Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 Part 5

His last Reform speech in 1866 was delivered in London, in St. James's Hall. It was preceded on the previous day by the usual procession through the streets and an open-air demonstration at Lillie Bridge. The poor Londoners were very much alarmed at the prospect of the gathering. The editors of the morning papers opened their respective Balaam boxes and gave the a.s.ses a holiday, to borrow a phrase of Christopher North.

Innumerable letters were published, declaring that the mob of reformers, led by the wild man from Birmingham, would probably sack the town; and fervent entreaties were addressed to the Government to line the streets with troops for the protection of peaceful and law-abiding householders.

The Government, which had received its lesson in Hyde Park in the preceding summer, did nothing of the sort; but I believe that a good many houses and even shops in the West End were actually closed and barricaded by their perturbed and nervous proprietors. There was one notable and significant exception to this rule. Miss--now the Baroness--Burdett-Coutts not only did not close her house in Piccadilly, but a.s.sembled a party of friends at it, and, seated in the midst of them in the great bay-window overlooking Piccadilly, saluted in friendly fas.h.i.+on the great army of the unenfranchised as they pa.s.sed along the road. She was cheered vociferously, and must have felt a thrill of satisfaction at the thought that she was recognised as the worthy representative of that stout old Radical reformer, Sir Francis Burdett. I took up my position to see the procession pa.s.s in Pall Mall, opposite the Reform Club. I had never before seen that famous building. It struck me at the time as having a cold and gloomy exterior, yet I gazed upon it with reverence as the home of the most distinguished of the men who espoused the cause of liberty. I little thought, on that dull winter day, how many years I was destined to spend within its walls, or how large a part I was to take in its affairs.

Of course, all the fears of the alarmists were falsified. The only untoward incidents were the raids of the pickpockets upon the crowds. I myself was one of their victims, in a somewhat curious fas.h.i.+on. I was riding with another reporter in a cab at the tail of the procession. The crowd, as we approached Lillie Bridge, was very dense, pressing upon us on all sides. Suddenly a hand was put in at the open window of the cab, and, before I had the presence of mind to grasp the situation, the pin I wore had been removed from my scarf, literally under my very eyes. It was one of the neatest and most impudent robberies I ever saw.

Bright's speech at St. James's Hall was a very fine one. It contained a memorable pa.s.sage in which he described men dwelling in fancied security on the slopes of a slumbering volcano. He demanded if those who warned them of the peril to which they were exposed were to be accused of being the cause of that peril. It was a brilliant and telling retort upon those who charged him with having stirred up a seditious movement for his own personal ends. But his best speech at St. James's Hall was a brief and unpremeditated utterance at the close of the meeting. Mr. Ayrton, the well-known member for the Tower Hamlets, an advanced Radical, and a man who subsequently made himself notorious as a Minister of the Crown by his aggressive and unconciliatory utterances, was one of the speakers who followed Bright. He referred to the demonstration in front of Miss Burdett-Coutts's house on the previous day, and made some remarks comparing her with the Queen, who was just then in Scotland, by no means to the advantage of the latter. Bright's loyalty, which was strong and real, was outraged by Ayrton's language. In burning words, evidently born of genuine emotion, he repudiated and rebuked the want of respect shown to her Majesty, and declared that any woman, be she the wife of a working man or the queen of a mighty realm, who was capable of showing an intense devotion to the memory of her lost husband was worthy of the respect and reverence of every honest heart. Years afterwards, I have reason to know, that utterance was borne in mind in high quarters. It laid the foundation of the high personal regard and friends.h.i.+p which her Majesty extended to the old tribune of the people when he became a Minister of the Crown.

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.

In 1867 a change unexpectedly took place in my position. The London representative of the _Leeds Mercury,_ my old friend Mr. Charles Russell, now editor of the _Glasgow Herald,_ retired from his post, and I was appointed to succeed him. In addition to the duties which had been discharged by Mr. Russell, it was arranged that I was to act as London correspondent of the _Mercury_ and to continue to be an occasional contributor of leaders. On September 5th in this year I was married at Cheadle Congregational Church, Ches.h.i.+re, to my cousin, to whom I had long been engaged, and I at once went to London to spend my honeymoon in the delightful occupation of house-hunting. The London suburbs wore a different aspect in 1867 from that which they now present.

