gardens, South Kensington,
January 1st_, 1905.




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.
EARLY DAYS.
Birth and Parentage--Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the 'Forties--A Visit to St.
Andrews--The Scottish Sabbath--First Acquaintance with a Printing
Office--Tyneside in the Mid-Century--In Peril of Housebreakers--At Dr.
Collingwood Bruce's School--A Plague of Flies--Cholera--Fire.

CHAPTER II.
PROBATION.
Aspirations After a Journalistic Life--A Clerk's Stool in the W.B. Lead
Office--Literary Ambitions--An Accepted Contribution--The _Northern
Daily Express_ and its Editor--Founding a Literary Institute--Letters
from Charles Kingsley and Archbishop Longley--Joseph Cowen and his
Revolutionary Friends--Orsini--Thackeray's Lectures and Dickens's
Readings.

CHAPTER III.
MY LIFE-WORK BEGUN.
On the Staff of the _Newcastle Journal_--In a Dilemma--Lord John
Russell and Mr. Gladstone at Newcastle-upon-Tyne--Mr. Gladstone's
Triumphal Progress--A Memorable Colliery Disaster: A Pit-Sinker's
Heroism--Adventure at a Dickens Reading.

CHAPTER IV.
FROM REPORTER TO EDITOR.
First Visit to London--The Capital in 1862--Acquaintance with
Sothern--Bursting of the Bradfield Reservoir--Attendance at Public
Executions and at Floggings--Assuming the Editorship of the _Preston
Guardian_--Political and Literary Influences--Great Speeches by
Gladstone and Bright--Bright's Contempt for Palmerston--Robertson
Gladstone Defends his Brother--Death of Abraham Lincoln--Meeting with
his Granddaughter.

CHAPTER V.
WORK ON THE LEEDS MERCURY
My New Duties--Betrothal--The Writing of Leading Articles--The Founder of
the _Leeds Mercury_--Edward Baines the Second--Thomas Blackburn
Baines--Patriotic Nonconformists--Another Colliery Disaster: A Story of
Heroism--An Abortive Fenian Raid at Chester--Reminiscences of the Prince
of Wales's Visits to Yorkshire--Mr. Bright and the Reform Demonstrations
of 1866--The Closing Speech at St. James's Hall--The Tribune of the
People Vindicates the Queen.

CHAPTER VI.
LIFE IN LONDON.
Appointed London Correspondent of the _Leeds Mercury_--My
Marriage--Securing Admission to the Reporters' Gallery--Relations between
Reporters and Members--Inadequate Accommodation for the
Press--Reminiscences of the Clerkenwell Explosion--The Last Public
Execution--The Arundel Club--James Macdonell--Robert Donald--James
Payn--Mrs. Riddell and the _St. James's Magazine_--My First
Novel--How Sala Cut Short an Anecdote--Disraeli as Leader of the House in
1868--A Personal Encounter with him at Aylesbury--Mr. Gladstone's First
Ministry--Bright and Forster--W.E. Baxter--Irish Church Disestablishment
Debate in the House of Lords--Mr. Mudford--Bereavement.

CHAPTER VII.
EDITOR OF THE _LEEDS MERCURY_.
Forming Good Resolutions--Provincial Journalism in the 'Seventies--
Recollections of the Franco-German War--The Loss of the _Captain_
and its Consequences to me--Settling Down at Leeds--Acquaintance with
Monckton Milnes--Visits to Fryston--Lord Houghton's Chivalry--His
Talk--His Skill in Judging Men--Stories about George Venables--Lord
Houghton's Regard for Religious Observances.

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 Licensing Bill--My Second
Marriage.

CHAPTER IX.
A NEW ERA IN PROVINCIAL JOURNALISM.
Bringing the _Leeds Mercury_ into Line with the London
Dailies--Friendship with William Black--The Dissolution of 1874--The
Election at Leeds--Mr. Chamberlain's Candidature for Sheffield--Mr.
Gladstone's Resignation--Election of his Successor--Birth of the
Caucus--The System Described--Its Adoption at Leeds--Its Effect upon the
Fortunes of the Liberal Party--The Bulgarian Atrocities Agitation.

CHAPTER X.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO BRONTË LITERATURE.
Visit to Haworth--Feeling Against the Brontës in Yorkshire--Miss Nussey
and her Discontent with Mrs. Gaskell's "Life"--Publication of "Charlotte
Brontë: a Monograph"--Mr. Swinburne's Appreciation--An Abortive Visit to
the Poet--Lecture on Emily Brontë and "Wuthering Heights"--Miss Nussey's
Visit to Haworth after Charlotte's Marriage.

