RECOLLECTIONS

By David Christie Murray

With Photogravure Portrait of the Author and a number of OriginalLetters, of which one by George Meredith and another by Robert LouisStevenson are reproduced in facsimile. 

London

John Long Norris Street, Haymarket

1908

[Illustration: Frontispiece-Portrait]

[Illustration: Titlepage]

CONTENTS

Chapter I. . . . . . . . 9

The Unlucky Day of the Fool's Month--High Street, West Bromwich--MyFirst Pedestrian Triumph--The Common English Bracken--The Sense ofBeauty. 

Chapter II. . . . . . . . 14

My Father--The Murrays--The Courage of Childhood--The Girl from theWorkhouse--Witchcraft--The Dudley Devil--The Deformed Methodist--AChild's Idea of the Creator--The Policeman--Sir Ernest Spencer'sDonkey--The High Street Pork Butcher. 

Chapter III. . . . . . . . 28

My Father's Printing Office--The Prize Ring--The Fistic Art--First Stepsin Education--A Boy's Reading--Carlyle--Parents and Children--A SchoolChum--Technical Education--Plaster Medallions. 

Chapter IV. . . . . . . . 42

A First View 01 London--Charles Dickens--The Photograph--On the Coachto Oxford--The Manuscript of Our Mutual Friend--An UnpublishedChapter--Dickens as Reader--The British Museum Reading-Room. 

Chapter V. . . . . . . . 53

I Enlist--St George's Barracks--The Recruits--From Bristol toCork--Sergeants--The Bounty and the Free Kit--Life in the Army--MyDischarge--A Sweet Revenge. 

Chapter VI. . . . . . . . 67

Towards Journalism--Dr Kenealy as Parliamentary Candidate--TheWednesbury Advertiser--George Dawson--The First PrivateExecution--Misprints--The Black Country Sixty Years Ago--Aunt Rachel OldServants--Local Poets--Mining Dangers. 

Chapter VII. . . . . . . . 84

George Dawson as Editor--Birmingham Politicians--John Bright'sNervousness--The Black Lake Rescue--The Pelsall Hall CollieryDisaster--Archibald Forbes--Out of Work--Edmund Yates and The World--TheHangman--Human Oddities--A Mislaid Cheque--Hero Worship--Three Storiesof Carlyle--Journalism. 

CHAPTER VIII. . . . . . . 118

The House of Commons Press Gallery--Disraeli as Orator--The Story of theDry Champagne--The Labour Member--Dr Kenealy's Fiasco--Mr Newdigate'sEloquence--Lord Beaconsfield's Success--"Stone-Walling"--Robert Lowe'sClassics--The Press Gallery and Mr Gladstone. 

Chapter IX. . . . . . . . 141

The Russo-Turkish War--Constantinople--His Friend the Enemy--Col. Archibald Campbell--The Courage of Non-Combatants--Father Stick--TurkishEconomy--Memories of Constantinople. 

Chapter X. . . . . . . . 159

Constantinople--The Massacre of Kesanlyk--A SketchingExpedition--Failure of Supplies--Correspondent for the Scotsman and theTimes--Adrianople--The Case of the Gueschoffs--The Bulgarians. 

Chapter XI. . . . . . . . 177

Retrospect--Return to London--Interview with Mr Gladstone at Hawarden--Reminiscences. 

Chapter XII. . . . . . . . 189

First Fiction--A Life's Atonement--The Casual Tramp--Poor LawRelief--Charles Reade--The Cloister and the Hearth--Wilkie Collins--TheFigure in Mediaeval Costume--Joseph's Coat--At Roche-fort--RainbowGold--The Anarchist--The Police--The Text of Scripture. 

Chapter XIII. . . . . . . 221

Eight Hours in Melbourne--The Australian Born--Australians and theMother Country--The Governor--The Sydney Bulletin--The Englishmanin Australia-Australian Journalism--The Theatre--The Creed ofAthleticism--The Future. 

Chapter XIV. . . . . . . 257

Mr Rudyard Kipling and "Brugglesmith"--New Zealand--ItsClimate--People--Future--Neds Chum--Sir George Grey. 

Chapter XV. . . . . . . . 268

The Dreyfus Case--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Opinion--Meeting atthe Egyptian Hall--Interview with Zola--Maître Labori--M. HenriRochefort--Major Esterhazy. 

Chapter XVI. . . . . . . 285

A Few Letters--George Meredith--J. M. Barrie--Advice on Going toAmerica--A Statue to Washington--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the RightHon. Joseph Chamberlain, M. P. --Robert Louis Stevenson--Mr Edmund Gosseon the Neo-Scottish School--My Contemporaries in Fiction--Sir ArthurConan Doyle--Mr Joseph Hocking--Robert Buchanan--Mr E. Marshall Hall, K. C. 

Chapter XVII. . . . . . . 311

Sixtieth Birthday. 

RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTER I

 The Unlucky Day of the Fool's Month--High Street, West Bromwich--My First Pedestrian Triumph--The Common English Bracken--The Sense of Beauty. 

I remember that in a fit of petulance at some childish misdemeanour, mymother once told me that I came into the world on the unlucky day of thefool's month. It was her picturesque way of saying that I was born onthe thirteenth of April. I have often since had occasion to think thatthere was a wealth of prophetic wisdom in the phrase which neither shenor I suspected at the time. 

I did the world the poor service of being born into it in the year 1847, in a house not now to be identified in the straggling High Street ofWest Bromwich, which in those days was a rather doleful hybrid of aplace--neither town nor country. It is a compact business-like town now, and its spreading industries have defaced the lovely fringe of countrywhich used to be around it. 

Its great peculiarity to a thoughtful child lay in the fact that evenat his small rate of progress he could pass in an hour from the clink, clink, clink on the anvils of the poor nailmakers, who worked in theirown sordid back kitchens about the Ling or Virgin's End, to a ruralretirement and quiet as complete as you may find to-day about Charlcoteor Arden, or any other nook of the beautiful Shakespeare country. Sincethe great South Staffordshire coal fault was circumvented, nearlyall the wide reaches of rural land which I remember are overgrown anddefaced by labour. The diamond stream in which I used to bathe as a boy, where you could have counted the pebbles at the bottom, was running ink, and giving forth vile odours, when last I saw it. But fifty years ago, or more, there was the most exquisite green fringe to that fire-rotted, smoke-stained, dirty mantle of a Black Country. In the extreme stillnessof the summer fields, and more especially, as I seem to remember, ina certain memorable hush which came when afternoon was shading intoevening, you could hear the clank of pig-iron which was being loadedinto the boats on the canal at Bromford, quite two miles away, and thethump of a steam hammer at Dawes's foundry. 

I have begun many a child's ramble by a walk down Bromford Lane, to lookin at the half-naked figures there sweating and toiling at the puddlingfurnaces, and have brought it to an end in the middle of the fairy ringon Stephenson's hills, only a couple of miles away, in what felt likethe very heart of nature's solitude. Thus the old parish, which wasnot by any means an ideal place to be born and bred in, had itscompensations for a holiday schoolboy who had Milton, and Klopstock, andBunyan at his finger-ends, and had hell and the plains of heaven withinan easy ramble from the paternal doorstep. But the special memory aboutwhich I set out to write was the one which immediately follows on thebaby experience already recorded. It is almost as brief and isolated initself; but I know by after association precisely where it took place, and I am almost persuaded that I know who was my companion. 

I think it is Mr Ruskin who speaks of our rural hedgerows as having beenthe pride and glory of our English fields, and the shame and disgraceof English husbandry. In the days I write of, they were veritableflower-gardens in their proper season. What with the great saucer-shapedelderberry blooms, and the pink and white dogroses, and the honeysuckle, and the white and purple foxgloves, and harebell and bluebell, and thestarlike yellow-eyed daisy, there was an unending harvest for handand eye. But the observation of all these things came later. Below thehedges the common English bracken grew, in occasional profusion, andit was a young growing spray of this plant which excited in my mind thevery first sense of beauty I had ever known. It was curved in a gentlesuggestion of an interrogation note. In colour, it was of a greenish-redand a very gentle yet luxuriant green. It was covered with a harmlessbaby down, and it was decorated at the curved tip with a crown-shapedscroll. There is really no need in the world to describe it, for onesupposes that even the most inveterate Cockney has, at one time oranother, seen the first tender offshoot of the commonest fern whichgrows in England. 

From the time at which I achieved my first pedestrian triumph until Ilooked at this delight and wonder, I remember nothing. A year or two hadintervened, and I was able to toddle about unaided; but, for anything Ican actually recall, I might as well have been growing in my sleep. ButI shall never forget it, and I have never experienced anything likeit since. Whether I could at that time think in words at all, I do notknow; but the beauty, the sense of the charm of the slender, tenderthing went into my heart with an actual pang of pleasure, and mycompanion reproved me for crying about nothing. I don't remember crying;but I recall the question, and I know that nothing has ever since movedme in the same way. 

I was about nineteen years of age, I think, when I first awoke to thefact that I had been born shortsighted. I bad had a year in the army, and when we were at the targets, or were out at judging-distance drill, I was aware that I did not see things at all as the musketry instructorrepresented them. But it happened one starlight night, after I hadreturned to civilian life, that a companion of little more than my ownage, who had always worn spectacles in my remembrance of him, began totalk about the splendid brilliance of the heavens. I could discern acertain milky radiance, with here and there a dim twinkle in it, butno more. I borrowed my comrade's glasses, and I looked. The whole thingsprang at me, but rather with a sense of awe and wonder than of beauty;and even this much greater episode left the first impression of thechild unchanged. 

There is, or used to be, a little pleasure-steamer which starts atstated times for a voyage on Lake Wakatipu in New Zealand. For a whileit passes along a gloomy channel which is bounded on either side by darkand lofty rocks of a forbidding aspect. This passage being cleared, thesteamer bears away to the left, across the lake, and, beyond the juttingpromontory near at hand, there lifts into sight on a fair day the firstmountain of the Glenorchy Range. When I first saw it, the sky at thehorizon was almost white; but the peaks of the distant mountains had, asShakespeare says, a whiter hue than white, and through field-glassesits outlines could be perfectly distinguished. Then swung into sight asecond mountain, and a third, and a fourth, and so on, in a progressionwhich began to look endless. There is a form of delight which is verypainful to endure, and I do not know that I ever experienced it morekeenly than here. The huge snow-capped range gliding slowly up, "theway of grand, dull, Odyssean ghosts, " was impressive, and splendid, andmajestic beyond anything I have known in a life which has been rich intravel; but if I want, at a fatigued or dispirited hour, to bathe myspirit clear in the memory of beautiful things seen, I go back, becauseI cannot help it, to that tender little fern-frond in a lane on the edgeof the Black Country, which brought to me, first of all, the messagethat there is such a thing as beauty in the world. 

CHAPTER II

 My Father--The Murrays--The Courage of Childhood--The Girl from the Workhouse--Witchcraft--The Dudley Devil--The Deformed Methodist--A Child's idea of the Creator--The Policeman--Sir Ernest Spencer's Donkey--The High Street Pork Butcher. 

My father was a printer and stationer, and would have been a booksellerif there had been any book buyers in the region. There was a good dealof unsaleable literary stock on the dusty shelves. I remember _TheWealth of Nations_, Paley's _Evidences of Christianity, Locke onthe Human Understanding_, and a long row of the dramatists of theseventeenth century. I burrowed into all these with zeal, and acquiredin very early childhood an omnivorous appetite for books which has neverleft me. 

There was a family legend, the rights and wrongs of which are long sincedrowned in mist, to the effect that our little Staffordshire branch ofthe great Murray family belonged to the elder and the higher, and thetitular rights of the Dukedom of Athol were held by a cadet of thehouse. My father's elder brother, Adam Goudie Murray, professed to holdthis belief stoutly, and he and the reigning duke of a century ago hada humorous spar with each other about it on occasion. "I presume yourGrace is still living in my hoose, " Adam would say. 

"Ay, I'm still there, Adam, " the duke would answer, and the jest waskept up until the old nobleman died. Sir Bernard Burke knew of thestory, but when as a matter of curiosity I broached the question to him, he said there were too many broken links in the chain of evidence tomake it worth investigation. My father had, or humorously affected, asort of faith in it, and used to say that we were princes in disguise. The disguise was certainly complete, for the struggle for life wassevere and constant, but there was enough in the vague rumour to excitethe imagination of a child, and I know that I built a thousand airyday-dreams on it. 

To me the most momentous episodes of life appear to resolve themselvesnaturally into first occasions. Those times at which we firstfeel, think, act, or experience in any given way, form the truestepping-stones of life. Memory is one of the most capricious of thefaculties. There is a well-known philosophical theory to the effect thatnothing is actually forgotten or forgetable which has once imprinteditself upon the mind. But, bar myself, I do not remember to haveencountered anybody who professed to recall his very earliest triumphin pedestrianism--the first successful independent stagger on his feet. When I have sometimes claimed that memory carries me back so far, I havebeen told that the impression is an afterthought, or an imagination, ora remembrance of the achievement of some younger child. I know better. It is an actual little fragment of my own experience, and nothing whichever befell me in my whole lifetime is more precise or definite. I donot know who held my petticoats bunched up behind to steady me for thestart, nor who held out a roughened finger to entice me. But I rememberthe grip, and the feel of the finger when I reached it, as well as Iremember anything. And what makes the small experience so very definiteis, that after all this lapse of time I can still feel the sense ofperil and adventure, and the ringing self-applause which filled me whenthe task was successfully accomplished. There was a fire in the grate onmy right hand side, and beneath my feet there was a rug which was madeup of hundreds of rough loops of parti-coloured cloth; and it was theidea of getting over those loops which frightened me, and brought itsproper spice of adventure into the business. There is nothing beforethis, and for two or three years, as I should guess, there is nothingafter it. That little firelit episode of infancy is isolated in themidst of an impenetrable dark. 

Where a child is not beaten, or bullied, or cautioned overmuch, itis almost always very courageous to begin with. Where it survivesthe innumerable mishaps incident to the career of what Tennyson calls"dauntless infancy, " it learns many lessons of caution. But the greatfaculty of cowardice, which most grown men have developed in ahundred forms, is no part of the child's original stock in trade. Evencowardice, in its own degree, is a wholesome thing, because it is a partand portion of that self-protective instinct which helps towards thepreservation of the individual of the race. But it would be a goodthing to place, if such a thing were possible, a complete embargo onits importation into the infant kingdom. I suppose the true faculty forbeing afraid belongs to very few people. There are many forms of genius, and it is very likely, I believe, that the genius for a true cowardiceis as rare as the genius for writing great verse, or constructing agreat story, or guiding the ship of state through the crises of tempestto a safe harbour. But every human faculty may be cultivated, and thisis a field in which, with least effort, and with least expenditure ofseed, you may reap the fullest crop. 

Whilst I was yet a very little fellow, a certain big-boned, well-fleshed, waddling wench from the local workhouse became a unit inmy mother's household. Her chief occupation seemed to be to instructmy brothers and sisters and myself in various and many methods of beingterrified. Three score years ago there was, in that part of the country, a fascinating belief in witchcraft. There was in our near neighbourhood, for example, a person known as the Dudley Devil, who could bewitchcattle, and cause milch kine to yield blood. He had philtres of allsorts--noxious and innocuous--and it was currently believed that he wentlame because, in the character of an old dog-fox, he had been shot byan irate farmer whose hen-roost he had robbed beyond the bounds ofpatience. He used to discover places where objects were hidden whichhad been stolen from local farmhouses, and he was reckoned to do this bycertain forms of magical incantation. In my maturer mind, I am disposedto believe that he was a professional receiver of stolen goods, and Iam pretty sure that the modern police would have made short work of him. But from the time that foolish, fat scullion came into the householdservice, we were all impressed with a dreadful sense of this gentleman'spotentialities for evil; and darkened rooms and passages about thehouse, into which we had hitherto ventured without any hint of fear, were suddenly and horribly alive with this man's presence. 

Speaking for myself, as I have sole right to do, I know that he hauntedevery place of darkness. He positively peopled the back kitchen to whichwe went for coals. He haunted a little larder on the left, and stood oneach of the three steps which led down to its red brick floor, whilst atthe same instant he was horribly ready to pounce upon one from the rear;was waiting in the doorway just in front; was crouching in each cornerof the darkened chamber, and hidden in the chimney. That fat, foolishscullion slept in the same room with my brother and myself. He, as Ifind by reference to contemporary annals, was seven at this time, andI was five, and we got to know afterwards that the sprawling wench grewhungry in the night-time, and went downstairs to filch heels of loavesand cheese, or anything our rather spare household economy left open toher petty larcenies. And in order that these small depredations shouldbe hidden, she used to play the ghost upon us, and I suppose it to be aliteral fact that many and many a time when she stole back to our room, and found us awake and quaking, she must have driven us into a cleanswoon of terror by the very simple expedient of drawing up the hinderpart of her nightdress, and making a ghostly head-dress of it about herface. That I fainted many a time out of sheer horror at this apparition, I am quite certain; but the sense of real fear was, after all, left inreserve. I had rambled alone, as children will, along the High Street ona lovely summer day, each sight, and scent, and sound of which comes tome at this moment with a curious distinctness, and I had turned atthe corner; had wandered along New Street, which by that time wasold-fashioned enough to seem aged, even to my eyes; had diverged intoWalsall Street, which was then the shortest way to the real country, andon to the Ten Score; past the Pearl Well, where Cromwell's troops oncestopped to drink; through Church Vale, and on to Perry Bar, and evenpast the Horns of Queeslett, beyond which lay a plain road to SuttonColdfield, a place full of wonder and magic, and already memorable toa reading child through its association with one Shakespeare, and a SirJohn Falstaff, who afterwards became more intimate companions. 

I had never been so far from home before, and the sense of adventure wasvery strong upon me. By-and-bye, I found myself in what I still rememberas a sort of primeval forest, though a broad country lane was cutbetween the umbrageous shade on either side. I saw a rabbit cross theroad, and I saw a slow weasel track him, and heard the squeak of despairwhich bunny uttered when the fascinating pursuer, as I now imagine, first fixed upon him what Mr Swinburne calls "the bitter blossom ofa kiss. " I very clearly remember an adder, with a bunch of its young, disporting in the sunlight; but there was nothing to alarm a child, and everything to charm and enlist the fancy. The sunlight fell broadlyalong the route. Birds were singing, and butterflies were fanningtheir feathery, irresponsible way from shade to shade. I saw my firstdragonfly that day, and tried to catch him in my cap, but he evaded me. All on a sudden, the prospect changed. A cloud floated over the sun, and a sort of preliminary waiting horror took possession of the harmlesswoods on either side. Just there the road swerved, and I could hear ahalting footstep coming. Somehow, the Dudley Devil was associated in mymind with that halting step, and there was I, in the middle of a wasteuniverse, in which all the bird voices had suddenly grown silent, andthe companionable insects had ceased to hum and flutter, left to awaitthe coming of this awful creature. The stammering step came round thebend of the lane, and I saw for the first time a person whom I grew torespect and pity later on, but who struck me then with such an abjectsense of terror as I have sometimes since experienced in dreams. 

One might have travelled far before meeting a more harmless creature. He was on the local Plan of the Wesleyan Methodists, as I found outafterwards. He had been a metal-worker of some sort, and the victim ofan explosion which had wrecked one side of his face and figure, and hadmade nothing less than a ghastly horror of him. The upward-flying streamof metal had struck him on the cheek and chin, and had left him writhenand distorted there almost beyond imagination. It had literally boiledone eye, which revolved amid its facial seams dead-white in a sightlessorbit. The sideward and downward streams had left him with a danglingatrophied arm and a scalded hip, so that he came down on me, with mypreconceived ideas about him, like an actual lop-sided demon. I letout one screech, and fled; but even in the act of flight I saw thepoor fellow's face, and read in it the bitter regret he felt that thedisaster which had befallen him should have made him unbearable to theimagination of a child. 

A great many years after, when I was quite a young man, and was invitedto read a paper on "Liberty" before a society of earnest Wes-leyanyouths who called themselves the "Young Bereans, " this identical manstood up to take a part in the discussion, and I knew him in a flash. He began his speech by saying something about the inscrutable designs ofProvidence, and I recall even now some fragmentary idea of the words heused. "I was a handsome lad to begin with, " he said, "but God saw fit todeform me, and to make me what I am. " And now, when I am settling downto these reminiscences in late middle age, the most dreadful wakingsense of real horror, and the first real touch of human pity, seem tomeet each other, and to blend. 

It is fully half a century ago, for I could not have been quite sixyears of age, when my brother Will and I were taken to chapel on onevery well-remembered Sunday evening. The preacher was the grandfatherof a gentleman who now lives in a castle, and does an enormous trade insoap. His theme was the omniscience of the Deity, and he told his simpleaudience how the same God who made all rolling spheres made theminutest living things also, and all things intermediate. It was a veryimpressive sermon for a child to listen to, and I can recall a greatdeal of it to this day. It set my brother's mental apparatus moving, andhe thought to such effect that he started a new theory as to the originof the universe. If God had made all things, it appeared clear to himthat somebody must have made God. He suggested that it might have been apoliceman. I accepted this idea with an absolutely tranquil faith, and Iwas immediately certain of the very man. The High Constables Act was notpassed until some fourteen or fifteen years later, and it was that Actwhich finally abolished the old watchman and installed the policemanin his place, even in our remotest villages. But I cannot recall atime when there was not a police barracks in my native High Street. Itsinmates were all "bobbies" or "peelers, " out of compliment to "Bobby"Peel, who called them officially into being in 1829. I know no bettergrounds than those afforded by a baby memory that the particularpoliceman whom I supposed to have created the Creator was a somewhatremarkable person in his way. He was six feet four in height, for onething, and he was astonishingly cadaverous. I once found a tremulousoccasion to speak to him, and as I looked upward from about the heightof his knee at God Almighty's maker, I thought his stature more thanHimalayan. I forget what I asked, or what he answered; but the sense ofincredible daring is with me still. 

I learned later that this elongated solemn coffin of a man was thechampion eater of the district I am not inclined to be nice inmy remembrance of recorded weights and measures; but they had himregistered to an ounce at the "Lewisham Arms, " which was only a yardor two beyond the police barracks, on the road to Handsworth, where hefigured as having consumed a shoulder of mutton, a loaf of bread, a panof potatoes, and a dish of cabbage, each of such and such a weight, insuch and such a time. I cannot be sure whether it were at this houseof entertainment, or at another in the neighbourhood, where there was aglass case on view in which was displayed the ashy remnant of a pound oftobacco smoked, and the desiccated remnant of a pound of tobacco chewed, within so many given minutes by the local champion in these invitingarts. I am pretty certain now that the local glutton was not identicalwith the local champion consumer of tobacco; but at that time Iheaped all these honours on his head, and my belief in his originalresponsibility for the launching of the universe was not, so far as Iremember, in any way disturbed by the contemplation of these smallerattributes of power. 

It is something, even in the flights of baby fancy, to have known andconversed with the origin of all created things. It is perhaps somethingof a throwback to be forced to the recognition of that prodigious figureas it really was. But, after all, it is not quite impossible that asimilar awaking may await the grown man who imagines himself to havemastered something of the real philosophies of life. The cadaverouspeeler with the abnormal appetite fades out of recollection, and mynext hero is a blacksmith, who, in a countryside once rich in amateurpugilists, had earned a local distinction for himself before he made asettlement for life at the "Farriers' Arms, " in Queen Street. Hisname was Robert Pearce, and he dawns on me as second hero because ofa physical strength which must have been remarkable even when allallowance for the childish ideal is made. 

Sir Ernest Spencer, who was for many years the Parliamentaryrepresentative of my native parish, was an infant schoolfellow of mine, and on a birthday, or some other such occasion for celebration, hisfather made him a present of a small donkey; and we two took the beastto Bob Pearce's to be shod. I can see the great, broad-shouldered, hairyfarrier at this minute, as if I saw him in a picture, with his smokyshirt thrown wide open at the collar, and his breast as bearded as hischin. When the small beast was trotted in to the farriery, the grimygiant laughed aloud. He stooped, and, placing his great palm under thedonkey's belly, he raised the animal in one hand, and poised him at theceiling, swaying him here and there as if he had been a weathervane ina high and varying wind. I suppose that the donkey was a little donkey;but I am sure that he was only an averagely little donkey, and that notone man in a British regiment could have performed Bob Pearce's featwith any approach to the air of ease and dexterity he gave it. Therewas no effort at all about the action, and no apparent idea that anyexhibition of strength was being offered. There was a conqueringcomic spontaneity in that exhibition of great muscular power whichirresistibly appealed to the imagination, and made the Queen Streetfarrier a god for years to come. 

When I was sent to a regular day-school, many years afterwards, therewere legends amongst us of this man's super-normal strength. There wasa great lath of a fellow who kept the "Star and Garter" public-house. After all this lapse of time one hopes that one may not hit on anysurviving prejudice against the use of names and places. His name wasTom Woolley, and I saw Pearce set his big hand underneath the chair onwhich he sat, and place him on an ordinary table in a smoke-roomfor some slight wager of a pint of beer or so. This was one of theameliorations of the rigours of a committee meeting, of which my fatherwas chairman, called to decide on the form of the public reception ofa returning Chartist, who had spent six months in Stafford Gaol for theexpression of such extreme opinions as are now daily enunciated in thecolumns of _The Times_. 

There are no such liars as schoolboys, and no set of men could possiblybe found who could as religiously believe each other's lies as they do. 

We used to invent for each other's delight stories about this particularhero which went beyond grown-up credence altogether. But there are somefew narratives that survive the application of the laws of evidence. Forinstance, it is recorded that, taking advantage of the temporary absenceof a rival smith, he carried away an anvil under his cloak withoutexciting suspicion that he was bearing any weight at all. 

There was a pork butcher in the High Street who sprang to the mostdazzling height of fame amongst the schoolboys and other well-practised, self-believing liars of the parish. On the Wednesday the man was as mereand simple a salesman of dead pig as might be found within the limitsof the land. On the Thursday he had obliterated the memory of theachievements of Nelson and Six-teen-String Jack. Surveying thecircumstances from a considerable distance, I am inclined to think thatthere was some authenticity in the story which sent the whole parishinto a gaping admiration. The tale was that the pork butcher had gonemoney-hunting on the afternoon of that eventful day which made a hero ofhim. He had gathered, so the local story ran, something like two hundredpounds, and he made an incautious brag of this fact in the bar-room ofthe old "Blue Posts, " at Smethwick. Midway up Roebuck Lane, which wasthen without a house from end to end, three men sprang out upon himfrom the shadows of the bridge then just newly-erected across the GreatWestern line of railway, over which, if I remember rightly, no train atthat time had ever travelled. 

Then that pork butcher proved himself a paladin. He thrust one of hisassailants to the rails at the bottom of the cutting with his foot;he laid out another upon the pathway with one prodigious buffet; and, seizing the third by the coat collar, he kicked him half a mile to thepolice station. Even now, I believe this story to be true, or near thetruth; and the sympathetic reader may fancy what we boys made ofthe hero of it. I have worshipped many people in my time, and I havethrilled at the thought of many splendid deeds; but I have never sincereached that high-water mark of hero-worship at which I sailed whenI followed that pork butcher down the West Bromwich High Street, andpersuaded myself beyond the evidence of my senses that he was ten feethigh. 

CHAPTER III

 My Father's Printing Office--The Prize Ring--The Fistic Art-- First Steps in Education--A Boy's Reading--Carlyle--Parents and Children--A School Chum--Technical Education--Plaster Medallions. 

At the age of twelve I was taken from school and set to work in myfather's printing office. There must have been a serious fall in thefamily fortunes about this time, for a year earlier I had been removedfrom the respectable little private seminary I had hitherto attendedand transferred to a school of the roughest sort, where the pupils paidthreepence a week apiece to the schoolmaster and we used to give off theresult of our lessons in platoons. I learned a little freehand drawinghere in the South Kensington manner, for we had a night school which wasaffiliated to the Art department there, and our teachers came to us oncea week from Birmingham. I was secretly very unhappy all this time, andbrooded much on the disguised prince idea among my rough companions. 

My way to school led me past the Champion of England public-house, keptby the Tipton Slasher--William Perry, from whom Tom Sayers afterwardswrested the honours of the Prize Ring. I got to know that knock-kneedgiant well, and took an enormous pride in my acquaintance with him. Iremember one summer evening, seeing him eject an enormous fat Frenchmanfrom his door--one of the colony of artificers in glass which livedthere at this time. The champion's was the last house in the parish, and beside it lay the Birmingham and Worcester Canal. The big pugilistconducted his captive to the bridge and dumped him down there on thewall, the top of which was all frayed and crumbled by the action of thetowing ropes. The fat Frenchman, who was good-naturedly tipsy, pickedup a loose half brick and tossed it after the departing Slasher. Themissile took him between the shoulders, and he, turning in wrath, flungout one windy buffet at his assailant, and toppled him over the bridgeinto the canal. There was a momentary flurry, and then a bystander lentthe immersed Frenchman one end of a barge-pole, and he was drawn tothe side, apparently quite sobered. The Slasher stood guffawing on thebridge, a little crowd of loafers roared with laughter, and the fatvictim of the incident seemed as much amused by it as anybody. He strucka burlesque fighting attitude on the tow-path, and then went drippinghomeward. 

This small episode was quite in tune with the place and the time, andnobody thought it worth more than a laugh. The good old Prize Ringwas even then sinking into disrepute and only the giant fight of yearslater, when England and America were matched against each other in thepersons of Tom Sayers and The Benecia Boy, gave it a momentary flickerbefore, as it were, it fell into the socket, and one form of Britishvalour died. 

The Slasher was, of course, the central luminary, but there were scoresand scores of lesser lights revolving round him. The fistic art in thosedays was very generally practised and a stand-up fight between two localchampions was often undertaken for the mere love of the thing. It wasnot at all an uncommon practice for a party of eight to be broughttogether, lots would be drawn, and four would stand up against four, then two against two, and the survivors of the competition would fightit out between them. I witnessed many of these contests and can bearevidence that there was less rowdyism displayed than can be noted anyday amongst the crowd on a modern race-course. It was good, serious, scientific fighting and the rules of the Ring were strictly observed. Any violation of them would indeed have aroused the spontaneous angerof the crowd, for the laws of the game were known to everybody and wereuniversally respected. I hope I am not going to sermonise often in thecourse of this narrative, but I have always thought that the legislativemeddling with the Prize Ring was a grave mistake. The hooliganism ofmodern days was absolutely unknown at the time of which I write and theroughest crowd might be relied upon to see fair play between any chancepair of combatants. But the best of the sport was that it was commonlycarried on out of that pure hardihood which at one time made the roughersort of Englishman the pick of the world for valour and endurance. Thesentimentalists and humanitarians abolished the Prize Ring because ofits brutality, and the result is that all sense of honour has gone outamong the rougher classes, and the record of the police courts havefamiliarised everybody with the use of the knife in private warfare, athing almost unknown until the Prize Ring was abolished. 

I have very often thought it odd that I have not even a fragmentarymemory of the very earliest steps in education. I recall quite easily atime when I could not read, and the recollection of one superb momentis very often with me. That moment came with the reading of a story, entitled _The Mandatés Revenge; or the Riccaree War Spear_, which camefrom the pen of Mr Percy B. St John, and may still be found in somefar-away number of _Chambers's Journal_. I have never gone back to thatstory. I have never had the courage to go back. It would be somethinglike a crime to dissipate the halo of romance and splendour which livesabout it, as I know most certainly I should do if I read it over again. I daresay Mr St John was an estimable person in his day; but hecould not have written one such story as that my memory so dimly, yetsplendidly recalls, without having made himself immortal. In sobertruth, I do not believe that any man, whatever, in any time or country, ever wrote a story quite as enthralling and as wonderful as I thoughtthe _Mandans Revenge_ to be. The curious part about this recollectionto me is, not that I should have found so intense a joy in what wasprobably a very commonplace piece of hackwork, but that the facultyof reading at all was, as it were, sprung upon me, and that I rememberclearly a feeling of surprise that I had not discovered this wonderfulresource before. In effect, I said to myself, "This is the best thingI have yet encountered, and I am never going to do anything else, henceforward. " Fortunately for myself, I have not quite kept thatpromise, though the printed page has never ceased to be a joy. 

In my father's shop we sold not only such serious literature as thepopulation cared to buy, but we dealt, too, in the ephemeral. Mr J. F. Smith wove stories for _Cassell's Illustrated Family Journal_ and the_London Journal_ which would have made the fortune of a modern man; andthere was one writer in _Reynolds' Miscellany_ who was most delightfullyfertile in horrors. In one chapter he buried a nobleman alive in thefamily vault, and described his sensations in his coffin so poignantlythat for weeks I was afraid to go to sleep lest I should dream abouthim. My father was an uncommonly well-read man; but he made no attemptto regulate my studies, except that now and then he would suggest tome that I was wasting time in the perusal of rubbish; and I do supposethat, as a boy, I read as much actually worthless stuff as anybodyever did within an equal time. But I do not know whether, after all, itmatters very greatly what a child reads, so long as he has full and freeaccess to the best of books. 

Amongst my earliest literary treasures was a fat, close-printed volume, the binding of which had been torn away. I do not suppose it had everbeen issued in the form of a single volume; but it contained _RoderickRandom_, _Gil Blas_, _The Devil on Two Sticks_ and _Zadig_; _or, the Book of Fate_, and it was my companion through many hundreds ofdelightful hours. It is both curious and touching to remember theinnocence with which one's childish fancy ranged through those pages. Ihave not turned back to look at my old friend, Asmodeus, for a good manyyears; but there is one episode in the story of the unroofed city inwhich an artist is unable to take his mistress to a ball because she hasno stockings, and the brilliant idea occurs to him that he should painta pair upon her legs. There is a special sly mention of the work uponthe garter; and the whole business used to seem to me most magnificentlycomic. There was no more of a suggestion of an impropriety about it thanthere was about my breakfast bowl of bread and milk. It was just simply, innocently, and gloriously funny; and it has long been my belief thatthe time at which it is best that a reader should make acquaintance withour rather indelicate old classics is the time of innocence, when nogrossness of suggestion has a meaning, though the mind is fully opento the reception of all the reader's own experience teaches him tounderstand. 