In the far west of London, at all events, the reign of the semi-detached villa, with its private garden, was still maintained. There were no lofty "mansions" comprising endless suites for the accommodation of persons of limited means, and the system of a common garden for the residents in a particular street or square was practically unknown outside the central district of the metropolis. Notting Hill, Kensington, Shepherd's Bush, and Hammersmith offered to the man of moderate means the choice among an infinite number of pleasant little villas, each boasting its own garden and lawn secluded from the public eye. My choice fell upon a house of this description in Addison Road North, and there I spent two happy years, the garden, with its fine old tree casting a welcome shade over the lawn, making me forget the fact that I was, at last, an actual dweller in the world's greatest city.

Almost my first business in London was to secure admission to the Reporters' Gallery in the House of Commons. There was an autumn session in that year, 1867, and I was anxious to get access to the Gallery when it began. In order to obtain the coveted Gallery ticket I proffered my gratuitous services as an occasional reporter to the _Morning Star_.

My offer was accepted, and after an interview with Mr. Justin McCarthy, who was then editor of the _Star_, I was introduced to Mr. Edwards, the chief of the reporting staff, as a new member of that body. Edwards, who was one of the veterans of the Gallery, was a character in his way.

He was an Irishman possessed of a delicious brogue, a devout Roman Catholic, intensely proud of the fact that he had a son in the priesthood. His mind was stored with reminiscences of the Gallery in the days when the status of a Parliamentary reporter was hardly recognised even in the House of Commons itself. Like so many of the Gallery men of this time, his world seemed to be limited to the little society of which he was a conspicuous member. Nothing appeared to interest him that lay outside the immediate duties of a Parliamentary reporter. His sole reading seemed to be the reports of debates, his sole pleasure listening to Parliamentary speeches. Many amusing stories were told of him by his colleagues. Not long before I made his acquaintance, Mr. Bright, in one of the debates on the Liberal Reform Bill, had made his famous reference to the Cave of Adullam which caused the anti-reformers in the Liberal party to be nicknamed "Adullamites." Mr. Bright was interested in the _Morning Star_, and that newspaper's report of this pa.s.sage in his speech was obviously confused and defective. The day after it was printed the manager of the _Star_ summoned Edwards to his presence in order to complain of this fact. "Do you think our fellows understood the allusion to the Cave of Adullam?" he inquired of Edwards. "Of course they did," replied the latter, hotly. "They're an ignorant lot, I know, but there isn't one of them so ignorant as not to have read the Arabian Nights!"

Edwards was very kind to me. He seemed to feel a profound respect for a man who undertook to do any work for nothing, and he did his utmost to make my somewhat anomalous position personally agreeable. One bit of good advice he gave me. That was that I should not let anyone know that I received no salary. The truth is that in those days the Parliamentary reporters were a very clannish set--almost, indeed, a close corporation.

To my youthful eyes, most of them appeared to be men who had attained an almost incredible age. They could talk of the days in the old House of Commons when no Reporters' Gallery existed, and the unfortunate shorthand writers had to take their notes on their knees, at the back of the Strangers' Gallery. In the House of Lords they had to stand in a kind of gangway, and I have heard a venerable man tell how a certain distinguished peeress, who had to pa.s.s along this gangway when she went to hear the debates, used deliberately to brush against the reporters as she did so, and knock the note-books out of their hands. It was, I suppose, her Grace's manner of displaying her peculiar affection for the Press. The reporters looked with suspicion upon any newcomer, and for a time after I entered the Gallery I was viewed with unconcealed dislike by most of my new colleagues.

A somewhat untoward incident that happened on the first night on which I took my seat as one of the _Star_ staff added to this feeling.

Worthy Edward Baines, sitting on the Opposition benches below me, no sooner recognised me in the Gallery than he felt it to be his duty to come up and have a chat with me. Accordingly he made his way to one of the side galleries adjoining the reporters' seats, and conversed with me for several minutes, pointing out the leading members and officials of the House and making himself generally agreeable, as was his wont. I little knew what offence I was unconsciously giving to my colleagues. In those days a gulf that was regarded as impa.s.sable divided the members of the Press from the members of the House. Occasionally the white-haired, or rather white-wigged, Mr. Ross, the head of the _Times_ Parliamentary corps, might be seen holding a mysterious colloquy in some gloomy corner behind the Gallery with some politician; but the overwhelming majority of the reporters had never exchanged a word with a Member of Parliament in their lives, and, to do them justice, they evidently had no desire to do so. The caste of reporters neither had, nor wished to have, any relations with the Brahmins of the green benches below them, and I found subsequently that if by any chance a reporter were detected in conversation with even the most obscure Member of Parliament he thought it necessary to give some explanation of his conduct to his Gallery friends afterwards. It may be imagined, then, with what feelings the veterans of the Gallery saw a newcomer, on his very first appearance in the Gallery, talking on friendly and confidential terms with a well-known Member of the House. Some of the old hands positively snorted at me in their indignation, and one of the few friends I had in the Gallery earnestly warned me that the recurrence of such an incident would prove fatal to my career as a Parliamentary reporter. Who would have imagined then that the relations of journalists and Members would ever a.s.sume their present intimate character?

