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Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842 1885

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




There was little sleep that night for any of us who had heard the news
before retiring to rest. The next day was such a Sunday as I never
remember to have seen in London before or since. The newspapers spread
the tidings far and wide. In numberless cases men first learned the news
as they were going to church. They turned aside in scores, and hurried
down to Pall Mall to learn the latest particulars of a tragedy that was
instantly recognised as being one that affected the nation as a whole.
From early morning until late at night the fine hall of the Reform Club
was crowded with members, and with friends who came to inquire for
further news. In the forenoon a strange thing happened. Mr. Forster, the
man whose life the villains who struck down Lord Frederick Cavendish and
Mr. Burke had chiefly sought, and who had passed through perils so
terrible that even now the recollection of them raises a shudder, came
into the club. He was besieged at once by a host of members, but breaking
away from them, he came to me, and taking me by the arm, led me to one of
the seats in the hall. Instantly, and as it seemed instinctively, the
great crowd of men formed in a semicircle around us, out of earshot, but
gazing with wondering and sympathetic eyes upon the man who had escaped
so cruel a fate.

I remember the first words that Forster spoke to me. "They may say what
they like," he said, "but it is Mr. Parnell who has done this. He is the
man who sowed the seed of which this is the fruit." And then he talked of
the victims, of Lord Frederick, so gentle, kindly, honourable in all the
relations of life, and of Burke, "the most loyal man," he declared, "who
ever served the Crown." Indeed, at the moment he seemed to feel the death
of poor Burke more acutely than that of Lord Frederick, and he was full
of the idea that if he himself had been in Ireland the lives of both
would have been saved. "I shall go back to Ireland," he said to me
presently. "They must want someone to manage pressing affairs, and I
shall tell Mr. Gladstone that I am at his service." He went straight from
the club to Downing Street, and saw Mr. Gladstone--who, unlike most other
men in London, had been to church that morning. He made the offer, one in
every respect noble and magnanimous as well as courageous; but it was not
accepted. The bitterness of party passion which had been aroused by the
events that culminated in his own resignation had not yet sufficiently
subsided to render such a step possible, and Forster, to my keen regret,
was not permitted to have this fresh opportunity of showing that
unfailing fearlessness in the face of danger which was one of his most
eminent characteristics.

On the following day the adjournment of the House of Commons was moved by
Mr. Gladstone in a speech which betrayed his grief and emotion. That
evening a certain Irish Tory member was dining out, and he told the
following story to a party in which there were women as well as men. "I
was crossing St. James's Park after the rising of the House this
afternoon, when I saw Mr. Gladstone walking in front of me. For the first
time in my life I felt sorry for the fellow, for I knew what a terrible
blow this affair must have been to him. I said to myself, 'Well, there
was no playacting in his speech this afternoon, at all events. The fellow
really felt what he said.' Can you conceive, then, my indignation when on
getting to the top of the steps at the Duke of York's column I saw him
lurking behind the column talking to an abandoned woman?"

A lady who was present at the dinner-party, and who was a great admirer
of Mr. Gladstone, thought it her duty to write to him, and tell him the
charge that had been made against him. She did not mention the name of
her informant, but merely stated the facts that had been reported to her.
She received an immediate reply, on a postcard. It was as follows:--"The
presence of ---- was not unperceived on the occasion to which you refer;
but the conversation he has reported to you was not of the nature he
imagined, and possibly desired." The voice of slander often pursued Mr.
Gladstone, but the reply which he gave to this particular accusation was
recognised, even by his enemies, as complete and conclusive. All through
his life Mr. Gladstone was filled with pity for the outcasts of the
streets, and whenever he could hold out a helping hand to them he did so
with a fearlessness that was characteristic of his courage--the courage
of the pure in heart.