I suppose I am going to say a Scythian sort of thing, but I do notremember any very keen or special pleasure in my first encounter withShakespeare. Perhaps it came when I was too young; but at first theimpression made upon me was certainly much inferior to that producedby Mr Percy B. St John, and he was only one of that assembly ofwonder-workers of whom the nameless hacks of _Reynolds'_ and _Bow Bells_were members. When it began to dawn upon me that the spell he exercisedwas of another kind, I cannot tell. I suppose that the conception of hisgreatness slowly expanded with the expanding mind; but I know that I hadcome to young manhood before any special sense of wonder dawned. 

After that first discovery of the power to read at all, which came withthe _Mandans Revenge_, the one salient thing in memory is thesudden finding of Carlyle's _Heroes_ and _Sartor Resartus_. Someliterary-minded compositor in my father's employ had placed the book ina rack of type-cases, and had apparently forgotten it. It bore on manypages the stamp of some Young Men's Christian Association in a Northerntown, and my literary-minded compositor seems to have looted it. Itwas my most valued possession for some years. It was, no doubt, a veryobvious duty to return it to the institution whose inscription it bore, but I do not think the idea ever presented itself to me. 

How shall I speak of the extraordinary emotions which were excited inmy mind at a chance opening of the pages at the first chapter of the_Sartor_? The hurling satire of the opening paragraph--the torch oflearning having so illuminated every cranny and dog-hole in the universethat the creation of the world had now become no more mysterious thanthe making of a dumpling, though concerning this last there were stillsome to whom the question as to how the apples were got in presented aninsoluble problem--this seized me with an amazement of pleasure. I donot mean to say a presumptuous thing at all; but it is a simple factthat from this first beginning of acquaintance with Carlyle, he neveronce appeared to teach me anything in the way of thought. I know he didso; I know that he profoundly coloured the fountains of my mind for manyyears; that long and long after the experience I am recording, I thoughtCarlyle, and wrote Carlyle; and that neither the thinking nor theliterary mode could ever have occurred to me without his influence;but in my first reading of his pages, he seemed to be telling me thingswhich were deeply implanted in my soul already. The truth about thematter is, probably, that he dominated me so completely that I did notthink at all of domination. But all I know is, that I seemed suddenlyto have found an unexpected and hitherto unimagined self. I leapt intransport to encounter a majestic Me; and in this impulse I can honestlyaver that there was no tinge of vanity. I should say, rather, thatit sprang from the utter humility of the disciple who instantly, absolutely, and unquestionably accepted the master's word. Be thesethings as they may, the Carlylean gospel came to me, not as a revelationof another's mind, but as an unveiling of a something which seemedto have been for ever my own, though until that great hour I had notdreamed of its possession. 

I do not propose to make any immediate flight into sentiment. The thingfor which I am trying is a genuine recollection of the way in which thegrowth of this emotion was marked within myself. Things are very muchotherwise to-day; but nearly three-score years ago there was a certainpurposed austerity practised by the most dutiful and praiseworthyparents, which froze the natural budding affections of a child. BeforeI had arrived at the technical age of manhood, my father had become thedearest friend I had in the world, and the friendship lasted till hisdeath; but as a child I feared him. He was by nature as kindly a man asever lived; but he had been bred in the old rigid Calvinistic creed ofScotland, and though I knew very well, in later years, how his heart hadrebelled against him, he was, throughout my childhood and early youth, the embodiment of justice, certainly, so far as he could see it, but always of an apparently unpitying severity. Any judgment of hischaracter based on the system of discipline in which he devoutlybelieved would have been false in the extreme, for the inflictionof pain was actually abhorrent to him. I remember how, on scores ofoccasions, when I put him to the ordeal of administering a hiding tomyself, his face would grow pale, and his hand would tremble. 

Between my mother and myself there were none of those intimacies ofaffection which make life so happy to a child. The whole atmosphere ofthe house repelled love, and its whole principle seemed to be embodiedin the belief that a child should think despitefully of himself, andshould repress all natural ebullitions of fondness or of gaiety. I havebeen trying hard to recall the surname of the boy to whom my heartfirst flowed out in a real affection, but memory fails me. He was aschoolfellow of mine, and I guess that he may have been of Scottishparentage, because his Christian name was Gavin. I can give no reason, at this time of day--nor ever in my maturer years have I been able tofind a reason--why I should have loved that small contemporary as Idid. I cannot say that he was conspicuously gifted in any way. He wascertainly no Steerforth to my Copperfield, being neither distinguishedfor good looks, nor for brilliance at his schoolwork, nor for success ingames. 

It was at this time that there was an ebb in the family fortunes, andI was hastily taken away from a respectable private school in the HighStreet, and sent, as I have explained, to a big vulgar establishment amile away, where a crowd of some three hundred lads attended, at a costto their parents of threepence a week per head. I did not staythere long, but whilst I was kept there, by the strain on the familyexchequer, I was very unhappy. It was in the midst of a sore-heartedloneliness that I encountered Gavin, who, to the best of my belief, wasthe son of a bargee who worked on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal. The impulse which took me towards him I have always regarded as one ofthe strangest, as it was undoubtedly one of the strongest, I have known. He and I were pretty much alike in age--somewhere between nine and tenwe must have been--and we seemed to slide together like two separaterainspots which meet upon a window-pane in wet weather. We used towander about the stony playground, from which every blade of grass wastrampled, except in the remoter corners, and to walk with our armsabout each other's shoulders, and to exchange almost daily such trumperyschoolboy treasures as we owned. I never had a child sweetheart, and Inever knew anybody with whom I exchanged a caress, or bartered a word ofreal kindness, until I fell in with this fascinating young ragamuffin. I never spoke about him to a soul, but he filled my thoughts nightand day, and I was never happy out of his society. I am guilty of noexaggeration when I say that. The feeling I had towards him was, in itsown time, so tender, so yearning, so complete in its absorption of mywhole nature, that it stands altogether apart in my experience. Andwhen, after a period of some six months, perhaps, the family fortunesrevived a little, and I was restored once more to the society of my ownsocial equals, I was broken-hearted at the thought of losing him. 

The master of this rough school had a glimmering of the necessity fortechnical education, and on occasional afternoons a chosen number of uswere drafted off into a big class-room to watch some craftsman workingat his trade. One of these men set the whole class on fire with a spiritof emulation. He brought with him a number of medallions, a quantity ofplaster-of-paris, a stick or two of common sulphur, and a small brazier, and he proceeded to show us how plaster casts were taken from hismedallions. The first part of the process was to oil the surface of themedal, and to bind a strip of brown paper about its edge, so as toform a shallow little well. The next business was to melt enough ofthe sulphur to secure a cast of the medallion. This part of the processresulted in the production of a most appalling smell, which was notlessened in pungency when the odour of singed brown paper was added tothat of melting sulphur. When the cast was cool it also was bound roundwith brown paper, and a compound of plaster-of-paris and water waspoured over it When this had hardened, behold! a snowy reproduction ofthe original medallion. We all went quite wild about this process, andwhen the workman filled in the hollowed head in the mould--it was aportrait of John Wesley--with the white preparation, very carefully, bythe aid of a small spoon and a camel-hair pencil, we watched withwonder for the next development. The craftsman took a small quantityof chrome-yellow, and, having mixed it carefully with his creamy paste, poured it over the white stuff, so that in a few minutes we saw a snowybas-relief of the great divine set on a golden-coloured background. Fromthen until I left the school there was an actual fever for the making ofplaster medallions, mainly from the heavy, half-effaced Bolton pennieswhich at that time were in circulation; and among those who were mostdevoted to this pursuit were my friend Gavin and myself. 

We made casts by the dozen and the score, and when it was knowndefinitely that I was leaving the school, he gave to me his _chefd'oeuvre_, in the shape of a reproduction in two colours of a medalwhich had been struck to commemorate the opening of the Crystal Palacein Hyde Park. There was a solemn understanding between us that I, likewise, should make a cast in two colours, and present it to my chum, and this was to be the symbol and token of an eternity of friendship. I took home the medal; I saved my infrequent pence for the purchaseof materials; and one night, all being ready, I set to work to melt mysulphur in a cracked teacup in the kitchen oven. The whole family wasassembled in that apartment, for the sitting-room was never usedsave upon unfrequent gala days, and before long there were sniffs ofbewilderment and suspicion at the stench which began to fill the room. Ihad not thought of this, and I was afraid for the life of me to withdrawthe teacup. It was a winter night, and a great fire was blazing on thehearth, so that it was no wonder when the cracked teacup burst asunder, and let out its contents on to the iron floor of the oven. Then therearose an odour of mere and perfect Tophet, and the room was filled witha sulphurous smoke. I confessed myself the author of the mischief bytrying to bolt, and I suffered then and there. We were very near beingdriven entirely out of house and home that night, and I was very shy ofreviving the experiment. But my promise lay upon my conscience likea cloud. I _had_ to keep it. To fail in that would have been anunspeakable disloyalty, and very tremulously I made a new occasion when, as I fancied, the coast was clear. It was not so disastrous, in onerespect, as the first, but the burning sulphur again betrayed me, andthe very natural judgment was that I had been guilty of pure contumacy. 

CHAPTER IV

 A First View of London--Charles Dickens--The Photograph--On the Coach to Oxford--The Manuscript of _Our Mutual Friend_-- An Unpublished Chapter--Dickens as Reader--The British Museum Reading Room. 

I worked in the ramshackle, bankrupt, old printing office at home untilI was nearly eighteen years of age, and it was then decided to send meto London to complete my education in the business. 

It is like an exhibition of the biograph, in which the scenes depictedgo by at such a racing speed that it is difficult for the eye to followthem. There is an instantaneous vision of the old kitchen, seen at someabnormal unaccustomed hour of early morning in the winter-time. Threeo'clock on the morning of January 3, 1865. A gas-lit scene of bustle andhurry. Gone. A minute's waiting in a snow-powdered road, carpet-bag inhand, and four-horsed coach ramping along with a frosty gleam of lamps. A jingle of harness, and an adventurous tooting from the guard's horn, as if a charge was being sounded. Gone. Snow Hill, Birmingham, all whiteand glistening. An extraordinary bustle and clamour. A phantasmagoria ofstrange faces and figures. Gone. A station all in darkness, but full ofechoes and voices. Gone. 

A buffet at Oxford, and an instantaneous glimpse of people scaldingtheir throats with an intolerable decoction called coffee extract. The figure of an imperious guard with a waving lamp. The vision of astampede. Gone. Then an interlude of sleep, during which an orchestraplays dream music, with a roll, roll, roll of wheels as a musicalgroundwork to the theme. Then Paddington, in a fog--a real Londonparticular, now for the first time seen, felt, tasted, sneezed at, coughed at, wept over. Distracted biographic figures rampant everywhere. Gone. A vision of streets, populous, and full of movement, buthalf-invisible in a pea-soup haze, through which the gas that takes theplace of daylight most ineffectually glimmers. Gone. Then a room, stillgas-lit when it should be broad day; a table spread with napery none tooclean; a landlady in a dressing-gown and curl-papers; and breakfast. Thebiograph ceases to whirl by at its original speed, and I can take breathhere, and can begin to analyse myself and my own surroundings. 

To begin with, this is London; and to continue, I don't think much ofit. This is a London egg, and this is London bacon, and this exiguousliquid which "laves the milk-jug with celestial blue" is London milk. All the flavours are strange. The atmosphere is strange. The sight of alady in curlpapers at 10 a. M. Is strange. 

Now, in setting down all these things, I begin to take new notice of afact which has long been familiar to me. It has been expressed by morethan one poet, and the reason for it may be found in the works of morethan one man of science; but the fact itself is that every one of thesecinemato-graphical exercises is associated with a special odour. Thesespecial odours have each one so often recurred that they have drivenhome certain memories in such wise as to make them stick. The firein the old home kitchen had been "raked" as we used to say in SouthStaffordshire, overnight, and it gave forth a scent of smouldering ashwhich, whenever and wherever I have encountered it, has not failed tobring back the scene in which I smelt it first. There is an odour lesseasy to define, but just as easy to recognise, in the air of the morningstreet; in the reek of horse and harness going up Snow Hill; ina mingling of wet rot and dry rot in the station; in the acrid, faintly-tinctured coffee smell at Oxford; in the scent of a London fog, or the fragrance of a London egg--any one of which will infallibly takeme back to the scene and the time at which it was first perceived. 

This, however, is an after-reflection; and here am I in London for thefirst time as a free man, and, to my own mind, master of my destiny. Itreally seems at moments as if one might pat it into any form one chose;and it really seems at times as if one were an insect without wingsat the bottom of some unfathomable cranny. The fog of my first weekin London is, I believe, historic, and its five or six days of tearfulblindness and catarrh began to look as if they would reach to the verycrack of doom. Those fog-bound days, in which it was impossible fora Midland-bred stranger to stray ten yards from his own door withouthopelessly losing himself, are amongst the most despondent and mournfulof my life. But, on a sudden, the dawning day revealed to me the otherside of the street in an air as crisp, clear, and invigorating as theheart of any youngster, inured to the smoke of the Black Country, couldwish for. Then what a joy it was to walk about amongst the bustlingcrowds, reading stories in the faces of the passers-by, and identifyingscores and hundreds of people with the creatures of the great fictionwriters. Above all, the people whose life-long friendship we owe to theworks of Charles Dickens declared themselves. I lived off the GoswellRoad, and that fact alone predisposed me to recognise Mr Pickwick in anyspectacled, well-fleshed old gentleman of benevolent aspect. I tumbledacross Sam Weller constantly. I was quite certain as to the livingpersonality of one of the Cheeryble twins. When I knew him he was atailor in Cheapside. It was merely by the accident of time that theshadows I identified with living men had assumed a dress dissimilar tothat of the early Victorian era, and I think I may honestly say that fora month or two, at least, my London was mainly peopled by the creationsof the author of _Pickwick, Little Dorrit_, and _Dombey_. 

I never exchanged a word with Dickens in my life; but at this period, bysome extraordinary chance, I met him twice. I knew his personal aspectwell, for I had heard him read his own works in Birmingham. I was, indeed, a unit in the packed audience which greeted his very firstprofessional appearance as a platform exponent of his own pages. Thatevent took place at the old Broad Street Music Hall in Birmingham, abuilding which was superseded by the Prince of Wales' Theatre. It wasnot easy to mistake so characteristic a figure for that of any other manliving. 

There used to be in Cheapside, at the time of which I write, a windowin which the Stereoscopic Company exhibited the latest achievements inphotography; and it was my custom, in the dinner hour, to spend someodd minutes in front of this display. I was impressed one day by a newlife-sized portrait of Dickens, an enlargement by a process then quitenovel. The hair and beard, I remember, had a look of being made out oftelegraph wire; but the features were quite natural and unexaggerated. I had taken a good look at the picture, and had, indeed, so firmly fixedit in my mind that I can positively see it now, and could, if I wereartist enough, reproduce it; when, having an unoccupied quarter of anhour still on my hands, I turned to stroll towards St Paul's Churchyard, and there, at my elbow, stood the original of the picture. He waslooking at it with his head a little thrown back, and somewhat set onone side, and his look was very keen and critical. I gave a start whichattracted his attention, and, in the extremity of my surprise, Iam afraid that I stared at him rather rudely. I looked back at thephotograph, and I looked back at the living face of the great master oftears and laughter, who was then my reigning deity. I can only supposethat my face was full of a foolish wonder and worship, for when I hadlooked from Dickens to the portrait again, and then back to Dickens, thegreat man laughed, and gave me a little comic affirmative nod, as muchas to say: "It is so, my young friend. " With that he turned briskly, andwalked away along Cheapside, leaving me wonder-stricken at what was not, perhaps, so very wonderful an adventure after all. 

I rubbed shoulders with the great man again, within a month or two, ona coach which travelled from Thame to Oxford. I climbed that coachon purpose to enjoy the privilege of sitting next to him. He had atravelling companion, who was nursing between his knees quite a littlestack of walking-sticks and umbrellas, and I overheard a brief colloquybetween him and Dickens. 

"Charles, " said the man with the bundle, "why don't you have your nameengraved on these?"

"Good God!" said Dickens, in a tone of almost querulous indignation. "Isn't it bad enough already?"

One can well believe that the poor great man found it hard to get aboutEngland without being stared at, and pointed out and run after; andwe know, from his own pen, that outside his public hours he had aself-respecting passion for privacy. 

I came into contact with Dickens in a far different way in the course ofthat spring. It is a little boast of mine that I was the first person inthe world to make acquaintance with Silas Wegg and Nicodemus Boffin andMr. Venus. My name-father, David Christie, was chief reader at Clowes'printing office in Stamford Street, Blackfriars, and month by monthas the proofs of _Our Mutual Friend_ were printed, it was his habitto borrow the Dickens manuscript from Mr Day, the overseer of theestablishment, and to take it home with him for his own delectationbefore it reached the hands of the compositors. On each occasion, untilI left London behind me, Christie would wire me always in the samephrase: "Dickens is here, " and I would go down to his lodgings in DukeStreet and would read aloud to him the work fresh from the master'shand. It was written on long ruled foolscap on rather darkish blue paperin a pale blue ink, and it needed young eyes to decipher it. Therewere only a few of such nights, but the enjoyment of them remains as aremembrance. I shall never forget how he laughed over Mr Wegg's earlierlapses into poetry:

"And my elder brother leaned upon his sword, Mr Boffin, And wiped away atear, Sir. "

Hereabouts befell the first tragedy of my life. In his time Christie hadbeen "reader's" boy at Ballantyne's, in Edinburgh, and in that capacityhe had laid hands with a jackdaw assiduity on every scrap of literaryinterest which he could secure. He had proof sheets corrected by thehands of every notable man of his time. He had been engaged for at leastfifty years in making his collection, and he kept it all loosely tumbledtogether in a big chest, which he used to tell me would become myproperty on the occasion of his death. Amongst other treasures, Iremember the first uncorrected proofs of _Marmion_ and a manuscript playby Sheridan Knowles. 

When Christie died I was in Ireland, and on my return to London Idiscovered that the whole collection had been sold to a butterman aswaste-paper at a farthing per pound. There was one literary relic, however, of inestimable value; it consisted of an unpublished chapterin _Our Mutual Friend_, in which the golden dustman was killed by SilasWegg. Dickens excised this chapter, had the type broken up, and all theproofs, with the exception of this unique survival, were destroyed. Iam not ashamed to confess that when I got back to London and learned thefate which had befallen my old friend's collection, I had a bittercry over it, which lasted me a good two hours. Christie was a veryaccomplished man, and was on terms of friendly correspondence with mostwriters of his time. 

I think that first and last I heard Charles Dickens in everything heread in public. What an amazing artist he was in this direction can berealised only by those who heard him. A great actor is always alegend. In these days he may leave something behind him by means of thephonograph and science may yet contrive such an exhibition of facialdisplay and gesture as will enable those who come after us to appreciatehis greatness, but in a few years at the utmost, the last man who satspellbound under the magic of the Dickens personality will have vanishedfrom the face of the earth and nothing but a record will be left. 

He depended, as I remember, in a most extraordinary degree upon thetemper of his audience. I have heard him read downright flatly and badlyto an unresponsive house, and I have seen him vivified and quickened tothe most extraordinary display of genius by an audience of the oppositekind. The first occasion on which he ever read for his own profit was inthe old Broad Street Music Hall at Birmingham, which for many years nowhas been known as the Prince of Wales' Theatre. There is so little thatis subtle about his work as a writer that it was surprising to findwhat an illumination he sometimes cast over passages in his work. For example, in his reading of the _Christmas Carol_, there was oneastonishing little episode where the ghost of Jacob Marley firstappears to Scrooge. "The dying fire leapt up as if it cried: I knowhim--Marley's ghost. " The unexpected wild vehemence and weirdness of itwere striking in the extreme. He peopled a whole stage sometimes in hisbest hours, and his Sykes and Fagin, his Claypole and Nancy, were allas real and as individual as if the parts had been sustained by separateperformers, and each one a creature of genius. Who that saw it couldforget the clod-pated glutton, with the huge imaginary sandwich and thegreat clasp knife in his hands, bolting the bulging morsel in the midstof the torrent of Fagin's instructions, and complaining "that a man gotno time to eat his victuals in that house. " Concerning the scene betweenSykes and Nancy, Charles Dickens the younger told me a curious story, atthe time when I was writing for him on _All the Year Round_. They wereliving at Gad's Hill, and it was the novelist's practice to rehearse ina grove at the bottom of a big field behind the house. Nobody knew ofthis practice until one day the younger Charles heard sounds of violentthreatening in a gruff, manly voice, and shrill calls of appeal risingin answer, and thinking that murder was being done, he unfastened agreat household mastiff and raced along the field to find the tragedy ofSykes and Nancy in full swing. 

I am afraid that like most newly emancipated lads I used my freedomin many foolish ways; but most of them were harmless, and some of mytruancies from work were even useful to me. Do what I would, I could notfind the strength of will to go and pick up types in a frowsy printingoffice when the picture-gazing fit was on me; and many a time I shirkedmy duties for the vicious pleasure of a long day's intercourse withTurner in the National Gallery, or for a lingering stroll amongstthe marbles at the Museum. One never-to-be forgotten day, my oldname-father, David Christie, lent me a reader's ticket, and I foundmyself for the first time in that central citadel of books, the MuseumLibrary. I went in gaily, with a heart full of ardour; but as I lookedabout me my spirits fell to zero. I knew that what I saw in the storiedshelves which run round the walls, under the big glass dome, made buta little part of the vast collection stored away below and around them;and the impossibility of making even a surface acquaintance with thatwhich lay in sight came strongly home to me. 

CHAPTER V

 I Enlist--St George's Barracks--The Recruits--From Bristol to Cork--Sergeants--The Bounty and the Free Kit--Life in the Army--My Discharge--A Sweet Revenge. 

I am not very good at dates, but there are a few which I can recall withunfailing accuracy. On 25th May 1865, whilst I was staring at one ofthe sunlit fountains in Trafalgar Square, and listening to the bells ofWestminster as they chimed the hour of four, a venerable old spider in ablue uniform with brass buttons, and a triple chevron of gold lace uponhis arm, accosted me without introduction and asked me what I thoughtabout life in the Army. Until then, so far as I can remember, I hadnever thought about the Army at all. My eighteenth birthday was just onemonth and twelve days behind me; I had one and sevenpence in the wideworld; I was smoking the last cigar of an expensive box, in the purchaseof which I had not been justified by the means at my disposal; and I wasin mortal terror of my landlady. It had been discovered at the printingoffice of Messrs Unwin Bros. , at which I had been engaged as an"improver, " that I had no regular indentures, and I had been thrown upona merely casual employment amongst as undesirable and as hopeless a setas could have been found at that time in my trade in London. Apart fromall these considerations, the world had come to an end because acertain young lady, who, to the best of my belief, is still alive, anda prosperous and happy grandmother, had unequivocally declined to marryme. The blue-clad spider had no need to spread the web of temptation. Iresolved in an instant, and he and I adjourned to a backyard somewherein the neighbourhood, for which I have long since sought in vain. I rather fancy that the wide spaces of Northumberland Avenue havedisplaced it; but, in any case, the route we took led us towards theriver, the smell of which comes back to my nostrils at the moment atwhich I write, with a queer mingled suggestion of sludge, and sunlight, and sewage. 

In that backyard I was put to a sort of mild ordeal by question. Was Imarried? Was I an apprentice? Had I ever been refused for either of HerMajesty's Services on account of any physical defect? Was I aware of anysuch defect as would debar me from service? Had I ever been convicted ofany crime or misdemeanour? To all these queries I was able to answer inthe negative; but, whilst the solemn interrogation was going on, a youngman with his head full of flour, and his hands and arms covered withlittle spirals and pills of dough, appeared at the top of a neighbouringwall. "Don't you believe a word of what that cove is telling you, " hecounselled, and so disappeared, in obedience to a rather urgent gesturefrom the blue old spider. I took the shilling, and the spider hintingthat a dry bargain was likely to prove a bad bargain, I expended it intwo glasses of sherry at some neighbouring "wine shade, " to which heconducted me--the sort of institution which the Bodega Company has veryadvantageously superseded. It was a dirty place, with rotting sawdust onthe floor, and little hollows beaten into the pewter counter, in whichwere small lakes of stale wasted liquors of various kinds; and the smellof it, also, is in my nostrils as I write. I was instructed to presentmyself at St George's Barracks, Westminster, at eleven o'clock on thefollowing morning, and was told that if I failed in that respect Ishould become in the eye of the law a rogue and vagabond, and should beliable to summary indictment. I was dressed in my best, because Iwas going out to tea that evening with an old family friend in theHaymarket, a picture-restorer, whose shop and studio were next doorto the old Hay-market Theatre. My host told me that at the very lastappearance of Madame Goldschmit (Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale), he had sat at his open window, and had heard her sing as clearly as ifhe had been one of a paying audience who spent anything from a hundredpounds to a guinea to enjoy that privilege; and I can well believehim, because I heard easily the quaint chuckle of old Buckstone's voicethrough the open windows of the studio. I am not sure at this distanceof time, but I think he was then playing the part of Asa Trenchard, withSothern, in _Dundreary Married and Done For_. 

I got home that night without any interview with the dreaded landlady, and made a bolt very early in the morning, leaving books, pictures, andwardrobe to solve my bill. That night I slept in the great Londondepot barracks. I know perhaps as well as anybody how Tommy Atkins hasimproved in character and conduct since those days, but I can aver thatnever before or since have I encountered a crew so wholly shameless andabominable as I found that night at St George's, Westminster. It isnot a pretty thing to be the only decently bred and sober man amongsta howling crowd of yokel drunkards, whose every phrase is built on afoundation of hitherto unconceived obscenities. The night was enough;and, with three half-crowns in my pocket, paid to me as subsistencemoney for the three days ensuing between that date and the date ofmy departure, I betook myself to a common lodging-house, and livedin comparative decency. Some score of us, or perhaps a dozen, went uptogether for surgical examination, and were made to strip stark naked ineach other's presence. I had never objected to this amongst my own kindand kindred, when one exposed one's nudity by the side of the cleanbrook or yellow canal in which we used to bathe in boyhood; but amongstthis crew it was hard, and even terrible. We had all been bathed, perforce, before the medical examination began; but a mere tubbing doesnot cleanse the mind or tongue, and I loathed alike the ceremony itselfand the men amongst whom I was forced to submit to it. 

We marched through the London streets to Paddington, and I, havingingratiated the sergeant who escorted us by a drink or two, waspermitted to walk by his side, whilst the ragged, semi-drunkencontingent went rolling and cursing ahead. We embarked for Bristol, andthere spent a night at the Gloucester Barracks, where a cross-grainedold sergeant, who had vainly tempted me to sell my clothes, and toexchange them for a suit of rags, compelled me to carry endless loads ofcoals up endless flights of stairs. He began his intercourse with meby addressing me in Greek, of which language I knew nothing; and hefollowed it with a dog-French which, ignorant as I was, I was able todetect. In the morning we were taken aboard the paddleship _Appollo_, bound for Cork, and I am in debt to the chief officer of that craft forthe advice he gave me. "It's the ambition of these beggars, " he said, intending thereby the convoying sergeants, "to land any decent chap atthe barracks looking like a scarecrow. There's a good half of themno better than dealers in old clothes. You take my advice: go to yourregiment looking like a gentleman. When you get your regimentals, youcan sell your civilian clothes for twice as much as these sharks wouldgive you. " I followed the advice thus given, and I had reason to begrateful to the adviser. 

The drunken, howling, cursing, foolish contingent with which I startedwere scattered far and wide from the Catshill Barracks at Cork, and Itravelled thence under the care of a sedate old sergeant to Cahir, inTipperary. The sergeant was talkative and friendly, but I paid littleheed to him, for it was here, if I mistake not, that the joy oflandscape first entered into my soul. I have an impression only of anabounding green and blue in general, but one or two stopping-points areas clear in my mind as if I had seen them yesterday. Amongst them issome old grey stone bridge near Limerick, where the train slowed downand my Irish companion--Limerick born and bred, and rejoicing to showhis own country to a landscape lover--declared that he had travelledalmost dry-shod over the backs of the salmon which once thronged alongthat river. I had my doubts at the moment as to the literal truth ofthis statement, and I am not quite sure that I do not nurse them still. Anyhow, the country struck me with that deceptive sense of fruitfulnesswhich besets every Englishman on his first travels into the fertiledistricts of Ireland; and partly, perhaps, because I was half a Celt tobegin with, the "wearing of the green" became then and there a symbol inmy mind. 

Finally, at the end of a fairly long day's run--for the cheaper kind oftrain travelled slowly in those days--the convoying sergeant and I weredumped down at the station at Cahir, which had not yet become celebratedin that gorgeous fiction which was woven about it in later years bythe claimant to the Tichborne estates. Night was falling as we trampedthrough the village, and on the road beyond we came across the ghostlyshell of an old castle, standing, I think, in the Byrne demesne, whichwas packed full of jackdaws, who had caught one or two human phrasesfrom some half-Christianised member of their fellowship, and who wokethe echoes in answer to our footsteps with a hundred semi-human cries. They had only a phrase or two amongst them, but they gave one clearlythe impression that they represented a Babylonian crowd intent oninsurrection. 

I was passed from one sergeant to another in the course of my transferfrom St George's Barracks to Clare in the county Tipperary, and therewas not one of them who did not try to induce me to change a reputablegarb for a set of garments that would have done justice to a scare-crow. 

The contingent with which I was shipped from Bristol to Cork composedas ribald and foul-mouthed a crew as I remember to have seen, and longbefore I assumed Her Majesty's uniform, I was sickened of the enterpriseon which I had embarked. I think I am justified in saying that I wasinstrumental in bringing about one great and much needed reform. Inthose days, the recruit on enlistment was supposed to receive abounty and a free kit; as the thing was worked out by the regimentalquartermaster, he never saw one or the other. He had served out to himon his arrival at his depot a set of obsolete garments which he wasforbidden to wear and was compelled to return to stores, when a newoutfit at his own cost had been supplied to him. My gorge rose at thisbare-faced iniquity, and as a protest against it, I attired myself onmy first Sunday in barracks in the clothes which had been fraudulentlyassigned to me, and joined the regiment on church parade. I suppose nosoldier had been so attired since Waterloo, and my appearance was thesignal for a roar of laughter in which men and officers alike joined, and which was not extinguished until I had been ignominiously hustledback to quarters. In the Fourth Royal Irish Dragoon Guards at least, Iknow myself to have been the last man whom the wicked system attemptedto pillage in that fashion. As a matter of course, I was marked fromthat moment. 

People who have a practical knowledge of modern Army life tell me thatthings have changed altogether for the better since those far bygonedays of 1865; and I am disposed to believe that no such shamelessswindles as were then perpetrated could possibly continue for a weekunder existing conditions. A Press which makes us familiar with allsorts of grievances, and an inquiring Parliamentarian or two, wouldprovide a short shrift and a long rope for the perpetrator of any suchbare-faced robbery as I suffered under when I first joined the FourthRoyal Irish Dragoon Guards. The motive of my enlistment had no remotestconnection with the bounty offered. I joined the Army simply out of thatgreen-sickness of the mind from which so many young men suffer, andsome nebulous notions of heroism in falling against a savage foe insome place not geographically defined. But in the printed terms of theagreement which I signed it was promised that I should receive a threepound bounty and a free kit. As a matter of fact, I received neither onenor the other. I was served out, as I have stated, with an absolutelyobsolete uniform, which I was forbidden to wear, and my bounty wasimpounded to pay for regulation clothing. 

This initial struggle made me from the first a personage of mark in theregiment; for when I was summoned to my first parade, I haddeliberately donned the clothes which had been dealt out to me from thequartermaster's stores, and presented myself to public view in a uniformwhich had probably been seen on no parade ground in England since Herlate Majesty's accession to the throne. It was a sufficiently solemnproceeding on my own part, for I was warned that I was being guilty ofa military misdemeanour of the gravest sort But if the thing was seriousto me, it was a matter of rejoicing comedy--or even, if you like, ofscreaming farce--to the troops who were paraded for church that Sundaymorning. Men fairly shrieked with laughter at the sight of the oldKilmarnock cap, the ridiculous tailed jacket, and the rough shoddytrousers bagging at the seat. The officers made an attempt at decorumwhich was not too successful; and I was hustled from the ground, andescorted to the guard-room, for the high crime and misdemeanour ofpresuming to appear in the clothes which had officially been servedout to me. I appeared at the orderly-room next morning, and underwenta severe wigging from the officer who was in temporary command of theregiment; but the incident was mercifully allowed to close with a merereprimand. It did a little good, perhaps, for I never knew any otherrecruit to be served out with an utterly obsolete and useless kit solong as I remained with the regiment; but, until the hour at whichmy discharge was purchased, I was taught that it was not conducive topersonal comfort to rebel against any form of tyranny and extortionwhich might be condoned by tradition in the Army. 

Honestly, I do not think that I look with a jaundiced eye upon myremembrances of that most unhappy time, but, as I remember, to have hadan education a little better than that of the average ploughman, andto show an inclination to be smart and quick at duty, was a certainpassport to the hostility of the non-commissioned officers of the time. They regarded themselves, as I am now inclined to fancy, as a sort ofclose corporation, and I cannot help thinking that they felt it a kindof duty to themselves to repress the ambitions of any youngster whoseemed likely to be marked for promotion. A mere recruit, who had notyet learned the simple mysteries of the goose-step, had registered anobjection to being robbed at the outset of his career, and had therebyrevealed himself as a person of dangerous ideas which, if pursued totheir ultimate, would make an end of all manner of illegitimateprofits; and I am not careful to suggest that any special aptitude for asoldier's life on my own part was responsible for the dead set whichwas made at me by all the non-coms, of the regiment. There was onetroop-sergeant-major, as already stated, who was currently knownthroughout the corps as The Pig. A furious and determined attempt wasmade upon his life by a man named Lovell, who was sent to a militaryconvict prison for twelve years, if I remember rightly. Now, Ihave never heard of any ordinarily decent officer, commissioned ornon-commissioned, being assaulted by a subordinate; and the civilianobserver of Army life may be assured that, almost without exception, whenever that kind of thing occurs, petty tyrannies and intermeddlingson the part of the superior are answerable for it. I met this particularman on one occasion only. I suppose that I had been pointed out to himas the young insubordinate who had dared to trespass on tradition bywearing the clothes served out to him. He stopped me in the middle ofthe barrack square at Cahir, and offered me a solemn warning: "You go onas you've begun, young man, and we'll make life hell to you. " I do notclaim that I am in any special sense a lover of justice, but I knowthat my gorge rose less at the sense of personal injury, than against ascheme of organised robbery; but, luckily for myself, I refrained fromanswer, and passed on. 

