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Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842 1885

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




On every side we witnessed, during this year 1879, the revival of Liberal
feeling, and the rapid growth of a strong hostility to Lord
Beaconsfield's adventures in the domain of foreign affairs. The current
had turned with a vengeance, and the flowing tide was indeed with us. We
three organisers of Leeds Liberalism were determined that at the coming
General Election we would win a victory that should fully redeem the
character of our town and give it a leading place in the political world.
We were, however, somewhat hampered for want of a good candidate to stand
along with Mr. Barran, the sitting member. I had found a thoroughly
suitable man who would have been a credit to the constituency, but there
were other candidates in the field, and it seemed as though one of these
would be chosen by the Liberal Four Hundred. For the adoption of a
candidate was a matter which rested solely with the Four Hundred, and
they clung to this prerogative of theirs with great tenacity.

On the eve of the meeting at which they were to make their final
selection of a colleague for Mr. Barran, I learned that my fears were
well founded, and that the choice was likely to fall upon a gentleman
whom I did not regard as suitable. In order to prevent this, I proposed
in the _Leeds Mercury_ of the next morning that, in spite of Mr.
Gladstone's acceptance of the candidature for Midlothian, we should make
him our candidate at Leeds also. It was true that he had already refused
the invitation of the Leeds Liberals, but I pointed out that the fight
for Midlothian would notoriously be a severe one, and that it was quite
possible that Mr. Gladstone might be defeated. In such a case, if the
Liberal Association adopted my suggestion, Leeds would secure the high
honour of being represented by Mr. Gladstone, whilst, in any event, our
adoption of him as a candidate would enable him to conduct the contest in
Midlothian without feeling any anxiety as to a possible interruption in
his Parliamentary career. To my great delight, the Liberal Association
not only adopted my suggestion, but did so with enthusiasm. I had
consulted nobody before making it, but I had the satisfaction of finding
that everybody approved of it--everybody, that is to say, except the
gentleman who had won over to his own candidature a considerable
proportion of the Four Hundred.

When the Association met that evening the whole of the candidates whose
claims had been so eagerly discussed beforehand were swept ruthlessly
aside, and nothing was talked of but the proposal of the _Leeds
Mercury_. After some discussion--in the course of which one gentleman
shrewdly pointed out that the anonymous letter suggesting the candidature
of Mr. Gladstone was probably written by the editor of the _Mercury_
himself--the Association resolved by an overwhelming majority that Mr.
Gladstone should be one of the two Liberal candidates for Leeds at the
next election. And yet, at the very time when this proof of his
extraordinary hold upon the affections of a great community was made
public, the London newspapers were speaking of Mr. Gladstone as a
politician who no longer possessed either reputation or influence. We,
who had to live at a distance from Fleet Street, were at least able to
form a sounder judgment upon this point.

I may interpolate here an account of one of the institutions of Leeds
that helped to reconcile me to my sojourn in that city. I do so because
it has always seemed to me to be a model institution of the kind. This
was the Conversation Club. It consisted of twelve members who were
supposed to be more or less representative of the intellectual life of
the town. The meetings were held monthly, each member entertaining his
fellow-members once a year in his own house. After dinner the host acted
as president, and the members present talked upon some selected subject.
By an ingenious arrangement it was impossible that anyone should know
beforehand what the subject of conversation on any particular evening
would be. In this way the preparation of set arguments was prevented, and
the club had nothing about it of the debating society. Speeches, of
course, were strictly prohibited. We limited ourselves to real
conversation, and many a delightful talk we had after dinner in those
Leeds drawing-rooms in which we met. Any facility I may have gained in
conversation I feel that I owe to the club, as I owe to it also many
happy and instructive hours. Considering our limited numbers, and the
fact that we met in a provincial town, we counted in our membership an
usually large number of men who have made some mark in the world. Amongst
the members were William Edward Forster, Sir Edward Baines, the Bishops
of Ely (Woodford), Truro (Gott), Chester (Jayne), and Rochester (Talbot);
Clifford Allbutt, Regius Professor of Medicine at Cambridge;
Professor--now Sir Arthur--Rücker, who has been secretary of the Royal
Society and President of the British Association, and is now Principal of
the University of London; Professor Thorpe, the chemist and Government
analyst, and Dr. Edison. This is not a bad list for so small a club, and
one might easily give many other names, in addition, of men who would
have been welcomed anywhere for their knowledge and attainments. In the
year 1900 the club celebrated its jubilee, and its members can look back
with satisfaction upon the influence which it has had on the social and
intellectual life of Leeds. Politics and religion were forbidden themes;
but many public movements of great importance for the development and
improvement of Leeds have had their origin in our conversations, whilst
the intellectual stimulus which those conversations afforded cannot be
forgotten by at least one grateful member of the club.