I must turn aside from the Irish tragedy to speak of a small agitation,
in which I and other persons were concerned at the time, that had a
certain connection, not with the Phoenix Park murders, but with the
events that led up to them. Two of Mr. Chamberlain's brothers had been
nominated as candidates for the Reform Club. It was, perhaps, unfortunate
for them that they came up for election in this spring of 1882, when
there was much hostility towards Mr. Chamberlain himself on the part of
many Liberals, who believed that he was intriguing in order to drive Mr.
Forster out of the Cabinet. At all events, the two candidates were
black-balled, and great was the ferment that arose in consequence. In
Birmingham the action of the Reform Club was regarded as an outrageous
insult not only to Mr. Chamberlain himself, but to that section of the
Liberal party to which he then belonged. "The good people of Birmingham
are simply furious," wrote Mr. Chamberlain to his friend, Mr. Peter
Rylands, M.P., "and they even talk of marching upon London," It was an
astounding assertion, but really Mr. Chamberlain's organs in the
Birmingham Press dealt with the black-balling of his brothers in such a
fashion as almost to warrant the expectation that Pall Mall would be
invaded, and the Reform Club sacked, if it did not repent in dust and
ashes of the affront it had offered to the leader of Birmingham
Radicalism. Nothing less would suit Mr. Chamberlain and his friends, as
an atonement for the misdeeds of the club, than such an alteration in the
rules as would deprive the members of the power of black-balling
candidates by transferring elections from the club at large to a special
election committee.

I was present at the meeting of the club at which a resolution to this
effect was proposed by Lord Hartington. The meeting was held only a
couple of days before the Phoenix Park tragedy. It was largely attended,
and many distinguished persons were present. "I saw the whole Cabinet
crowded into the glass and bottle room," said George Augustus Sala, in
speaking of the scene afterwards. Sala himself took a prominent part in
the proceedings, for, provoked by a speech from Mr. Bright, in which he
had denounced black-balling as an odious and ungentlemanly practice, Sala
delivered himself of an impassioned oration in which he asserted that
there was no right more sacred in the eyes of every true-born Englishman
than the right to black-ball anyone he pleased at a club election. I
remember Lord Granville's attempt to reply to Sala's sweeping assertion,
but judging by the cheers, it was the essayist, rather than the earl, who
had the sympathy of the members. Lord Hartington's resolution was carried
by a small majority, and a ballot of the whole club was demanded, to
settle the question finally. When this ballot took place, it was seen
that the feeling of the club as a whole was distinctly adverse to the
proposed change of rules, and Lord Hartington's resolution was rejected
by a large majority. The rejection was due in part, at least, to the
feeling which Mr. Chamberlain had inspired among the moderate Liberals.
Shortly afterwards, Mr. Chamberlain resigned his membership of the club,
and the question of an alteration of the rules fell to the ground.

The Phoenix Park tragedy confirmed many persons in the belief that
Forster had been right, and the rest of the Government wrong, with regard
to Irish policy. In Yorkshire we felt keenly on the subject, and in the
_Leeds Mercury_ I lost no opportunity of vindicating my friend from
the attacks which a section of the advanced Radicals, who claimed Mr.
Chamberlain as their leader, made upon him. The result was to bring about
a strained state of the relations between myself and the official leaders
of the Liberal party. Leeds had given the Government its most signal
victory in the General Election of 1880. It was felt in the Cabinet to be
a serious thing that the _Leeds Mercury_, and with it no
inconsiderable section of the Liberal electors, regarded Mr. Forster's
supersession with indignation, and by some influential member of the
Government a proposal was made to crush the _Mercury_, and prove
that it did not really represent Liberal opinion in Leeds, by convening a
meeting of the Liberal Association for the purpose of expressing
confidence in the Irish policy of the Ministry. It was an absurd device,
and it failed, as it deserved to do. Although we were very angry at the
treatment which Mr. Forster had received, we were perfectly loyal to
Liberal principles and to the leadership of Mr. Gladstone. There was no
need, therefore, to ask us to testify to our confidence in Ministers. But
the men who had succeeded in driving Mr. Forster from office desired to
complete their work by bringing his defenders into open contempt, and
they thought that they would accomplish this by means of a meeting of
Liberal electors in Leeds which should prove to the world that the editor
of the _Leeds Mercury_ represented nobody but himself in his
championship of Forster's cause.