Every man had his nickname in the regiment, and I was christened Oxford. I was on stable sentry duty at some idle high noon of mid-summer, and aplayful chum of mine, whose name was Barlow, laid a little trap forme. "Oxford, " says he, "who do you think is the ugliest beggar in theregiment?" I answered, without hesitation, "Sergeant So-and-So;"and Sergeant So-and-So was at that very moment coming--michingmallecho--through the stables. He heard both the question and theanswer, and he was naturally displeased. From that hour whatever chanceI might have had of a peaceful life in the regiment disappeared. The non-coms, began to lay plots against me, and I recall one day inparticular, after weeks of rain, during which the horses' legs had beenthickening for want of exercise, we got out into a very muddy ménagewith what we called the "young horse ride. " I was mounted on a mostunmanageable, untrained beast, and before the work was over he was in alather from nose to tail, and I was encased in mud from the spur to thechrome-yellowed button on the top of my forage cap. It was the custom, after having unsaddled one's mount, to pass a hasty oil-rag over bitand bridoon and stirrups, and then to fall to upon the grooming of thehorse. My ugly sergeant had found a collaborateur, who wanted to knowwhat the blank blank I meant by leaving my horse to shiver in the coldwhilst I loitered about this customary duty. I set to work upon thehorse at once, and, as the collaborating sergeant disappeared at onestable door, my ugly friend turned up at the other, wanting to knowwhy the blank blank I had not oiled my stirrup irons. I took up thediscarded oil-rag with all activity; the ugly man vanished, and hiscollaborateur appeared at the door on the other side of the stables. "Now, didn't I tell you not to let your horse catch cold?" said he. "Haven't you the brains to go and groom him?" I had learned long sincethe wisdom of silence, and I began to groom with a will. When my uglyfriend once more appeared with a command "to the stirrup irons;" backI went, forboding the disaster which swiftly came. The accommodatingfriend of the ugly man swooped down, and I was haled before the officeron duty on a charge of having thrice neglected to obey a given order. But the colonel of our regiment, the late Sir Charles Cameron Shute, since then for many years Member for Brighton, was at headquarters. Hewas a good deal of a martinet, but he was justice incarnate. I toldmy story, and I offered him my witnesses. His word to me was a simpleright-about-face and march; but, as I put on my forage cap in theanteroom, I heard him thundering at the accusing sergeants to the effectthat he would not have his recruits bullied, that he would not endure tohave plots laid against them, and that on any repetition of the manouvrenow exposed, he would break the pair of them, and return them to theranks. 

And here occurs what is to me a very curious reminiscence. A dear oldgreat-aunt of mine had purchased my discharge, and had furnished mewith money to go home. We were then stationed at Ballincollig, in CountyCork, and I had secured a suit of civilian toggery from a Cork tailor. Iwas waiting for the jaunting car which was to carry me to town, when myugly friend heaved in sight, and, finding a man in civilian dress withthe undeniable air of the barrack-yard upon him, and being, as I guess, a little short-sighted, he saluted me as he would have saluted anofficer in passing. Discovering his error, he was very angry, and hebegan to cite all the pains and penalties to which a man was liable whosmoked a cigar within a given distance of some powder-magazine whichthen existed there. When I had pointed out to him the fact that I wastwenty yards beyond the limit, I promised him, with all the sincerityof youth, that whenever and wherever I might meet him in civil life, Iwould do my honest best to give him a hiding for the twelve months ofmisery he had caused me. It was years before I saw him again, and he didnot know me. I had grown a beard, and an increasing shortness of sighthad forced me to the use of an eyeglass. He was a commissionaire at someglassworks which stand opposite to the offices of a journal with which Ihave been now intimately concerned for some years. I hailed him by name, and asked him why he had left his old regiment He told me that he wassuffering from hernia and pulmonary consumption; and when I left theplace, after seeing the picture on glass which I had been invited toview, I enjoyed the sweetest vengeance of my lifetime in tipping theex-sergeant half-a-crown, and in leaving him without any disclosure ofmy own identity. 

CHAPTER VI

 Towards Journalism--Dr Kenealy as Parliamentary Candidate-- The _Wednesbury Advertiser_--George Dawson--The First Private Execution--Misprints--The Black Country Sixty Years Ago--_Aunt Rachael_--Old Servants--Local Poets--Mining Dangers. 

I suppose that I should have gravitated into journalism in any case; butit was poor old Dr Kenealy, who was afterwards famous as the intrepid, if ill-tempered, counsel for the Tichborne Claimant, who gave me myfirst active impulse towards the business. The Borough of Wednesburyhad just been created, and my own native parish was a part of it. TheLiberals chose as their candidate one Brogden, who had been unseatedfor bribery at Yarmouth, a fact in his history which did much to enliventrade amongst the local fishmongers, the bloater becoming, as it were, the Tory ensign in all processions and in all public meetings at whichthe Liberal candidate addressed his future constituents. Two or threemen, who afterwards became well known, nibbled at the constituency, andwent away again. Among them were the late Samuel Waddy, Q. C. , and MrCommissioner Kerr, who issued an electioneering address of astonishingprolixity, prefacing it with the statement that he had no time to bebrief. But Brogden's only real opponent was poor old Kenealy. Therewas, of course, a Conservative candidate in the field; and, rightly orwrongly, it was said that Kenealy had been brought down in his interestto split the Liberal vote. 

I found the doctor one night addressing a mere handful of people in avast building which would have accommodated two or three hundred forevery unit he had before him. That was the first occasion in my life onwhich I wore a dress suit; and amidst the unwashed, coally-flannelledhandful, I daresay that my expanse of shirt front, and the flower in mybuttonhole, made me conspicuous. I was a red-hot Liberal in those days, for no better reason, probably, than that my father held that form ofcreed, and I was quite persuaded that Kenealy was a paid impostor. Sowhen, in that raucous voice of his, he said, "I love the working man, "I answered from below with a cry of "Bunkum, doctor, bunkum. " The doctorpaused and looked at me, but said nothing at the moment By and by heflowed on: "When I go to the poll with ten thousand of the working menof this constituency behind me, " and I chimed in with a cry of "When, doctor, when?" This time the orator fixed my flint, as the Americansused to say. He surveyed me from top to toe, and he said quietly, and ina tone of deep commiseration: "I pity that drunken blackguard. " My firstimpulse was to spring upon the platform, and to throw the speaker fromit; but it was so obvious that I could not clear myself of the imputationcast upon me in that way that I surrendered the idea in the very instantin which it occurred to me. I searched in my own mind for a retort, but I searched in vain; and I spent a good part of that night in theinvention of scorching phrases. But the exercise afforded me no relief, and on the following day I sat down and wrote my first newspaperarticle. We had in our new-made borough, in those days, one ineffective, inoffensive little weekly journal called the _Wednesbury Advertiser_, and I posted my article to the editor, who, as much to my surprise asmy delight, printed it in all the glory of leaded type. I believe I wasunder the impression that it would kill Kenealy; but, as all the worldknows, the poor man survived for years, and died from wholly differentcauses. That was the determining incident in my career, and for monthsafterwards I wrote the _Advertisers_ leaders without any sort ofagreement, and without receipt or expectation of any kind of pay. It isnot because I imagine my work to have been exceptionally brilliant thatI am disposed to think that I must have seemed a sort of heaven-sentblessing to my editor (whom I do not remember, by the way, ever to haveseen); but at least I did a good share of his work for nothing. I haveaddressed larger audiences since then; but I have certainly neverbeen puffed up with such a sense of my own power and value as I had inwriting those pompous, boyish essays, in which I trounced Disraeli, andinstructed Gladstone and the chairman of the local Board of Guardians inthe art of administration. 

I have always held that there is no training for a novelist like thatof a journalist. The man who intends to write books describing lifecan hardly begin better than by plunging into that boiling, bubbling, seething cauldron called journalism. The working journalist is foundeverywhere. Is there a man to be hanged?--the working journalist ispresent. Exhibitions, processions, coronations, wars, whatever may begoing on, wherever the interest of life is richest and the pulse beatsfastest, there you find the working journalist. There is no experiencein the world which really qualifies a man to take a broad, a sane, anequable view of life in such a degree as journalism. 

When first I joined the Press, I took a berth as junior reporter at 25s. Per week. I went to George Dawson--one of the highest types of men Ihave ever known, but one who was a born idle man and loved to talk andtalk, and so left no record of himself--I went to dear old Dawson andsaid, "You are starting a journal, and I want to be on it. " What isthe bottom rung of the ladder? Well, my work was to report police courtcases and inquests. I do not know of a lower rung. I had ambitions andideas of my own, but I went for whatever came in my way, and I have notrepented it until this day, although a good opening into business lifeawaited me if I chose to accept it in preference. 

Almost the first "big thing" I recall in my experience was the firstprivate execution which took place in the English provinces. It was atWorcester, when a man named Edmund Hughes, plasterer's labourer, washanged for the murder of his wife. I have often thought that if thatman's story had only been rightly told, if there had only been a modernShakespeare round about, there was the making of a new tragedy ofOthello in it. His wife had run away with her paramour no fewer thanthree times, and each time he had followed her and fetched her back. Butthe last time she refused to come back and cruelly mocked him. He lefther, saying that he would see her once again. He borrowed a razor from afriend, went to the place, and nearly severed her head from her body. 

Well, I went to see that man hanged. I had never seen anyone die before, and such a thing as death by violence was altogether strange to me. Iwas told to apply to the sheriff for permission to be present at theexecution. I devoutly hoped that permission would be refused, but itwas not. I shall not forget the sensation that overcame me as I left thegaol on the night before the man was to be hanged. It was wintry weatherand a storm was breaking. The sky seemed, in fact, to be racked with thestorm clouds. But through them there was one open space with one brightstar visible. That star seemed to carry a promise of somethingbeyond, and I went away somewhat uplifted, though sick and sorrynotwithstanding. 

When I went to the prison next day I, for the first time, bottomed thedepths of human stupidity. The wretched man was pinioned and led up tothe scaffold. I pray God I may never see such a sight again. The man wasjust one shake of horror. The prison chaplain, who had primed himselfrather too freely with brandy--it was his first experience of thisduty--walked in front of the prisoner reciting the "Prayers for theDead. " The poor condemned wretch, who was gabbling one sentence withoutceasing, and who was so terribly afraid as to be cognisant of nothingsave the fact that he _was_ afraid, had nineteen creaking black steps, newly-tarred, to mount on reaching the scaffold. He turned to the warderand muttered "I can't get up, " but the latter slapped him on the backwith the utmost _bonhomie_, and said, "You'll get up all right. " He didget up and they hanged him. On the evening of the same day I read theamazing proclamation in the evening papers that "the prisoner met hisfate with fortitude. " Yet I never in my life saw anything so utterlyabject as that man's terror. I have since then come to the belief thatthe average man has learned the measure of expression of emotion by whathe sees in the theatre. In the theatre a man has to make his emotionsvisible and audible to a large number of people. But in real life deepemotion is silent--I have always found it so. This was my first lessonin this particular direction, and I came to the conclusion that theaverage observer has no faculty for reading the expression of humanemotion at all. Only for the sake of that reflection have I venturedupon this really gruesome story. 

Somewhere about this time there appeared in Birmingham the firstillustrated provincial newspaper ever issued in England. It was calledthe _Illustrated Midland News_, and its editor-in-chief was Mr JosephHatton. France and Germany were at death-grips with each other, and Iwrote many sets of war verses for the new venture, and made somethinglike the beginning of a name. It was at this time that I firstexperienced an agony which has since recurred so often that by dint ofmere repetition it has worn itself away to nothing. I encountered myfirst misprint, a thing bad enough, in all conscience, to the mereprose-writer, but to the ardent youngster who really believes himself tobe adding to the world's store of poetry, a thing wholly intolerable andbeyond the reach of words. Brooding over the slaughtered thousands ofSedan, I wrote what, at the time, I conceived to be a poem. 

I can recall now but a single verse of it, and that, I presume, iskept in mind only by the misprint which blistered every nerve of me forweeks. The verse ran thus:--

 "O! pity, shame, and crime unspeakable! Let fall the curtain, hide the ghastly show, Yet may these horrors one stern lesson tell, Ere the slain ranks to dull oblivion go. These lives are counted, the Avenger waits, His feet are heard already at the gates. "

And, as I am a living sinner, some criminal compositor stuck in an "n"for a "v, " and made the stern lesson appear to exist in the fact that"these lines" were counted. I used to wake up at night to think ofthings to say to that compositor if ever I should meet him, and to theprinter's reader who passed his abominable blunder. The most induratedprofessional writer who takes any interest in his work likes it toappear before the public without this kind of disfigurement; but it isonly the beginner who experiences the full fury of pain a misprint caninflict, and I think that even the beginner must be a poet to know allabout it. 

Talking of misprints carries my mind at least a year farther forwardthan I should just yet allow it to travel. Mr Edmund Yates, who wasat that time on a lecture tour in America, brought a story he was thenwriting for the _Birmingham Morning News_, under the title of "A BadLot, " to a rather sudden and unexpected conclusion, and I was suddenlycommissioned, in the emergency, to follow him with a novel. I wrote afirst instalment on the day on which the task was offered me; but I hadno experience, and no notion of a plot, and before I was through withthe business, I had so entangled my characters that my only way out ofthe imbroglio I had myself created was to send every man Jack and womanJill of them, with the exception of the hero and the heroine, to thebottom of a coal mine, where I comfortably drowned them all. In thelast chapter my hero asked the lady of his heart, "Are there no troublesnow?" and the lady of his heart responded, "Not one, dear Frank, notone. " And then I wrote, very neatly, and in brackets, the words, "WhiteLine, " a professional instruction to leave the space of one line blankbetween the foregoing and the following paragraphs. And the "comp. " whowas entrusted with my copy, being obviously inspired of Satan, set outthe heroine's response and the trade instruction in small type, ' thus, as if it had been a line of verse:

 "Not one, dear Frank, not one white line. "

I think the error was repaired in time; but I remember that the authorof it was forcibly invested by his comrades with a leather medal, and that the whole establishment below stairs revelled in beer at hisexpense. In the same journal appeared a report of a speech delivered byits own editor, who having said of Shakespeare, "We turn to the wordsof this immortal writer, " had a "t" knocked out for him, and wasrepresented as having spoken of "this immoral writer. " I was with thedear old chief at the time at which the blunder was discovered and themost eloquent conversationalist at that time alive in England surpassedhimself. The offending "reader" was a married man with a family, and ahard-working, conscientious creature, as a rule, and he escaped with themildest wigging, though I should not like to have been responsible forthe consequences which might have ensued had he been present at theinstant of discovery. 

For a good many years it had been my habit to tramp of a Sunday nightsome five or six miles out, and some five or six miles home, to hearGeorge Dawson preach at the Church of the Saviour; and it was thus thatI learned that he was to be the editor of a new daily newspaper, the_Birmingham Morning News_, and, as I have already said, I was employedby him at 25s. A week. He left little behind him to justify the beliefI had in him, which was shared, by the way, by a good many thousandsof people. I reckon him to have been, upon the whole, potentially thegreatest man with whom I ever rubbed shoulders. He was a very wide, though possibly a somewhat shallow, student; he was, without exception, the best talker to whom I have ever listened. He possessed a certainmagnetic quality which extorted in a really extraordinary degree theworship of thinking young men; and there was no man in his own day whowas more courageous in the expression of his beliefs, though they wereoften enough likely to cost him dear. I cannot think of him as everhaving entertained an intellectual fear. He was honesty personified;but his heart had established a curious mastery over his mind. He wastelling me one day in New Street that promiscuous charity was a curse tothe community, and that it was a man's duty to button up his pocket atthe first sound of a beggar's whine. While he was still intent upon thismoral lesson, he gave a half-crown to a mendicant Irishwoman, who didmost certainly look as if she were in need of it. The great-hearted, big-brained, eloquent man has even yet his monument in the hearts ofthose whom he inspired; but he left next to nothing as a lasting mementoof his own genius. The truth is that, when he took pen in hand, thegenial current of his soul was frozen. In print he was curiously stiffand unimpressive; and it has been one of the wonders of my lifetime thata man so wise, so learned, and so original should have left so faint atrail behind him. 

I suppose that really no greater stroke of luck could possibly havebefallen a student of the oddities of human nature than to have beenborn in that desolate Black Country sixty years ago. Almost x everybodywas an oddity in one way or another and that defacing School Boardwhich has ground the lower middle class of England and its labouringpopulation into one common monotony had not yet laid a hand upon thepeople. They spoke a very beautiful old English there, full of thequaint plurals long since obsolete in most other places. "Shoon" and"housen, " for example, and now and then a double plural--a compromisebetween the ancient manner and the new--would creep into their speech;"eysen" was the plural of "eye, " "peasen" the plural for "pea;" and thepatois was rich with many singularities which I have known often tobe quoted as "Americanisms, " although, as a matter of fact, the"Americanisms" are no more than the survival of the early English form. 

If I had only had the brains to know it, there lay before me as fine afield as any craftsman in the art of fiction ever had a chance to gleanin. It is an impertinence for a man to speak of his own work, but I haveoften thought in my own story of _Aunt Rachel_, there is at least anadumbration of what a man aimed with real sympathy and humour mighthave done with the people of that place and time. When I say that thecharacters in _Aunt Rachel_ are all real, I do not mean to make thefoolish boast that they are all alive. I mean simply to say that theyare all sketches from the life and are as true to their own lineamentsas my hand could make them. The old musical enthusiast who, having heardPaganini, laid down his bow for ever because he could be content withnothing less than the great virtuoso's perfections, was a maternalgreat-uncle of mine, and the pathetic little story of the manner inwhich the life-long severance between himself and his sweetheart wasbrought about is literally true. "Aunt Rachel" herself in her extremelystarched and dignified old age was a constant visitor at my mother'shouse. She had, for a space of something like forty years, had chargeof successive generations of children in a stately country house inWorcestershire, and when she was honourably pensioned and retired, sheused to boast, in her prim way, that she was not unacquainted with theairs and graces of the higher powers. She must at least have reached theage of fourscore when on one occasion she had lingered at my mother'shouse until darkness fell. The cottage she lived in was a mile away andwas approached by a somewhat lonely road. My brother Tom, at that time astalwart lad of eighteen, was suggested to her as an escort. The littleold lady drew herself up to the full height of her dignity. It was asaying of hers that she could not by any loyal person be described asa female of inferior stature, since she was but one barleycorn less inheight than Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria. She rebuked mymother with a solemnity which laid a heavy tax on our politeness. "No, Mary, my dear, " she said, "I will go alone; I have my reputation toconsider. "

One meets rarely at this time the example of the attached old school ofservants, who used to identify themselves with the household to whichthey ministered. The faithful servant of the antique world is dead, but I remember dozens of instances in my childhood where even inestablishments as humble as our own, a domestic who had entered intoservice in early childhood had stayed on until age or a by no meanspremature marriage put an end to the association. One of my mother'smaids stayed with her for a matter of some thirty years and finally lefther to share the destinies of a working mason. The honest fellow hadjust fulfilled a profitable, small contract in so satisfactory a mannerthat he was offered something bigger which, in due time, was followed bya something bigger yet. In a while, Jane was keeping her carriage, buton her frequent visits to her old mistress her demeanour never changed, unless one could read into it a trifle of apology for her rustling silkdress and black kid gloves. She developed a love for long words whichhad not distinguished her in her earlier years, and this tendencybetrayed her into occasional malapropisms, the best of which is perhapsworth preserving. My mother was a very notable housewife and trainer ofdomestic servants. It was her pet hobby to take some neglected littledraggle-tail from the workhouse and to turn her into an efficientmaid-of-all-work. When this self-imposed duty was accomplished, the maidinvariably went elsewhere in search of higher wages, so that my motherwas rarely without some slatternly little pupil whom she was drillinginto ways of household order. Jane came one day in her rustling silksand streamers to announce a discovery. "The very girl you want, ma'am; Iam sure you could turn her into a perfect treasure. " "Well, Jane, " saidmy mother, "you know what I want. I want three qualities in a girl andif she has them, I can make a good servant of her. I want her to behonest and willing and clean. Is she honest?" "As the day, ma'am, " saysJane. "And is she willing?" "Oh, as willing as the rising sun, ma'am. ""And is she clean?" "Clean, ma'am, " says Jane, raising her black glovedhands to emphasise the affirmation, "she's _scrofulously_ clean!"

And then the poets! there was not a parish or a hamlet for a good tenmiles round but had its own acknowledged bard. There were continualtragedies happening in the coal mines. Men were much more careless inthe handling of naked lights than they are now, and the beneficent giftof the Davy lamp was looked on with mistrust. The machinery by which themen were lowered to their work was often inadequate. There was nothinglike a scientific system of ventilation and fatalities were appallinglyfrequent. Whenever one happened, the local bard was ready with histhrenody and the little black-bordered, thick leaflets were sold at onepenny apiece for the benefit of the survivors. The prince of the poeticthrong in my day was one Alfred Randall whom I used to encounter onSunday mornings on his way to chapel dressed in black broadcloth, withhuge, overlapping, rhinocerine folds in it--for, as I have remarkedelsewhere, a Black Country tailor who had supplied the customer withmerely cloth enough to fit him, would have been thought unpardonablystingy--a very high false collar tied at the back of the neck by a footor two of white tape which as often as not trailed out behind, a woollencomforter dangling almost to his toes whatever might be the season ofyear, and the hardest looking and shiniest silk hat to be had for loveor money--these were Mr Randall's Sabbath wear, and it always struckme as a child that he had very much of the aspect of a cockatoo inmourning. He was a preternaturally solemn man and when I felt that Icould command my features, I used to like to talk with him about hisArt, and hear in what manner his inspirations occurred to him. "It's nocredit to me, " he used to say, with a sort of proud humility, "it's agift, that's what it is. " Mr Randall's views were not always engagedon tragic themes, and I have the most delightful recollections of apastoral of his entitled:--"Lines on a Walk I once took on a Day in Mayinto the Country. " It began thus:--

 "It was upon a day in May, When through the fields I took my way. It was delightful for to see The sheep and lambs they did agree. 

 And as I walked forth on that day I met a stile within my way; That stile which did give rest to me Again I may not no more see. "

I had the pleasure to put this effusion into type with my own hands. Myfather was generally his own proof reader, and when I went to him withthe first impression and began to read to him from the manuscript, I wasreally very terribly afraid. My father was a man who hid a great dealof tenderness and humour under a very stern exterior, and I felt that itwas my duty in his presence to go through my share of the proof-readingwith a grave and business-like countenance. I approached one coupletwith terror, for I knew beforehand that it would break me down. 

 "As on my way I then did trod The lark did roar his song to God. "

I had to laugh, whatever might happen, but to my relief my fatherlaughed also. I believe that was the first real, honest, human communionthat he and I had ever known together, and Mr Randall's poem did moreto make us friends and to break down the life-long shyness which hadexisted between us than anything else I can remember. I remember thisgem from Randall's hand concerning a comrade who met death by his sidein the mine in which he worked:--

 "John Williams was a godly man Whose name was on Wesleyan Methodist plan, He rose one morning and kissed his wife And promised to be home at night. But ah! he met the fatal flame And never he went home again. "

The indifference with which these men lived in the face of danger wassomething truly remarkable. One would barely encounter a working minerat that time who had not, on face or hands, a deep blue mark like anirregular tattoo, branded where the blast of the exploding gas haddriven the coal-dust into his skin, and every man thus marked had beenin imminent peril of his life at least once, and had probably foundhimself in the midst of a dozen or a score of his dead comrades. Afterone of my own earliest descents into the underground region of the oldStaffordshire ten-yard coal, I found myself in a great dimly lightedhall, where the men were pursuing the dangerous task of cleaning outthe pillars which had hitherto been left to support the roof. This wasa common enough procedure at the time, and many a life was lost in it. I was seated on an upturned wheel-barrow, talking to a doggy or ganger, who was taking his mid-day meal of bread and meat and cold tea. Wewere perhaps half a dozen yards apart when right between us from theinvisible roof, thirty feet above, a cartload of rocky fragments fellwithout warning. A foot this way or that and one or other of us mustinevitably have been crushed. It was the first close and immediatedanger of which I had been conscious in my life, and I do not scrupleto say that it set me trembling and shaking and left me with a curioussense of emptiness and nausea. But the old doggy just cocked his eyetowards the invisible roof and looked down at the heap of débris, andsaying, "That stuck up till it couldn't stuck up no longer, " went onquite composedly with his meal. 

CHAPTER VII

 George Dawson as Editor--Birmingham Politicians--John Blight's Nervousness--The Black Lake Rescue--The Pelsall Hall Colliery Disaster--Archibald Forbes--Out of Work-- Edmund Yates and _The World_--The Hangman-Human Oddities-- A Mislaid Cheque--Hero Worship--Three Stories of Carlyle-- Journalism. 

For two or three bright and happy months I acted as George Dawson'samanuensis after a rather curious and unusual fashion. In his unclericalsuit of Irish homespun and his beaded slippers, with a well-blacked claybetween his lips, he would roam up and down the Turkey carpet of theeditorial room and talk about some topic of the day, and in that fashionhe would make his daily leader. "Now, " he would say, "take that to yourown room and get as much as you can of it into a column. " I made nonotes, for I had a verbal memory in those days like a steel rat-trap. But I used to go away charged sometimes with matter enough for anewspaper budget, or nearly, and it was my business to condense andselect from this material that which seemed worthiest of preservation. I offer here a fragment or two of the kind of thing he used to say atthese times. Talking of Disraeli, whom he hated vehemently, he said:"The man has been writing all his life of the great Asian mysterywithout guessing that he is the greatest Asian mystery alive. Hispolitics are romantic, his romances are political, and he himself isa fiction founded on fact. " Of another person whom I will not name, hesaid: "You put the man into a book as you put a sponge into a bucket. You take him out and squeeze him, and he returns the stream uncoloured. He is a sort of _Half Hours with the Best Authors_, bound in man's skin;he is intellectually impotent, he never begot an idea. "

But he could be as generous in praise as savage in condemnation, and hisoccasional lapses into tenderness of mood were very sweet and touching. I recall one night at the Church of the Saviour, after his return froma holiday in Rome, when he told us how he had purposely lost himself inthe viler quarters of the city. The noon-day sun beat down, elicitingabominable stenches and revealing, without compromise, the ugly squalorsof the region. He walked on right into the country, strolled on theCampagna, and at night-fall regained the city by something like the sameroute he had chosen in leaving it. The garish sun was down. The eveningdews had laid the foul odours. The moon was at the full. Every uglinesswas turned to beauty. Vile things were transfigured in that softeninglight. "Christianity, " he said, "is the moonlight of the soul. " It wasnote a complete saying, but Dawson was a creature of intimations. Hestartled one sometimes by an intellectual crudity, but he had alwaysreserve. 

There are many still living who remember the truly astonishing eloquenceand devotion of those improvised prayers of his at the Church of theSaviour. Old mouthing George Gilfillan, by the way, author of the _Bardsof the Bible_ and other deservedly neglected works, wrote to Dawson whenhis congregation built this church for him: "You have started the Churchof the Saviour, but you will never be a saviour to the church. " To whichthe other George fittingly responded "that the Church had its Saviouralready and it was a plain man's business to preach His plain meaning. "But those prayers! They were the mere breathing of a strong, sanesoul towards an infinite hope, an infinite possible good, a greathalf-revealed Fatherhood. Doubt faltered there, hope exulted. I havenot heard from other mortal lips--I do not hope to hear again--such anexpression of humble hope and doubt, such a tone of complete abasementbefore the Divine Ideal, such a final triumphant note of praise in thefar-off haven to which creation moves. 

The best result of the life of my dear old chief was the effect he hadupon the municipal spirit of that town of Birmingham. It was not thena city in those days to which he devoted so large a portion of hismany gifts and his great energies. Such men are the salt of greatcommunities. Not so endowed as to command the armies of the world, missing something of the ambition, or the vanity, or the push ofpotential greatness in its wider spheres, they gain in force by thevery limits of the current to which they commit their powers. Many ageneration will go by before the capital of the Midlands wholly forgetsthe influence of the man whose character I have so feebly indicatedhere, who was to its teeming thousands the lighthouse of honesty, andwho still seems to me, after the lapse of all these years, the bravest, the sincerest and the most eloquent soul it has been my fortune toencounter. I owed to him a personal acquaintance with the leadingpoliticians of the town. John Skirrow Wright--of whom Dawson alwaysspoke as the "great Liberal party"--a big, noisy, vehement, jovial man, whom the phrase accurately fitted; Dr R. W. Dale, the Archbishop of theNonconformists of his day and many others. 

On one memorable afternoon, he introduced me to John Bright. I do notthink I ventured to take any share in the conversation between the two, but I recall one interesting passage of it "Tell me, friend George, "said Bright, "you have, I suppose, as large an experience in publicspeaking as any man in England. Have you any acquaintance with the oldnervous tremor still?" "No, " said Dawson, "or if I have, it is a meremomentary qualm which is gone before I can realise it. " "Now, for mypart, " said the great Tribune, "I have had practice enough but I havenever risen to address an audience, large or small, without experiencinga shaking at the knees and the sense of a scientific vacuum behind thewaistcoat. "

When I enlisted under Dawson's banner, on the _Birmingham Morning News_, I was the junior reporter, but in the course of a month or two, I waspromoted and became the recognised descriptive writer on the staff. Throughout my journalistic experience I have been fortunate in onerespect. The men under whom I have worked have, for the most part, hadthe knack of extorting one's best, and one of the ways of extorting thebest of an enthusiastic youngster is to let him know cordially when hehas done well. I shall never forget the flush of resolve which cameover me when Dawson first laid his hand upon my shoulder with a cheery"Bravo, my lad, " in acknowledgment of a piece of work of mine. It wasthe first really great chance I had had. I was just newly married at thetime and supposing my work to be over for the day I was taking my wayhomeward, when the printer's "devil" overtook me after a breathless runand told me that I was wanted at the office. I went back to learn thatthere was a mine on fire at Black Lake, some seven miles away, and I wasbidden to go and see what was to be seen there. 

A hasty search through the time-table showed that there was no trainrunning in that direction for an hour or two and so I was bidden to takea hansom and to use all despatch. The scene of the disaster lay a mileor two past the house in which I was born, and by the time at whichI reached this point I could see that the tale was true. It was aperfectly still and windless evening with an opalescent sky, and faraway I could see a great column of smoke rising like the stem of a giantmushroom and over it a canopy of smoke like the mushroom's top, and asI drew near I could see that the lower part of the column was faintlyirradiated by the flames at the bottom of the pit shaft. The mine wassituated in the midst of an open field and there was a great surgingcrowd about it which made way for me at a word. Round about the bedshafts of the mine, the downcast and the upcast, a little space was heldvoluntarily clear and half a dozen men in coaly flannels were standingthere. A little tin pot of an engine in a miniature of an engine-housewas labouring and panting at a little distance, and almost as I arrivedupon the scene, the great iron bucket capable of containing as I shouldjudge some five or six hundred gallons, was brought from the upcast, lowered there, set upon a trolley and then run along the rails until itcould be emptied into the shaft in which the fire was raging. 

This poor attempt to extinguish the flames was continued for perhaps aquarter of an hour, but at last one of the little band said, "This isno good, lads, we might as well stand round in a ring and spit at it. We shall have to get the 'Stinktors' out. A man or two will have to godown. " The coal-smeared men were all standing close together and theylooked at each other with faces pale beneath the grime. For a second ortwo none of them spoke, but at last one said, "Will you make one?" andthe first man answered with a mere nod and a sullen-sounding growl. The others were appealed to each in turn, and each gave the same sulkyseeming acquiescence. I had at the moment no idea as to what it wasactually proposed to do, but the plan was soon made clear. Whatthe first speaker had called "stinktors" turned out to be littlebarrel-shaped objects about one foot by two. 

They were called "l'extincteur, " and they contained some gas which incombination with water was fatal to fire. But when I reflected that ina confined space like that into which they proposed to venture, any gaswhich was fatal to fire would in all probability be fatal to humanlife, I almost wondered if the men were mad. Mad or no, they made theirpreparations with a deliberate swiftness which showed that they knewperfectly well what they were about. The man who had first proposedthe venture was the first to set out upon it. The large iron bucket, technically called "bowk, " was attached to the steel wire rope whichhung about the smouldering shaft. The man stepped into this, the chainwas passed about his waist, he was smothered in heavy flannels whichwere tied about him with cords; the end of a long coil of dirty, oily, coaly, three-ply twine was fastened round his right wrist, and he wasswung into the smoke. The word was passed to the engine-room, the littletin pot of an engine began to pant and snort 30 or 40 yards away and theman dropped out of sight. The coal-smeared comrade who had charge ofthe twine paid it out delicately fathom by fathom. It was the only linkbetween the adventurer down below and the chance of life, and the meresttug at it would have caused an immediate reversal of the engine andwould have brought him back to bank. But no signal came, and foranything that anybody there could have told, the man below might havebeen suffocated by the smoke. There was not a sound to be heard butthe creaking of the wheel as it revolved above the shaft and the hoarsepanting of the little engine, and the crowd which had by this time grownto vast dimensions waited in so tense a silence that there was somethingawful in it. 

How long we waited I cannot tell, but at last the signal came. Theword was flashed to the engine room and the rope came gliding swiftlyupwards. The hero was comatose and was hanging all limp and loose by thechain which had been passed about his waist. He was seized, swung to oneside and lowered and landed and one great fiery flake of flannel as bigas a man's hand fell from the rough garments in which he was swathedfrom head to foot. A bottle of whisky came from somewhere and was put tohis lips and in a while he recovered consciousness though he was stillgasping and choking and his eyes were streaming. In the meantime anotherman, as good as he, was ready, and he came back, as it turned outafterwards, blinded for life, but neither that nor anything that fearcould urge could stay the rest, and man after man went down and facedthat lurid smoke and hell of darkness undismayed, until at last theirvalour won the day and they brought out every man and boy and beast. Onecoaly giant yelled, "That's the lot, " when the last batch came up, andthen the crowd went mad, weeping, cheering, dancing mad. I have seenmany deeds of valour in my time, both in peace and war, but I have neverseen anything to match the Black Lake rescue for deliberate courage. 