The accommodation for reporters outside the Gallery was very different then from what it is now. There were two wretched little cabins, ill-lit and ill-ventilated, immediately behind the Gallery, which were used for "writing out." But one of these was occupied exclusively by the _Times_ staff, and the other was so small that it could not accommodate a quarter of the number of reporters. One of the committee rooms on the upper corridor--No. 18, if I remember aright--was given up after a certain hour in the afternoon to the reporters, and here most of the work of "writing out" was done. As for other accommodation for the Press, it consisted only of a cellar-like apartment in the yard below, where men used to resort to smoke, and of the ante-room to the Gallery, where the majestic Mr. Wright presided.

Mr. Wright was one of the characters of the Gallery. Like most of the officials of the House in those days, he was a _protege_ of the Sergeant-at-Arms, Lord Charles Russell. Rumour declared that he had originally been a boat-builder on the Thames, and had secured the favour of Lord Charles by his services in teaching his sons to row. He certainly looked more like a boat-builder, or the captain of a barge, than the keeper of the vestibule to the Reporters' Gallery. He was permitted to purvey refreshments of a modest kind to the reporters. He always had a bottle of whisky on tap, a loaf or two of stale bread, and a most nauseous-looking ham. I never, during my career in the Gallery, tasted that ham. The tradition was that every night, when Mr. Wright, at the close of his duties, retired to his modest abode in Lambeth, he took with him the ham, wrapped in a large red bandana which he had been flouris.h.i.+ng, and using, during the evening, and for greater security placed it under his bed during the night. I do not vouch for the truth of this story, universally believed by the Gallery men of my day.

I simply repeat that I never in the course of my life tasted one of Mr.

Wright's hams. The sole refreshment I ever consumed in his filthy den consisted of eggs and tea. The tea I drank with unfeigned reluctance, but the eggs, however stale, inspired me with a confidence I felt in none of the other viands provided by the ex-boat-builder. The reporters nowadays have a dining-room of their own, as well as reading-room, smoking-room, and tea-room. The status of the Press is changed indeed.

One of Mr. Wright's characteristics was his love of talking Johnsonese. I can see him in my mind's eye now, as I emerged from the Gallery after a heavy "turn," reclining on the wooden bench which was his favourite place of rest. His head half covered with the famous red bandana; his boots off, and a pair of dirty worsted stockings exposed to view, he twiddled his thumbs, and through half-closed eyes cast a disparaging glance at the young member of the Gallery who had not yet patronised either his whisky or his ham; then, with a grunt, he would wake up and begin to speak. "I hope, sir, that you are intellectual enough to appreciate the grandeur of the debate to which you have just been privileged to listen. Sir, it fills me with an amazement that is simply inexpressible to listen to those two men, Gladstone and Disraeli, when they are a-conducting themselves as they 'ave been this evening. What I want to know, sir, is, where do they get it from? You and me could never do such a thing--no, not a moment. In my opinion they are more than mortal." But enough of Mr.

Wright, who is dead now, though he lived to see the twentieth century born, and to mourn over the changed times which no longer made the hungry reporter dependent upon his famous ham.

The first night of that autumn session of 1867 was a memorable one. Mr.

Disraeli sat on the Treasury Bench as leader of the House. Opposite to him sat Mr. Gladstone, now the recognised leader of the Liberal party.

Mrs. Disraeli had been seriously ill; was, in fact, still ill when Parliament met. Mr. Gladstone, who never overlooked the courtesies of debate, in opening his attack upon the Government after the speech had been duly moved and seconded, made touching reference to the personal anxieties of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Disraeli was visibly moved. He suddenly covered his face with his hands, and one could see that his eyes were filled with tears. Nearly thirty years later there was a similar scene in the House, in which Mr. Gladstone was again the moving cause. This was when, referring to a speech by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, he spoke of it in terms that made Mr. Chamberlain himself flush with emotion, and caused the tears to gather in the eyes of that hardened political fighter. Strange are the links which bind the generations together!

It was in the late autumn of 1867 that one of the most remarkable of the outrages committed by the Fenians in London took place. This was the explosion at the Clerkenwell House of Detention. The object of the crime was the rescue of two Fenians who were confined in the prison. The authorities at Scotland Yard had got wind of the plot, and sought to put the governor of the prison, and the magistrates who controlled it, on their guard. The latter declared themselves quite able to look after their prisoners, and declined the proffered a.s.sistance of the police.