They put pressure upon the Association to summon a meeting, which was
duly held. It turned out to be a demonstration in favour of Forster
rather than the Government, and the attempt to crush independence of
opinion in the Liberal ranks was thus signally foiled. I do not know who
the member of the Cabinet was who was responsible for this manoeuvre, but
whoever he may have been--and I have my suspicions upon that point--he
had little reason to congratulate himself upon the result of his
strategy. For a time the incident caused a certain degree of coldness
between myself and my Liberal friends on the executive of the Liberal
Association. Sir James Kitson and I had worked together so harmoniously
in raising up a united party in Leeds that this partial breach between us
was rather painful. Happily it did not last long. I stood to my own
opinions, and for the future our local Liberal leaders were content that,
whilst supporting them in every matter upon which I was in agreement with
them, I should not be attacked for maintaining my absolute independence
on those questions on which I took a line of my own. No further attempts
were made, I need scarcely add, to intimidate the _Mercury_ by means
of public meetings in Leeds, nor do I think I suffered in the long run in
the estimation of friends from whom I then differed, by the steps I took
to vindicate my character, both as a responsible journalist and as an
independent critic of public affairs.

Naturally I was drawn closer to Forster by the fact that I was thus
constituted his representative and champion in the Press, and I became a
somewhat frequent visitor at his delightful but unpretentious residence
on the banks of the Wharfe at Burley. It was on my first visit to him
after his resignation that an incident took place which touched me
deeply. I was sitting with his and my old friend, Canon Jackson, of
Leeds, in the library after breakfast. Forster, of whose blunt manner I
have already spoken, came into the room. For some time he walked up and
down without speaking, and was apparently somewhat troubled. Suddenly he
turned to Jackson and asked him if he would go out of the room. When the
Canon had gone Forster closed the door behind him, took another turn up
and down the apartment, and then, speaking with evident difficulty, said
to me, "I cannot let you leave this house without letting you know what I
feel with regard to all that you have done for me. When nobody else dared
to say a word in my favour in public during that terrible time in
Ireland, you were always ready to defend me from attack. I needed
defending, Heaven knows! My colleagues left me absolutely alone; they
left me to take my own way, just as if I had been the Czar of Russia. I
was attacked, as you know, both in England and Ireland, by the papers and
public men of all parties. I knew I had very powerful enemies who were
determined to make the worst of everything I did, and none of my own
colleagues defended me. You can never know what a comfort it was to me at
that time to know that I had one staunch friend in the Press, and that
the dear old _Leeds Mercury_ would always judge me fairly and try to
make the public see the truth. God bless you!"

I do not know whether he or I was the more deeply moved by this sudden
and most unexpected outburst of feeling from a man who, as a rule,
stubbornly concealed the sensitiveness of his nature and the warmth of
his heart under a rugged and at times almost forbidding exterior. I do
not pretend to have deserved what he said, but the words he uttered sank
into my heart, never to be forgotten. Henceforth the censures of a caucus
and the sneers of those superior critics who derided me as the victim of
an absurd prejudice in favour of a statesman who had fallen, were as less
than nothing to me.



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.


I should like to dwell upon my visits to Forster at his own home at
Wharfeside, and to describe the frank, wholesome talk which I had there
on many different occasions with the master of the house; but the talk
was private, I made no notes of it at the time, and it is better that I
should make no attempt to recall it now. This, however, I will say, in
justice to Forster himself. During all my intercourse with him I never
heard him utter a harsh word or give expression to an unworthy sentiment.
No public man of his day was more cruelly misunderstood by his
contemporaries. It had become a sort of tradition among the followers of
Mr. Chamberlain, and among others who ought to have known better, that
Forster was not even a genuine Liberal. He was supposed to be a trimmer
and a time-server, and all manner of ignoble jealousies were attributed
to him. I know, not only from many repeated conversations with him, but
from acts of his which never reached the public, how deep and genuine was
his faith in Liberal principles, how exalted and far-extended his belief
in the application and development of those principles. He was the first
man of eminence to attempt to bring home to the mind of the nation the
greatness of its Imperial duties and responsibilities. It was he who, in
the days when he was a discarded Minister, sowed the seed which is now
bringing forth fruit in the shape of that unity of the Empire for which
others, who came but yesterday into the field, are, with a great flourish
of trumpets, claiming the credit.