I may here mention a visit I received from John Morley about this period.
He was one of the many men whose acquaintanceship I owed to the good
offices of Lord Houghton. It is an acquaintanceship that has lasted over
a considerable stretch of years, and that has from time to time been of a
close and almost confidential character. The charm of John Morley's
manner, and the brightness of his talk, have been felt and acknowledged
by all who have been brought into contact with him, and it would be
superfluous on my part to say anything about his literary reputation. But
I have always felt that neither his fine gifts nor his peculiar
temperament were suited for the rough and tumble of political warfare. I
have felt this whether I have been, as has often happened, marching
behind him in thorough unison with his opinions, or, as has also occurred
at times, directly opposed to him and to his policy. He came to see me at
Leeds because, having undertaken to deliver an address to the Trades
Union Congress, he was wishful to learn something on the spot of the
relations of master and men in a great industrial community. I made him
acquainted with my friends James Kitson and David Greig. He discussed
with them the problems concerning the relations of labour and capital,
and in their company visited the great industrial establishments over
which they presided. At that time he was not in Parliament, nor had he
begun his editorship of the _Pall Mall Gazette_. I remember that,
after a fatiguing day, spent in the works of the Kitsons, Morley
expressed his conviction that the great captains of industry, like Kitson
and Greig, were not only of greater importance to the world than a mere
Secretary of State, but were engaged upon much more laborious and
responsible tasks. I do not know if he still adheres to that opinion.

I must now turn back to the course of public events, or at least of those
with which I had some personal connection. The dissolution of 1880 came
very unexpectedly, almost as unexpectedly as that of 1874. One evening,
as I was preparing to go down to the office, a messenger arrived in hot
haste with a telegram that had come over the _Mercury_ private wire
stating that the intention to dissolve Parliament had been announced in
the House of Commons that evening. Kitson, Mathers, and I had made all
our preparations, so the plan of campaign was already settled. On getting
the telegram I crossed over to the house of Mathers, who was a neighbour
of mine, and told him the news, and together we drove off to Kitson's to
take the first steps in the battle. The next morning the people of Leeds
awoke to discover every dead wall in the town placarded with an address,
signed by the president of the Liberal Association, announcing the
dissolution, and appealing to the electors to support the Liberal
candidates, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Barran. By ten o'clock in the forenoon
our committee rooms were open, and in full working order, and bands of
willing workers, whom we had summoned the night before, were already
being despatched to all quarters of the town to begin the indispensable
canvass. Our opponents were taken completely by surprise, and we had
gained that great advantage in all contests, the first start. As it
began, so it continued. All through the great struggle the Conservatives
were hopelessly behind us. As the enthusiastic Mathers afterwards
remarked, "We were right on the top of them the whole time." It was a
stirring and Homeric contest. To a staunch Liberal it was one that gave
unalloyed satisfaction, for all through the great fight there was the
amplest evidence that the flowing tide was on the side of Liberalism.

In Leeds we had, of course, to face the disadvantage of fighting without
our chief candidate. Not by a word nor a sign did Mr. Gladstone, who was
deep in his own struggle in Midlothian, show that he was conscious that
an election in which he was personally concerned was going on in
Yorkshire. Naturally, our opponents made the most of this, and we had
constantly to meet the taunt that we were asking the electors to vote for
a man who had refused to countenance our proceedings, and who would
never, as a matter of fact, sit as the representative of Leeds in the
House of Commons. In ordinary times we should undoubtedly have suffered
from this taunt, especially since it had the merit of being true. But in
1880 the times were the reverse of ordinary. The overwhelming majority of
the people of Great Britain seemed to be possessed by an almost
passionate admiration for Mr. Gladstone. Future generations will find it
difficult to understand the extent of the fascination that he seemed, at
that period in his career, to exercise over the minds and hearts of a
majority of his fellow countrymen. Whilst London, and the London press,
still refused to admit that he could ever return to power, there was not
a public gathering in the provinces at which the mention of his name was
not received with enthusiastic cheering, so that, at last, men were
almost afraid to name him in their speeches, lest they should be accused
of bidding for the inevitable applause. If there was one town in the
country where this enthusiasm ran higher than in any other, it was Leeds.
We had no reason, therefore, to fear the taunts of our opponents. We knew
that we were being swept on an irresistible current to an assured
victory.