Instead of keeping guard, as they should have done, round the walls of the House of Detention, they contented themselves with keeping the prisoners--whose names, if my memory does not fail, were Burke and Casey--in their cells at the hour when they usually took their daily exercise in the yard. A wheelbarrow, laden with powerful explosives, was deliberately wheeled up to the prison wall, outside the exercise ground, at the time when Burke and Casey were supposed to be walking there. An orange was thrown over into the yard, this being the signal that had been agreed upon with the captives, and the fuse attached to the barrel of explosives was lighted. Then the conspirators quietly retired, n.o.body molesting them. A terrific explosion followed.

I had just left the reading-room of the British Museum that afternoon, and was crossing the quadrangle, when I heard a sound which my experience of the Oaks Pit enabled me at once to recognise as that of an explosion.

I thought that some kitchen boiler in an adjoining house must have burst; but nothing was to be seen, and I went my way, merely making a note, with the reporter's instinct, of the exact moment at which the explosion took place. The next morning the London papers were full of the details of the great crime. Several persons, including some children, had been killed outright, and many more had been injured. A breach had been made in the prison wall, but the Fenian prisoners, of course, had not escaped, owing to the precautions taken by the authorities. The whole country was roused to a violent state of indignation by this crime, which followed close upon a similar attempt to rescue other Fenian prisoners who were being carried in a prison van through the streets of Manchester. The Manchester crime resulted in the death of a police sergeant named Brett, and for that murder three men--Allen, Larkin, and Gould, who are still famous in Irish history as "the Manchester martyrs"--were hanged.

On the day following the Clerkenwell explosion I attended the inquest upon some of the victims, and, curiously enough, I was the only person who could inform the coroner of the exact hour at which the outrage was committed. The police were soon in hot pursuit of the culprits. Five men were arrested, and after a tedious investigation at Bow Street were committed for trial at the Old Bailey. If I remember aright, they were Irishmen hailing from Glasgow. I made my first acquaintance with Bow Street Police Court at the examination of these men. It was the old police court--a dismal, stuffy, ill-ventilated room--where justice had been administered for several generations. I have a lively recollection of the fact that whilst I was reporting the proceedings I suddenly fainted, for the first time in my life; and I still remember gratefully the kindness of the police, who removed me from the court room into the fresh air, and tended me with the utmost care until I had recovered. This sympathy with illness is one of the best characteristics of our London police.

The trial at the Old Bailey resulted in the acquittal of all the prisoners except one, a man named Barrett. He was convicted, and sentenced to death. Great interest in his case was felt in Glasgow, and I was asked by one of the Glasgow newspapers to telegraph to it a full account of the execution. It was in one respect to be a remarkable occasion, for an Act had just received the a.s.sent of Parliament putting an end to public executions, and Barrett's was to be the last event of the kind. I and an old newspaper friend named Donald, who was also commissioned to describe the scene, agreed to stay up all night in order that we might witness the gruesome preliminaries of a hanging at the Old Bailey. We were on duty in the Reporters' Gallery up to a late hour of the night, and I remember that Mr. Bright, rising from his seat below the gangway, made an appeal to the Home Secretary to spare the condemned man's life. It was very unusual for such an appeal to be made in that fas.h.i.+on, and it was still more unusual to make it within a few hours of the time fixed for the execution. The Home Secretary was, of course, unable to comply with Mr. Bright's prayer, but this scene in the House of Commons was undoubtedly a solemn one, more solemn and impressive than the tragedy to which it was the prelude. Donald and I, when the House at last rose, sauntered slowly through the streets, taking note of that night side of London, which was novel to both of us. In the early hours of the morning we found ourselves at Covent Garden, where we watched the unloading of the vegetable carts and the unpacking of the great hampers filled with sweet spring flowers. Before six o'clock we had reached the Old Bailey, where already a large crowd was gathering.

Rumours of an attempted rescue, even on the scaffold, had been freely circulated. Calcraft, the executioner, had received a number of threatening letters, which had frightened him greatly. The police, knowing what the Fenians had already attempted in the way of rescuing their friends, were very much on the alert, and more than a hundred officers, in private clothes and armed with revolvers, had been placed outside the barriers amongst the crowd. At six o'clock the great gates leading to the yard of the Old Bailey courthouse were thrown open, and with a heavy, rumbling sound the grim old scaffold which had figured in so many scenes of horror was for the last time drawn forth from its resting-place and wheeled to its position in front of the small, iron-barred door, which, as late as 1900, was still seen in the middle of the blank wall of Newgate Prison. The noise of the workmen's hammers as they made the scaffold fast was almost drowned by the roar of the quickly gathering crowd. All the scoundreldom of London seemed to have a.s.sembled for the occasion. It was the last Old Bailey execution crowd. The windows of the public-house opposite the scaffold had been thrown open, and at every window men and women were crowded together, eagerly waiting for the grim approaching spectacle. It was not an edifying sight, this execution crowd.