I feel inclined to say less about the courage displayed by the membersof the next rescue party whose work I saw, for the very sufficientreason that I was a member of it To tell the honest truth, I had notthe remotest idea that I was courting any sort of danger. At the PelsallHall colliery, which lay two or three miles from Walsall, there had beenan inrush of water from some old deserted workings near at hand, andtwenty-two miners were imprisoned. The water filled the shaft to a depthof sixty feet, and so the rescuers were really hopeless of being able topump the mine clear before the prisoners had been reduced to a state ofabsolute starvation. There was always the certainty that the inrush ofwater would be followed by an influx of poisonous gases. This, in fact, proved to be the case, and every man had been dead a week before thefirst body was recovered. 

I began my friendship with Archibald Forbes at Pelsall, and I beganit in a rather curious fashion. The place was a wretched little miningvillage with a solitary beer shop in it, and there was only one house inwhich it was possible to secure decent accommodation. I bargained withits tenant for a bed, and agreed to pay him half-a-crown a night for theaccommodation. Forbes had made a precisely similar arrangement with thewoman of the house, and there was but a single bedroom to be disposedof. Neither of us knew anything of the other's bargain until thefollowing morning. Forbes was under the belief that an attempt atdescent was intended to be made that night, and that it was to breakinto an old abandoned air-way which had long been bricked up at the sideof the shaft, and was believed to lead to the stables of the mine whichwere situated at a point above the level of the flood. 

The dialect of the Black Country, when spoken at its broadest, is noteasy for a stranger to understand. I, as a native of the district, was of course familiar with it, but Forbes was out of his elementaltogether, and might almost have tried talking chockjaw. I, knowingperfectly well that the intended attempt could not be made for atleast twenty-four hours, went away with a comfortable mind and sleptin Bailey's cottage. When I left the door next morning I saw stridingtowards me through the mud a very begrimed and unprepossessing-lookingfigure. It was, after all, a man with a two days' beard, a very dirtyface, a collarless, grimy shirt, who wore heavy ankle Jack-boots, and had his trousers rolled above his ankles. This person accosted mebrusquely. "What are you doing in that cottage there?" he asked me, andI asked in turn, "what business of his that might be. " He told me hehad hired and paid for the only available bed in the house fromthe landlady, and I told him that I had hired and paid for the sameaccommodation through the landlord. The stranger claimed precedence, andwas good enough to tell me that if he found me attempting to infringeupon his privileges he would take the liberty of throwing me out of thewindow. I was five-and-twenty at this time, stood five feet eleven in mysocks, and reckoned myself a pretty good man with my hands, as a pupilof the old Slasher had a right to be, and in considerable wrath at thestranger's insolence, I drew myself up shoulder to shoulder with him, and told him hotly that that was a game that two might play at. Therecame a quiet humorous gleam into his eye, and when he looked at me forhalf a minute he burst into a great roar of laughter. "Newspaper man?"he asked me. I answered in the affirmative, and he stretched out anunwashed hand. "I am Forbes, " he said. "I am here for the _Daily News_;if I can't bully a man I make friends with him. "

Now Forbes for years had been one of my heroes and I was simplydelighted to meet him. We struck up an immediate friendship but inan hour he turned into bed and I saw him no more until the followingmorning when I believed that I had made of him an enemy for life. Ilearned at the mine head the hour at which the rescue party was todescend and I made arrangements to join it. Then I walked in to Walsalland there hired a saddle horse which I bestowed in the stables of thebeer shop. This done, I made my way back to the mine and found the partyjust in readiness to make the descent. There were six of us, all told, and the little contingent was captained by Mr Walter Neas, who, partlyas a reward for gallantry as I believe, was afterwards appointed managerof Her Majesty's mines in Warora, Central India. We were all lowered ina skip together and the position of the air-way having been preciselyascertained one man lay face downwards on the skip's bottom and brokethrough the brickwork with a pick. The sullen waters of the pool wereonly some eight or ten feet beneath us. The bricks splashed in oneafter the other until there was a space large enough for a man towhirl himself into it, and one by one we entered the passage. It was atremendous scramble, and here and there the roof of the place had sunkso low that we had hard work to squeeze through on our hands and knees. In places we had almost space to walk upright. We came at last upon aface of brick, the wall of the stable for which we were bound and beyondwhich there was some faint hope of finding the imprisoned men. The soundof our picks elicited no response though we paused more than once tolisten, but the wall being at length broken down, we entered the stableand I was the first of the party to perceive the dead body of a man whosat leaning against the wall of coal looking for all the world like awax-work figure. 

I was holding a candle to the dead man's face and we were all gatheredround when the light went out suddenly as if it had been quenched inwater. In a second we were in pitch darkness and our leader called out"Choke damp--back for your lives, " and in the pitchy darkness backwe struggled. I have forgotten to say that water was running down theair-way like a little mill-stream, though it was barely over shoe-tops. We scrambled on with the deadly gas following us, sucked and drawn alongby the draught of air. I was last but one and was saved many of thebruises and excoriations which befell the leader. The warning voicewould come out of the darkness, "duck here, " or "hands and knees, " andon we toiled, panting and perspiring, until we reached the shaft andwere all drawn up again. I dried myself roughly before a roaring fire inthe hovel of the mine and then made all haste to the beer shop where Imounted my horse and rode full tilt into Birmingham. The paper had goneto press early that night and the press was already clanking when I rodeinto Pinfold Street and sat down, all muddy and dishevelled as I was, to dictate my copy to a shorthand writer. What I had to say filled twolarge type columns and with the copy of the paper in my pocket, I rodeback to Pelsall. There I found Forbes at breakfast--he asked where I hadbeen and I produced the paper and showed my work in silence. He readit through without a word of comment, good, bad or indifferent, laid itdown upon the table and left the room. I heard him rummaging about inthe chamber overhead and by and by he came down with a portmanteau inhis hand and without a word or a look left the house. I thought that hewas galled to feel that he had been beaten by a novice. 

Two years had elapsed when I met him again. I found him by hazard in theLudgate Bar, which was then a great resort of the bigger men among theLondon journalists. As I entered he sat among a knot of his companions. Tom Hood was there as I remember, and Henry Sampson, founder of the_Referee_ with Major Henty, the famous writer of books for boys, andpoor brilliant young Evelyn Jerrold. Forbes greeted me boisterously, and, springing from his seat, clapped me upon the back. He took meto his friends and introduced me with words that put me to the blush. "Here, " said he, "is a man who writes English, and here is the only manwho ever beat me on my own ground. " "No, " I answered, "it was my ground, Mr Forbes, and I should not have beaten you if you had spoken thelanguage of the natives. " I never had a better or more generous friendthan Forbes. 

The _World_ Journal, founded by Edmund Yates, was just then enteringinto its first dawn of success. Forbes had been asked to write aseries of articles for it on a subject which, as he confessed, had noparticular charm for him. He handed it over to me and that gave me myfirst chance in the higher journalism of London. But I am runningfar ahead now and there is much to tell before my narrative arriveslegitimately at this point. 

The _Birmingham Morning News_ was a financial failure from the first, and towards the end of its second year its proprietors determined toreconstruct it. How or by whom they were advised I never knew, but aperson who had no acquaintance either with finance or with journalismwas entrusted with the command and Dawson threw up his post in dudgeon. I had fully intended to resign with him, but I had no time given me inwhich to do it, and in the space of a few weeks after the arrival of thenewcomer, I was free to seek my fortune in London. By the good officesof the late Charles Williams, war correspondent on the staff of the_Morning Advertiser_, I was introduced to Colonel Richards, the editorof that journal, and did actually secure a berth as gallery reporter, but I was suddenly called back to the country by a grave domestictrouble, no less than the illness of my wife, which terminated fatallyeight or nine weeks g 97 Recollections later. When I returned to Londonmy place was filled and for a while the outlook was extremely desolate. My funds were very limited to begin with, and in spite of all the careI could exercise they dwindled at an appalling rate. I abode in a shabbylittle back bedroom in a lodging off the Gray's Inn Road and sat at mytable wrapped in an ulster to prevent myself from freezing, whilstI wrote, and sent broadcast prose and verse, essays, short stories, journalistic trifles of every kind. All were ignored or returned. 

Where the handsome offices of the _Daily News_ now stand in BouverieStreet, there was at that time a doleful place of resort for life'sfailures. It was called the Sussex Hotel. The _habitués_ of the placewere for the most part broken journalists and barristers, some of whomwere men of considerable native talent and attainment. They were mostlygiven to drink, but they contrived to maintain at least such an outwardsemblance of respectability as enabled them to loaf about the FleetStreet offices and bars without being actually the objects of derision. I do not suppose that there is anywhere at this time such a contingentto be found in London. I went to live amongst them for economy's sake. We each paid sixpence a night in advance for a bed, the linen ofwhich had a look of having been washed in tobacco juice and dried up achimney. When a guest had paid his money, he was supplied with a key andabout an inch of thin candle, which was affixed by its own grease to abroken shard of pottery. I spent about six weeks there and during thelatter part of the time at least, my one daily meal consisted of ahard-rinded roll and thick chocolate. My belongings had all dwindledaway, and at last I found myself penniless and homeless in the midst ofLondon. 

It is not, when all is said and done, a very dreadful thing for ahealthy man to be without food for a few days, nor is it such a hardshipas the fastidious might fancy to snatch one's nightly rest on thebenches of the Embankment. I passed four nights there, chivied with therest of the abject crowd by the ubiquitous policeman with his eternal"Wake up, move on there!" and for four days I was entirely without food. I can quite honestly say that I cared very little for these thingsin themselves, but where the iron enters into a man's soul in suchconditions is when he feels that his degradation is unmerited and knowsthat he has powers within him which, if he could find a vent forthem, might lead him on to fame and fortune. The exasperating ragingbitterness of this, the grudging envy with which he looks at those morefortunate than himself, whose intellectual equipment he despises, theseare the things which sear the heart. 

I had resolved--let come what might come--that I would never go home toconfess myself a failure. The thing, of course, might have had a tragicending; there have been thousands of tragic endings to such enterprisesas that in which I was engaged, but in my case, fate ordered otherwise, I have told the tale elsewhere, but it will bear re-telling. I wasdrifting about Fleet Street, mournfully conscious of the extent to whichmy appearance had deteriorated, of the unblacked boots and the yellowlinen, and the general air of being unkempt and unwashed, when I foundmyself standing in front of the window of a filter-maker's shop, closeby old Temple Bar. In this window were displayed a number of glassdomes, under each of which a little jet of water tossed about a corkball. The ball would soar sometimes to the roof of the dome and wouldthen topple over, sometimes to be caught midway upon the jet andsometimes to fall to the bottom, but always to be kept drenched anddancing in a melancholy futile way. I was comparing it with myself whena hand was clapped upon my shoulder and a jolly voice accosted me. Thespeaker was John Lovell, the president of the Press Association, whichhad its offices in Wine Office Court hard by. He could not have failedto be aware of my condition, but he gave no sign of having observed itand asked me if I could spare the time to earn a couple of guineas, by writing "a good, sea-salt, tarry British article about ChristopherColumbus. " Time pressed, he told me, and he was too busy to undertakethe article himself. If I would accompany him to the office, he wouldsupply me with the necessary materials and would pay money down for thework. On to the office I went with him, with a sudden bright confidencethat here at last the lane of ill-luck had found a turning. I wasushered into a little private room, and writing materials were setbefore me. In a couple of hours I sent in my copy, and there came backto me at once a pill-box, on the lid of which was inscribed in a verydelicate handwriting, "The prescription to be taken immediately. " Thebox being opened was found to contain two sovereigns and two shillings, wrapped in cotton wool, and I went away to break a fast which was thenentering on its fifth day. My next proceeding, after having somewhatrefurbished myself, was to go back to the dingy old hole in BouverieStreet and to write an article on "Impecunious Life in London. "

During the brief run of the _Illustrated Midlands News_, to which Ihad been a frequent contributor of verse, the late Richard Gowing, theneditor of the _School Board Chronicle_, had officiated as Mr JosephHatton's assistant editor. He had just acquired the copyright in the_Gentleman's Magazine_, and I bethought me that here lay my opportunity. I took the article to him, and after turning the manuscript pagesswiftly over, he decided to accept it. It ran, I think, to two andthirty pages, and I received his cheque for ten shillings and sixpence apage. 

Thus armed, I felt more than fit to face the world again, and it waswhilst I was yet in this new flush of fortune that I walked into theLudgate Bar as already recorded, and for the second time encounteredArchibald Forbes. 

And now began a period of halcyon weather. A kinder, more discerning andmore helpful chief than Edmund Yates no aspiring young journalist everhad. He was as genial and as quick to recognise honest effort as Dawsonhimself, and he knew ten times better what he wanted, and a thousandtimes more about the taste and temper of the public. 

He had conceived the idea of a series of articles on our civilisation, in which the writer should deal with the sores and oddities of it, andinto this work I plunged with all the splendid vigour and avidity ofyouth, I chose the hangman as my first theme, because I happened to havehad an acquaintance with a gentleman of that profession, and to havebeen engaged in some personal dealings with him. His name was JamesSmith, and he lived about midway between Rowley Regis and Dudley. Iheld that property in trust for my infant daughter, and the rents werecollected for me weekly by a little lame clockmaker named Chesson. Atone time my business often led me along that road, and I was familiarwith the figure of a great, sprawling, muscular-looking, idle fellow, who, whenever I passed him, was leaning across the garden-gate in hisshirt sleeves and smoking. He seemed to have no sort of employment, and, though I did not notice it at the time, it occurred to me afterwards, when I knew the truth about him, that I had never seen him exchange somuch as a passing salutation with a single human creature. The rentscame in regularly for some time, and then it was reported to me thatmy idle tenant had not paid. Time went on, and the idle tenant _never_paid. I determined to look into the thing myself, and I set out with thelame clockmaker to interview the man. He was sprawling over the gate asusual when we reached his cottage, and, to my surprise, the little lameman lagged some yards behind and refused to approach him. I explained myerrand to the idle tenant, and he lugged out a handful of half-crowns. 

"That cove, " he said, indicating the clockmaker "'as never been a-nighme this four months. The money's always bin 'ere for 'im if 'e'ed a-comefor it. What d'you take me for?" he asked savagely. "I ain't a wildbeast, am I? It's Government work, and somebody's got to do it. " Itturned out upon inquiry that my collector had actually paid three orfour weeks' instalment out of his own pocket, rather than face thehangman, after he had discovered the nature of his trade. I am notwriting melodrama, but it is a simple fact that I have never seen aman more profoundly distressed. The hangman's speech was broken andobstructed, his face worked strongly, and there was an actual glint ofmoisture in his eyes. He and my collector had been cronies until hisdreadful secret was surprised, and had shared many a friendly half-pinttogether. 

His ostracism seemed to have hit him hard. Even a hangman, one supposes, has some sort of human feeling. 

At the time at which I wrote this narrative, I had gone into lodgings atBarnsbury, and shared rooms with a struggling water-colour painter, who, for the most part, in default of patrons, worked for the pawn-broker--aharum-scarum, ripe-hearted Irishman; and on the Sunday on which I turnedout my first contribution to the _World_, he sat painting and smokingclose at hand, and I read out to him, paragraph after paragraph, as Iwrote. Those days are gone, but the glow, the passion, the very rage ofachievement, which possessed one's work, are not to be forgotten. The work took Yates's fancy mightily, and he had the good sense andgenerosity to let me know it. The Bentley Balladist wrote years ago:

 "Excuse me, gents, but to poetic ponies, One ounce of praise is worth ten tons of corn. "

Yates did not stint the corn because he was generous with the praise, and throughout our association he was most unfailingly good and kind. He was a bitter enemy and a hard striker, and he went into battle witha good heart and made for himself many foes, but a more loyal colleagueand leader it would have been hard to find. 

My search for human oddities led me into strange places and made meacquainted with strange people. The most astonishing and completeexample of human vanity and pretence I ever encountered was one ofthese. He was a pavement artist and he had a pitch outside the railingsof the great terminus in Euston Road, where he used to sit and patroniseLondon. There was something in the fellow's look which invited me, and when I got into conversation with him, I learned that nothing butjealousy had kept him from taking a high place as a scene-painter, andthat artists of far less merit than himself had a place, year afteryear, on the line at the Academy. Where he had picked up his phrasesit was of course impossible to guess, but he talked a good deal of thedissipation of the grey matter of the brain, which resulted from hisartistic occupation. 

He had one awful daub which he called "The Guardship Attacked, " inwhich was depicted a vessel, broadside on to the spectator, wedged verytightly into the sea and sky of an impossible blue, with little pills ofwhite smoke clinging to a porthole here and there. This work he told mewas his "chef de hover, " and he volunteered to furnish me with a copy ofit on cardboard for half a crown, and to deliver it at my lodgings forhis 'bus fare and a drink. I closed with that proposal and in a week'stime he brought the work to me. My chum's painting tools and easels werescattered about the room in which I received him, and a dozen or so ofsketches in various stages of progress were propped up on the buffet andthe mantelpiece. He surveyed these with an ineffable sniff and said:"Oh! I perceive you are a brother of the brush. " I took him outside togive him his promised drink and found that he was accompanied by anelderly, bearded, incredibly dirty man, who dealt in chick-weed, andwho shared his room with him in Gees Court, Oxford Street. This fearsomeperson was absolutely alive with vermin and his unkempt grey beard wasas the wrinkled sea. The pavement artist ordered a drink for him at myexpense and when he had consumed it, he told me that I was a patronof the arts and wanted to embrace me. I held him off by the aid ofan umbrella, and his companion told me that he had been a beneficedclergyman of the Church of England, and a companion for dukes andprinces. However that might have been, the wretch had certainly theunmistakable _no_ accent of a gentleman and spoke with a certain beeryeloquence which reminded one of poor Tom Robertson's Eccles. 

My acquaintance with these gentlemen led me to a somewhat familiarknowledge of Gee's Court I have not been near the place now for morethan thirty years and, for aught I know to the contrary, it may longsince have been wiped out of existence. But when I knew it it was anawful place, the haunt of thieves and prostitutes, the vilest offspringsof the streets of London. What with the aid of the Scripture-readers, the various nursing and charitable sisterhoods, and the young medicalaccoucheurs in their fourth year, with whom I scraped acquaintance, Igot to be quite well known in Gee's Court and could go about in safety. But one evening as I was entering the low-browed slimy archway by whichit was approached from Oxford Street, a young policeman stopped meand asked me if I knew where I was going. I told him that I was quiteintimate with the place and quite safe there. "Well, sir, " he answered, "you know your own business best, but I wouldn't go along there for afiver. " My investigations had by this time brought me acquainted asI have said already with all manner of queer people. Amongst others Irecall an omnibus driver who told me that he was the rightful heir to abig estate by Guilford. At my invitation he told his story, and he beganit with this astounding proclamation: "It's like this, sir, " he began, "my grandfather died childless, " and when I failed to disguise myamusement he explained. "He was not really my grandfather but he was myfather's uncle and we always called him grandfather. " Then he went intoa long and tangled statement of which I could neither make head nortail, but the fact remained clear that in his own opinion he ought tohave been a millionaire or thereabouts, and by rights able to pass histime in smoking cigars and drinking champagne wine, which he appeared toregard as the summit of human felicity. 

The contract I had made with Edmund Yates was for a series of thirteenarticles, and when it was fulfilled, there was no more immediate workfor me to do and another little period of stress set in. But in themeantime I had written a little handful of short stories, and oneof these, entitled _An old Meerschaum_, I sent in to Messrs Chatto& Windus. It owed its immediate acceptance to an accident Mr GeorgeAugustus Sala had agreed with that firm to supply a two-part storyentitled _Dr. Cupid_. For some reason or another the second part of thisstory was never forthcoming, and my copy arriving in the nick of timewas used to stop the gap. It brought me a regular commission, and monthby month thereafter, for quite a considerable time, I contributed ashort story to the _Belgravia_ Magazine. Very early in the history ofthis connection a curious accident happened. I was looking forward to acheque for seventeen guineas and it came to me as a surprise when, frompaymasters so scrupulously punctual, no cheque arrived at the date fixedfor its delivery. I could afford to wait for a day or two and I waited, but by and by things became pressing. My landlord, who was a sorter inthe Post Office and not particularly well paid, grew exigent The supplyin the cupboard became scanty and yet scantier. I found my way to "myuncle's" once more, and week after week went by until I was once moreface to face with that grim phantom of actual want which I had alreadyonce encountered. Partly from pride and partly from fear of disturbinga valuable arrangement, I refrained from any approach to my publishers, but at last when I had decided upon it as an unavoidable necessity, aslatternly little maid came in with a dirty mildewed envelope betweenfinger and thumb and said she thought that it was addressed to me. Ipounced upon it and there, all soaked and bedraggled but still quitelegible, I found the cheque, which had been sent to me nearly a monthbefore, and it had been by some accident dropped into the area where ithad lain unregarded all this time. There was a feast that night, but thetruth is that life was one constant vicissitude, an unfailing series ofups and downs, of jolly happy-go-lucky rejoicings with comrades who wereequally careless with myself, and of alternating spells of hardship. "Literature, " said Sir Walter, "is an excellent walking stick but a verybad crutch, " and so in truth I have found it all my days. 

As one is drawn into late middle-age there are few things more affectingand in a measure more surprising than the recollection of the ardenthero-worship of one's youth. Whether, if my dear old chief were backagain and I could survey him in the light of a riper experience thanI had during his lifetime, I should still be able to offer him such anundivided fealty as I paid him then, I cannot guess; but all the othergods of youth and early manhood, with one exception only, havefallen somewhat into the sere and yellow leaf. For some six or eightenthusiastic years, I was saturated with Carlyle; I thought Carlyleand talked and wrote in unconscious Carlylese, and one day when in thelibrary at the British Museum I got an actual bodily sight of my deity, I was translated into a heaven of adoration which is really, at thistime of day, pathetic to remember. I knew him from his portraits ata glance and I was assured of his identity, if any assurance had beennecessary, by the profound and flattering deference which was paid tohim by the officials and by the unanimity with which the students in thebig circular hall found it necessary to pass the place at which he hadtaken his seat. He was not there more than a quarter of an hour, andduring that time he behaved quite like an ordinary mortal except whenhe once produced a dark red handkerchief of enormous size and broke thesilence of the place by a nasal blast which sounded like a trumpet callto arms. When he arose to go I arose also and followed him; I could nomore have helped it than if he had been a magnet and I a bit of ironfiling. He walked to Oxford Street and took a seat in a 'bus bound forChelsea. I followed and sat opposite, hardly daring to lift my eyes tohim until I found that he was wholly absorbed in the notes he had taken. When he alighted I followed him all the way to Cheyne Walk and watcheduntil the door closed behind him. 

A week later Dawson was lecturing at the Birkbeck Institute and I wentto hear him and afterwards drove with him to the Victoria Hotel atEuston where he was staying for the night. I told him of the tremendousadventure just recounted and he asked me if I would like to meetCarlyle. In the explosive mood which came natural to seven and twenty, I answered that I would go on my hands and knees from there to Chelseaonly to hear him speak and to be able to boast that I had shaken him bythe hand. "No need for that, " said Dawson, "I'll take you to him one ofthese days, when I have an hour or two to spare in town, " and then hebegan to tell me that he had often thought of leaving behind him someintimate record of his association with the great man whose most popularand familiar translator he himself had been to the people of England. "But, " he acknowledged, "I have always been too busy or too idle andI begin to fear that that duty will never be performed. I'll tell youwhat, " he added suddenly, "I'll hand the whole thing over to you ifyou care to have it. I make a point of going now and then down toRickmansworth, where I had my first cure of souls and where there arestill a few of my old friends left. We'll go down there together andhave a quiet day. " Dawson began straightway to open, as it were, a bagof samples. He told me three stories of Carlyle; they were all I everhad from him, for that was the last occasion on which we met. I learnedthat when Carlyle, who was then engaged in the preparation of thoseseven tremendous volumes of _The Life of Frederick the Great_, made anexcursion into Germany for the purpose of getting a view of his hero'sbattlefields, Dawson was one of his travelling companions--the other wasa German gentleman who, according to my old chiefs account, did agreat deal of what he Called the underground work on which Carlyle'smonumental edifice was reared. The trio, if I remember rightly, restedat Munich and the historian expressed a wish to find some quiet placein which he could assort his notes and at the same time enjoy a day ortwo's repose. Dawson and his companion set themselves to work and founda charming little farmhouse within easy distance of the city. "Andbetween ourselves, " said he, "we weren't sorry to be left for a littlewhile to our own devices; we were like a pair of schoolboys brokenloose. We went to the theatre and afterwards dropped in to listen to themusic in the Beer Garden and altogether we made rather a late night ofit. We were breakfasting in the open air at our hotel the next morningabout eleven o'clock when suddenly I spied Carlyle with his coattails flying and his old felt hat rammed on angrily anyhow. He wasgesticulating wildly with his walking-stick and began to talk whilst hewas twenty yards away. 'Ca' ye that a quiet place?' he shouted, 'ca' yethat a quiet place? At three o'clock they damned cocks began to crow, and a hour later they damned oxen began to low and every dog was barkingfor a mile around; and that, ' he said, casting both hands to heaven asif he were appealing for a judgment on some heart-breaking iniquity, 'and that's your notion of a quiet place!' The culprits looked guiltilyat each other, but for the life of them they could not refrain fromsmiling; the smile became a laugh in spite of effort, and Carlyle, afterone withering glance at the pair of them and one frenzied exclamation of'Ma Goad!' dropped suddenly into a chair and laughed uproariously. "

When Emerson was in England, Carlyle and Dawson were his companions onhis visit to Salisbury Plain. They went to Stonehenge together and onthat day Carlyle was in one of his saddest and most pessimistic moods. Life was not worth living--the whole world was rotten and wrong--andhe wondered, like the old monk in Longfellow's _Golden Legend_, why Goddidn't lose his patience with it wholly and shatter it like glass. Menwere fools and liars, and impostors and quackery reigned supreme. "Andin a world like this, George, " he was concluding with a tragic emphasis, "I see nothing for it, for two honest men like you and me, but just tosit down on yon heap of road metal and have a quiet smoke together. "

I wish I could tell the third story with half the gusto with whichDawson related it. At the time of that visit to Germany of which I havealready spoken, there was no Prussian Empire. Bismarck may, even then, have dreamed of it, but what is now a united Germany was split intoan infinite number of little principalities. In one of these, a SereneTransparency--or some personage of that order--held rule over a handfulof subjects. It happened that he was a profound worshipper of Carlyle, regarding him as the greatest humorist, philosopher and historian of hisage. He wrote to Carlyle a letter full of German enthusiasms, begginghim to name an hour at which he could present himself for the personaldelivery of his homage. "But, " said Carlyle, "we are in the man'sterritory and it is only in the fitness of things that we should pay ourrespects to him. " Accordingly the two set out together and reaching thepalace proposed to send in their names. They were encountered bysome kind of glorified flunkey, an official of the toy court of theprincipality--who assured Carlyle that it was impossible to present himto the Serene Transparency in the costume he was then wearing. Carlylewanted sardonically to know what was the matter with the costume, andthe major-domo instanced his hat. Carlyle tore the hat savagely fromhis head and punched it two or three times before he thundered: If HisSerene Transparency objected to the hat he might object; it was the onlyhat the philosopher owned and he had no immediate intention to providehimself with another! And whilst he was brandishing the hat and ragingat the astonished major-domo, who should appear on the scene but HisSerene Transparency, who rushed forward and, falling on his knees, embraced the legs of the amazed philosopher. Dawson declared the wholescene to have been beyond pen and pencil. Carlyle's face was a wonderfor wrath and astonishment, but that of the court official was beyondspeaking for amazement. Who or what he supposed the visitor to be wasaltogether beyond conjecture!

I was still waiting for that promised invitation to Rickmansworth whenDawson died. He had suffered for some years, though he did not know it, from an aneurism of the aorta, and the bursting of the aneurism into thelarynx was the cause of death. He used to say that he should pray to betaken suddenly and to be spared the misery of a prolonged deathbed. Hehad his wish, for it was all over in a few minutes and was absolutelypainless. I was staying with a chum of mine in his chambers in Dane'sInn--long since gone the way of all stone, bricks and mortar. My hostcame in with a newspaper and laid it on the table before me with hisfinger on a cross-headed paragraph, "Death of George Dawson, M. A. "Nothing in all my experience had ever hit me so before, and whatevermay be held in reserve for me, nothing can ever so profoundly affect meagain. The whole world went dark and empty--George Dawson dead! He hadbeen my man of men, for years my dearest friend and helper, my Moses inthe spiritual wilderness through which it is the doom of every young andardent soul to travel, and with his going, everything seemed blank andwaste. 

If you search all the professions round, you will not find one inwhich men display such an extraordinary divergence of intellect andacquirement as you will if you turn to journalism. There are menemployed in that craft who are better qualified for Cabinet rank thanhalf the men who ever hold it, and there are, or used to be in my time, hundreds of intelligences as purely mechanical as if they had been bornto be hodmen. With one of the latter species I was officially associatedfor a year. He is now dead and no truth can hurt his feelings any more, but I think he was about as ignorant and self-satisfied an ass as I canremember to have encountered anywhere. There was one thing to be saidfor him: he had mastered the intricacies of Pitman's shorthand systemand wrote it almost to perfection. You might rely upon him to getdown in his note-book every word he heard, or thought he heard, butin transcription he sometimes achieved a most extraordinary andunlooked-for effect, as for example: A meeting of the LicensedVictuallers' Association was held in the lower grounds at Aston, andMr Newdigate--the member for North Warwickshire--presided over it, andduring the annual address--what else the right honourable gentleman hadto say I have long since forgotten--he wound up by quoting a verse fromLord Tennyson's "Lady Clara Vere de Vere ":--

 "Howe'er it be it seems to me Tis only noble to be good. Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood. "

This the shorthand genius rendered in the manner following:--"The righthonourable gentleman, who resumed his seat amidst loud and prolongedcheers, concluded by remarking that however it might represent itselfto others it appeared to him that the only true nobility consisted ingoodness, that kind hearts were better than coronets, and that simplefaith was more to be esteemed than Norman blood. " Somehow this passedthe printer's reader and appeared in all the glory of type the followingmorning. It fell to my lot to take the criminal to task, but he disarmedme by a mere turn of the hand. "I don't call it fair, " he said, inhis soft, insinuating Rother-ham accent, "to expect a man to have allEnglish literature at his fingers' ends for five and thirty bob a week, and beside that, if you look at Mr Pitman's preface to his last edition"(he produced the book from his coat pocket), "you'll find it set down asan instruction to all shorthand writers that it's a reporter's duty tomake good speeches for bad speakers. I have got down what he said rightenough, but I thought I'd touch him up a bit!"

On another occasion the improver of Tennyson came across from the TownHall to the office with the final "turn" of an address which had justbeen delivered by Mr Bright to his constituents. "I'm in a bit of adifficulty, " he explained to me breathlessly, "there's old Bright beenhavering about in his customary manner and he has been talking aboutHercules and some kind of stables. I got a 'j' and an 'n' down on mynotes, but I forgot to vocalise the word and I can't remember it. " Isuggested Augean. "That's it, " he said joyfully, "but, my word! what amemory you've got to be sure!"

One almost incredible example of mental agility he gave me. He came tome one day beaming with an unusual complacency, and announced that hehad made a discovery. He had an absolutely hairless, shining domeof head, and he confided to me the fact that the boys in Rotherhamseventeen years ago had nicknamed him "bladder o' lard. " "I could nevermake out what they meant by it, " he said, "until this morning I wasstanding in front of my looking-glass shaving, and it came to me at arun--they gave me that nickname because I'm bald!"

CHAPTER VIII

 The House of Commons Press Gallery--Disraeli as Orator--The Story of the Dry Champagne--The Labour Member--Dr Kenealy's Fiasco--Mr Newdigate's Eloquence--Lord Beaconsfield's Success--"Stone-walling"--Robert Lowe's Classics--The Press Gallery and Mr Gladstone. 

I forget precisely how it came about that I secured my first sessionalappointment in the gallery of the House of Commons. Some member of thereporting staff of the _Daily News_ was disabled or had gone upon thespree. Anyway the staff was shorthanded for a night, and I was told thatI could earn a guinea by presenting myself to the chief at the House ofCommons, and that there would probably be very little indeed to do forit. I attended accordingly and found that my whole duty for the eveningconsisted in inscribing on three separate sheets of paper, "Murrayfollows Murphy--Pullen follows. " I got my guinea and was instructed toappear again on the following afternoon when I found a very differentcondition of affairs prevailing. Every bench was packed, the sidegalleries were full, and it would have been impossible to squeezeanother person into the Stranger's Gallery above the clock. A greatfield night was toward, and from the time at which I first entered thebox at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon until two the following morning, my pencil was kept going without cessation, note-taking or transcribing. 

I have quite forgotten what the fight was about, but it was then thatI first caught sight of the parliamentary heroes of the time. Gladstonewas in his place with Hartington and Bright and the rugged Forster, and Sir William Harcourt and all the rest of his henchmen. Disraelisat impassive opposite with folded arms and closed eyes, with his chinresting on his breast. The only clear impression I brought out of therush and hurry of the night was that whereas Disraeli, whenever itcame to be my turn to be in the reporter's box, was apparently sound inslumber and utterly oblivious of all that was going on, he rose an hourafter midnight and presented a masterly analysis of the whole debate, interspersed with snatches of a fine ironic mockery. His method as anorator was far from being impressive or agreeable, his voice wasveiled and husky, and once or twice when he dropped the ironic veinand affected to be serious, he seemed to me to fall into burlesque. "Itwould be idle, " he said, and there he brought his elbows resoundinglyto his ribs, "to suppose"--and there the elbows came down energeticallyagain--"that at such a crisis"--and here was another repetition ofthe grotesque gesture--"Her Majesty's Ministers"--more rib and elbowwork--"would endeavour, " and so on and so on, in what seemed to onelistener at least to be the merest insincerity. His irony was perfect, his assumption of earnestness a farce. Robert Lowe was put up to answerhim, and after coughing out a score or two of biting trenchant phrases, with a page of notes almost touching his white albino eyebrows and thetip of his nose, every sentence punctuated with a roar of laughter, cheers and protests, he sat down. Among the speakers I heard thatnight were Mr Beresford Hope and Sir Wilfrid Lawson, the latter of whomoffered to the House quite a sheaf of carefully prepared impromptu. Again I got my guinea, and again I was asked to appear on the followingnight, and at the end of that week, the defaulting member of the staffnot having again put in an appearance, I was formally enrolled for therest of the session. I do not profess to record in anything like theirchronological order the events which most impressed me, but many scenesoccur to me as being worth remembering. 