The man who was scornfully described as "the great trimmer" was the most
absolutely fearless man in political life I have ever known. I remember
his coming to me when the question of extending Household Suffrage to the
residents in the counties was first being broached in Parliament. He told
me that he meant to move a resolution extending the measure to Ireland.
No other statesman of importance had at that time suggested such a step,
whilst Lord Hartington had openly denounced it. I implored him to leave
such a measure, which was certain to be unpopular with that section of
the party which had been most favourable to him, to somebody else. "You
have suffered enough already for Ireland," I said. "Let somebody else
knock his head against this stone wall." "Who else will do it?" he
replied. "The thing is right, and it must be done. As for your stone
wall, I have never been afraid of being the first man over a fence."
Trimmer, indeed! As for his alleged jealousy of the men who were treading
on his heels, I can only say that I never heard a syllable from his lips
which gave countenance to this charge against him. Always frank and
outspoken, he was at the same time invariably generous in his judgments
upon his colleagues and his rivals. Rancour he never cherished, and he
could forgive those who had injured him far more freely than most men I
have known.

I have spoken of his manner. This was, I think, his great misfortune.
Again and again he offended men who were brought into contact with him by
his bluntness of speech, and by his disregard of the mere niceties of
deportment. I have heard him denounced as "a heartless ruffian" by
someone who had suffered from an apparent lack of courtesy on his part.
All the time Forster was absolutely unconscious of having given offence,
and when his attention was called to the fact that he had wounded someone
by his manner, he was filled with distress. One day an eminent publicist
who had cruelly misjudged and misrepresented Forster came to me in the
Reform Club and asked if I had ever stayed at Wharfeside. I replied in
the affirmative. "Then," said my friend, "you can perhaps tell me if what
I hear is true. I am told that, rude and bearish as he is to people who
meet him casually, it is nothing in comparison with his brutality in his
own house, and especially to his wife." Angry as I was at this charge
against my friend, I could not refrain from bursting into a roar of
laughter at its absurdity. No woman that ever lived was treated with a
more tender and chivalrous affection and reverence than that which Mrs.
Forster received from her husband. That she was eminently worthy of being
worshipped by the man whose name she bore, all who knew her must admit.
She had inherited great intellectual qualities from her father, Dr.
Arnold, of Rugby. She shared the delicate critical spirit of her brother
Matthew; and, above all, she was a delightful woman, gentle, refined,
full of love for those of her own household, but full also of interest
in, and sympathy with, all other men and women. Upon her Forster lavished
the love of his whole heart, and to her judgment he deferred more
constantly than to that of any other person. It always seemed to me that
their marriage was an ideal union, both of brain and heart. When I was
writing his biography, I felt it necessary to say something about the
peculiarities of his manner. Mrs. Forster objected to what I said, not on
the ground that it hurt her feelings to remember those peculiarities, but
because, in her opinion, they had never existed. "I do not understand
what you mean by the peculiarities of his manner," she said to me one
day. "His manner was always delightful, especially to women." This was
the one point on which she was blind with regard to her husband. She did
not see how great was the tribute paid to his sterling qualities by the
fact that so many men loved him and honoured him in spite of his rough
exterior. Often when I was with him I thought of Browning's line, "Do
roses stick like burrs?" It was his very angularities that seemed to make
Forster's friends cling to him so closely.

In the years which followed his retirement from office he remained a
thorough-going Liberal, but he claimed for himself the right of
independent judgment as a member of his own party. The Ministry never got
over the blow it received when he resigned. On the day of his
resignation, when he left the Cabinet, Lord Selborne, who sympathised
altogether with him, rose directly after he did, and said, "If Forster
goes, I must go too." He was actually on his way to the door when
someone--I believe Sir William Harcourt--following him threw his arms
round him, and forcibly detained him till he was brought to a more docile
state of mind.