There was one strange incident connected with it that has never been put on record. Shortly after the scaffold had been placed in position I saw four men, whose faces were familiar to me, trying to force their way through the crowd, and I was greatly startled when I recognised them as the four men who had been tried at the same time as Barrett, but who had been acquitted by the jury. Not knowing what sinister purpose they might have in view, I felt it my duty at once to warn the chief inspector of police of their presence. He was greatly disturbed, and quickly pushed his way through the crowd towards the place I had indicated to him. I followed close at his heels until we reached the front of the scaffold.

As we did so he quickly put his hand upon my shoulder to stop me, and at the same time uncovered his head. It was a strange sight that we saw in the middle of that obscene and blasphemous mob. The four men, who had so narrowly escaped the fate of Barrett, were kneeling, bare-headed, on the stones of the Old Bailey in front of the scaffold on which their friend was about to die, praying silently but earnestly. For several minutes they continued to kneel and pray, and then, suddenly rising, they hurriedly left the crowd and disappeared. "Did you ever see anything like that?" said the inspector to me; and I do not know which of us was the more moved by this strange incident.

Of the execution itself I have only one thing to say: that is, that Barrett died in a very different fas.h.i.+on from any other murderer whom I had seen hanged. He faced death, in fact, like a hero, with undaunted mien, and a smile upon his pallid lips. I observed that his trousers were all frayed and worn at the knees, and remarked upon the fact to one of the warders who was standing beside me. "Yes," he replied, "he has been on his knees, praying, ever since he was sentenced." I came away from the spot rejoicing in the thought that I should never again be called upon to witness that abominable thing a public execution.

It was in 1868 that I gained my first experience of London club-life.

This was when I became a member of the Arundel Club. The club is still, I believe, in existence, and has a home somewhere in the Adelphi. In 1868 it occupied a house at the bottom of a street, running from the Strand to the river, which was swept away when the Hotel Cecil was built. This house had once been the residence of John Black, the well-known editor of the _Morning Chronicle_, a journalist who used to boast that his readers would follow him wherever he liked to lead them. The members of the club were, for the most part, journalists, actors, and artists. It was a delight to me to find admittance to the society I had hitherto regarded with wistful eyes from afar. I could feel at last that I had got a foothold, however humble, in the literary life of London. The man who introduced me to the club was my old friend James Macdonell. We had become intimate at Newcastle, in the days when he was editing the _Northern Daily Express_. His brilliant writing had attracted the attention of the proprietors of the _Daily Telegraph_, and they had brought him to London to act as a.s.sistant editor of that paper.

Macdonell was a typical journalist, of very fine character. He was an enthusiast, more than commonly perfervid, even for a Scot. Whatever he believed, he believed with all his heart and soul. He was always in earnest, and always striving to give effect to his opinions. His leaders were really polished essays, of remarkable point and brilliancy. His conversation was as striking and epigrammatic as his writing. He was inspired by generous impulses, and his soul was clean. One of his colleagues on the _Telegraph_ declared that Macdonell evidently believed that his chief business in life was to frame syllogisms and apply them. He had a good deal of the temperament of the French man of letters, and to the enthusiasm of the Gaul he added a fine taste for style. In those early days in London he was full of the possibilities that lay before the penny Press, and predicted that the day was not far distant when the _Daily Telegraph_ would supersede the _Times_ as the chief organ of English opinion. He greatly admired the shrewdness of the proprietors of the paper, who, having no knowledge of literary quality themselves, had yet an unerring instinct for what was good in journalism. He delighted in one story which I have heard him relate more than once. He had been telling Alexander Russel, of the _Scotsman_, of the shrewd manner in which Mr. Levy, the princ.i.p.al owner of the _Telegraph_, had been criticising an article of which he did not quite approve. The writer had pleaded that the reasoning of the article was perfectly sound. "We don't want sound reason; we want sound writing,"

was Mr. Levy's response. When Macdonell repeated this to Russel, the great Edinburgh editor slapped his thigh, and cried, with an oath, "The Lord knew what He was about when He chose that people for His own!"