Perhaps the most remarkable example of Disraeli's careless audacity wasafforded on the occasion on which, in the House of Commons, he contrivedto denounce his great rival as a liar, without infringing the etiquetteof the House. I was on what is called or used to be called the "victim"turn that week. It was the duty of the victim to stay on in the galleryafter all other members of his staff had left the House, and to watchproceedings until the Assembly was adjourned. On one occasion, Iremember, I was on duty for seventy-two hours. That was when Parnellmade his famous stand against the Government, and the Irish members wentoff in detachments to sleep at the Westminster Hotel and came back indetachments to keep the parliamentary ball a-rolling. 

Disraeli's famous escapade was made on another occasion in the smallhours of the morning and so far as I know I am the only surviving eyeand ear witness of the occurrence. Shortly before the dinner hour on thepreceding evening, somebody brought up from the lobby to the gallery theintelligence that Mr Disraeli had called for a pint of champagne, andthat was taken to indicate his intention to make a speech. When MrGladstone was bent upon a great effort, he generally prepared himselffor it by taking the yolk of an egg beaten up in a glass of sherry, MrBright's priming was said to be a glass of a particular old port, and there was a malicious whisper to the effect that Mr Lowe, whilstChancellor of the Exchequer made ready to enter the oratorical arena bytaking a glass of iced water at the bar, being moved to his choice of astimulant by considerations of economy. Mr Disraeli then was reported tothe gallery as having taken his half-bottle, and very shortly afterwardshe slipped into the House from behind the Speaker's chair andassumed his accustomed seat. Some quite inconsiderable Member of theConservative party was on his legs, and we all supposed that on hischiefs arrival he would bring his speech to a close. He prosedalong, however, until the House adjourned for dinner, and Disraeli'sopportunity was for the meantime lost. He left the House at the hour ofadjournment and did not return until about one o'clock in the morning. When at last he rose, he entered upon a long tale which at first seemedto have no bearing whatever upon any business the House could possiblyhave in contemplation. "Mr Speaker, sir, " he began, "it will be withinthe memory of many right honourable and honourable gentlemen, members ofthis House, that one of the most distinguished ornaments at an earlierperiod of its history was the late greatly lamented Sir Robert Peel. One of Sir Robert Peel's most intimate friends was Colonel Ellis, a lessdistinguished member of this Assembly. Colonel Ellis, sir, was a notedauthority in all matters relating to gourmandising and his opinion wasespecially respected with regard to the quality of wines. At the timeof which I speak, champagne was a liqueured and sugared beverage, mainlyrelegated to the use and for the enjoyment of the ladies. "

The House sat in an amazed speculation as to whither the orator wasbeing led by this extraordinary exordium, but Mr Disraeli flowed onunmoved. 

"It happened that a friend upon the continent sent to Sir Robert Peel acase of dry champagne, a beverage then almost unknown in this country. Sir Robert invited Colonel Ellis to dine with him and to taste andto pronounce upon the novel beverage, and when the repast had beendiscussed, Sir Robert turned upon his guest and inquired of him, witha solemnity befitting the occasion: 'Pray, Colonel Ellis, what is youropinion of dry champagne?' To which Colonel Ellis, with a solemnityequal to Sir Robert's own, responded: 'I believe that the man who iscapable of saying that he likes dry champagne, is capable of sayinganything. ' Now, sir, it is not within my purpose or my province tocharge the right honourable gentleman who controls the destinies ofthe party opposite with tergiversation, but this I will say that, on myhonour and my conscience, I believe that he is capable of declaring thathe is fond of dry champagne!"

This astonishing sally was greeted with roars of laughter and criesof disapproval, neither of which moved the speaker in the least. Theincident somehow remained unreported, but one can easily fancy theavidity with which it would have been pounced upon by the alerterjournalism of modern days. 

Mr Thomas Burt was the first working man to be returned to Parliament, where his sterling qualities of character and his unassuming and naturaldemeanour made a very favourable impression. But a year or two afterhis return, he was joined by a Labour representative who displayed thecharacteristics of altogether a different sort. For one thing, he was avulgarly overdressed man, and he used to sprawl about the benches withoutstretched arms, making his cry of condescending patronage heardin answer to any utterance of which he might approve from suchinconsiderable persons as Gladstone or Harcourt or Forster. His "Hear, hear, hear, " was the very essence of a self-satisfied and unconsciousinsolence. He was a man who would have patronised the angel Gabriel, and he was quite unconscious of his own offensiveness until he triedhis hand upon Disraeli, when he found his level once for all and with aludicrous swiftness. 

He and Mr Burt had together backed a Bill which was intended to dosomething to ameliorate the condition of the coal-miners of thiscountry, and at the annual slaughter of the innocents, Mr Disraeliannounced that it was the intention of the Government to carry on themeasure. The statement had already fallen from his lips and he had justentered on another sentence when the intolerable patronising voice brokein, "Hear, hear, hear, " "Hear, hear hear, " as if a very great personagewith too great a consciousness of his own greatness were expressing hisapproval of the conduct of a little boy. Disraeli stopped dead short inhis speech and one of the finest bits of comedy I can remember to haveseen ensued. He closed his eyes and began very deliberately to fumbleabout the breast of his frock-coat within and without in search ofsomething which he was evidently not over anxious to find. Alighting atlast on the object of this perfunctory search he produced an eyeglassand, still with closed eyes, he lifted the skirt of his coat andpolished the glass upon its silken lining. It began to occur to MrDisraeli's patron that all this slow pantomime was in some way directedto his address. The House waited, with here and there a rather nervousexpectant laugh. The Labour member, who was originally thrown abroad inhis usual pompous fashion, began to shrivel. His widely-extended arms, which had been stretched along the top of the bench on which he sat, crept closer and closer to his sides. He shrank, he dwindled, he wiltedlike a leaf on a hot stove, and when Disraeli finally screwed his glassinto his eye and, after surveying him for two or three dreadful seconds, allowed the glass to fall and resumed his speech at the very word atwhich he had broken off, the patron of the House was an altogetherabject figure. The assembly literally rocked with laughter and Mr Burt'scolleague never, never, never ventured to pat Mr Disraeli on the backagain. 

It does not fall to the lot of every self-sufficient ass who findshimself returned to Parliament and who imagines that he can at once makea figure in that assembly to learn his place in so abrupt a fashion, butthere is no gathering in the world in which a man so inevitably findshis proper level. Poor Dr Kenealy had gifts enough to have carried himto a high place almost anywhere, but unfortunately for himself he cameinto the House in a mood of passionate defiance against the world. Hechose to defy the rules of the Assembly at its very threshold. It hasbeen the custom from time immemorial for a new member to be introducedby two gentlemen who are already officially known to Mr Speaker. Ihappened to be in the box apportioned to the _Daily News_ when theDoctor attempted to evade this rule and to present himself before theSpeaker without the customary credentials. He was of course forbidden toenter and after some unseemly altercation outside the bar, two memberswere found to volunteer to introduce him. He marched up the House withhis umbrella in one hand and the certificate of the Returning Officerin the other, his eyes flashing a quite unnecessary defiance, poorgentleman, behind his gold-rimmed glasses, and his whole figure placedas if for instant combat. It was probably by an inadvertence that hehung his umbrella upon the Speaker's mace, but it was certainly countedas an act of intentional discourtesy against him. He was sent toCoventry from the first, and he was so sore and angry that he was almostfore-doomed to bring himself into trouble. 

Kenealy succeeded in placing on the paper a motion in favour oftriennial Parliaments very shortly after his first unfavourableintroduction into the House. It was long after midnight when he rose tospeak. He began at the beginning and favoured us with an analysis ofthe characteristics of the first gathering of a representative assemblyunder Alfred the Great. Sir Wilfred Lawson almost immediately roseto inquire whether the hour were not somewhat too advanced for adisquisition on parliamentary history, the facts of which wereavailable to everybody, and Kenealy passionately retorted that he was inpossession of the ear of the House, that he would stand upon his rights, would adopt his own methods and would speak at what length he chose. In answer to this defiance, the House rose _en masse_ and its memberssolemnly filed away, leaving Kenealy to address the Speaker, the clerksat the table and a handful of reporters in the gallery. He struggled onfor awhile, but by and by a member returned and drew the attention ofthe Speaker to the very obvious fact that there were not forty memberspresent. The Speaker rose under his canopy and waved his cocked hatsolemnly towards Kenealy and then towards the other occupant of theHouse. 

"There are not forty members present, " he said solemnly, "the House isnow adjourned. " That was the result of Dr Kenealy's first essay and inhis second he came to final and irremediable grief. In a crowded House, he arose to impeach his enemies and traducers. He was ploughing alongand I was fighting after him in my own gouty, inefficient shorthand, when one of the strangest premonitions of my life occurred to me. Hesaid "If any of these unjust aspersions are cast anew upon me"--and Iseemed to know as absolutely what he was going to say as if the wholething were a play which I had seen rehearsed a score of times. Ithought, "I hope to heaven he won't say that, " and he went on in thevery words my mind forebode. "If these unjust aspersions are cast uponme, I shall shake them from me as the lion shakes the dew-drops from hismane. " There was a second's silence as he paused, and then there was acrash of laughter with peal on peal to follow. Three times I haveknown the House of Commons surrendered to illimitable mirth and oneach occasion the victim of its derision is somewhat pitiable. But poorKenealy! he stood there lost, astounded, vacant, a quite tragic figure, and when the crowded House had ceased to laugh out of pure exhaustion, he spoke again in a tone completely changed; all the forensic mannergone out of him. That he could find a voice at all after such a scathingwas an evidence of his courage, but with that unfortunate sentence hehad shot his bolt. He never attempted to address the House again. Ido not remember even to have seen him within its precincts after thatcatastrophe. 

It is not impossible there may have been a little touch of gratifiedmalice in that Homeric laugh which killed Kenealy's parliamentarycareer, but there was certainly not a trace of it in that heroic peal ofmirth which dismissed Mr Newdigate from the scene of his parliamentaryactivities. Mr Newdigate was undoubtedly a dull man, he was undoubtedlyan eccentric, but he was just as certainly a gentleman and he enjoyedeverybody's esteem. He was a long-backed Tory squire who for many yearsrepresented the Northern Division of the County of Warwick. His chiefvirtues were that he rode straight to hounds, that he dispensed anopen-handed old-fashioned hospitality to his hunt and that he votedregularly and faithfully with his party. There was no man who could morequickly empty a full House than he. The very sight of him on his feetcreated a stampede, and throughout his parliamentary life it had beenhis lot to empty benches. But at last his chance came. Our presentKing, then Prince of Wales, was about to visit India, and the Governmentproposed a vote of 60, 000L. To enable him to do the thing in properfashion. Mr Peter Taylor, a distinguished Radical of that time, rose tomove the previous question, and then Mr Newdigate, in recognition, asone supposes, of the faithful party service of many years, was allowedto support the Government resolution. Just for once in his life theHouse did not empty at his rising; his chance was here, the covetedopportunity of a lifetime, and in his own way he proceeded to takeadvantage of it. In sepulchral tones he assured Mr Speaker that if thisvote were refused the loyal feelings of this country would receive ablow, and the popular confidence in that House would receive a blow, andthe loyal sentiment of the Empire would receive a blow; and as he piledup the agony of his speech, he stooped lower and lower, driving hisright hand down at the end of each period with a sledge-hammer forceuntil the blow landed, not on the public conscience or the loyalty ofthe Empire, but on the white hat of one, Mr Charley, who sat directlybelow him and who in a second was bonneted to the very shoulders. Now MrCharley wore a very tall white hat and it was his habit to wear his hairrather long, and as he struggled to release himself from the obscurityinto which he had been plunged, the lining of the tall white hat turnedinside out and his long hair rose with it until he appeared to beexpanding himself like some elastic snake. One gentleman on the frontbench below the gangway actually fell from his seat and rolled upon thefloor, and the House laughed itself almost into hysteria, whilst thehapless orator stood waving in apologetic dumb show. Now here was atragedy indeed: to have the dream of a whole lifetime at last actuallyrealised and concrete and then to see it go to ruin in that way. Soswift a transition from the very height of triumph to the very gulf!When our laugh was over I am sure there was not one of us who didnot profoundly sympathise with the sufferer, and Mr Newdigate neverattempted to speak again at least in my time. He and Mr Whalley were thetwo members of the House who were the stern and unfaltering enemies ofthe Jesuits. They saw the emissaries of Jesuitry everywhere and wereunceasing in denouncing all their wicked wiles, but it was notoriousthat each cast an eye askance upon the other and each was ratherinclined to be persuaded to believe that his pretended fellow-crusaderwas a Jesuit in disguise. 

On the night on which Disraeli's government fell he gave the House ofCommons a last proof of his unconquerable "cheek and pluck. " The Marquisof Hartington had delivered a speech which everybody knew to have sealedthe fate of the party in power, but the great Jew statesman rose upimperturbable and audacious to the last "There is, sir, " he said in thatveiled voice of his which sounded as if it were struggling through densefog and could indeed only have been made audible throughout the chamberby a trained master in elocution--"there is in war a manoeuvre which iswell known. First the cavalry advance creating dust and waving sabres, then a rattle of musketry is heard along the line, and next the big gunsare brought into play, and when the dust and smoke have cleared away theforce which has created it is found to have removed to a considerabledistance. This manouvre, sir, is known as the covering of a retreat andthis manoeuvre has been executed with an admirable adroitness by HerMajesty's Opposition this evening. " He knew, of course, that he wasbeaten, he knew that in an hour's time the reins of Government wouldhave passed from his own hands to those of his rival, but he took defeatwith his own sardonic gaiety and made a claim for victory with hisexpiring breath. 

I had a curious little instance of this indomitable vein in him onesummer morning when the House had risen after sunrise and I overtook himon his way to his official residence. The street was empty and he wascrawling along leaning heavily on his walking stick and clasping hisleft hand on the small of his back with a gesture which bespoke him asbeing in severe pain. He heard my footstep behind him and turned; hiscareless and apparently unseeing glance had crossed my face a score oftimes and he could not fail to have known at least that he was known tome. At the second at which he became aware of me, he drew himself tohis full height and stepped out with the assured gait of a man in fullpossession of health and strength. He twirled his walking stick quitegaily and he maintained that attitude until I had passed him by. I hadnot the heart to look back afterwards. I saw him once again and onceonly. One afternoon whilst I was sitting writing in my lodgings Ireceived a telegram from Mr Robinson, afterwards Sir John--then theinspiring genius of the _Daily News_, instructing me to repair to theoffice. On arriving there, I received instructions to repair at onceto the House of Lords and there, no other journalist being present, Iwitnessed the formal installation of Lord Beaconsfield. There were fourpeers present in their robes of scarlet and ermine and their beaverbonnets and the Lord Chancellor was seated on the woolsack. An attendantbrought a scarlet cloak, and a very shabby and faded garment it wasindeed, and adjusted it about the shoulders of the neophyte. The secondattendant handed to him a black beaver which he assumed, then he was ledin a sort of solemn dance to the four quarters of the House, at eachof which he made an obeisance. Finally he was conducted to the LordChancellor and the ceremony came to an end. Everybody supposed thatDisraeli's career had come to an end also, and I myself was one of themistaken prophets. I was writing at the time a weekly set of verses for_Mayfair_, a sixpenny Society journal long since defunct, and in thenext issue of that journal I took Mr Disraeli's formal installation formy theme. I remember two verses which may perhaps be allowed to serveas an expression of the almost universal opinion of the time, an opinionwhich everybody now _knows_ to have been contradicted in the mostextraordinary fashion by the happenings of the next four years. Iwrote:--

 "Sitting last Thursday in the House of Peers, A little ere the hour of five I saw The Muse of History weeping stony tears Above the picture I'm about to draw. The saddest spectacle the place has known Since Barry planned its first foundation stone. 

 "Tired with the weight of triumphs worn too long, A man of genius sought a grave for fame; And far apart from Life's impetuous throng To this dim place of sepulture he came. And in the presence of a grieving few He read his own brief burial service through. "

The House of Lords had proved a grave for so many brilliant reputationswhich had been built up in the Lower Chamber that the general prophecy, mistaken as it was, was not at all a thing to be surprised at; MrPunch's cartoon of Lord John Russell's entry into the House of Peers isnot forgotten. The meagre little figure in robes and coronet is shownslinking by Lord Brougham similarly attired, and the latter addressesthe arrival, saying, "You'll find it very cold up here, Johnnie. "

I was in the House also when Mr Biggar introduced the greatparliamentary art of "stone-walling. " Mr Biggar would take the firsthalf-dozen blue books he came across, and would begin to read aloudwhenever any new measure of which he disapproved was about to beintroduced. At half-past two he would begin to read, and continue, oblivious of the passing of the hours, until the time after which no newmeasure could be introduced. Sir Wilfrid Lawson, in his characteristicway, "wanted to know if the hon. Member were in order in reading tohimself for sixty minutes at a stretch?" Mr Speaker, who at that timewas Mr Brand, rolled out the instruction that "the honourable membermust make himself audible to the chair. " Mr Biggar forthwith put threeblue books under each arm, and taking up his glass of water said, "Iwill come a little nearer, Mr Speaker, " and came. Mr Speaker told himon one of these occasions, "So far as I can understand the line you aretaking, I do not see how these matters are related. " "I will establishthe connection by and by, sir, " replied Mr Biggar. This art of"stonewalling" was practised in the House for a number of years untilat last the rules were so altered as to make it impossible. It wasremarkable how quickly a member found his level in the House. If hestarted with the idea that he would "boss" the House he would quicklyfind that the House "bossed" him. 

I only heard Bright make one speech in the House. It was an impromptuone, and the orator was not at his best But Bright in a passion wasa. Person to be listened to. I heard him at Birmingham just after hisappointment to the Presidency of the Board of Trade. A Conservativebanker opposed his re-election, and Bright was very much annoyed, infact he was profoundly indignant at being opposed. When he came on theTown Hall platform, that horse-shoe in the forehead, of which Sir WalterScott speaks as becoming visible in moments of excitement, was flashingout scarlet. He plunged into his speech at once. He did not say "Ladiesand gentlemen, " or "Electorate of Birmingham, " or anything of the kind. "I call it a piece of impertinence, " he began, "and unsurpassed in myknowledge of political history that here in this home of freedom, andnow at this hour when the fetters you have worn for a lifetime arebut newly smitten from you, while your limbs are yet sore with theirchafing, and the sound of their clanking is yet in your ears, that aTory should come forward and ask your permission--to do what?--to rivetthose fetters anew upon you. Will you give him that leave?" And in onevoice eight thousand people answered "No, " which sealed the doom of thebanker. 

Robert Lowe afforded one of the most noteworthy instances of a man who, having made a fine reputation in the House of Commons, failed to sustainit in the House of Lords. I did not myself witness the scene of hisdiscomfiture, but I had the story of it at first hand within ten minutesof its happening. The unfortunate gentleman was so short-sighted that hecould read only when his eyes were within one or two inches of the page. He had prepared himself with a sheaf of notes for his first addressto the Upper House; he had contrived in the nervousness natural to theoccasion to mix his memoranda, and finding himself unable to rearrangethem, he sat down discomfited, and he appears to have accepted that onedisaster as final. 

In the Commons he had been a brilliant figure. I have good personalreason to remember his most striking effort. His speech had relation toan Army Reform Bill, and it was a mosaic of the aptest and most wittilyapplied literary quotations. It was of so fine a literary quality thatI very much doubt if there were a score of people among his hearers whowere able fully to appreciate its excellence. 

Those who could follow his allusions were delighted beyond measure, andthe House took its cue from them and laughed and cheered uproariouslyat many things it did not understand. Mr Gladstone acted as a sort offugleman, and his rejoicing chuckle at some happy ironic application ofa Virgilian or Homeric phrase was a cue which was instantly seized upon. Lowe was always a terror to the reporters, for he spoke at a pace whichno stenographer's or phonographer's pen could follow, but it was notmerely the speed of his utterance which made him so impossible. He wouldboggle at the beginning of a sentence, and would stammer over it untilthe reporter was half wild with expectancy, and then he would be awayat racing pace, gabbling at the rate of three or four hundred words aminute. I was in the reporter's box when Mr Lowe caught the Speaker'seye on this particular evening, and the chief of the staff, who sat nextto me, gave me an urgent whisper, "We want the fullest possible note ofthis. " I suffered a twenty minutes' agony. I believe that for many yearsafter I had left the national talking-shop, I was credited with havingbeen one of the lamest shorthand writers who ever sat there, and in myanxiety and with the certainty of failure before my eyes, I fell intosuch a state of agitation that my hand perspired so that my pencil wouldnot mark a line upon the paper. I threw it down in despair and staredupward at the painted ceiling, listening for all I was worth, anddetermined to rely upon what was then a really phenomenal memory. 

"What are you doing?" my chief whispered to me. "For God's sake leaveme alone!" I answered. He gave a moan and went to work feverishly at asupplementary note. The orator sat down amidst a great burst of cheers, just as my relief tapped me on the shoulder, and I walked away tocommittee room No. 18, which was then used by the gallery reporters asa transcribing room, feeling assured as I walked along the corridor thatmy career as a parliamentary reporter had reached an ignominious close. Near the door of the committee room I encountered old Jack O'Hanlon, one of the veterans of the gallery and reputed the best classic in allWestminster. His note-book was tucked in his armpit and he was rubbinghis hands delightedly. "That's parliamentary eloquence, if you like, "he said as I came up with him; "there's nothing loike that been heard inthe House of Commons these thirty years. There's hardly a scholar in theclassics left in the House. " We sat down side by side, and when we hadbeen at work in silence for a minute or two, the old scholar turned tome and asked, "Did you happen to catch that phrase of Sam Weller's?" Igave it to him without difficulty and then an inspiration occurred tome. The stammering tongue had plundered Father Prout and the prophetMalachi, Dickens and Ingoldsby, Pope and Smollett and Defoe, and as itchanced he had made no literary allusion in English which did not recallsome long familiar text to my mind, I offered a bargain. If O'Hanlonwould give me the classical stuff in respect to which I was inPagan darkness, I would give him the English with which he was lesswell-acquainted. We exchanged notes and between us we turned out anexcellent if a somewhat compressed and truncated report. I felt that Iwas saved, and on the following morning, I made an anxious survey of thework of my rivals. O'Hanlon represented _The Advertiser_, and Ifound that the report of a big meeting of the Licensed Victuallers'Association which had been held somewhere in the provinces hadswamped him. He was cut down to a mere paragraph and as for the otherjournals--_The Times, The Telegraph_ and _The Standard_--they were allhopelessly at sea. There was but one report of that amazing discoursewhich was even distantly worthy of it, and that was in _The Daily News_. I received a special letter of congratulation from Mr J. R. Robinsonwho, to the day of his death, persisted in regarding me as a classicalscholar of exceptional acquirements. I never had an opportunity ofundeceiving him or I would certainly have taken it, but I have sincebeen content to regard this as an example of the haphazard way in whichreputations are sometimes made. I learned, many years after, that I wasstill remembered in the gallery as the man who took a note of the mostdifficult speech of its year by staring at the painted ceiling. 

It was surprising to notice to what heights party feeling ran amongstthe reporters in the gallery. When Mr Gladstone came into power, hundreds of malicious and impossible stories were current about himamongst the supporters of the Opposition, and in the little Tabagie atthe foot of the gallery stairs in which most of our spare hours werespent, there were heated discussions in which his eloquence, hisfinancial capacity and his scholarship were all decried. I remember oneoccasion when the veteran of _The Daily Telegraph_ staff walked into theroom with the announcement that "that eternal old woman was on her legsagain, " and a general groan went round. I was, and have never ceased tobe, an ardent admirer of Mr Gladstone's character and genius, and I usedconstantly to chafe at his belittling by little men, but I never found areal opportunity for the expression of my own opinion until one daywhen I was sent down to report the annual outing of the Commissionersof Epping Forest. We had a jolly day, winding up with a very substantialdinner and a drive back to London in a string of open brakes. There wasa basket of champagne aboard the brake in which I found a seat, andit turned out that nobody in the whole assembly was in possession ofanything which could be utilised as a champagne opener. One gentleman, however, was very skilful in knocking off the necks of the bottles, andbefore we were half-way home we were all in a state of great contentmentand joviality. There was a rather noisy discussion about politicsand, with one exception, my companions were all fierce opponents ofGladstone. I fired at last--I daresay the champagne had something to dowith it--and I ventured to tell those gentlemen that they seemed to meto be crawling about beneath the instep of a great man's boot, underthe impression that they were taking an architectural survey of the man. "You will have, " I said, "to travel to a telescopic distance beforeyou will be able to realise his proportions, " and there I burst intoquotation:

 "Every age, Through being beheld too close, is ill-discerned By those who have not lived past it; we'll suppose Mount Athos carved, as Persian Xerxes schemed, To some colossal statue of a man: The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear, Had guessed as little of any human form Up there, as would a flock of browsing goats. 

 They'd have, in fact, to travel ten miles off Or ere the giant broke on them, Full human profile, nose and chin distinct, Mouth, muttering rhythms of silence up the sky, And fed at evening with the blood of suns; Grand torso, --hand, that flung perpetually The largesse of a silver river down To all the country pastures. 'Tis even thus With times we live in, --evermore too great To be apprehended near. "

I supposed that even if the quotation were not recognised, everybodywould at least know that it was a quotation, and that it could notconceivably have been an impromptu, but one man turned on another andsaid: "By Jove! that's eloquence, " and a gentleman at the rear ofthe brake asked me out of the darkness why I didn't make a try forParliament, and assured me that I had a future there before me. 

CHAPTER IX

 The Russo-Turkish War--Constantinople--His Friend the Enemy--Col. Archibald Campbell--The Courage of Non- Combatants--Father Stick--Turkish Economy--Memories of Constantinople. 

At this time trouble was brewing in the east of Europe and less thana year later war between Russia and Turkey was declared. In the earlyspring of the year, the opposing forces were playing a game of longbowls across the Danube, and very soon the forces commanded by "thedivine figure of the North, " as Mr Gladstone most infelicitously styledthe Czar, had set foot upon the enemy's country. Just before thishappened, I received a visit from a gentleman who announced himself asColonel Keenan, the English representative of the _Chicago Times_, who wanted to know if he could enlist my services for the campaign. Iassented eagerly, some sort of a hurried contract was drawn up betweenus, and on the morrow I was away, bound for Schumla, proposing to takeVienna _en route_, and thence to steam down the Danube to the theatre ofthe war. I found that the Donau Damp Schiff Company had despatchedits last steamboat to the Black Sea twenty-four hours before I reachedVienna and that the service was temporarily suspended. There was nothingfor it but to go on to Trieste and to take boat to Constantinople. Ifound the city proclaimed in a state of siege and filled with all therascaldom and ruffiandom of Tripoli and Smyrna, who held the respectableportion of the community in terror, so long as they were quarteredthere. 

There was an encampment of these gentry about five thousand strongbetween the city and that dreary and dirty canal which enjoys theromantic appellation of "the sweet waters of Europe. " They were soonto be let loose for the suppression of a wholly imaginary Bulgarianinsurrection, and it was they and their comrades who, together withthe Bashi-Bazouks, carried the banner of rapine, fire and slaughterthroughout the land. They gave us a mere taste of their quality beforethey had occupied their quarters for a week. A Greek lady and herdaughter, drawn by curiosity, ventured through their lines. They weresubjected to unspeakable outrages and, together with their coachman, were cruelly murdered; and after this occurrence, the city neverbreathed freely until they were marched away up country. After theirdispersal the authorities appear to have paid but little attention totheir commissariat and they were left to live by pillage. Many monthslater I ventured to ask an officer of the regulars on what principlethey were supposed to be paid. "Payés?" responded the gentleman whom Iquestioned, "ils ne sont pas payés, ils volent. "

One of my fellow-passengers from Trieste was a young German officer whohad fought through the Franco-German campaign and had now obtained leaveto volunteer on the Turkish side against Russia. He was the grandson ofan Irish peer, but his father had long filled some diplomatic officein Berlin. On his death the family had settled in Germany and the youngofficer of whom I speak was a naturalised subject of the emperor. Heand I put up at the Byzance Hotel together and there a strange thinghappened. A fellow-guest at the hotel came to dinner one evening with ayoung French officer, a very handsome, alert and gallant fellow, whom Igot to know intimately afterwards. His host sat him down at the _tabled'hôte_ opposite the young German, and almost from the first it was tobe seen that the two looked at each other in a curious way. By andby the Frenchman arose and drawing his host aside made a whisperedcommunication to him and withdrew. It turned out afterwards that the twomen had been engaged on different sides in the great cavalry chargeat Gravelotte. When the opposing regiments met, there was a tremendous_mêlée_ after the first shock, and the Frenchman had engaged both theyoung German officer whom he now encountered and his brother, the latterof whom fell by his hand. They had never met before nor did theyever encounter afterwards, but the recognition on both sides wasinstantaneous. Captain Tiburce Morisot--that was the Frenchman'sname--made another curious recognition of which I was a witness. I wasdining with him at the Hotel Misseri when there entered a big stalwartfellow who sat down opposite to us. "I beg your pardon, " said myentertainer, speaking across the table, "but I think that you and I havemet before somewhere. " "So I was thinking, " the big man answered; "I wastrying to size you up in my own mind but I can't manage it. " "Were youever in Africa?" the other asked him. "Yes, " the big man answered, "Ispent some years there. " "Big game shooting?" asked my host "Yes, " saidthe other. "Do you remember coming across a party of Frenchmen whowere cutting a military road?" He named the region, and the man whowas interrogated answered "Yes, " he did remember it. "You brought agiraffe's heart into the camp, " said Morisot, "and asked leave to roastit at our fire. " "I did, " the other answered, "and, by Jove! you're theman who was in command of that party. " They renewed their acquaintancewith a cordial handgrip, and clinked glasses together. The bigEnglishman was Colonel Archibald Campbell, afterwards known as SchipkaCampbell, and there was a story told of these two, which is perhapsworth relating. They went up to Schumla together, and there for weekafter week they lived in a deadly monotony which was varied only by theintrusion of an occasional shell, hurled by one of the Russian guns fromthe other side of the river. "It's getting horribly dull here, " said theFrenchman one day. "Suppose we go and sit, by way of a change, on thefortifications and get shelled at. " The suggestion was probably madein a purely humorous mood, but the Scotchman chose to appear to take itseriously and said that it was a very good idea. In all likelihood theanswer was as humorously meant as the suggestion, but each carried onthe game with so much gravity that in the end they did actually go andsit upon the glacis, where they smoked their pipes until such time asa big shell burst between them, when the Frenchman hinted that theyhad done enough for honour, and the pair leisurely withdrew. And here Irecall an experience of my own which befell me a year and a half later, but may perhaps best be dealt with now. I had been elected to the SavageClub, and one night I encountered there a number of old campaigningmen--newspaper correspondents, artists, and doctors--who were swoppingbattle yarns among themselves, and who were all agreed with respectto one thing--the extraordinary exhilaration which came of being underfire. Now I have been under fire for weeks together in my time, and I amfree to confess that I never liked it. I am going to be quite honest; Inever showed the white feather, but I know quite well that many atime in the course of that campaign, if I could have bolted withoutdisgracing myself in my own eyes, I should have done it. I stuck to myplace because it _was_ my place, but not in the least degree becauseI liked to be there, and all this talk about the exhilaration of beingshot at, and the maddening pleasure inspired by it, hit me very hardindeed, and set me probing my own mind to ask if I were not, as amatter of fact, a coward who had just managed to disguise the truth fromhimself and others. I went out of the club that night in a melancholymood, and as I was wandering purposelessly along the Strand, I felt ahand upon my shoulder and, turning round, saw Archibald. 

Forbes beside me. "You look hit, young 'un, " said he, "come and havea drink. " He drew me into the Gaiety bar, and there, over a whiskyand cigar, I unfolded my trouble. "My boy, " said Forbes, "I have beenthrough seventeen campaigns, big and little, and I have had a bit ofexperience. You can make your mind quite easy, and the first thingyou can do is to go back to your club and give those fellows mycompliments--Archibald Forbes's compliments--and tell them that they areliars to a man!" I did not take that message, which was delivered in aform more emphatic than I have given to it, but I went away a good dealcomforted. I have compared notes since then with many an old campaigner, and I have never talked seriously with one who has not been in the endwilling to confess to a very serious knowledge of his position at such atime. In the course of a siege men get inured to it, but even then thereis no particular fun about it, and merely to sit still and endure isanything but a cheerful experience; to be on the move towards the enemyis altogether another matter. 

I remember, for instance, an incident which occurred at Guemlik, when arifle bullet passed so close by my left ear, that for a minute or two Iwas deafened on that side, and the ear itself was hot with the passingof the bullet. I remember that I yelled out to the little party whichaccompanied me, "We're under fire!" and flinging myself from my horse, dragged him into the shelter of a coppice. We held a council of warthere, and it was finally decided that we should ride straight intothe village and trust to what might happen. I had been compelled by themilitary authorities to travel with an escort, and I had with mefour mounted Zaptiehs, a sergeant, my interpreter, and afellow-correspondent. We all remounted and made a rush at the village, which was not more than three hundred yards away. We tore along at thecharge, and what with the speed and the risk and the uncertainty, itwas certainly all very thrilling, and even in a sense enjoyable. Whenwe clattered into the cobbled street, we found a solitary Bashi-Bazoukarmed with a Winchester repeating rifle. Him, the sergeant of my escortquestioned. "Had he fired a shot lately?" "Evvet, " said the insolentruffian, with a grin, answering in the affirmative. "What had he firedat?" asked the sergeant. "A small bird, " was the answer. "Had he firedin the direction of the highway?" the sergeant asked him again. "Evvet, "once more. "And had he seen a party coming along the highway?" thesergeant asked. "Oh, Evvet!" The sergeant rode towards a dilapidatedwattled fence and wrenched from it a thick stake with which headministered such a hiding to that Bashi-Bazouk as I never saw one manbestow upon another before or since. 