On the Saturday before the polling-day a great meeting was held in the
Albert Hall, presided over by Kitson. The chief business of the meeting
was to listen to a lecture on Mr. Gladstone which I had prepared for the
occasion. Never before had I addressed so large an audience, nor one
possessed by so boundless an enthusiasm. It was amid an almost incessant
accompaniment of rolling cheers that I delivered my hour-long eulogium
upon the Liberal leader. I had thought that I had gone as far as any man
could in his praise, but I found I had not gone far enough for my
audience, and the only sounds of dissent I heard were when I ventured
mildly to hint that at some period or other in his career the great man
had not shown himself to be infallible. I dwell upon this state of public
feeling because it ought to be understood by those who wish to appreciate
aright the history of our country at that period. I do not think I go too
far when I say that the feeling entertained towards Mr. Gladstone in 1880
by the great majority of the people of these islands was nothing less
than idolatrous. Any smaller man must have been intoxicated by the
knowledge of the feeling he had thus aroused. It says much for Mr.
Gladstone that, so far from showing any signs of intoxication or personal
exultation, from first to last he seemed to regard his hold upon the
masses of the people simply as one of the assets in the cause of which he
had made himself the champion.

After I had finished my lecture in the Albert Hall a young man, then
unknown to me, and who was described as an Oxford don, was called upon to
address the meeting. This was Mr. Arthur Acland, subsequently a member of
Mr. Gladstone's last Cabinet. The next day I wrote to Mrs. Gladstone--for
all direct communication with her husband was forbidden--telling her how
the contest was going, and predicting that not less than twenty thousand
electors would vote for her husband on the polling day. My prediction was
more than fulfilled, for when the votes were counted it was found that
Mr. Gladstone's stood at the remarkable number of 24,622, whilst Mr.
Barran came next to him with 23,674. Mr. W. L. Jackson (afterwards Chief
Secretary for Ireland), the successful Conservative candidate, was more
than ten thousand below the number secured by Mr. Gladstone. It was,
indeed, a famous victory; and when I parted from Kitson and Mathers after
the declaration of the poll, whilst we all felt more than repaid for the
toil and anxiety of months, we admitted, with a certain amount of
sadness, that we could never hope to repeat such a success. "Whatever
happens, we shall never see 1880 again," said Kitson, and he spoke truly.
Mrs. Gladstone, on receipt of my letter, had written to me expressing her
warm thanks for what "the dear people of Leeds" were doing, but she said
not a word about her husband, nor did we receive a sign or acknowledgment
of the stupendous victory--a victory which had staggered the whole
country, and opened the eyes even of the London clubs to Mr. Gladstone's
real position--whilst the Midlothian contest remained in suspense. We
heard, indeed, from a private source, that the company assembled with Mr.
Gladstone under Lord Rosebery's roof at Dalmeny had "jumped for joy" when
the telegram announcing the Leeds result had arrived. But that was all.

A few days later Midlothian also spoke, and in turn elected Mr. Gladstone
as its representative. Within an hour of the declaration of the poll in
Edinburgh, Kitson received a telegram from Mr. Gladstone, thanking Leeds
for all that it had done. It was characteristic of the great man's
businesslike habits and careful attention to small details that the
telegram was so worded as to come within the limits of the shilling rate
which was then the minimum charge for telegraphic messages. A day or two
later Mr. Gladstone wrote fully and most cordially in acknowledgment of
the great services which had been rendered to him and to the Liberal
cause by the party in Leeds. But his real thanks were given to us more
than a year after, when he paid a memorable visit to the town, of which I
shall have occasion to speak later.