It was not to be Macdonell's fate to convert the _Telegraph_ into a second _Times_. On the contrary, after a few years in Fleet Street, he himself went to Printing House Square, where he became, in the closing days of Delane's editors.h.i.+p of the _Times_, the princ.i.p.al political leader writer. He made a great mark in that capacity, and drew the _Times_ a good deal further in the direction of advanced Liberalism than it has ever been drawn before or since. He was a strong hater of Mr.

Disraeli's Imperial policy, and for a time the leading journal lent no countenance to that line of action. But the curb was put upon the enthusiastic leader writer, with his strong humanitarian views, and he had to see the paper with which he was identified taking a course of which he could not approve. To a man who threw his whole heart into his work, nothing could be more galling than this. Poor Macdonell fairly wore himself out with his ceaseless expenditure of nervous and intellectual force, and he died suddenly and prematurely in 1878. His death was, I think, the greatest blow to English journalism that it has received in my time. In 1868, however, Macdonell was still in the heyday of his physical and mental powers. We used to meet at the Arundel Club in the society that I have described. Sala, Tom Robertson, Swinburne, and others hardly less eminent, formed the company; and to these Macdonell, when he was moved to talk--as he frequently was--would pour out the epigrams in which he delighted. I can recall some of them that were very brilliant, but they are too personal to be repeated here.

Another friend of those days never attained to anything like fame. He died, as he had lived, a simple working journalist, and he is now remembered only by a handful of personal friends. Yet even now, more than twenty years after his death, I feel that Robert Donald was in many ways one of the most gifted men I have ever known. He had come from Edinburgh to fill a place in the Reporters' Gallery, and he added to his work as reporter that of London correspondent of the _Glasgow Herald_. With the rest of his intimate friends, I had an almost unbounded admiration for his gifts, and an unqualified belief in his future. We knew from constant and intimate intercourse the wealth of intellect and of feeling that he possessed, and we were convinced that when he revealed these riches to the world he would impress others as much as he had impressed us.

He had been engaged for years in writing a novel--a novel that, we were convinced, would be a notable addition to the great treasury of English literature. He was very reticent on the subject of this _magnum opus_, but at last he consented to submit the ma.n.u.script to me and to another friend with whom he was equally intimate, Mr. Charles Russell. I can recall the thrill of expectancy and delight with which I first turned to the voluminous pages of Donald's book. I can remember how I read on far into the night, revelling in the freshness and vigour of the style, in the brilliancy of the dialogue which abounded throughout the story, and in the insight into character and the grasp of human motives that were everywhere revealed. After I had read a hundred pages I was convinced that all our antic.i.p.ations as to Donald's future fell short of the mark. But I read on and on, and slowly, yet certainly, a deadly sense of disappointment crept into my heart. It was not that there was any falling-off in the quality of the work. Every page was as fresh and as strong as those which preceded it. But when I had read a thousand pages--large pages, closely written--and had come to the end of that part of the work that he had finished, I made the appalling discovery that the story he had to tell had not advanced a single step beyond the point he had reached in the first chapter. Apparently it would require thousands of pages more to complete the tale, and the work was already as long as "Middlemarch" itself.

Donald had the faculty of writing admirably--far better, I still think, than any but the greatest of his contemporaries; but he lacked the chief essential of a novelist, the power of making his story march. Russell, when he read the ma.n.u.script, compared it to an immense torso, heroic in its proportions, splendid in its workmans.h.i.+p, but nothing more than a fragment after all. "And yet what a quarry it is!" he said to me when we were discussing it. "If only some inferior writer were allowed to dig into it, and transfer its gold and marble to his own pages!" My poor friend's personal story was a real tragedy. He accepted the advice we gave him, and, laying aside the huge unfinished ma.n.u.script, began to write what he meant to be a short and simple story. He submitted the opening chapters to the editor of the _Glasgow Weekly Herald_. That gentleman was delighted with it, and at once accepted the novel for publication in his journal. The first few weekly instalments were read with the keenest pleasure by everybody, and the hope ran high that we had found a new writer who was destined to take his place in the first rank of English authors.h.i.+p. But by-and-by the readers of the _Herald_ made the discovery that had been made by myself when I read Donald's unfinished ma.n.u.script. Each chapter of the tale was brilliant in itself, but no single chapter advanced the movement of the story by a hair's breadth.

For weeks and months the novel ran its course, until the murmurs of discontent on the part of the readers swelled into a positive roar. Mr.

Stoddart, the editor, who was a warm friend of Donald's, again and again implored him to expedite the development of the plot, and again and again he undertook to do so. But it was beyond his power to fulfil his promise.