That, however, was, as everybody knows, a Cabinet of many resignations.
It was said, when it at last came to an end, that there was no man in it
who had not resigned once at least, and that one or two had resigned many
times. The fact is that the disruption of the old Liberal party had
already begun. The new wine provided by Chamberlain and Company fermented
in the old bottles. Nobody felt very happy in the presence of the member
for Birmingham. He was the reverse of conciliatory, and seemed anxious to
let everybody know that he recognised no superior. This would not have
mattered so much if his conduct had been more consistent with the
traditions of Cabinets. Sir William Harcourt was not unversed in
intrigue, and one wonders now how a Cabinet which contained those two men
held together as long as it did. It was the leakiest Cabinet, so far as
its secrets were concerned, that I have known. It is amusing now to
recall the fact that at that time an innocent public, which still
regarded Mr. Chamberlain as a man with more self-assertion than intellect
or force of character, pictured him to itself as the tool of Mr. Morley.
It was Mr. Morley, we were told, who found the policy and the brains, and
Mr. Chamberlain was but the instrument of his will. This is not the only
point upon which the public fell into error, but it is one that deserves
to be noted.

The ugly wrench which was given to the Ministry by Forster's retirement
and the Phoenix Park tragedy that immediately followed it, was aggravated
by the revelations at the trial of the murderers of Lord Frederick
Cavendish and Mr. Burke. Whilst Mr. Forster was still Chief Secretary it
was vaguely known that he had been the object of murderous conspiracies.
The _Pall Mall Gazette_ had sneered at the rumours of plots against
his life, and had pleasantly hinted that they were all a myth, concocted
by Forster's friends in his interests. When James Carey, the infamous
ringleader of the assassins, told his dreadful story in the witness-box
in order to save his neck, the truth was made known, and the world
learned that for months Forster, whilst meeting slander and hostile
criticism in England, had been in constant danger of murder in Ireland. I
have told elsewhere the story of his last week in Dublin, and of the
daily attempts that were made by Carey and his confederates to compass
his death. Some of my readers may remember how at the last he only
escaped the knives of the assassins by something like a miracle. He was
leaving Dublin for the last time, though he himself was not aware of the
fact, and he had arranged to go from Westland Row Station by a certain
train in order to catch the night boat for Holyhead. In the afternoon his
work at the Castle was got through rather sooner than had been expected,
and his private secretary, Mr. Jephson, suggested to him that instead of
waiting for the train they should drive together to Kingstown, and dine
at the club there. The inducement held out to Forster was that in this
way he would have time for a game of whist before going on board the
steamer. He fell in with Jephson's suggestion, and thus escaped from
Ireland safely. That very night the whole gang of Invincibles, as the
murderers had called themselves, had assembled at Westland Row for the
purpose of killing him. Thrice they searched the train, vainly looking
for the man whose death-sentence they had pronounced. Mrs. Forster was in
one of the carriages, but her husband was not there. "If he had been,"
said Carey, in telling the story, "he would not have been alive now."

When the truth became known, and it was seen that there was nothing of
the mythical in the conspiracy against Forster's life, public indignation
flamed up afresh at the treatment he had received. When he next came to
Leeds, after the trial of the Invincibles, a crowd followed him through
the streets from the railway station to the _Mercury_ office,
cheering loudly. No wonder that a Government which had to confront the
feeling caused by the treatment meted out to Forster was neither very
happy nor very strong. It was soon after the exposure of the Invincibles
that Forster addressed his constituents in St. George's Hall, Bradford. A
number of Irishmen had got into the gallery, and persistently interrupted
him, so that at last his speech was brought to a standstill. Gathering
himself together, he waited for a moment's silence, and then, with
outstretched arm menacing his antagonists, cried, in a voice which rang
through the hall, "Since you didn't kill me in Ireland, you've got to
listen to me here!" The shout that went up from the meeting as a whole
acclaimed this sentiment with such emphasis that the Irishmen were
reduced to silence, and there was no more trouble. Some persons were,
however, very much shocked by Forster's characteristic bluntness. Among
these was Mr. Gladstone, who thought that his former colleague had shown
very bad taste.

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