A few weeks afterwards, when the Gladstone Ministry had been formed, and
the new Parliament, with its overwhelming Liberal majority, had met, we
had fresh reason to acknowledge the unique and astounding position of
supremacy which Mr. Gladstone had secured among his fellow countrymen. He
had, as from the first was anticipated, elected to sit for Midlothian,
and there was consequently a vacancy for Leeds. All the heart had been
taken out of the Tories of the borough by the beating they had received,
and their leaders courteously informed us that they would not oppose any
candidate whom we might elect. We had, it need hardly be said, many
applicants for this safe seat, but we--I speak of the recognised leaders
of the Liberal party in the town--had fixed upon one man to fill the
vacancy. This was Edward Baines, who had been, as I have told on a
previous page, so scurvily treated by the teetotallers in 1874. The
executive committee of the Association agreed by a unanimous vote to
propose Mr. Baines to the Four Hundred as the new candidate in place of
Mr. Gladstone. But we reckoned without our host, and, above all, we had
failed to give due weight to the overwhelming strength of the Gladstone
cult.

When we met the Four Hundred, and Mr. Baines was duly proposed and
seconded in the name of the executive committee, we found that the
proposition was but coldly received; nor were we long left in doubt as to
the reason. Someone in the body of the hall got up and proposed that Mr.
Herbert Gladstone should be the Liberal candidate. Herbert Gladstone was
at that time a stranger to me, and I believe to every other man in the
room. All that we knew of him was that he was Mr. Gladstone's youngest
son, that he was twenty-five years of age, and that he had just been
defeated by Lord George Hamilton in the contest for Middlesex. No member
of Mr. Gladstone's family had suggested Herbert's name to us, and we had
naturally felt that the first claim to the vacant seat lay with our old
representative and honoured fellow-townsman. But it was useless to
struggle against the glamour of the name of Gladstone. The whole meeting
broke away from its recognised leaders, and adopted with enthusiasm the
candidature of Herbert Gladstone. Looking back, I cannot pretend to
regret its decision. Though we knew nothing of Herbert Gladstone at the
time, when we did get to know him, a few weeks later, we found him to be
a young man of the highest promise, of exceptional talents, and of great
amiability of character. The Liberals of Leeds ratified the verdict of
the Four Hundred, and he was elected almost by acclamation to be the
representative of the town in Parliament--a position which he still
holds. The incident of his election when personally quite unknown is,
however, conclusive as to the extent of his father's influence among the
electors of the country.

In those days, it is no reflection upon Herbert Gladstone's abilities to
say that one of the most powerful influences in his favour was his
appearance. The young women of Leeds of the working-class formed the
highest estimate of his good looks, and whenever he appeared in public a
crowd of them gathered to feast their eyes upon his pleasant and handsome
features. In the later elections that took place during my residence at
Leeds I always accompanied him in his drive through his constituency on
the polling day. Wherever our carriage stopped, a group of young women
flocked round it, and Gladstone had to listen to their somewhat
embarrassing comments upon his appearance--comments, I ought to say, that
were uniformly favourable. In the 1885 election, which took place in
November, we had drawn up in front of one of the Liberal clubs, and he
had gone inside the building to interview his committee. As he
disappeared from view, the young women burst forth in their usual praise
of his appearance. "Eh, but isn't he good-looking? Shouldn't I like to
kiss him!" said one of the girls who was standing at my elbow. "Would you
really?" I said, anxious for some relief to the grave business of the
day; and the girl repeated her declaration. "Then when he comes out of
the club," said I, "you may give him a kiss if you like." And, to my
great amusement, when the candidate reappeared, a pair of buxom arms were
suddenly thrown round his neck, and a good-looking girl kissed him
heartily. The crowd cheered with enthusiasm, all the more because of the
blush which spread over the features of the ingenuous candidate thus
taken by surprise. But kisses, as we learnt long ago, are not to be
despised as electioneering weapons.

It was in October, 1881, that the Prime Minister came to Leeds to thank
us for his election in the previous year. Among the many political
meetings, or series of meetings, that I remember, I can call to mind none
like this. For weeks before the event we of the Liberal Committee were
engaged in preparing for it. Mr. Gladstone was to arrive on the Thursday
evening, and to leave on Saturday evening. Into the forty-eight hours of
his visit a series of engagements was packed to which a week might well
have been devoted. On the first evening he was formally welcomed to the
town, which had been decorated for the occasion as though for a royal
visit. Afterwards a large dinner party was held at the residence of his
host, Mr. (now Sir James) Kitson. On the Friday he received an address
from the Mayor and Corporation, and another from the Chamber of Commerce,
to both of which he replied in speeches of some length. A little later in
the day a great meeting was held in the Victoria Hall, at which addresses
were presented to him from all the Liberal Associations of Yorkshire, and
he responded in a very fine speech that lasted an hour. In the evening he
attended a great banquet at which thirteen hundred persons sat down to
dinner in a noble hall specially erected for the occasion, whilst the
day's work ended with a vast torchlight procession from the dining-hall
in the heart of Leeds to Kitson's residence at Headingley.