Then, one day, a terrible thing happened. I was lunching with Donald in a club in St. James's Street, one of the proprietors of the _Herald_ (now dead) being also his guest. This gentleman suddenly turned to Donald, and speaking not with intentional brutality, but simply in the frankness of unrestrained good-fellows.h.i.+p, asked him "when that d----d long-winded story of his was going to stop?" adding that it must be got out of the way in a week or two, as they wanted to begin the publication of another. I saw how my poor friend turned pale at the cruel thrust. He faltered out a promise that he would finish the tale at once, but I felt that his heart was broken. He went home and bravely did his best to keep his promise, but he only found once more that the task was beyond his strength; and the unfortunate editor was reluctantly compelled to call in an outsider to put an end in a summary fas.h.i.+on to a story which had escaped completely from the grasp of its author. Donald never recovered from the blow. His own ambition was crushed and mortified, and the ardent hopes of his friends were all destroyed. He did not long survive this tragical experience. And yet what a man he was! And what capacities he possessed, capacities which would have enabled him to delight the world, if only he had not lacked the poor faculty of the storyteller!

These were two of my great friends during my first residence in London, and they were friends of whom any man might have been proud. Others I held scarcely less dear, but they are still, happily, living, and I must refrain from dwelling upon them. I had not been long settled in London before I found work of different kinds acc.u.mulating on my hands. I wrote London letters every week for the _Madras Times_, under the editors.h.i.+p of an old friend, James Sutherland, and I contributed to various provincial papers. But that which chiefly attracted me was literary work for the magazines, and it was in connection with this work that I first became acquainted with one of the dearest and most honoured of the friends of my life, James Payn. I had been for some years an occasional contributor to _Chambers's Journal_, and had received more than one encouraging note written in a hand that it was difficult to decipher, and simply signed, "Editor, _C.J._" At last it occurred to me that a series of descriptive articles relating to the places and scenes with which I had become familiar as a Parliamentary reporter might be accepted by the editor. With much trepidation--for I was still a neophyte in London literary life--I addressed a personal note to Mr.

Payn, asking for an interview. I got a cordial reply, inviting me to call upon him at the office of Messrs. Chambers in Paternoster Row. Though I entered his presence with fear and trembling, in two minutes I was at my ease, and talking freely to the kindest and most generous man that ever wielded the editorial pen. Neither of us then knew how dear we were to become to each other, and how close and affectionate was to be our intercourse during more than twenty years.

To Payn I was, of course, merely a very humble contributor to the journal he edited; but I was received in a most friendly and cordial fas.h.i.+on, and found, much to my delight and not a little to my astonishment, that the brilliant man of letters before me was eager to recognise the bond which a common calling created between us. There was no air of patronage in his treatment of my modest proposals. He did what he could to make me feel that we stood on an equality. This was Payn all over. Throughout his life he was one of those men of letters who, whilst never sinking into the boon companions.h.i.+p of Bohemia, show their respect for the calling they have adopted by treating all the other members of that calling with an unaffected respect and cordiality. Such men are the salt of our order.

Payn's generosity to young and unknown writers has been attested by many men who in later life attained eminence, to whom he gave the first helping hand in their long struggle against fate. When, in later days, I read these tributes to the splendid and unselfish service which Payn had rendered to English literature, I always recalled him as I saw him in the dingy office in Paternoster Row on that day in 1868, when he first gave me the right hand of fellows.h.i.+p. I shall have much to say of him hereafter. At this point I need only record the fact that I became a frequent contributor to _Chambers's Journal_, writing for it a series of articles, descriptive of the work of the journalist, that were afterwards republished in a volume called "Briefs and Papers." In this little book I collaborated with my old friend and schoolfellow, Mr. W. H.

Cooke, who was the author of the chapters describing the experiences of a young barrister.

By-and-by, as I extended my connection with magazine work, I was brought into contact with Mrs. Riddell, the gifted writer of that admirable novel "George Geith," and of other stories of equal merit. Mrs. Riddell was the editor and proprietor of the _St. James's Magazine_, and I became a regular contributor to its pages. Here I was brought into intimate a.s.sociation with a phase of literary life which belongs rather to the past than to the present. Mrs. Riddell had achieved sudden fame by her brilliant stories. In these days such fame would have meant for her a handsome income and a recognised position in society. But forty years ago fame as a writer was not necessarily rewarded in this way. My first interview with Mrs. Riddell, who was a lady of delightful manners and charming appearance, took place literally in a cellar beneath a shop in Cheapside. The shop was her husband's, and here certain patent stoves, of which he was the inventor and manufacturer, were exposed for sale. I had been greatly surprised when Mrs. Riddell, wis.h.i.+ng to speak to me about certain contributions to the _St. James's Magazine_, had asked me to call, not at the office in Ess.e.x Street, but at this shop in Cheapside. I was still more surprised on finding this gifted woman, in whose brilliant pages I had found so much to delight me, acting as her husband's clerk, and engaged in making out invoices in the cellar beneath the shop.