CHAPTER XI.
VISITS TO THE CONTINENT.
Politics in Paris in 1877--An Oration by Gambetta--the Balloting--The
Republic Saved--Gambetta's Funeral--A Member of the Reform Club--The
Century Club--A Draught of Turpentine and Soda--The "Press Gang" at the
Reform--James Payn and William Black--George Augustus Sala and Sir John
Robinson--Disraeli's Triumph in 1878--A European Tour.

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

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

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

CHAPTER XV.
THE FIRST LIBERAL IMPERIALIST.
Forster a Pioneer of Liberal Imperialism--His Political Courage--His
Unfortunate Manner--His Home Life--Intrigues in the Cabinet--The Plots
against Forster's Life--Reaction in his Favour--Forster and Lord
Hartington--The Former's Grief for Gordon--Forster and Lord Rosebery--Mr.
Stead and the _Pall Mall Gazette_--His Responsibility for the
Gordon Imbroglio.

CHAPTER XVI.
NOVELS AND NOVELISTS.
"The Lumley Entail"--"Gladys Fane"--My Experience in Novel-Writing--About
Sad Endings--Imaginary Characters and Characters Drawn from Life--Visits
from William Black and Bret Harte--Black as an After-Dinner Speaker--How
Bret Harte saw Haworth Parsonage, and was Roughly Entreated by a
Yorkshire Admirer--A Candid Opinion on the Brontë Monograph.

CHAPTER XVII.
TO THE DEFEAT OF THE GOVERNMENT (1885).
More Antagonism towards Forster--A Household Suffrage Demonstration at
Leeds--A Meeting at the Carlton Club and a Coincidence--Forster and "the
most Powerful Man in England"--Single-Member Constituencies and the
Cumulative Vote--Dynamite Outrages--Police Protection for Statesmen--I
Receive Threatening Letters and Get a Fright--Death of Lord
Houghton--Lord Derby and how he was Misunderstood--An Unconventional
Dinner at Lord Houghton's--A Visit to Tangier--In Peril of the
Sea--Gibraltar "a Magnificent Imposture"--Captain W. and the M.P.--To the
North Cape--Cheering a Funeral Party--News of Mr. Gladstone's
Overthrow--Home Again.




MEMOIRS OF
SIR WEMYSS REID.


* * * * *



CHAPTER I.

EARLY DAYS.

Birth and Parentage--Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the 'Forties--A Visit to St.
Andrews--The Scottish Sabbath--First Acquaintance with a Printing
Office--Tyneside in the Mid-Century--In Peril of Housebreakers--At Dr.
Collingwood Bruce's School--A Plague of Flies--Cholera--Fire.


It was in the old town, now the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne that I first
saw the light--March 29, 1842. My father, the Rev. Alexander Reid, was
trained first at the University of St. Andrews, under Dr. Chalmers, and
afterwards at Highbury College, London, under Dr. Pye-Smith, for the
Congregational ministry. On leaving College he settled in 1830 at
Newcastle, and there remained for half a century a faithful and honoured
preacher, retiring in 1880 amid the esteem of the whole community on
Tyneside. He died in 1887 under the roof of my younger brother Stuart, at
Wilmslow, Cheshire, a year which was memorable to me in other than a
sorrowful sense, since it was then that I settled in London. It was said
of my father at the time of his death, in one of the Newcastle papers,
that for a man to be in difficulty or sorrow was a passport to his help
and sympathy. My mother was the daughter of Thomas Wemyss, of Darlington,
a well known Biblical scholar and critic, a kinsman of the poet Campbell,
and a direct descendant of the Stewarts of Ascog, Bute, a family which
traced its descent in unbroken succession--with the bar sinister at the
start--from Robert II. of Scotland.

Of the six children who grew up in the austerely simple but happy
surroundings of my father's home, the eldest, Mary, was the daughter of
my father by a previous marriage; she married the Rev. William Bathgate,
D.D., of Kilmarnock, and died as recently as 1903, to my great sorrow. My
elder brother James, with whom I was most closely associated in boyhood
and youth, was always more or less of an invalid, and died at Leeds in
1880--the year in which our mother also passed away. I came next in the
family, and my younger brothers are Alexander, now manager of the Dublin
and Wexford Railway, and Stuart, who, like myself, has followed
journalism and literature. It only remains for me to mention the youngest
member of the family, John Paul, a bright and affectionate little fellow
of thirteen, whose loss in 1868 threw a shadow over the home which only
the passage of long years softened.