Good old Father Stick seemed to play a very large part in the Turkishadministration. On the march to Plevna, for example, I saw two highmilitary dignitaries chastised in the presence of their fellow-officers. What they had done or failed to do I did not know, but I arrived uponthe scene just in time to see each man step out in turn, fold his armsand with bent head submit himself to half a dozen resounding blowsacross the shoulders. It was no perfunctory ceremony, but the two tookit quite quietly and went back to their separate posts of duty lookingas if nothing at all had happened. A third example of the kind tookplace at the military hospital at Adrianople. Dr Bond Moore had chargethere and one day I was with him when one of the irregular troopswas brought in with a broken leg. The doctor dressed the limb with adilution of carbolic acid and fixed it in a plaster bandage. He leftthe man fairly comfortable, and, through his interpreter, promised hima speedy recovery. But two days later, in the course of our rounds, wecame upon the patient and found him in a state of dreadful suffering. On investigation it was found that the bandage had been changed and thatthe limb was hopelessly distorted, the toes being turned inwards in sucha fashion that even had the man recovered he would have been a helplesscripple for the rest of his days. The bandage was huddled on anyhow, andMoore tore it away to discover to his horror, that the brown limb belowit was hideously blanched and inflamed. It turned out on inquiry thata young Turkish haakim, who had watched the operation at which the limbwas first set, had taken it into his head to rearrange the dressingbefore the plaster case in which the limb was bound had dried, andhe had improved upon the process he had witnessed, pretty much as anintelligent monkey might have done, by applying a dressing of undilutedcarbolic acid. I have rarely seen a man in such a towering rage as BondMoore when he saw the full extent of the mischief which had been done. He was fertile in curses, but when he had exhausted all he knew orcould invent on the spur of the moment, he begged me to send for myinterpreter who arrived in a minute or two, and drew from the sufferera description of the man who had so mishandled him. Bond Moore sent forthat man, and having made sure of him, kicked him the whole lengthof the corridor and finally sent him flying down a lengthy flight ofstairs, where, very fortunately for himself, he fell upon a load of haywhich had just been delivered for the use of the cavalry regimentwhich was stabled below the hospital. The indignant haakim hobbledoff straightway to the military commandant of the city and lodged acomplaint as to the manner in which he had been treated by his Englishcolleague. In less than a quarter of an hour he was back again and thePasha with him, a little, black-avised man with a beard like wire, whobore a malacca cane in very truculent fashion. He was quivering withanger, and he demanded in fluent French an explanation from Bond Moorein a manner which was peremptory in the extreme. Bond Moore knew no moreof French than he did of Turkish, but my interpreter having explainedthe position, the Pasha turned round upon the complainant and, after afew curt and angry questions, set about him with the malacca cane untilhe roared: "Amaan, Eccellenza, amaan!" (which, being interpreted, is"have pity, ") and finally took to his heels and ran for it with theirate little Pasha in full cry after him. 

Of course it would be useless to deny the existence of the delight inbattle which affects some natures, but I am perfectly sure that it doesnot come as the result of standing still to be shot at. I have seensome extraordinary examples of cool courage and at least one of perfectpanic, but the circumstances in which I saw the last, disposed me tounderstand and to sympathise with it. We were quartered at Tashkesenshortly after our enforced retreat from Plevna. The village in whichwe lived was two or three miles from the actual front of war, and ona certain foggy morning I set out with a little hill pony to visit thefortifications. I may as well make one bite at the whole story, and todo this I must go back to the time when I was at Vienna and had justdiscovered that it was impossible to make my way to Schumla by theDanube. At the Englischer Hof Hotel in that city I met a gentleman whohad for years been engaged in a military survey of the Balkan country. He had been under some sort of contract with the Turkish Government, buton the very eve of the campaign, the authorities had refused to pay hima sum of £12, 000 which he reckoned to be due to him for his labours andexpenses, and at considerable risk and difficulty he had contrivedto smuggle his map out of Constantinople. He was on his way to StPetersburg with it and eventually disposed of it to the RussianGovernment. Without it the Russian army would never have been able taforce the passage of the Balkans and I always traced the defeat ofthe Turks to that poor economy of £12, 000. The map was the mostextraordinary thing of its kind I have ever seen. It consisted of agreat number of thin wooden slabs of about a foot square on which weremodelled in wax all the mountains and passes of the Balkan range, builtexactly to scale and showing every road and bypath. 

Now at Tashkesen the Russians were in possession of this map, with theresult that they were able to adjust their guns to the precise range ofpositions which were out of sight. The road by which I travelled on thatfoggy morning was being swept by shell, the evident purpose being toprevent provisions and supplies from being carried along it to thetroops in front. Probably from want of ammunition, the cannonade hadbeen suspended from seven o'clock in the morning until about eleven, andI took advantage of this lull to attempt my visit to the fortifications. I was about half-way up the hill when a shell burst a few score yards infront of me; another and another followed. One which had been dischargedat a higher elevation than the rest burst overhead, and I began to feelextremely nervous. I dismounted and led my pony into the wood on theright hand side. I had not penetrated ten yards into the wood when ashell burst in front of me and in something like panic I dragged mylittle steed across the road and sought a shelter in the wood on theopposite side. Crash! came a shell in front of me as I entered, and thistime nearer than ever. Now it is one thing to be in imminent danger inthe midst of your comrades or even when you have the companionship of asingle friend, and it is another to find yourself surrounded by aring of fire when you are absolutely alone and have nobody to lend youcountenance. The memory of that time will always make me pitiful tothe man who runs away. For one instant I was on the edge of an absolutesurrender to physical fear. How I got a grip of myself I really do notknow. I was certainly most horribly afraid and my nerve was almostgone, when I remembered that on a previous journey I had passed a greatoutcrop of granite rock, which afforded a perfect shelter. I reflectedthat it was just as dangerous to go back as to go on, and I estimatedthat my refuge was only two or three hundred yards in front of me. Withthis aim in mind, I mounted again and rode uphill as fast as my mountcould carry me. When I reached my shelter the shells were howling andscreaming and bursting everywhere, but I sat in perfect safety, and byand by recovered my self-possession. I had been there perhaps an hourand had begun to write an account of my morning's adventure when Iheard a wild voice pealing down the road and the stumbling clatter of ahorse's hoofs at a dangerous, breakneck speed, and the horseman passedand in his passage, swift as it was, we recognised each other. I knewthe man quite well; he was an English doctor, and I felt as keen a pangof pity as I have ever experienced in my life as I recognised in himthat condition of abject surrender to fear from which I had myself sorecently escaped, Heaven alone knows how! I had touched the line and hadsomehow been saved from going over it; the man who went howling past mehad touched the line and crossed it. He was holding on to the front ofhis saddle and his horse's reins were trailing loose and broken; hisface was livid and he was yelling with sheer terror at the top of hisvoice. He was gone in a flash and I learned afterwards that within anhour of his arrival at the village, he put in his papers on some plea ofurgency, and immediately went down country. Years afterwards I broughtmy wife to town to hear an afternoon lecture from Mr Bennett Burleigh, who was just back from one of his numerous campaigns. We were stayingon for the theatre, and in the interim we dined at the Criterion, Agentleman in evening dress came in with a theatre party consisting ofthree ladies. He busied himself for a while in arranging his party andthen sat down facing me. Our eyes met, and I do not remember to haveseen a man more painfully embarrassed. He blushed until his very earswere pink, and if I could have found the courage I would have takenhim aside and have made to him a confession which might possibly havesoothed his mind. 

A reputation for coolness in danger, like other reputations, is oftengot without much deserving. At the time of the Russo-Turkish war, therailway had its terminus a few miles beyond Tatar Bazardjik. I wastravelling north with a party of English doctors and we alighted at thestation there for refreshment. We had been misinformed about the lengthof time for which the train halted there and were hurriedly summoned bythe guard when it was already in motion. The engine-driver slowed downuntil it was possible, by hard running, to overtake our carriage. I wasin heavy riding boots and somewhat hampered by that fact, and just asmy fingers touched the brass guard at the side of the compartment, Itripped on a ground wire and fell beneath the approaching train in sucha fashion that the carriage wheel was actually between my thighs. Iclutched the _marche-pied_ with both arms and clung on with all mymight. The revolving wheel was actually rubbing at the inside of my legsand the spurs were torn from the heels of my boots. How I executed themanoeuvre I shall never know, but before the train was brought to astandstill, I was on my knees on the _marche-pied_ and was being helpedinto the railway carriage by one of my companions. I suppose that itmust have been the most imminent moment of danger I have ever known, but I can testify quite honestly to one queer thing--I was absolutelywithout fear--and with a horrible death actually grazing me, I was ascoolly self-possessed as I ever have been in the whole course of mylife. But there was the shock of consciousness awaiting me. I wasviolently sick a moment later, and for nights and nights to come, Iexperienced a horrible nightmare, in which all the terrors which mighthave seemed natural to the situation laid hold upon me. 

In the Grande Rue de Pera there was a café _chantant_ which was run byone Napoleon Flam. There was a little silver hell attached to it wherethere was a roulette table with twenty-four numbers and a double zero. There were always plenty of flying strangers who were prepared to throwaway their money here, and I fancy that the fat Greek who presided overthe table made a fat thing of it. In the concert room, the superannuatedartistes of the poorer kind of Continental concert hall shrieked andgrimaced and ogled, and after every item of the show, the performer cameround with an escallop shell into which the more generously disposeddropped small copper coins. The place was nearly always crowded with menin black frock-coats and crimson fezzes. Ill-starred Valentine Baker hadbeen employed by the Sublime Porte to create an English _gendarmerie_, and this fact had brought a large number of English military men intoConstantinople, who were anxious to enlist under his banner. Manyof them were men who had done good service in their day and heldunblemished records, but there is no disguising the fact that a largecontingent of the discredited riffraff of the British army was collectedin the city at that time. The "Concert Flam" was the accepted rendezvousfor both sets, and on my second night in Constantinople I went thitherin company with the young Irish-German officer, of whom I have alreadyspoken, and an American newspaper correspondent who had been in the citylong enough to know the ropes. 

Young Von A. Was a big, genial fellow, full of animal spirits, and onthis particular occasion, _Bacchi plenus_. He was under the impressionthat all the little swarthy men who sat about him in their red fezzesand their black frock-coats were Turks, He was boiling over withenthusiasm for the Turkish cause, and he had picked up a patrioticphrase or two. The spirit moved him to rise in an interval of the stageperformance and to bawl out aloud the words:

"Chokularishah Padishah, " which, being interpreted, signifies, "Maythe Sultan live for ever!" His enthusiasm was not contagious, for theassembly consisted almost entirely of people who did not care a copperwhether the Sultan lived for ever or died next morning. There werelifted eyebrows and cynical stares, but the young gentleman was not ina condition to regard these and he went on to cry: "muscove dormous!"signifying that a Russian was a hog, and drawing a masonic forefingeracross his throat to indicate what, in his opinion, ought to be donewith him. The youngster stood there, big and burly and jolly, andmeaning, I am quite sure, no harm to anybody, when a little Greek, whowas seated opposite to him, said, "Je suis muscove, monsieur, " and thelad leant across the marble table and aimed a mock buffet at him whichunfortunately reached him and rolled him over as if he had been aninepin. At the "Concert Flam" a porcelain coffee cup weighed somethinglike a quarter of a pound, and half a dozen of these came hurling atthe offender from various parts of the room. There were big mirrorsall round the café reaching from the ceiling to the dado; one or twoof these were smashed, and, before one could say "Jack Robinson, " thewildest disorder reigned and all the place was in a _melee_. The nine orten Englishmen who were there ranged themselves round the originatorof the disturbance, who was really in some momentary danger. The wholeposse of us formed into an irregular ring in the centre of the room, and for a while we had quite a merry time of it. There were flags ofall nationalities hung about the little hall dependent from short woodenlances with gilt heads, and these our assailants tore down and used asweapons against us. The conflict was brief and decisive; numericallythere were perhaps six to one against us, but we ended by forming inlines, and the barbarous English fashion of striking straight from theshoulder sent the enemy in a hurry towards the narrow and windingstair which afforded the only exit from the place, and here, in theexhilaration of the moment, two of our party did an unguarded thing;they took to dropping the fugitives in the rear over the banister on tothe heads and shoulders of the crowd below. We were left masters ofthe field but, as it happened, the "Concert Flam" was situated rightopposite to the lowest Greek quarter, the Rue Yildiji, I think it wascalled, and it was approached under a low arch by a dirty flight ofstone steps. Up these steps thronged a great crowd of people armed withanything they could snatch up at the moment--frying-pans, pokers, fireshovels, and any article of domestic use which at short notice might beturned into a weapon of defence. Luckily for us there was one cool headamongst us. Schipka Campbell, who had not then earned the title by whichhe was afterwards so widely known, was there, and he took command of theparty. We were all armed, but though we displayed our weapons for theintimidation of the mob we were gravely cautioned not to fire a shot onperil of our lives. The Grande Rue de Pera was raging when we reachedit, but we slipped out one by one, each man revolver in hand, and rangedourselves against the wall. I cannot recall that a solitary blow wasstruck, but I know that the people in the rear of the crowd were in amighty hurry to get at us and that those in front were in equal haste toretire, and little by little we made our way to the Byzance Hotel wherethe gates were closed and barred against the crowd. Shortly afterwardsthe Chief of the Consular Police was amongst us making inquiries intothe origin of the émeute. He took an official note of the occurrence anddrank a glass of wine or two and smoked a cigar with us, but we neverheard any more about the business, and though we strolled thereafterinto the "Concert Flam" quite freely, we suffered no molestation. 

CHAPTER X

 Constantinople _Continued_--The Massacre of Kesanlyk--A Sketching Expedition--Failure of Supplies--Correspondent for the _Scotsman_ and the _Times_--Adrianople--The Case of the Gueschoffs--The Bulgarians. 

At first I thought the Constantinople fare the most delightful I hadever encountered anywhere. At the first dinner at which I sat down wewere served amongst other things with red mullet, stuffed tomatoes andquail--all excellent of their sort and admirably prepared. Red mullet, _tomates farcies_ and quail appeared again for breakfast and were notto be despised, but red mullet, tomates farcies and quail for luncheon, began to be a trifle tiresome, and when all three appeared again atdinner and at the next day's breakfast and luncheon, there were some ofus who began to hunger for a change. We made a little party and wewent across to the Valori restaurant. Here we encountered a polyglotmajor-domo, who spoke all languages of Europe indifferently ill. "Whatcan we have for dinner?" asked our spokesman. "Ret moiled, domadesvarcies, et qvail!" He smiled ineffably and evidently thought that hewas offering us food for the gods. We ate tough beefsteak, fried in oil, and cursed the delicacies of the country. The diners at Valori's made upthe first really polyglot assembly I had ever seen. There were Bulgariannotables--caring apparently to speak their own language only--SpanishJews from Eski Zaghra, Greeks, Turks, Germans, Italians, Armenians, Englishmen, native volunteers for the Polish legion then forming, and aCroat gentleman with bejewelled handles to his private arsenal of lethalweapons, and starched expansive white petticoats. Our major-domo wassomehow equal to them all, and when the rush of service was partlyover, I found an opportunity to ask him how many languages he spoke. He answered in a tone of apology and regret: "Onily twelluv, ich habevergessen les autres!"

A day or two later I encountered the official interpreter of the PersianEmbassy who spoke English as perfectly as I did and apparently all thelanguages of the civilised world beside. I asked him seriously how manytongues he professed to have mastered, and his reply was this: "If youask me in how many languages and dialects I can converse, I suppose Ishould have to say seventy or eighty, but if you confine me to those inwhich I can construct a grammar I should have to tell you fifteen atthe outside. No man can really say he knows a language until he canconstruct a grammar for it. "

So much for a special detached faculty which I have found in thepossession of people who are otherwise entirely stupid. 

The utter lawlessness of the Asiatic troops, by whom Constantinople wassupposed to be defended, gave me a fair foretaste of things to come. 

It was certainly rather a curious thing that in a country about whichI travelled freely, and which was overrun by the most murderous ravage, months passed before I heard a shot fired. It so fell out that I wasthe discoverer of the fields of massacre in the district of the RoseGardens. I found twelve hundred unburied dead, all hacked and mutilated, in a vineyard near Kesanlyk. I found Kalofer a smoking wilderness, without a living soul left out of a population of twelve hundred. Ifound Sopot a howling desolation, where only the village dogs were leftalive. Day by day, for weeks, I travelled stealthily in the rear of theroving bands of Bashi-Bazouks and Zeibecks who were laying the countrywaste and slaughtering its Christian population; but it was more than anEnglishman's life was worth to show himself among them, and I never camenear enough to see them actually engaged upon their dreadful business, except during one week, when, from one of the lower slopes of theBalkans, I could see the whole horizon red with the flame of burningvillages, and could sometimes even hear the shrieks of outraged women. 

But in all this time I never heard a shot fired, so far as I canremember, until I came to the Schipka, where a long-drawn artilleryduel was dragging on in the pass between the guns of Sulie-man Pasha andGeneral Gourko. Correspondents and doctors lived at that time, for themost part, at a respectful distance from the scene of that monotonousaction. We were quartered at Schipka Keui, where we pitched our tents onthe edge of a forest of wild plum trees, and spent our idle time as bestwe could, whilst we waited for developments. Amongst us was the Englishvolunteer on the Turkish side, mentioned in the last chapter, who borethe rank of Colonel, and remembered by his old comrades as SchipkaCampbell. He was a man of the most extraordinary and daring valour, andI really believe that he found a keen joy in danger. He was full of ascheme for a night attack upon a position which Gourko had taken up ina height which the Russians called St Nicholas Crag, and he got leave, after a good deal of characteristic procrastination, to go into theforts, and thence to take a sketch of the country he desired to travelin the night-time. I was very eager to see things closer at hand thanI had been able to do till then, and it was arranged that I shouldaccompany Campbell on this sketching expedition. By the side of thewinding mountain way a sort of covering wall had been built for somehundreds of yards, to shelter passing troops and convoys from theobservation of the enemy. It was a rather flimsy structure, and it couldhave been beaten down by a single gun in an hour or two; but I supposethat the rocks which commanded it from the other side of the pass wereinaccessible to artillery. In one place the ground dipped, and formeda cup-like hollow, and, the big guns having brought down a good deal ofrain by their constant firing, a pond had gathered here, and had sappedthe foundations of the wall. There was left a clear space of rathermore than a dozen yards, and this place was thickly strewn with splashedbullets which had struck the face of the overhanging rock. There wasprobably a good cartload of spoiled lead strewn there, and the dark faceof the rock was pitted all over with grey bullet-marks. 

Campbell informed me, in a casual sort of way, that there were alwayssome hundreds of the enemy's infantry on the lookout for a passenger atthis point, and that we were sure to draw a volley. Now, I had no reallypressing business to persuade me onward, and I had no special liking forthe prospect; but Campbell scoffed at the very thought of danger. Evenif the enemy were expecting us, he urged, a man could clear that spacein quicker time than a bullet would take to travel from the oppositeside of the pass, and it was just as likely as not that by nippingacross quickly we might fail to draw Are at all. This had an airof reason about it, but I was not nearly so curious to see thefortifications as I had been. I represented that the two journals forwhich I was working at that time had no other representative on theground, that big events were probably imminent, and that it was my dutyto preserve a whole skin in the interests of my employers. Upon thisCampbell assured me of his belief that I was funking, and I immediatelyconcurred with him. It was a mere matter of fact, and I saw no groundon which I could dispute it. I have never run away from anybody oranything--though I have wanted to do so upon occasion--but I am notfond of unnecessary danger. My guide declined to waste time on me, and, leaving me in the shelter of the wall, he ran swiftly across the openspace, and turned crouching on the other side. It has turned me colda thousand times to think about it since; but I was just in the actof nerving myself for a run when he impetuously waved me back, and aperfect tempest of lead fell shrieking on the face of the rock. Had Iobeyed my own impulse, I should have been riddled like any colander. The grey face of the rock seemed to flash white under the impact of thevolley. One splashed bullet struck the rock some yards above me, and fell to the ground flattened to something like the form of afive-shilling piece, with irregularly starred edges. I stooped to pickit up, but it was at almost a melting-heat. I dropped it quickly, andthen, in answer to Campbell's call, I cleared the open space in safety, and was followed by a belated random shot or two. But, to be quitehonest, I had no pleasure in the adventure, and I was careful not toreturn until the shades of night had fallen. 

The gentleman from Chicago, at whose instigation I had gone out toTurkey, had supplied me with a sum of forty pounds, and had undertakento deposit more to my account at the Ottoman Bank. I called at thatestablishment daily and found news of no remittance. I was in themeantime vainly moving the Turkish authorities for a _teskerai_, whichwould authorise me to go up country. No remittance, no leave to move, the hotel bill growing to really alarming proportions, the outlook wasunpleasant; in a while it had grown no less than desperate. I bombardedthe Chicago man with cablegrams as long as I could afford it, but noanswer came, nor have I, from that day to this, received any explanationof the circumstances which induced him to send me out and then to leaveme stranded. I had already made application to the British Consul, MrFawcett, afterwards Sir John, to secure for me a passage home, when Iwas delivered from my embarrassments by as remarkable a chance as everbefell me in my life. After leaving the Consul's office, I strolledinto the Valori gardens, which were a dreary waste of small pebbles andcoarse gravel, with an oasis here and there consisting of a painted irontable and a few painted iron chairs, where men of all nationalitiessat sipping vishnap and limoni, and extinguishing by their Babylonianchatter the strains of a very indifferent band. I was making the circuitof the gardens in tolerably low spirits; I had expended my last piastre, had emptied my cigar-case, had listened to a violent objurgation fromthe landlord of the Byzance Hotel and was now bound home at the expenseof the Consular funds--a failure confessed. Nobody likes to be beaten, and it seemed to me at that moment that I tasted the full flavour ofignominy, and whilst I was floundering in the depths of my despondencyI heard a voice speaking in English. "There you are--the _WeeklyDispatch_--Constantinople in a state of siege. If I could find the manwho wrote that article, I should like to commission him to-morrow. " Nowit happened that I had written that article and had sent it home withina day or two of my arrival. I had not even known that it had beenaccepted and the revival of hope ran through me like an electric shock. I claimed the article for my own and in ten minutes I had concludeda bargain with the authorised agent of the _Scotsman_, had agreedto accept the services of an interpreter, and had arranged, with a_taskerai_ or without one, to take the 7. 30 train to Adrianople fromthe Stamboul station. There followed a hurried interview with theVice-Consul, Mr Wrench, at which it was arranged that my hotel billshould be defrayed from future earnings, my baggage was released by theConsular influence, and next morning, at the appointed hour, my dragomanand I were being pulled across the waters of the Golden Horn by apair of sturdy _caiquejees_, and were bound for the front. With whata rebound of high spirits on my part it is quite impossible to say t Ithought I had never seen so beautiful a morning, and indeed the scene, apart from all considerations of mood, was very charming. The recedinghill of Galata, with its bowers of green, its mosques and minarets andpalaces, lay steeped in the early sunrise, and looked as lovely as adream. 

It was on the eve of the Feast of Bairam that we set out, and whenwe arrived at Adrianople, the city was illuminated and the street wasfilled with joyful crowds. News had arrived to the effect that a pitchedbattle had been fought between the Russian army and the forces ofRaouf Pasha, and the Turks were reported to have been magnificentlyvictorious. But Adrianople saw another sight next morning when thetrains from Yeni Zaghra, where the action had taken place, crawledslowly into the station with their burden of one thousand two hundredwounded. To one who was new to war, the spectacle of this one thousandtwo hundred was a reminder of its horrors. There was a good deal of talkabout the Russians having fired on the white protective flag, but ifthey had broken the rules of civilised combat in that way they had beenbut indifferent marksmen, for no one of the long row of carriages wasso much as scarred. It was evident, however, that the trains had beenunskilfully driven and that there had been checks and shocks upon theroad, for the wounded, who had been bestowed along the benches at thebeginning of the journey, were lying all higgledy-piggledy on the floorwhen they arrived. I helped to carry some of them from the train tothe rough eight-wheeled springless arabas in which they were borne tohospital. In these wretched vehicles the wheel was not a cycle but anoctagon, and the wounded, who were jolted along the street, filledthe air with cries of agony. I made an immediate dash to the sceneof conflict and there I encountered seventeen officers who, with theexception of the wounded I had seen already, were the sole survivorsof Raouf's army of seventeen thousand. One man, an artillerist, who hadbeen educated at Chatham and who spoke English faultlessly, gave me thehistory of yesterday's battle. The man had looked at doom, and there wasdoom still in his eyes. "We were beaten by their artillery, " he said, "there was never such a scene of carnage. The Russians had a shell forevery man. "

In Philipopolis I was introduced to the Gueschoffs, a Bulgarianmercantile family who had been established there for some generations. The two sons had been educated at Owen's College, Manchester, and mighteasily have passed anywhere for Englishmen. One of them was DeputyVice-Consul for Great Britain and the other held a similar office forthe United States. I dined with them and spent a very pleasant evening, and I am sure that no visible shadow of mischance was then hanging overthe household. But a fortnight later I was amazed to learn that thefather and the two sons had alike been arrested on a charge of treason, that they had all three been tried before a military tribunal andcondemned to death, whilst the whole of their possessions had beensequestrated by the commandant of the city, Ibrahim Pasha. This was inno special degree an affair of mine, but as soon as I heard the news Ihastened back to Philipopolis, and in the course of a hurried interviewwith Mr Calvert, the British Vice-Consul, the conclusion was arrived atthat the official position of the two younger men was of a character toafford them some protection against proceedings of so summary a nature. It became entirely obvious as the result of a mere surface inquiry thatthe charge against the Gueschoffs had been trumped up by the militaryauthorities simply and purely because they were wealthy people, and thecommandant saw his way to a handsome windfall. 

Armed with such scanty proofs as I could gather, I set out forConstantinople and, arriving there in the space of two days, I laid mycase before Sir Arthur Laird, who was then our Ambassador to the Porte, and the Honourable Horace Maynard, who was Minister for the UnitedStates. Sir Arthur was a pronounced Philo-Turk and would not for amoment believe that any such abominable intrigue as I suggested couldhave occurred to the mind of any Turkish official. He received me withmarked coldness and I felt from the first that I could make no headwaywith him. Mr Horace Maynard met me in another spirit "One of these men, "he told me, "is under the protection of the American flag and in hiscase I shall insist upon a new trial and in the meantime the executionshall be suspended. " A fortunate chance threw me into communication withLady Laird, who was less violently prepossessed in favour of theTurkish Government than her husband. She promised me her most cordialassistance, but for three days I hung about Constantinople in a feverof apprehension, waiting for the imperial _firman_, by virtue of which Itrusted to secure an arrest of sentence. 

The execution of the three Bulgarian merchants was fixed for eighto'clock on the morning of the ensuing Saturday, and late on Wednesdaynight the longed-for document came into my hands. I attempted at onceto telegraph the news to Philipopolis, but the wires had been cut ina score of places and communication was impossible. The next train upcountry started at seven o'clock in the morning and it seemed as ifI had ample time before me, but somewhere in the neighbourhood ofAdrianople a culvert had been blown up by the Bulgarian insurgents andwe were brought to a decisive standstill. There was nothing for it butto complete the journey on horseback and here I was heavily handicappedby the fact that I had mastered but a scattered phrase or two of thelanguage, and had the greatest difficulty in making my wants known. Atlength, by good hap, I encountered a Bulgarian who spoke a little Frenchand by his aid I contrived to get a mount The moon was almost at thefull and it was absolutely impossible to miss the road. I set out uponmy journey with a better heart than I should have had if I had knownwhat I learned afterwards. The whole district between Adrianople andPhilipopolis had been suddenly overrun by the Irregulars, who werecarrying everything before them with fire and sword. Luckily for methey shunned the high road and devoted their attentions to the outlyingvillages. Anything at once more dreary and more exasperating than thatride I cannot recall. I was badly mounted at the first and ateach succeeding stage, when after an infinitude of difficulty andmisunderstanding I had secured an exchange, it seemed to be always forthe worse. Some two months before at Kara Bounar, I had been affected bya touch of dysentery and this assailing me anew when my journey was onlyhalf through, made progress dreadfully difficult. But in the failinglight of Friday evening the great rock on which Philipopolis is builtcame into sight and I could afford to make the last stage of my journeyat a foot pace, with the certainty that I held a good nine hours inhand. I rode to the Roumelia Khan, the hostel at which I had left myinterpreter, and thence after a hurried meal, he and I set out in searchof the commandant who, with his staff, had taken possession of themansion of some Bulgarian notable. I produced the _firman_, duly signedand sealed, and demanded that, in accordance with its provisions, theprisoners should be removed, under safe escort, for re-trial at theport of Varna. The Pasha--a little man with a close-cropped beard, whichlooked like black varnished wire--glanced at the document and angrilypronounced it an impudent forgery. I have not often seen a man soinspired by rage; the hand in which he held the official document wasapparently as steady as a rock, but all the while he talked to us, the stiff paper rustled noisily. He declared that the execution shouldproceed and he threatened to hang me with the others. It was not at allimpossible in the existing condition of the country that he might haveventured on that course, but I saw fit to remind him that I was for themoment the authorized representative of Great Britain and the UnitedStates, and that if he did violence to me in that capacity Turkey wouldbe wiped off the map of Europe in a fortnight. The little commandantspoke French, and he surprised me greatly when I spoke of "_Les EtatsUnis_, " by interjecting in a tone of incredulous scorn: "_Les EtatsUnis! où sont les Etats Unis?_" My interpreter broke in volubly with thestatement that _Les Etats Unis_ were twenty times the size and hadtwice the power of Great Britain, and he and the little Pasha were bothshouting together when, as Providence would have it, Mr Fawcett, theBritish Consul-General, was announced. His presence calmed the storm atonce and he sternly bade Ibrahim to obey the "firman, " on peril of hisown head. 

The Gueschoffs were duly deported, were retried and acquitted, and wereallowed, I believe, to retire to Odessa until the close of the campaign. After that they returned to Philipopolis and, according to the latestnews I had of them, were prospering exceedingly. I had many other thingsto see to for months to come, but it surprised me somewhat to find thatno communication reached me from them after they were known to bein safety. I had a notion that the salvation of three lives at somepersonal risk and trouble and expense was worth at least a "thank you, "but years went on and the whole thing had almost faded out of mind whenit was brought back suddenly by my encounter with another Bulgarianmerchant, Melikoffby name, whom I met one fine summer's day at theStrand end of Waterloo Bridge. I had met him at the Gueschoffs' tableand I asked for news of them. Such intelligence as he had to give waswholly favourable; they were all well and prosperous. I suggested tohim that I thought it at least a little odd that no one of them had everthought it worth while to send me a line. "Well, " he answered, in someembarrassment, "they found it impossible to recover a very large part oftheir property when they got back to Philipopolis, and for some time Ican assure you that they were in considerable straits. " I answered thatthey could scarcely have been in such straits as not to be able to buy apostage stamp, but the upshot of the matter was simply this: At thetime at which I had been able to be of service to them I was therepresentative of the _Scotsman_ and the _Times_, and was supposed to besomething of a personage. It was impossible at the time for them to haveoffered what they thought would be a fitting recognition of my services, and on the whole: it seems that they had thought it best to let sleepingdogs lie and to say nothing at all about the matter. I might, itappeared, have made some kind of claim against them which, though Icould not have enforced it legally, they would have been bound in honourto recognise. I told him that this did not quite accord, with Britishideas of gratitude, but he appeared to think that he had offered aperfectly satisfactory explanation. It was quite obviously beyond himto conceive that I could have extracted any satisfaction from a mereacknowledgment of service rendered, or that such an acknowledgment wouldnot have been used as the foundation for some more substantial claim. 

As Edmund Burke said years ago, "It is impossible to indict a nation, "but my experience does not lead me to believe that the Bulgarians area grateful people. In Kalofer, for example, I was introduced undercircumstances of dramatic secrecy to a refugee who was hiding for hislife and who had been concealed for days in a dark cupboard witha sliding panel. I shall never forget the face of the haggard andfear-stricken wretch who crawled out of that hiding-place into the lightof a solitary candle, or the enthusiastic protestations of gratitude onthe part of his wife when I proposed that he should disguise himself asa farm labourer and should take a place amongst the men who were drivingdown for me a set of empty arabas to Philipopolis. The simple plansucceeded and the fugitive got over the frontier. The wife was veryeager to show how much she felt beholden to me. Her husband had been arose-grower and she had for sale a quantity of the precious attar whichshe was willing to dispose of to me, and to me only, for a mere song. She would have given it gladly but she had to join her husband and somesmall amount of ready money was essential to her purpose. I bought fromher five very small phials each containing perhaps a spoonful and a halfof the liquid. She assured me that the essence was absolutely pure andthat I could hardly have secured its like for love or money elsewhere. Iwas not the best pleased man in the world when I discovered that she hadpalmed off on me a perfumed olive oil, which, by the time I examined itin Constantinople, had turned rancid. 

When I was engaged in the administration of the Turkish BenevolentFund. , the raising of which was mainly due to the late BaronessBurdett-Coutts, the fact that I was bound upon an errand of mercy, and that I was instructed not to spare relief by any consideration ofreligion or race, enabled me to penetrate into parts of the disturbeddistricts into which I should not otherwise have dared to venture. Inthe course of my journey I came to Kalofer, where I found a singularlyintelligent and attractive little Bulgarian boy whom I resolved torescue from the almost certain starvation which lay before him. Hisfather had been the Vakeel of the place and the child of course had beendecently reared. He was pinched and pallid with hunger, and he had but asingle garment, a pair of the baggy knickerbockers worn by the peasantsof the district, which enveloped him from heel to shoulder. I got himdecently attired, and in a while managed to place him in the care ofa colleague in Constantinople, and when I left the country mybrother-in-law, Captain William Thompson, who was engaged in theLevantine shipping trade, gave him a free passage to Liverpool, wherefor the space of some months he lived with my sisters, the younger ofwhom turned schoolmistress for his advantage, and began to teach himEnglish. Mr Crummies used to wonder how things got into the papers, though perhaps he was under some slight suspicion of having contributedto their circulation. How the news of the young Bulgarian's arrivalin England got there I do not know, but there was a considerablejournalistic fuss about him, and the result was that a wealthy Bulgarianfamily, resident in Manchester, made overtures to my sister, and with myfree consent, formally adopted the child. Before this happened he paidthem a preliminary visit during which he was presented with a pony, anda male domestic was told off specially to his service. When his adoptionwas finally decided upon he went back to my sister's house in Liverpoolto gather up his belongings and to say good-bye. The little ingraterefused to say one word of farewell to either of them. "I not Englishany longer, " he declared, "I Bulgar again, " and Bulgar through andthrough he was, to my thinking, sure enough. It is quite true that youcan't indict a nation, but I shall need some persuasion before I go outof my way again to be of use to any member of that particular section ofthe human family. 