I am afraid that, in spite of her husband's occupation, I cannot give Mrs. Riddell a testimonial as a business woman. She was, as I have said, delightful as a writer, and charming as a woman, but her editors.h.i.+p of the _St. James's Magazine_ did not suggest that she had the apt.i.tude necessary to success in business. She was very kind to me, and gave me the opportunity of writing on any subject, and at almost any length, in the pages she controlled. More than once I have had three long articles in one number of the magazine; but I was always hara.s.sed by the fact that the magazine was never "out" on the proper day, and that the editor was always in a hurry for the copy I had to supply. My chief contributions to the _St. James's_ were a series of sketches of statesmen, subsequently republished in a volume, ent.i.tled "Cabinet Portraits,"

another series of sketches of London preachers, and a novel called "The Lumley Entail."

This novel was my first venture in fiction, and one curious incident, at least, was connected with it. I had submitted to Mrs. Riddell nothing more than the first two or three chapters, and a synopsis of the plot, when I offered it to her. With a courage that was undoubtedly rash, she accepted the story forthwith, and decided to begin its publication at once. I was very busy with my newspaper work at the time, and in consequence could only write my monthly instalment in bare time for its inclusion in the coming number of the magazine. One awful day, when the _St. James's_ for the current month was already overdue, I received a telegram from the publisher bidding me send in my instalment immediately, as they were waiting for it in order to go to press. I rushed to the office in a state of consternation, and explained to the man that I had duly sent in my ma.n.u.script more than a week before. "I know that," he said quite coolly; "I got it myself, and gave it to Mrs.

Riddell; but unfortunately she has lost it, so you will have to write it over again." Here was a pretty dilemma for a budding novelist! I did not take "The Lumley Entail" so seriously as I should have done, and I had a very vague recollection of the contents of the lost instalment; but there was no help for it. I had to sit down there and then in the office in Ess.e.x Street, and write another instalment of equal length. It was altogether different from that which it was meant to replace, and I have no doubt that it changed materially the fortunes of the more or less human beings who figured in my tale. Such, however, was the fate of a young contributor in the hands of an unbusinesslike editor.

But, as I have said, Mrs. Riddell, apart from her imperfect observance of editorial customs, was a delightful woman. She and her husband lived in a rambling old house in the Green Lanes, Tottenham. Here she entertained many of the notable men of letters of her time, and here I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of not a few of them. The establishment was a somewhat primitive one. The workshop in which Mr.

Riddell carried on the manufacture of his patent stoves was at the back of the house, and a rather large central hall, dividing the dining-room and the drawing-room, was used as a kind of show-room in which choice specimens of Mr. Riddell's wares were displayed. The special feature of these patent stoves was that they were ornamental as well as useful. They were made to look like anything but what they were. One stove appeared in the guise of a table, richly ornamented in cast-iron; another was a vase; a third a structure like an altar, and so forth. But whatever their appearance might be, they all were stoves. One winter's night, when there was an inch of snow on the ground, I went out to the Green Lanes to attend one of Mrs. Riddell's literary parties. It was bitterly cold, and one of the stoves in the hall had been lighted for the comfort of the guests. We were a merry company, including, if I remember aright, George Augustus Sala, and some other well-known journalists. In the course of the evening Mrs. Riddell asked a well-known barrister, who at that time dabbled a little in literature, and who has since risen to fame and to a knighthood, to favour us with a song. He was an innocent young man in those days, and tried to excuse himself. "Now, Mr. C----," said Mrs.

Riddell, "I know you have brought some music with you, so you must get it and do as I wish." The young man admitted that he had brought music, and blus.h.i.+ngly retired to the hall in quest of it. Suddenly, those of us who were standing near the door heard a groan of anguish, and, looking out, we saw Mr. C---- holding in one hand the charred remains of a roll of music, and in the other the remnants of what had once been an excellent overcoat. He had laid his coat, when he arrived, on what was apparently a hall table. Unluckily for him, it happened to be the patent stove that had been lighted that evening to cheer and warm us when we escaped from the storm outside. I draw a veil over the subsequent proceedings.