Newcastle, in those days, was scarcely a third of its present size, and
the river Tyne, which is now a mere ditch, hemmed in on either side by
great manufactories, shipbuilding yards, and wharves, from its mouth to a
point above Newcastle, was then a fair and noble river, which watered
green meadows and swept past scenes of rural beauty. The house in which I
was born stood in Elswick Row, and in the year of my birth--1842--that
terrace of modest houses formed the boundary-line of the town on the
west. Beyond it was nothing but fields and open country. There was no
High Level Bridge in those days, spanning the river and forming a link in
the great iron highway between the English and Scotch capitals; nor had
so much as the first stone of the famous Elswick Ordnance and Engineering
Works been laid. The future Lord Armstrong, whom I met at dinner not long
ago, looking hardly older than when I first saw him, was then a
solicitor, whose office stood in Westgate Street, and whose dreams could
scarcely have foreshadowed his ultimate destiny. Richard Granger was just
completing that great reconstruction of the centre of the town which gave
Newcastle so noble and unprovincial an appearance; but the fine streets
he had constructed--finer than any others to be found in England at that
period--were still untenanted, and it was melancholy in walking along
Clayton Street to see nine houses out of ten mere empty shells without
doors or windows.

My earliest recollections start out of the void with great distinctness
on one particular day. It was my third birthday, and I can still recall
vividly the two boys--myself and my brother James--who were playing
together in the garden in front of the pleasant house we then occupied in
Summerhill Terrace, when I was called into the drawing-room to receive my
birthday gifts.

It is not, however, with the memories of a child that I wish to entertain
my readers, except in so far as they may have some intrinsic interest of
their own. Dimly I can recall the year of storm and stress on the
Continent, when thrones were toppling and the tide of revolution
threatened a general catastrophe; vaguely, too, I remember the firing of
the guns from the old castle, which announced the death of Queen Adelaide
in 1849; but it was not until 1850 that my real life may be said to have
begun. In the spring of that year I went on a long visit to my paternal
grandfather at St. Andrews, where his family had been settled for many
generations. In the station of Berwick-upon-Tweed the luggage of
passengers was examined in order to see that whiskey was not being
smuggled across the Border, and I was filled with childish wonder as I
watched the process.

St. Andrews, as it was in 1850, bore little resemblance to the well-known
pleasure resort of to-day. So far as I can remember, there was not a
modern building in the city, and as a picture of an old-world Scottish
town it was without a flaw. No club-house faced the sea, nor were there
the fashionable residences which adorn the modern St. Andrews. The grass
grew and the oats ripened where now stretch the long terraces devoted to
summer lodgings for the visitors. North Street and South Street were the
two city thoroughfares, if thoroughfares they could be called, seeing
that even in them the green weeds grew freely. Antiquity and repose
characterised the place as a whole, though in the winter months the stir
of young life filled the little city, troops of red-cloaked students
passing to and fro between the grey, weather-beaten halls of the
University and their lodgings. At the end of South Street stood the ruins
of the cathedral with the fine tower, in which the beams of some great
vessel of the Spanish Armada, wrecked on the neighbouring Bell Rock, were
carefully preserved, and the graceful arches of the sacred building, for
the destruction of which John Knox was responsible. Many generations of
my forefathers slept side by side in one particular portion of the
cathedral grounds, and here my grandfather used to bring me to play among
the tombs and to spell out the names of kinsmen who had died a century or
more before my own earthly pilgrimage began. The whole place, with its
noble ruins of castle and cathedral, its grey and empty streets, its
venerable halls, its green links and fine coast-line, made a profound
impression upon my imagination as a child. To this day I can recall not
only the scene itself, but the sounds, the colours, the briny odours, the
very atmosphere of the place.

Golf was then, as now, the one great amusement of the citizens, though
there was this difference between the past and the present. In those days
the game was almost unknown to the rest of the world, and to all intents
and purposes St. Andrews had a monopoly of it. [Footnote: Blackheath, of
course, had then, as now, its ancient golf club.] We all talked golf,
even if we did not all play it. The shop-boys rose betimes of a summer's
morning to enjoy a round on the links before breakfast, and learned
professors and staid ministers gave their afternoons to the same
absorbing pursuit. Child though I was, even I had my clubs, and played in
my own fashion at the game.

My grandfather, who had retired from his business as a manufacturer of
flax some years before, had a number of poor relations and dependents
whom he frequently visited, taking me with him as a companion. Many of
these were weavers, and in those days the weaver carried on his craft at
home. I can see distinctly the little stone cottages in the narrow wynds
off South Street, which I was wont to visit; I can recall the whirr and
rattle of the loom "ben the house," and picture to myself the grave
elderly man who on my entrance would rise from the rickety machine in
front of which he was seated, and, after refreshing himself with a pinch
of snuff, adjust his horn-rimmed spectacles and stare, with a seriousness
which to me was somewhat disquieting, at the little English boy who had
found his way into his presence. Kind they were without exception, these
simple homely folk; but their gravity was hardly to be measured. Stern
Calvinists to a man and a woman, the world was clearly to them no
playground, no place for the frivolous pursuit of pleasure; and even the
innocent sports of a child seemed to jar on their sense of the fitness of
things.

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