CHAPTER XI

 Retrospect--Return to London--Interview with Mr Gladstone at Hawarden--Reminiscences. 

The memories of that adventurous year in Turkey come thronging back soquickly that it is hard to choose amongst them. In the retrospect itlooks as if it had been in the main a rather jolly sort of picnic, and at least there were streaks of splendid enjoyment in it Even ourhardships made fun for us at times. I suppose you can know more about aman in a month if you go campaigning with him than you might find outin the course of years in a mere stay-at-home existence. Littlegenerosities and selfishnesses display themselves more freely whencommons are running short and shelter is scanty than they do amongstthose who, in the phrase of Tennyson's northern farmer, "has coats totheir backs, and takes their regular meals. " One British gentlemen wehad with us during the siege of Plevna was a perpetual source of joyto me. He was a sort of human jackdaw, the picker-up of unconsideredtrifles; and especially in the way of provender and of medical comfortshe took care to be well provided whatever might befall the rest ofus. It happened one day during the siege that some member of our partydiscovered in some huckster's shop in the village a couple of bottlesof rum. He bore these triumphantly to the two-storeyed hut in which thegreater number of us lived together, and that night we held a symposium. The liquor was vile stuff, but we set fire to it and burned most of themalice out of it. I made a ballad about that night a year or two later, and perhaps I may be forgiven if I quote a verse or two of it here. Itgives at least a fair picture of the scene. 

 "Through ceaseless rain the rival cannon sounded With sulky iteration boom on boom, And while assailant and defender pounded Each other with those epigrams of doom, I sat at table, by my friends surrounded, Where mirth and laughter lit the dingy room And we made merry one and all, though dinner Had failed for days, and we were growing thinner. 

 There, while that sulky iterated boom Shook the thick air, our songs of home we sang; And memory wrought for each on fancy's loom, Unmoved, unshaken by War's clash and clang, Some dreamy picture woven of light and gloom, Of home and peace. "

 Who shall forget that night who took a part in it? The ceaseless downpour of the rain, The incessant thundering of the guns, The shells that ricochetted from the glacis Or went howling overhead. 

 "We pushed the gourd about and jested hard, Sang rattling songs, told many a rattling tale, -- A jest might keep the heart's deep floodgates barred. Chant gaily, Pity! lest thy blood grow pale: Bid every sprightly fancy stand at guard! Be noisy, Mirth! lest all thy mirth should fail, And yet, and yet our neighbour miseries Would blur the sparkle in our hearts and eyes. 

 "For near at hand there lay such countless woes, Such up-heaped horrors as no tongue can tell, Where helpless Pity's ineffectual throes Made that long shambles seem one ghastly hell, And all the broken, battered, blood-stained rows Of dead seem blessed in that they sleep so well; Where the soul sickened and the heart grew faint At scenes which Dante scarce had striven to paint. "

The rum was all drunk and the wine-gourds were all empty--the last songwas sung and the last tale told, and we betook ourselves to rest. Ourjackdaw friend, for economic reasons, had found a lodging elsewhere. Hefound it better to drop in upon the rest of us when there was anythingspecial going than it would have been to forage for himself. By thetime at which he left us, it had turned much colder, and the rain wasfreezing as it fell. The village streets were covered with a slippery_verglas_ and here and there, where a siege shell had fallen, there wasan embarrassing hole, not easily to be distinguished in the night-timefrom the merest puddle. There was scarcely a light agleam in the wholevillage, and it is not at all a thing to be surprised at that ourjackdaw lost his way and had a stumble or two into the icy pools whichbeset him. He did succeed at last in finding the hut in which he lived, or rather, he found the site of it, for an 18 centimetre shell had burstthere in his absence and the hut was not. We were making our apology forbreakfast in the dusk before dawn when he returned to us. He was clothedin a thin armour of ice from head to foot and it trickled from him inlittle showers as he stood forlornly before us. The hardest heart mustneeds have pitied him, but it was he himself who gave the pathos of theshow away. "Has nobody got a cup of tea?" he asked. "Tea, " cried BondMoore, who had a special mis-liking for him, "tea, you------" (the blankmay be filled in according to fancy, on the understanding that it wasneither polite nor complimentary) "there's no tea within five hundredmiles. " "Oh!" said the unhappy man, "I wish I had never come on thiscampaign, I do so miss my little comforts!" There was nobody there, Iam sure, who would have been much shocked if, in the circumstances, ourjackdaw had been even blasphemously profane. A man in his conditionmay say almost anything and may expect to be forgiven, but at this mostinadequate bleat we yelled with laughter, and the poor jackdaw stoodstaring at us with eyes of suffering wonder for a full three minutesbefore we could rouse ourselves to attend to his necessities. 

When I first went out to Turkey I was very much under the domination ofMr Gladstone's opinion. I was quite full of the unspeakable Turk andhis wickednesses and was quite as anxious as the great Liberal statesmanhimself to see the "sick man" bundled out of Europe bag and baggage. Butwhen I began to move about the country and to meet, as I was forcedto do, men of all sorts and conditions among its native population, my sentiments with respect to the Turk underwent a thorough and rapidchange. The real people, the men of the commercial and artisan classesand the rank and file of the army, are amongst the best people I haveever known. Their religion enjoins them to sobriety, and as a race theyare brave, truthful and kindly, and I never met one authentic instancein which an act of cruelty was chargeable to the men of the regularforces. The hordes of Bashi-Bazouks, of Smyrniotes and Tripolites wereof course a set of most unspeakable ruffians, and there are probably nomore deplorable specimens of human nature in the world than are to befound among the Paris-bred spawn of the harem. 

Almost immediately on my return to London I lunched with Canon Liddonof St Paul's. Our talk naturally turned upon the campaign, and in thecourse of it I gave him an account of the affair at Guemlik, as beingtypical of whatever disturbances had taken place between the citizenTurk and the Bulgarians. When General Gourko first broke into the greatplain south of the Balkans with his Cossack advance guard, the Christianpopulation rose rejoicingly to receive them and persuaded themselveswithout difficulty that the rule of their Mahommedan masters was deadand done with then and there. They were supplied with arms and wereurged to revolt. There is no doubt whatever that they had a great dealto complain of. They had been under the heel of official oppression forcenturies, although in that respect they were not much worse off thantheir Mahommedan neighbours, but they were a despised and abjectrace who ate forbidden food and who lived in an almost inconceivablecondition of personal uncleanness. To the Turkish peasant dirt isanathema maranatha; in his own station of life he is the cleanest manin the world, and if there is any dirtier person to be found than aBulgarian peasant, as I knew him in the war year, I can only say thatI have not yet discovered him. The Christian population (God save themark!) were forbidden by law to bear arms, and they were cowards bytradition. Villagers of the two races lived peacefully enoughtogether, though there was an open disdain on the one side always and asmouldering hatred on the other. 

It befell that in a neighbouring village the Bulgarians broke intorevolution, and all the able-bodied Turks in Guemlik sallied out to theassistance of their countrymen, leaving only a few infirm old men andthe women and children. The Guemlik Christians, being persuaded that thefighting force would never return, rose _en masse_ and put every Turkishsoul to death. The massacre was characterised by a terrible ferocity;the bodies of the dead were hideously mutilated and were all hurledpell-mell into the well at the Turkish end of the village, and all thehouses of that quarter were looted and burned down. Contrary to theexpectations of the victors, the Turkish residents returned triumphant. They took their revenge; they put the Christians to the sword, firedthe Christian houses, and filled up the Christian well with corpses. The account was quite equally balanced, but it is certain that theBulgarians made the first move in the game. It was so everywhere, sofar as my experience went, wherever the citizen Turk was drawn into theconflict Nothing viler than the conduct of the Government in lettingloose its vast hordes of irregular soldiery with license to slay andpillage an unarmed population could possibly be conceived. But what Iwas concerned to prove was that the Mahommedan villagers had no part orlot in the cruelties of that time unless by way of stern reprisal. 

Canon Liddon was anxious that I should lay my facts before Mr Gladstone. He despatched a telegram to him and ascertained that he would be willingto receive me at Hawarden on the morrow, and armed with a brief letterof introduction, I set out next day, and found the great Liberalstatesman placidly dozing in an armchair in a little study on the groundfloor of the house. At first he hardly seemed to recognise why I wasthere, but in less than a minute he became astonishingly alert, andproviding himself with hat and walking-stick took me out into the park. He walked at an extraordinary pace and plied me with questions in thoseringing, rolling, parliamentary tones of his, with which I had beenfamiliar in the House of Commons two or three years before. He could notfor one instant lay aside his platform manner, and before I had been inhis society for two minutes I appreciated the statement attributed toHer late Majesty Queen Victoria, that Mr Gladstone always addressed heras if she were a public meeting. Every sentence was rounded, polishedand precise, every syllable had its particular rhythmic weight andvalue, and with it all there was a certain suavity and courtesy which, for my own part, I thought very gracious and charming. I had heard oneof his remarkable Budget speeches and knew already with what ease hehandled figures, but he surprised me more than once by his quickness incalculation. He was questioning me as to Turkish methods of taxation:population of a province so many--piastres per head of population somany--what was the precise value of the piastre? Twopence and a fractionof a farthing. --Ah! in pounds sterling that would be approximately somuch. He made his reckoning with lightning rapidity and he was alwaysaccurate, as I could tell, having all the figures at my fingers' endsjust then. 

After two hours' hard walking, he took me in to luncheon. We were bythis time in the thick of our theme, and on our arrival at table hebanished the servants from the room and himself carved at the sideboardand handed round the dishes. H e ate his own meal standing, and hecarried on his questions all the while. I do not know if he had thenmade his famous rule about the seventy-two bites to a mouthful, but Icertainly thought him anything but deliberate in eating. Whether he tookmuch or little I could not tell, but he was certainly talking all thetime, and I shall never forget the noble sonorosity of the tone withwhich he approached me with a dish in either hand and asked': "Can Iassist you to another potato, Mr Murray?" The simple query was offeredin the finest parliamentary manner. There were present at the mealthe members of the family and one guest beside myself, a Mr Howard, acorpulent, silent gentleman, who accompanied us when we went out intothe park again. We recommenced our walk at about two o'clock, and keptit up until the evening shades were growing pretty thick about us. I wasinclined to be pretty glad when it was over, for though I was as hard asnails at that time, being fresh as I was from the severe training of thecampaign, I was walked almost off my legs. The talk went on ding-dongall the time, and in the course of it my host asked me with what weaponsthe Zaptiehs--the mounted police who were relied on to keep order--andthe irregulars who were committing unchecked atrocities everywhere, were respectively armed. I was compelled to tell him that the Zaptiehscarried an old-fashioned matchlock, whilst the Irregulars were in greatpart armed with the Winchester repeating rifle, which was then thelatest invention of destructive science. The corpulent visitor had longsince resigned the effort to keep within hearing. Gladstone faced round, and in those noble, oratorical tones of his called out, "Is it notodious, Howard; is it not odious?" The gentleman appealed to was utterlyout of earshot, and came trotting briskly towards us to find out whatthe question meant, but Gladstone was away again at score, and he wasagain out-distanced in a minute. Gladstone spoke of the duty which wasimposed upon him to turn out the Government of Lord Beaconsfield, ofwhom he invariably spoke as Mr Disraeli. I ventured to say to him, "Youwill have to fight for that, sir, " when he turned upon me with a mostvivid gesture, and striking his walking-stick upon the pathway with suchvehemence that he made the gravel fly, answered me, "Aye, sir, and weshall fight. " When the time came for me to go, he accompanied me to thehall, and with great courtesy assisted me into my overcoat with his ownhands. It was a rather remarkable-looking garment, that overcoat, andone of a sort not often seen in England, but I had passed through Londonso rapidly that I had had no time to replenish my wardrobe. The garmentitself was woven of camel's hair, and it was lined with bearskin. Ashe was helping me into it he asked, "Where did you obtain possession ofthis extraordinary garment, Mr Murray?" "I bought it, sir, in Bulgaria, "I answered. "Ah, " said he, with a perfectly grave face and fallingback a step to look at it, "I have had much to say of the Bulgarianatrocities of late years, but this is the only one of which I have hadocular demonstration. "

I met Mr Gladstone afterwards at a big social function which wasengineered by the late William Woodhall, some time member for Stoke andMaster of the Ordnance. Finding him unoccupied and alone, I ventured toask to be recalled to his remembrance. "No need for that, Mr Murray, " heanswered, "no need for that, " and plunged back straightway into thetalk at Hawarden as if it had taken place only yesterday. There were allmanner of amusements provided for Mr Wood-hall's guests, and into one ofthem at least he plunged with the delighted enthusiasm of a boy. 

Poor Charles Bertram, the conjurer, was there, and it was arranged thata hand of Napoleon should be played under his direction between thestatesman and Sir Francis Burnand, then editor of _Punch_. "You, gentlemen, must decide between you, " said the conjurer, "as to who isto win. " It was agreed that Gladstone was to be the victor, and Bertram, who, of course, had not apparently seen the cards, instructed him as towhat he was to lead and what to play in sequence, securing for himall five tricks out of an apparently impossible hand. He was immenselydelighted and interested, and held a very animated conversationafterwards with Bertram on the art of conjuring. 

A good many years later yet, when I brought over from Australia thenucleus of a comedy company to perform here in a piece of my ownwriting, I had amongst them a very remarkable child actor, whose namewas Leo Byrne. He played the title rôle in my comedy of _Neds Churn_, and when the provincial run of the piece was over he was employed bySir Henry Irving to play the child's part in Lord Tennyson's tragedy of_Becket_. Mr Gladstone was present at one performance, and not wishingfor some reason of his own to be identified by the public, took his seatout of view of the audience on the prompt side of the stage. Whilstthe curtain was down, Mr Gladstone took the fictitious son of theFair Rosamund on his knee and began to question him. "You come fromAustralia, my little man?" he said. "Yes, sir, " the boy answered. "Andwhat do you think of England?" he was asked. "I think it is being ruinedby the Liberal Party, " Master Byrne responded. The great man laughed andsuffered him to escape, which I am told he did very willingly. Mr BramStoker afterwards took the child apart and told him that one of thesedays he would be very proud of having been taken on that old gentleman'sknee. "Oh! I know, " the imp responded, "it's old Gladstone; I don't wantto be bothered with him. I have promised another boy to go and spin topswith him behind the scenes. "

CHAPTER XII

 First Fiction--_A Life's Atonement_--The Casual Tramp--Poor Law Relief--Charles Reade--_The Cloister and the Hearth_-- Wilkie Collins--The Figure in Mediaeval Costume--_Joseph's Coat_--At Rochefort--_Rainbow Gold_--The Anarchist--The Police--The Text of Scripture. 

Whilst I was still engaged on the staff of the _Birmingham MorningNews_, as I have mentioned previously, Mr Edmund Yates was runningthrough its columns a novel which he entitled _A Bad Lot_. He waslecturing in America at the time, and must have been living a hand tomouth life with his story, for he brought it to an abrupt and ratherdisastrous conclusion. When the final instalment of copy was receivedthere was a momentary consternation in the office. New arrangements werepending, but we had supposed ourselves to have at least two monthsin hand. In these circumstances my chief came to me and asked me if Ithought that I could fill the gap. I was simply burning for a chance totry my hand at fiction, and I leapt eagerly at the opportunity. I beganthat very day and I wrote a chapter which I am quite sure must have ledmy readers to expect a tolerable weekly entertainment for some time, butI had no plot in mind and I had not the remotest notion as to whither Iwas going. I struggled on week by week and succeeded, as I now believe, in producing absolutely the most formless and incoherent work of fictionwhich was ever put in type. Scores of letters were sent week by week tothe editor protesting against its continuance, and at last I had workedall my characters into such a tangle that, with the exception of thehero and heroine and a few subordinates, whose fate it was not necessaryto particularise, I sent them all into a coal-mine, flooded the workingsand drowned the lot of them. 

A very able and kindly critic told me that this amorphous first attemptat fiction had flesh and blood but no bones, and I have learnedsince that in writing a work of imagination as in much more seriousenterprises, the first essential is to be aware of your own purpose. Forsome years afterwards I tried my hand on the short story, but before Ileft England for the Russo-Turkish campaign, I had embarked upon a moreambitious work, which finally took shape in _A Life's Atonement_. In thehurry of departure I forgot my manuscript and left it at my lodgings. Ihad quite resigned myself to think it lost, but when I received myfirst commission for a three-volume story, it occurred to me that themanuscript was worth inquiring after, and it surprised me agreeably tofind that it had been preserved. It was finished, sent in and accepted, and achieved more than a commonplace success. New commissions came in, and I found myself fairly launched as a novelist. 

There is one queer thing about that first book which no critic evernoticed so far as I know; it was, from beginning to end, a whollyunconscious plagiarism of _David Copperfield_. Had there been noPeggotty, there would have been no Sally Troman; had there been noSteerforth, there would have been no Gascoigne. The greater part of thefable and nearly all the characters I owed to Dickens, and yet I canaver in perfect honesty that, at the time of writing and for yearsafterwards, I was entirely unconscious of the fact One thing in thebook, in any case, was real. I sent my tragic hero wandering about thecountry, finding shelter in all manner of low lodging-houses, and livinggenerally the life of a tramp. Before I put him to that experience Iwent through it religiously myself, and for a whole seven weeks in thesummer, after my return from Turkey, I was "on the road" as a casualtramp. It was my purpose to prove in my own person what I knew very wellalready, namely, that it was, as most unhappily it still is, actuallyimpossible for a poor man honestly in search of work, to make his waythrough England and to hold body and soul together without infringingthe law in one way or another. 

I found that it was not possible. Well, I had seven weeks of it. Iwent under the name of "David Vane, compositor, " as of course, I knewsomething about the printing trade. My clothes were shabby at theoutset, but were utterly in rags when I had done. "David Vane" had manystrange adventures, but the funniest was reserved for the close. I maysay that I took a ten-pound note with me, and through the Post Officesent portions of it on before me and walked towards it. 

When I got to the "George" at Hereford I had £7, 13s. 6d. Left out ofthe £10. I slept in workhouses or in the fields; the professional termfor the former is the "spike, " for the latter the "skipper. " I went on"spike" and "skipper" both. I had sent a little portmanteau on before meto the "George" at Hereford, with the initials "D. C. M. " at the side. Init I had a change of clothes and a shaving kit. When I got into HerefordI had had no shave for three or four weeks, my boots were absolutelyworn out, my clothes were rags and tatters, and exposure to the sunhad tanned my face. I drew my money at the Post Office at Hereford, andcarrying it in my hand, for all my pockets were worn out, I reached the"George, " a good old-fashioned county hotel. 

A set of steps reached up to the main entrance, where stood a waiterwith a professional napkin. He looked up the street, down the street, and across the street, smiling all the time--a proprietorial sort ofsmile. I talked to him from below--one always speaks from below with asense of disadvantage--and said, "I want a room. " He gave a wave of hisnapkin in answer, and said, "Go away, go away. " But I did not go away. I went up the steps, showed him my money, and told him not to play thefool. I said, "I want a room. " He looked at me stolidly, but suddenly Idiscovered my portmanteau in a corner. I claimed it at once and mountedthe stairs, the waiter following with his curiously feline footsteps, and murmuring at intervals, "Well, I am------!" He said it with greatconviction, but he took me to the bath room nevertheless. I got a shave, changed my suit, and, as I was something of a dandy at the time, Iaffected certain airs as to the arrangement of my watch-chain andthe like. I came out cleanshaven and with an eye-glass, and generallylooking as different from the man who went in as it was possible toimagine. On the stairs I found my waiter ready, and when he saw me hesaid most emphatically that _he was_ ----. He took me to the coffeeroom, where I had a meal. He stood behind my chair, and by means of amirror opposite I _saw_ him keep saying to himself that _he was_ ----. I stayed in Hereford for some time, both to rest and to write articlesabout my experiences, which appeared in _Mayfair_, a society paper, longsince dead. I took a private room, and this particular waiter seemed tobe told off to attend me in all my doings. Everything seemed to surprisehim; he could not measure me up at all, and he was continually sayingthat _he was_ ----, although I knew quite well that he wasn't. One dayhis worship the Mayor of Hereford called to see me. When I asked thewaiter to show his worship up he said that _he was_ ----. The mayor wasa flamboyant sort of individual, and said, "Now, Mr Christie Murray, Lord Lyttelton is in Hereford, and is most par-tic-ular-ly interested inthe subject of which you are treating in _Mayfair_. He will be delightedto meet you, and I have arranged with his lordship that you shall meethim at my house (the mayor's house) at 7. 30 on Friday. You will not failhis lordship?" I said that I would not for the world, and I escorted hisworship to his carriage. At the door he turned and said, "Half-pastseven on Friday, Mr Christie Murray, at my house, to meet LordLyttelton. Profoundly disappointed if you don't turn out. His lordshipwill be grieved, Mr Murray. " The mayor having gone I turned round--toencounter my waiter, and for the last time he said that _he was_ ----. And although I had known that he was not, he said it with such sinceritythat I more than half believed him. 

Either the man must beg, which in itself is, of course, a misdemeanour, or he must starve. To sleep out of doors is a crime, and for a man toappeal for shelter at the workhouse means that he will be detained untilevery chance of obtaining employment is lost. I remember an unfortunatefellow, whom I overtook near Tewkesbury, a man of about sixty as Ishould judge, who was sitting by the roadside cooling his blisteredheels in a little runnel of clear water, and crying quietly to himselfas he tried to rid his fingers of the tar which stuck to them after hisworkhouse morning's experience of oakum picking. I sat down beside himand offered him a fill of tobacco, and by and by got into talk with him. He was a man of some intelligence and education, and had begun life asa journeyman watchmaker. He had risen to be an employer, and had kept asmall workshop in Coventry, but misfortune had overtaken him and he hadfailed in business. The immediate cause of his distress was that he hadreceived notification that employment at his trade of watchmaker wasopen to him at Evesham. The poor fellow was quite penniless and had beencompelled to walk; his strength had failed him by the way, and he hadhad to take refuge in the workhouse. In payment for his lodging, histwo chunks of dry bread and his pint of skilly, he had been compelledto pick his quantum of oakum. The man's fingers were, of course, asdelicate as a lady's, and in the course of our talk he held them out tome, showing the tips all raw and bleeding and thick with tar. He sobbedbitterly as he told me that he would be unable to do a hand-strokeat his trade for at least a fortnight. He carried with him letters ofrecommendation which ought to have guaranteed him from any such usageas that to which he had been condemned. He had tried to show them to thelabour master, but he had been waved contemptuously aside, and had beenforced by threats of being imprisoned as a refractory pauper to betakehimself to the task imposed upon him. 

It need hardly be said that all the men one encountered were not of thistype. I met one engaging ruffian who unbosomed himself to me with theutmost frankness. "Oi meets genelmen on the road, " he said, "as arsks mewhy Oi don't gaow to wurk; a great big upstandin' chap loike you, theysez, loafin' abaht and doin' nothin'--why it's disgraiceful! Well, Isez, guv'nor, I sez, 'ow can Oi go to wurk? Oi'm a skilled wurkman, Isez, in me own trade, but Oi'm froze aht by modern machinery. Oi'm a'and comb-maker, I sez, and the trade's bin killed this dozen years. Oi'm too hold a dawg to learn new tricks, I sez, Oi'm a middle-aged manand what ham Oi to do to yearn my means of loiveli'ood. " He added witha wink that there was only one hand comb-maker in business in that widedistrict of England and Wales over which he wandered. "And, " said he, "you can bet your sweet loife Oi don't go nigh 'im. " This cadging rascalwould very rarely have occasion to present himself as a casual pauperat the Union workhouse, but had he done so, he and the unfortunatewatchmaker would have been treated on perfectly equal terms. 

The whole system of casual poor law relief is about as rotten and asstupid as it can be, and its administration is in itself a scandal. There is no general rule throughout the country as to dietary or as tothe nature of the labour executed, or as to the hours over which thatlabour shall be extended. The habitual loafer knows perfectly well theplaces where life is made easy to him, and as a matter of course avoidsthose in which the fare is poorest and the work most arduous. The honestseeker after work knows nothing of these things and the whole iniquitousand idiotic system is at once a direct bribe to the inveteratework-shirker and a scourge to the honest and industrious poor. Ipublished the result of my own researches into it in the columns of_Mayfair_ now nearly thirty years ago, and suggested a very simple andeasy remedy for its defects. I had some hope that I might be attendedto. The late Lord Lyttelton, Mr Gladstone's friend, was at one timedisposed to take the matter up, but his melancholy death put an end tothat, and recent inquiries assure me that the old intolerable methods ofcasual relief are still unreformed. 

Looking back now, I can see how very large a part that seven weeks'experience played in my life as a novelist. For years afterwards itcropped up as inevitably in my work as King Charles's head in Mr Dick'sMemorial, but at least it has enabled me to feel that few writers offiction in my time have gone nearer to reality in their studies thanmyself. I certainly worked the little mine that I had opened for allthat it was worth, and readers of mine who give themselves the troubleto remember will recall the wanderings of the hero of _Skeleton Keys_, of Frank Fairholt, of Hiram Search and of young George Bushell. Speakingof Hiram Search naturally reminds me of Charles Reade. I dedicated thebook in which Hiram appears to that great writer and sent a copy ofit to him with what I daresay was a somewhat boyish letter. I have theterms of my dedication in mind still, and I remember that I wrote of agreat genius which has always been put to lofty uses. Reade's letterin response has always held a place amongst my treasures. "It is nodiscredit, " he wrote, "for a young man to appreciate his seniors beyondtheir merits. " I have always thought that very noble and modest andwell-said. Reade is the only one of the writers who in my own boyhoodwere already reckoned great with whom it was my happiness to come intopersonal contact. 

I have met with but four men in my experience who have beendistinguished by that splendid urbanity of manner which was once thoughtto express the acme of high breeding. Charles Reade was one of them. Inever knew him intimately enough to get beyond it, but that hehimself could break through it upon occasion was known to everybody. Abeautiful, stately cordiality commonly marked his social manner, but hecould be moved to a towering rage by an act of meanness, treachery oroppression; and in his public correspondence he was sometimes downrightvitriolic. Hardly anything could have excused the retort he flung atsome unhappy disputant who had called one of his facts in question. "You have dared, " he wrote, "to contradict me on a subject in which I amprofoundly learned, while you are ignorant as dirt. " It was true enough, but perhaps it was hardly worth while to say it in that fashion. Nearlyall his life he was embroiled in controversy of one sort or another. Hespent himself in the exposure of abuses and the people whom he exposedassailed him rashly. He took prodigious pains to be accurate, and beforehe assaulted the prison system in _It's Never Too Late to Mend_, or theconduct of private lunatic asylums in _Hard Cash_, he had gathered andindexed huge volumes of information culled from every available source. These memoranda he called _nigri loci_. His system of indexing was soprecise that he could lay an instant finger on any fact of which he wasin search, and nobody who ventured to impugn his facts escaped from himunmutilated. In one instance, a barrister was so misguided as to tellhim publicly that a legal incident in one of the two books I havementioned was obviously impossible and absurd. 

Reade was down upon him like a hammer: "The impossibility in questiondisguised itself as fact and went through the hollow form of takingplace" on such and such a date, in such and such a court, and theproceedings were recorded in volume so and so, on certain pages of theofficial Law Reports for a given year. His adversary was left with nobetter resource than to charge him with hurling undigested lumpsof official documents at the head of the public; and this left hisequanimity undisturbed. 

But it was when they charged him with plagiarism that his critics hithim on the raw. About the time when I first knew him somebody started acontroversy with respect to his story of _The Wandering Heir_, and theaccusation was made that he had lifted a page or two out of Swift's_Polite Conversations_. "Of course I did, " said Reade to me, "but theessence of a plagiarism is that it shall have some chance of goingundetected; it is the appropriation to one's self of the property ofanother with the intent to display it as one's own, and to me it wasimpossible to suppose that a writer like Dean Swift was so obscure thatI could play a trick like that with him with impunity. A recognisablequotation is not a plagiarism. They brought the same charge against mebecause I translated the etchings of Corot into accurate English. Thesources I tapped for _The Cloister and the Hearth_ are open to anybody, and any man who chooses may study them and make a romance out of them ifhe can. It is perfectly true that I milked three hundred cows into thatbucket, but the butter I churned was my own. " It seems scarcely fair tohave brought such an accusation against a writer who not only madeno disguise of his literary methods, but who so openly proclaimed anddefended them. 

In the last page of _The Cloister and the Hearth_ he acknowledges hisdebt to the great Erasmus, for example, in these very noble and eloquentphrases:--"Some of the best scenes in this new book are from hismediaeval pen and illumine the pages where they come; for the words ofa genius so high as his are not born to die: their immediate work uponmankind fulfilled, they may seem to lie torpid; but at each fresh showerof intelligence Time pours upon her students, they prove their immortalrace; they revive, they spring from the dust of great libraries; theybud, they flower, they fruit, they seed from generation to generation, and from age to age. " The professional critics have never been just toReade, but it is a fact that I have never encountered a workman in thecraft of fiction who did not reckon him a master among the masters. Ithas long seemed to me that _The Cloister and the Hearth_ is, in fiction, the only real revival of a dead age in the whole range of imaginativeliterature. When Mr Conan Doyle, as he then was, was lecturing in theUnited States, we met one evening at the Parker House in Boston, and hesaid one thing about that immortal book which I have ever since thoughtmemorable. "To read _The Cloister and the Hearth_" he declared, "islike going through the Dark Ages with a dark lantern. " And indeed thecriticism is true. You travel from old Sevenbergen to mediaeval Romeand every man and woman you encounter on the way is indisputablyalive, though there is no he or she amongst them all who has a touchof modernity. They are of their epoch, from Denys of Burgundy to thePrincess Clælia, from the _mijaurée_ of the Tête D'Or to the tiredand polished old gentleman who for the time being presides over thedestinies of the Church of Rome. Here, for once, a prodigious facultyfor taking pains is used with genius, and the chances are that theauthor of this monumental work, despised as he too often was as amere sensationalist in his own day, will survive a score of hiscontemporaries who are even at this hour, by common critical consent, placed over him. 

He was always fighting against some legal oppression. In the latest casein which I knew him to be engaged, an attempt had been made by a wealthyground landlord to squeeze an unprotected widow lady out of her rightsand to compel her to surrender the house and grounds which had belongedto her deceased husband. With the impetuosity which distinguished him insuch matters, Reade flung himself into the conflict. It was enough forhim to know that an injustice was being done or attempted to fire him atthe centre. He caused to be inscribed on the outer wall of the gardenof the mansion in dispute the words, "Naboth's Vineyard, " and he used torelate with great glee how a Jew old clothesman one day translated thisinto "Naboth's Vinegar, " and after a wondering reading of it, said:"Good Lord! I should have taken it for a gentlemanth houth. " "Fromwhich, " said Reade, quaintly, "you may conclude that Houndsditch thumbsnot the annals of Samaria!"

That shapeless production _Grace Forbeach_ had one idea in it which Iwas able to use later on to some advantage. In those days a writer offiction expended much more care upon the actual mechanism of his plotthan seems to be thought necessary nowadays. Even a man of the genius ofCharles Dickens did not feel himself at liberty to work untrammelled bythe exigencies of some intricate and harassing framework of invention onwhich he made it his business to hang all his splendours of descriptionand his observation of human character. The power of the plot in Englishfiction found its culmination in the work of Wilkie Collins, whose_Moonstone_ is probably the finest piece of mere literary cabinet-makingin the world. All the younger writers of his time were strongly underhis domination and it was quite a necessity for us to have some merelymechanical central idea round which we could evolve a story which, inits serial form, should keep the reader perpetually upon the tenterhooksof expectation. Such an idea I had stumbled on in _Grace Forbeach_ whereone of the characters was made feloniously to possess himself of hisown property and thereby rendered himself liable to penal servitude. Ielaborated this notion in _Joseph's Coat_ and made the development ofthe whole fable dependent on it. 

Leaving forgotten _Grace Forbeach_ out of the reckoning, _Joseph's Coat_was my third novel in the order of writing and the second in order ofpublication. The second half of _A Life's Atonement_ was written underdifficulties which would have been absolutely insurmountable if it hadnot been for that spirit of camaraderie which distinguished the jollylittle Bohemian set amongst whom I had fallen. One chum who lived overan undertaker's shop in Great Russell Street found me house-room, andI had a resource from which, for the space of some ten weeks, I wasentitled to draw one pound a week, which came to me in rather an oddfashion. Every morning a half-crown was slipped under the doormat, except on Saturdays, when three were left there, one for the needsof the day and a double allowance for the Sunday. A loaf and a tin ofChicago beef stocked the larder, and that being once attended to, theremnant of my income served for such necessaries of life as beer andtobacco, and pen and ink and paper. The bargain I had made with MessrsChambers was that I should receive one-half payment for the book--onehundred and twenty-five pounds--on delivery and acceptance, and theother half on the conclusion of the serial publication of the story intheir journal. This left an interval of twelve months between the twopayments, and the first was all but exhausted when my second commissionfrom the firm reached me. It was then drawing towards the close of theyear, and Mr Robert Chambers wrote me to say that the writer with whomhe had bargained to follow _A Life's Atonement_ had broken down inhealth, and asking if I were in a position to supply her place. I wentoff post-haste to Edinburgh and saw him there, and it was arrangedbetween us that I should deliver to him six chapters of an originalnovel per week, that I should remain in the neighbourhood of Edinburghin order to give him opportunity for consultation from time to time, andthat whilst the book was being written I should receive a living wage. He recommended me to locate myself in Portobello, and there in the deadseason I had no difficulty in finding lodgings. 