On the Saturday, after some minor engagements, the character of which I
forget, but which involved a certain amount of speech-making, Mr.
Gladstone was entertained at luncheon in the Victoria Hall by the Leeds
Liberal Club, of which I was the honorary secretary; and after speaking
there he went direct to the temporary building erected in the Cloth-hall
yard, and there addressed a mass meeting of many thousands of persons.
Afterwards he attended a large dinner party at the house of Mr. Barran,
and at ten o'clock departed from Leeds by special train for Hawarden. It
will be seen that the burden of work laid upon him was enormous,
especially considering the fact that he was already in his seventy-second
year. Yet his wonderful constitution and untiring energy enabled him to
go through the whole programme not only with apparent ease, but with an
exuberant vitality that seemed to suggest that if his engagements had
been twice as numerous he would have been equal to them all. I doubt if
any other statesman ever before got through so much work and
speech-making in the course of a couple of days.

As I look back now, after the lapse of many years, upon that memorable
time--for the Leeds visit was memorable, not only in Mr. Gladstone's
career, but in the political history of the country--the two speeches
which stand out in greatest prominence are those which he delivered at
the banquet on the Friday evening, and the mass meeting on the Saturday
afternoon. The banquet narrowly escaped being a terrible fiasco. For the
first time in my association with them, I had a difference of opinion
with Kitson and Mathers regarding the arrangements for the dinner. The
cost of erecting the special dining-hall was, of course, very
considerable. I proposed that it should be met by a uniform charge of two
guineas for the dinner tickets. My friends, on the other hand, prepared
an elaborate plan by which the tickets were to be charged at different
rates from one guinea up to five, according to the position of the seats.
In this way more money was to be obtained, but it was at the cost of
extra labour on the part of the executive, and of a good deal of
grumbling from those local Liberals who had helped us most earnestly in
the 1880 election, but who could not afford to pay the very high price
demanded for the best seats. The allotment of these variously priced
seats at the banquet was a heavy task, and it was undertaken by Mathers.
Somehow or other he was delayed in his work until two days before the
dinner was to take place, and then he was seized with sudden illness.

I was called in to take his place, and discovered an alarming state of
affairs. It was Wednesday night, Mr. Gladstone was to arrive on Thursday,
and his heavy round of engagements was to begin on Friday morning. More
than thirty thousand tickets had to be sent out to all parts of the
country for the various meetings, and on Wednesday night not one ticket
had been despatched. Moreover, Mathers had prepared so elaborate a scheme
for the allotment and registration of all the tickets applied for, that a
rapid calculation satisfied me that we could not possibly despatch the
last of the tickets until at least two days after Mr. Gladstone's
departure from Leeds. This was rather a terrible discovery to be made on
the eve of the Premier's arrival. The knot had to be cut instead of being
unravelled. I put aside the elaborate and irreproachable volumes in which
Mathers and his staff had been entering the tickets at the time when he
was seized with illness, and, with the help of a sixpenny memorandum book
and half a dozen smart bank clerks, succeeded in allotting and posting
the whole of the thirty thousand tickets between ten o'clock on Wednesday
night and eight o'clock on Thursday morning. I never worked harder in my
life, but when my work was done, and the tickets had all passed beyond my
control, I fell into a terrible state of panic. I was firmly convinced
that in my rapid allotment of seats to the five different orders of
banqueters I had made the most hideous blunders, and I expected nothing
less than a riot when the company assembled in the dining-hall. To my
unfeigned astonishment, my fears proved to be utterly unfounded. There
was a seat for everybody, and everybody got a seat, though to this day I
have a shrewd suspicion that more than one gentleman who had paid five
guineas for his place found himself relegated to a one guinea seat. But
what did it matter? People had come to hear Mr. Gladstone, and so long as
they succeeded in this they were indifferent to everything else.

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