I had scarcely deposited my portmanteau when I set to work. I began towrite without the faintest idea of a plan, and for the first day ortwo I swam boldly enough along the stream of chance. The first chapterspleased Robert Chambers greatly and he was wise and generous enough tosay so. For six tremendous weeks I wrote, beginning punctually everymorning at eight o'clock and pretty generally bringing the day's work toa finish in the neighbourhood of midnight. I gave myself two half-hoursfor exercise and rambled in all sorts of weather about the sands and thedeserted promenade. I was approaching the end of the work when a verycurious experience befell me. I was sitting towards the end of the day'slabour at my table when I felt suddenly that somebody was standing justbehind me. The impression was so strong that I turned round hastily andmade a survey of the little room. There was nobody there and I went backto work again. The feeling returned so often that I repeatedly foundmyself turning round in the middle of a sentence, but in an hour at mostI was able to dismiss the fancy for the time. I got to bed too excitedand too tired to sleep, and whilst I was lying there in the dark, theidea of that fancied presence came back again. It was standing atmy bed-head in the darkness, and though I knew that to be a physicalimpossibility because the bed and the wall were close together, I foundmyself no longer able to dismiss the image. I went to sleep in spite ofit at last, but at the instant at which I sat down at my table to takeup the thread of last night's work, it was there again. Little by littleit assumed shape and colour in my imagination, until at last it was asclearly present to me as if I had seen it with my bodily eyes. I haveit before me at this instant; it was the figure of a man in mediaevalcostume, in trunk and hose and doublet, and his clothing was red on oneside and yellow on the other. The face, so far as it could be seen, wascadaverous and cruel, but half of it was concealed by a black vizor ofvelvet, through which lamped a pair of dark, unwinking eyes. The figurewas there all day and every minute of the day, but I pegged stolidly onand gave as little heed as I could to it. But that night when I hadgot to bed, a development occurred. The figure took up that impossibleposition at my head, and I became aware that it had, balanced over itsshoulder, an axe with a broad back and an edge like a razor, with whichit stood in act to strike. 

I got out of bed and re-lit the lamp, refilled my pipe and sat down tothink things over. Wherever I went, the figure was behind me and alwaysin the same threatening attitude. I began to talk to it at last inset phrases: "I know perfectly well what you are, " I said; "you arean inhabitant of the land of Mental Overwork. I'm going to hold you atarm's length, because if I allowed you to take liberties, you might growdangerous. We will travel together if you will insist upon it untilthis book is finished and then I will take you into some quiet, rural, restful place and lose you. " I did not lose him when the work was over;he went about with me for a week or two. He travelled with me fromEdinburgh to London, then from London by the long sea-route to Antwerp;from Antwerp to tranquil little Roche-fort in the Belgian Ardennes; andit was not until I found myself one day with my easel and my paintboxsketching some quaint bulbous old trees in the Avenue des Tilleuls, thatI woke up to the fact that I had lost him. He came back to me once moreand once only. I think it was owing to the fact that a fire had occurredat the printing premises of Messrs Grant & Co. In Turnmill Street, inwhich the manuscript of a work of fiction had been destroyed, that I wasasked by my old friend Gowing to put extra pressure upon myself for thecompletion of a story on which I was engaged for him. It was a questionof days and almost of hours, and I remember that at the last, fromFriday morning until late on Sunday night, I wrote almost incessantly, snatching an hour or two's sleep in an armchair, only when Natureimperatively demanded it. I delivered the manuscript in person on Mondaymorning and as I was walking home along Holborn, I suddenly became awareof the presence of my old unpleasant comrade. I gibed at him with afeeling of perfect security, but I was brought to a halt by a suddenhorrible discovery--the paving-stone in front of me was not a realpaving-stone at all but a mere paper imitation, with an actuallymeasureless gulf below it. The delusion was so real and convincing thatI was able to pursue my way only by the most desperate resolution, andall the way to Fitzroy Square, where I was living at the time, the fearclung to me. I took a liberal dose of whisky, went to bed and slept theclock round, and woke to find the whole thing vanished. 

I spent five happy years at Rochefort, and although when I first wentthere I had no idea of staying for more than three or four weeks' restand quiet, it was actually eighteen months before I left the place atall. 

In dealing with my experiences in the Press gallery of the House ofCommons, I had occasion to speak of the curious premonition whichassailed me at the instant at which the unfortunate Dr Kenealy made useof the rhetorical symbol of the dewdrops and the lion's mane. I donot know that I have any right to claim the possession of any psychicfaculty which goes beyond the ordinary, but I do know that that sortof premonition of a coming circumstance has not been at all rare inmy experience. Something very like it befell me whilst I was living atRochefort, and in that instance it proved of signal service to me, Iwrote the final scene of _Joseph's Coat_ on a certain wintry day and waswithin a page or two of the conclusion of the story when I was called toluncheon. In the ardour of work I had allowed the fire to die out in mybedroom stove, and encountering on the stairs a certain lout, whosename was Victor, who did duty about the stables of the hotel, I gavehim instructions to see to it. Ten minutes later a dreadful inspirationoccurred to me, and I dashed upstairs. The man was kneeling beforethe stove and was in the very act of striking a lucifer match when Iarrived. A glance at my writing-table showed me that the impulse onwhich I had acted was only too well-founded. The man had taken a dozenpages of my manuscript, and an instant later he would have set themblazing. In those days I wrote on an unruled large quarto, and sinceit was my habit to crowd sixteen hundred words into a page, the loss oftime and labour would have been, at least, considerable. I recovered myMS. All crumpled and dirty, and I applied to that ostler pretty nearlyall the opprobrious names in his language with which I was acquainted. "Mais, monsieur, " the criminal responded, "le papier était déjà gâté;vous avez écrit là-dessus. " If this had been intended as a literarycriticism, it might possibly have been justified, but seeing that it wasoffered by a man who could not read, there was something in the frankimbecility of it which disarmed me, and I daresay that the shout oflaughter with which I received it was just as incomprehensible to theman as the rage with which I had fallen upon him only a moment earlier. 

When I first took up my residence in that little Belgian village, Imistook it for an Arcadia, but a more intimate knowledge of it and theacquaintanceship I formed with the village doctor and the _doyen_ of thelittle local cathedral served to undeceive me. It was full of povertyand of all the more sordid forms of vice which everywhere seeminseparable from physical distress and overcrowding. I taught both themedico and the cleric to appreciate the flavour of Scotch whisky, andon many a score of winter nights I used to sit and listen to them whilstthey engaged in long discussions on the Christian faith. The venerable_doyen_ laboured hard to convince the doctor, who was an Agnostic of theaggressive type. "La religion, " said the latter, on one occasion, "estune bonne et belle chose pour les femmes, les enfants et les imbeciles, "but in spite of their antagonism in this respect, they worked togetherwith a devotion which was beyond praise amongst their poor. The priestused to tell the doctor that he would have been the best of Christiansif he had only known it, and the doctor used to assure him in returnthat he would have been the best of men if only his mind had never beendistorted by the fables of the Church. They met on the common groundof benevolence and scholarship and I think they were a pair of themost lovable old fossils I have ever known. The doctor was a man ofprodigious attainment and I often used to wonder what had induced such aman to bury himself in such a place, until I learned that the genial oldbachelor bookworm had known a day of romance long before, and that thelady of his choice had, on the very eve of marriage, resigned herself, like Carlyle's Blumine, to wed someone richer. The romance spoiled hiscareer, but it was a godsend for his native village, where he labouredtill the day of his death, expending the whole of his professionalincome in works of charity. He has no place in this simple record apartfrom my affectionate remembrance of him and these remembrances may betaken simply as a flower laid in passing on the burial mound of an oldfriend. 

The hunting lodge of Leopold, King of the Belgians--the Château desArdennes, as it is called--is situate some half a dozen miles fromRochefort, on the road to Dinan on the Meuse. It was a favouriterelaxation of mine when I found myself in want of exercise and aholiday, to mount a knapsack and to stroll to Dinan, which is onlya score of English miles away. On one of these jaunts I had my onlyinterview with a reigning monarch. I was sauntering homeward in the duskof a summer's evening when I saw at the gate of the château, a tall, gaunt figure with a long, peaked beard, a pheasant's feather stuck inthe ribbon of a bowler hat, and trousers very disreputably trodden intorags behind. As I passed him he raised his hat and gave me a courteous"Bon soir, monsieur. " I returned his salute and answered "Bon soir, sire. " "Ah, ha!" said His Majesty, like a pleased child, "vous meconnaissez alors?" I responded that everybody knew the King of theBelgians and I added that I had never ventured to enter His Majesty'sdominions without carrying his portrait with me. "Comment donc!" saidHis Majesty, and when I produced a brand new five-franc piece, the jestenjoyed a greater prosperity than it deserved. We got into conversationon the strength of it and he stood for perhaps five minutes chatting notunintelligently about English books and authors. 

The years I spent in Rochefort were, I think, the happiest and mostfruitful of my life, but the last piece of work I did there came verynear to landing me in a contretemps which might, for a time at least, have had an uncomfortable result. At that time Mr James Payn had justtaken over the editorship of the _Cornhill_ magazine, the price of whichhe had reduced to 6d. My story--_By the Gate of the Sea_--had been thelast to appear in the original series founded by Thackeray, and I wasinvited by Mr Payn to inaugurate the new and cheaper issue. With thispurpose I wrote _Rainbow Gold_, and since it was Mr Payn's unbreakableeditorial rule not to take any work into consideration until its lastline was in his hands, and he at this time was in a mighty hurry abouthis literary supplies, I had to undertake again pretty much such aspell of work as I had undertaken with _Val Strange_, and with an almostequally unfortunate result. My methods of work have often brought menear a nervous breakdown, and by the time at which _Rainbow Gold_ wasfinished, I was all but a wreck. It had been arranged between the editorof the _Cornhill_ and myself that the completed copy of my book shouldbe in his hands on a given date, and for some reason I was afraid totrust it to the post, and determined to carry it to London and deliverit with my own hands. For this purpose it was necessary that I shouldcatch the Malle Des Indes early on the Sunday morning at Jemelle twomiles away. I had a little leather case constructed, in which to carrymy manuscript, and this I had seen more than half completed on theThursday afternoon. I strolled into the shop of the village _cordonnier_on Saturday morning to ask why it had not been delivered, and I foundthe man busy on a duplicate of it which he promised to deliver beforethe evening. It came out on inquiry that he had sold the case I hadordered to a person who described himself as a commercial traveller, and who was staying at the Chevaux Blancs, a little hotel in the villagewhich was frequented by people of his class. I satisfied myself that thework would be done in time, and when it was delivered in the course ofthe evening, I naturally supposed that there was an end of the matter. Imet the purchaser of my box on the platform at Jemelle, and we travelledby the same train as far as Lille. There I got another momentary glimpseof him and thenceforth saw him no more. 

I travelled on to Dover without adventure, but there, as I was quittingthe boat, I was encountered by a man who, although he was in plainclothes, was immediately recognisable as a member of the police force. He laid his hand upon my shoulder and said: "I beg your pardon, but Imust ask you to accompany me to the Captain's cabin. " I not unnaturallyasked him why. He pointed to the box I held and asked if that were myproperty. I answered of course in the affirmative and he said in quitethe official manner that he must trouble me to go with him, and madea motion to relieve me of my burden. I handed the box to him and heconducted me, still with a hand upon my shoulder, to the companion-way. In the captain's cabin I found two or three men who were all very grave, and all very suave and polite. One of them asked me my name, and anotherwhether I had not left the village of Rochefort by such and such a trainin the morning. I answered both questions without hesitation, and Inoticed that my interlocutor looked a little puzzled. I was asked nextwhat I was carrying in that leathern case, and, by way of answer, I unlocked the box and produced my manuscript. There was a curiousrestraint visible in the manner of my examiners when I performed thissimple action, and I could not in the least understand it at the time, although its reason became clear enough a minute later. "I beg yourpardon, Mr Murray, " said the man who had first laid a detaining handupon me, "there has been a mistake, but we were compelled to do ourduty. " He intimated that I was at liberty to go, which in some heat Ideclined to do, until I had received some explanation of this arrest ofa private citizen bound on legitimate affairs. I had missed the tidaltrain, and I represented that this had caused me some inconvenience. 

Then the truth came out The hotel des Chevaux Blancs, in innocentseeming little Roche-fort, had been for some months past a hot-bed ofEuropean anarchy. The people who went and came there were surroundedby spies, and the police of Dover had been advised by telegraph, of thedeparture of a noted anarchist, who was carrying precisely such a boxas that in which I had bestowed my manuscript. Before I left Dover, ittranspired that a man had been arrested in Folkestone who was carryingwith him enough of Atlas dynamite to have wrecked a whole square. Themovements of each of us had been watched by the continental police, and had been wired to England. There had been a moment at which the twoboxes had been laid on the same bench on the platform at Jemelle, andI have often since pictured to myself the imbroglio which might haveensued if they had been accidentally exchanged. It could not have lastedlong in the nature of things, but it would certainly have afforded me anew experience. 

I have had a good deal to do with the police in my time, as most workingjournalists have, and this reminds me of one or two adventures which, ifI had preserved a chronological order in my narrative, should havebeen told earlier. Before I left Birmingham I became acquainted with anofficer who afterwards became eminent in the service of Scotland Yard. The fashion in which we were introduced to each other was sufficientlydramatic. It was an hour after midnight in a heavy rain and the placewas Pinfold Street, at the back of the premises of the _BirminghamMorning News_. A bedraggled woman ran shrieking uphill with criesof "help" and "murder, " and behind her staggered a drunken ruffianbrandishing a club which, when we came to examine it later, proved tohave been sawn from the top of an old-fashioned mahogany bedstead. Itwas simply rounded at one end and square and heavy at the other, and itwould infallibly have done the business of any person with whose headit had come in contact. I was encumbered with a heavy ulster which wasbuttoned down almost to my feet and I should certainly have been toolate to prevent mischief, but just as the pursuer came withinstriking distance an agile figure darted round the corner and themurderous-minded drunkard dropped like an ox in the shambles at a singleblow. The newcomer was a plain-clothes policeman and he had used a pairof handcuffs as a knuckle-duster and had taken the ruffian clean on thepoint of the chin. I accompanied him and his captor to the Moor Streetpolice station and got a paragraph out of the incident before the paperwent to bed. 

I saw no more of my plain-clothes man for a month or two and then an oddcircumstance threw us together again. My father, who was still carryingon business in West Bromwich, was a letterpress printer only, but hereceived an occasional order for copperplate and lithographic work whichhe handed over either to a Mr Storey in Livery Street, or to the firm ofW. & B. Hunt in New Street. I had been over to call on him one eveningand he had asked me to attend to some slight commission with eitherof these firms. I called first on the Livery Street man, whoseestablishment was just outside Snow Hill station, and found him lookingat a queer copperplate impression which lay on the counter before him. 

"There's something uncommonly queer about this, " he said, "and I don'tknow that I ought to go on with it; it strikes me very forcibly that anattempt is being made to forge a Russian note and that this is a part ofthe process. " The lines on the paper made a sort of hieroglyphic puzzlewhich it was quite impossible to decipher. I asked him what he intendedto do with it and he answered that he would fulfil his order and setthe police upon the track of the people who had given it. I went on toMessrs Hunt's printing works in New Street and there I found one of thepartners poring over what at first sight looked like a replica of theimpression I had just seen. I said nothing about the matter and nothingwas said to me, but when I had transacted my business and had got outinto the street again the first man I encountered was my plain-clothespoliceman. I told him that I thought I was on the track of a littlebit of business in his line and I took him back into the office of thecopperplate printer and introduced him. It had just occurred to me thatif the two plates I had seen were accurately registered they mightfit into each other and make out a consecutive document, and so in thesequel it proved to be. A gang of Polish forgers had conceived theidea that in a foreign country it would be possible to get two separateengravers to imitate each a portion of a fifty-rouble note and they hadmade arrangements to do their own printing when they had secured theplates. I made arrangements with my detective that he should bring mefirst hand and exclusive information with respect to the development ofthe case and within eight and forty hours he had effected his arrest andI was the only journalist in the town who was allowed to know anythingabout it. Had I stayed on in Birmingham I might have developed a sort ofspecialism in this direction, but circumstances drifted me away and itwas not until some years later that I met my friend again and found himto be occupying a position on the detective staff at Scotland Yard. He told me how he came there and, in its way, it is one of the mostremarkable little stories I remember to have heard. 

There was a manufacturing jeweller in Camberwell whose name wasWhitehead, who had a showroom somewhere in the neighbourhood of St. Paul's Cathedral. Seventeen years there had been in his employ acommercial traveller in whom he reposed the completest confidence. Thistraveller had a very pretty turn for the invention of ornamental designsin fgold and precious stones and he was an accomplished draughtsman. Inhis journeys about the country he carried with him a tray of pinchbeckand of coloured glass, which represented in duplicate a tray of realjewellery and precious stones which was kept under lock and key at theshowroom. It happened, whether by accident or design, that the one traywas substituted for the other, the pinchbeck imitations being left inthe jeweller's safe and the real thing carried away by the commercialtraveller. The fact of the substitution was not discovered for some daysand by that time the traveller, following his ordinary route, shouldhave been in Manchester or Liverpool. He was wired to at both places butno reply was received from him. Not a doubt of the man's probity enteredinto his employer's mind, but when all efforts to trace him hadfailed the jeweller became alarmed for the safety of his employé andcommunicated with the police. 

Now, as fortune would have it, the young Birmingham detective had beensent up to London at this time and, calling at Scotland Yard, he hadput into his hands some copies of the document by which the police werecirculating the news of the traveller's disappearance, together with awoodcut reproducing a photograph which had been taken some years beforeand had willingly been surrendered to Mr. Whitehead by the traveller'swife, who was naturally in great distress concerning him. It wasthe general impression at the time that he had been decoyed away andmurdered for the sake of the valuable property he carried, which wasof such a nature that it might easily have been disposed of by thecriminal--the gold being melted down and the precious stones beingdisposed of in the ordinary way of business. At Euston Station thatafternoon, on his way back to Birmingham, the provincial detective hadone fellow-traveller to whom, but for one singular little circumstance, he would probably have paid no heed whatever. The fellow-traveller hadone article of luggage only, but he seemed to be unusually anxious aboutit. It was a hat-box and when he had placed it on the rack overheadhe appeared to be unwilling to leave it out of sight for more than aninstant at a time. He arose a score of times to readjust it and whenhe was not occupied in that way he kept a constant eye upon it. "I'mno great Scripture reader, " said the detective to me, in telling methe story, "but when I was a kid my mother used to read the Bible to meevery day and one text came into my mind when I saw that cove so anxiousabout his hat-box: 'Where the treasure is, there will the heart bealso. ' It kept coming back into my mind and somehow I got to thinkingthat if it had not been for certain things about him the man inthe carriage would have been very like the man whose portrait anddescription I had just been looking at. The man described had featuresof a marked Jewish cast and so had the man in the carriage, but the mandescribed had red hair, thick red eyebrows and a beard and moustache ofthe same colour. The man in the carriage was clean shaved and his hairand eyebrows were as black as a crow's back, but I had got the idea inmy mind and I couldn't get it out again, and when he turned his facesideways to look out of the window the light fell on his cheek and, though the whisker had only just begun to sprout after his last shave, I could see that by nature he was as rusty as a jot. I felt downrightcertain of him from that very minute. He got out at Rugby, taking hishat-box with him, and as I had no funds with me I was afraid I was goingto lose him, but he only went into the refreshment room for a glass ofbeer and a sandwich and came back with me and travelled comfortablyon to Birmingham. There he engaged a room at the Queen's Hotel for thenight, and having locked up his hat-box in it he went away to order asupply of clothes and linen, as I found out afterwards. I nipped down toMoor Street and told them what I had to say. I got my authority to act, and when my gentleman got back again, I was there all ready for him witha fellow-officer and we nabbed him at his bedroom door. He nipped out arevolver and tried to shoot himself, but we were too quick for him. We made him give up the key of the hat-box and there, sure enough, wasevery one of the missing jewels. He had torn the velvet lining out ofthe case and had thrown everything into it pell-mell and wrapped it upin two or three towels so, I suppose, that the contents of the hat-boxcouldn't jingle. My getting him was just an accident from start tofinish, and if it had not been for that text of Scripture I should neverhave given the man a second thought, but it was reckoned a smartishcapture and it ended in my promotion and my coming here. "

CHAPTER XIII *

 Eight Hours Day in Melbourne--The Australian Born-- Australians and the Mother Country--The Governor--_The Sydney Bulletin_--The Englishman in Australia--Australian Journalism--The Theatres--The Creed of Athleticism--The Future. 

It is many years since I saw a sight which so pricked and stirred myblood as the final episode of the procession of Eight Hours Day inMelbourne. The day was wintry and dismal. Early rains had threatenedthe dispersal of the patient crowds which lined the roads; the pavementswere muddy and the sky was lowering. The march of the trades bodies didlittle to dispel the gloom of the day for the one onlooker concerningwhose sentiments I am authorised to speak. The vast crowd gave eachtrade a reception as it passed, and sometimes the marchers passed belowthe Treasury windows and cheered the governor. There was plenty ofnoise and enthusiasm, but I was unawakened until the tail-end of theprocession came. Two brakes drew up below the governor's standing-place, and some score of grey-bearded men rose up in these vehicles and wavedtheir hats with vigour, whilst the whole orderly mob roared applause atthem and Lord Hopetoun himself clapped his hands like a pleased boy atthe theatre. All the men in the two brakes were elderly and grey-headed, but as far as I could see, they were all stalwart and able-bodied, andthe faces of a good many were bronzed with years of sun and wind. Overthe leading vehicle was suspended a strip of white cloth, and on thiswas painted the words, "The Pioneers. " These men were the makersof Victoria, the fathers of the proud and populous city which laywidespread about us. There is no need to be eloquent about Melbourne. Too many people have sung its praises already. But it is one of thecities of the world; it has a population of over half a million; it hasits churches, its chapels, its synagogues, its theatres, its hotels; itis as well furnished in most respects as any other city of its size; andthese grey men yet staunch in body, bronzed and bright-eyed, were amongthe beginners of it. When I first visited Melbourne I was introduced toa man who, between the present site of the Roman Catholic Cathedral andthe present site of the Town Hall, had been "bushed" for a whole day andlost in the virgin forest. I knew already how young the city was, howstrangely rapid its growth had been; but I did not realise what I knew, and these elderly strangers' bodily presence made my thought concrete. That beautifully appropriate and dramatic finish struck the same chordof wonder, but with a fuller sound. 

 * These Antipodean notes, dealing with the conditions of some twenty years ago, have lost nothing of their vivid interest by the lapse of time, and illustrate in a remarkable manner the process of history being made for the world, while it hardly has time to wait. 

The city is commonplace enough in itself, but the Victorian, quitejustifiably, refuses to think so. Men come back from London, andParis, and Vienna, and New York, and think Melbourne the finer forthe contrast. In reality, it is very very far from being so; but itis useless to reason with patriotism and its convictions. The menof Victoria run devotion to their soil to an extreme. I was told anexquisite story, for the truth of which I had a solemn voucher, thoughit carries its evidences of veracity and needs no bolstering fromwithout. An Australian-born--he came of course from that Gascony of theAntipodes which has Melbourne for its capital--visited the home country. An old friend of his father was his cicerone in London and took him, amongst other places, to Westminster Abbey, and "There, my youngfriend, " said the Englishman, when they had explored the noble oldbuilding, "you have nothing like that in Australia. " "My word, " saidthe colonial export, "no fear! You should just see the Scotch church atBallarat!"

The tale is typical. I would tell it, in the hope that he would find itan _open-sesame_ to many things, to any fair-minded and observantman who was going out to Victoria. It is a little outrageous to thestranger, but in it the general public sentiment is drawn in grandoudines, magnified many times, but not in the least caricatured. Thepatriotic prejudice goes everywhere. It lives at the very roots of life. Truthful men will tell you that London is vilely supplied with cabs incomparison with Melbourne. They believe it. They will tell you thatthe flavours of English meats, game, fruits and vegetables are vastlyinferior to those they know at home. And they believe it. To theunprejudiced observer Melbourne is the worst cabbed city in the world, or amongst the worst. A gourmet would find a residence in Australia apurgatory. For my own part, I have learned in a variety of roughschools at whatsoever meat I sit therewith to be content. In matters ofgourmandise I am content wi' little and cantie wi' mair. 

But, Shade of Savarin! How I relish my morning sole, after two yearsbanishment from that delicious creature! How I savour my saddle ofmutton! What a delightful thing I now know my English strawberry to be!But to the New South Welshman my doctrine is a stumbling-block and tothe Victorian it is foolishness. Mr Sala preached it years ago and theconnoisseurs of the Greater Britain of the south have never forgivenhim. 

Another patriotic delusion is the glorious climate. The plain fact isthat there is no such thing as a climate. They take their weather inlaminae, set on end. You walk from the tropics to the pole in fiveminutes. A meteorological astonishment lies in wait at every corner ofthe street. It blows hot, it blows cold, it scorches, it freezes, itrains, it shines, and all within the compass of an hour. Yet thesewonderful Australians love their weather. Other people would endureit. They brag about it. I think they must be the happiest people in theworld. 

By the way, I must qualify, before I forget to do so, the judgmentexpressed above with respect to the Australian table. I tasted inAdelaide a favourable specimen of the wild turkey, and I believe it tobe the noblest of game birds. Its flavour is exquisite and you maycarve at its bounteous breast for quite a little army of diners. Andthe remembrance of one friendly feast puts me in mind of many. Is thereanywhere else on the surface of our planet a hospitality so generous, so free and boundless, as that extended to the stranger in Australia? Ifthere be I have not known it. They meet you with so complete a welcome. They envelop you with kindness. There is no _arrière pensée_ in theircordiality, no touch lacking in sincerity. This is a characteristic ofthe country. The native born Australian differs in many respects fromthe original stock, but in this particular he remains unchanged. Youpresent a letter of introduction and this makes you the immediate friendof its recipient. He spares no pains to learn what you desire and thenhis whole aim and business in life for the moment is to fulfil yourwishes. Your host will probably be less polished than an Englishmanliving in a like house and boasting an equal income, but his _bonhomie_is unsurpassed. I used to think there was nothing like an Englishwelcome. Australia has killed that bit of English prejudice. 

This very openness of welcome, the sincerity of heart in which your hoststands before you, is the means whereby the traveller first learns tobe dissatisfied. He has come out with his own judgment of things rayingfrom him in all directions--a very porcupine of pre-conception. He isnot merely persuaded that the colonies are loyal but he is certain theyare loyal after his own conceptions of loyalty. 

So long as he encounters only the old folks he will find hispre-conceptions flattered, but he will not go long before he meetsa member of the A. N. A. (which letters being interpreted signify theAustralian Natives Association), and then he must be prepared to beastonished beyond measure. In a while, if he be a man of sense, he willbegin to see how natural the position of the Australian native is, andthen he will cease to be astonished, though he may still be grieved. The society is large and powerful. It includes within its ranks a greatnumber of the most capable of the rising men and the younger of thosealready risen. Speaking broadly, its aspiration is for a separatenational life. It will "cut the painter"--that is the phrase--whichties it to the old ship of state. In its ranks are many who love theold country and reverence its history and traditions, and these anEnglishman only remarks with a readier excuse for what he must esteem anerror. But there are others, and the melancholy fact, too long concealedor slighted, is that they are many and growing in numbers, who hateEngland and all things English. There are many, not stigmatised asdullards or as fools, who publicly oppose the teaching of Englishhistory in the State schools. The feeling against England is not afantastical crank, it is a movement growing yearly in strength. I haveseen men keeping their seats in serious protesting silence when thehealth of the Queen has been drunk at public banquets, and have found inprivate converse that hundreds approve their action but do not followit because they dislike to be thought singular. The out-and-outjournalistic supporters of the country vilify the mother country asa whole. They belittle its history and besmirch its rulers. LoyalAustralians pooh-pooh these prints and entreat the stranger withintheir gates to believe that they are despised and without influence. The stranger has only to travel to learn better than this. The strongestcurrent of Australian feeling is setting with the tide of growing poweragainst the mother country. 

That this statement will excite anger and derision in the minds of manyAustralians is certain. They live entrenched in the flutters of theirown opinion, and are blind to the fact of the power which is musteringagainst them. They are as little instructed as to what is goingon around them as we are at home, and our ignorance of our greatdependencies is shameful and criminal. Our colonial governors, from someof whom we are supposed ourselves to learn something, and many of whomhave been men of especial capacity, do not come in contact with thecrowd. Lord Carrington saw more of the people amongst whom he lived thanany governor before him, and I had from him a single story of a man ofthe country who expressed in drunken Saxon his opinion of existing formsof government; but the tale was jocularly told and was not supposed tohave any importance. It could have had no importance to one who found ita single instance, as a governor would be likely to do. A governor seessmooth things. All sorts of people (except the working sort) frequenthis receptions--the fashionable classes, who are far more loyal toEngland for the most part than the English themselves, their fringe, andthen the wealthier of the tradespeople. It is proven every day that ademocracy is the happiest hunting ground for a man with a title. Thevery rarity of the distinction makes it more precious to those who valueit, and the titled governors of one of our great colonies occupiesa position which is vastly higher in public esteem than that of hisfellow-noblemen at home. He is the local fount of honour. To sit athis table, and to be on terms of friendship with him is to gratify thehighest social ambition. He is the direct representative of the Crown, and the people who desire to associate with him must not have viewswhich are inimical to existing forms of government, or, if they holdthem, they must keep them carefully concealed. The governor responds tothe toast of his own health and talks of those ties which bind and mustbind the mother country to her children. His hearers are at one withhim, and cheer him with hearty vigour. Absence from the dear old landhas made their hearts grow fonder. Their loyalty is perfervid. Everybodygoes home in a sentimental glow and the native born working-man readshis _Sydney Bulletin_ over a long-sleever and execrates the name of thecountry which bore his father and mother. 

The journal just named is very capably written and edited. The brightestAustralian verse and the best Australian stories find their way intoits columns. Its illustrations are sometimes brilliant, though the highstandard is not always maintained. And having thus spoken an honest mindin its favour I leave myself at liberty to say that it is probably thewrongest-headed and most mischievous journal in the world. People try totreat it as a negligible quantity when they disagree with it. But I haveseen as much of the surface of the country and as much of its peopleas most men, and I have found the pestilent print everywhere, andeverywhere have found it influential. For some time past it has beentelling blood-curdling stories of the iniquities of prison rule inTasmania, with the tacit conclusion that nothing but the power of theworking classes makes a repetition of these atrocities impossible. It compares the Russian Government with the English, and compares itfavourably. It loses no opportunity of degrading all things English asEnglish. England and the Englishman are as red rags to its bull-headedrage. Of course, its readers are not all sincere, though doubtless someof them are. Vast numbers of people who do not agree with it read itfor its stage and social gossip; but there is a class of working-menwho take its absurdities for gospel, and it is one of the factors inthe growing contempt for the mother country which is noticeable amongstuninstructed Australians. 

Another and more potent factor is supplied by Englishmen themselves. Ihave never in my life known anything more offensively insolent than thepatronising tolerance which I have seen the travelling Cockney extendto men of the colonies, who were worth a thousand of him. I have seenan Englishman unintentionally insult a host at his own table, and seteverybody on tenterhooks by his blundering assumption that the colonistsare necessarily inferior to home-bred people. Nobody likes this sort ofthing. Nobody finds himself feeling more kindly to the race which sendsout that intolerable kind of man. 

"Met a girl the other day, " says the eye-glassed idiot, beamingfatuously round the table, "little colonial girl, don't you know. She'dread George Eliot. Never was more surprised in my life. " And this to acompany of Australian ladies and gentlemen bred and born. 

This kind of person has his influence, and on that ground he is to beregretted. The students of men and manners find him as good as meat anddrink; but we cannot all be Touchstones, and perhaps, on the whole, itwould be well if he were buried. 

Yet another and a still more potent factor is found in the habit whichprevails amongst English fathers and guardians of sending out theirincurable failures to the Colonies. "You shall have one more chance, sir, and it shall be the last. You shall have £100 and your passage outto Australia. This is the last I shall do for you. Now go and neverlet me see your face again. " So the whisky-bitten _vaurien_ goes outto Melbourne, has an attack of delirium tremens aboard ship, findshis alcoholic allowance thenceforward stopped by the doctor's orders, swaggers his brief on the block in Collins Street, hangs about the bars, cursing the colonies and all men and all things colonial in a loud andmasterful voice, to the great and natural contentment of the people ofthe country, pawns his belongings bit by bit, loafs in search of theeleemosynary half-crown or sixpence, and finally goes up country to beloathed and despised as a tenderfoot, and to swell the statistics ofinsanity and disease. The most loyal and friendly of Australians resentthis importation. The uninstructed and untravelled native accepts him asa pattern Englishman, and the satirical prints help out that conclusionin his mind. There is no signboard on the Australian continent thatrubbish of this sort may be shot there, and the English tendency tothrow its waste in that direction has never been regarded in a friendlyspirit. We gave them our convicts for a start and now we give them ourmost dangerous incapables. They do not like this and will never be gotto like it. At the Bluff in New Zealand people show the stranger thesouthernmost gas-lamp in the world. It is the correct thing for thestranger to touch this in order that he may tell of the fact thereafter. The traveller may take the spirit of Sheridan's excellent advice to hisson, and _say_ he has touched it, but as a rule he takes the troubleto go down and do it. I was escorted for this festal ceremony by aresident, and leaning against that southernmost lamp-post was a Scotin an abject state of drunkeness, and as Stevenson says of a similarpersonage, "radiating dirt and humbug. " Nigh at hand was anotherdrunkard, sitting pipe in mouth on an upturned petroleum-tin, and thetwo were conversing. "Et's a nice letde coal'ny, " said the man againstthe lamp-post, "a very nice lettle coal'ny, but it wants inergy, and itwants interprise, and it wants (hie) sobriety. " He spoke with a faceof immeasurable gravity, and I laughed so that I forgot to touch thelamp-post. 

There are countless little matters which help the growing distaste forEnglish people in the Australian mind. Our London journals for the mostpart leave us in profound ignorance of the colonies. We see now andagain a telegram which is Greek to most of us, but we get no consecutiveinformation about our kindred over seas. 

The colonists are perhaps curiously tender to the feeling of the mothercountry and they resent this indifference. It is difficult to expressthe varying sentiments of a community, but in many respects theAustralia of to-day resembles the America which Charles Dickens saw onhis first visit. There is an eager desire to ascertain the opinion ofthe passing English visitor, and this exists inexplicably enough evenamongst the people who despise the visitor, and the land from which hecomes. They ask for candour, but they are angry if you do not praise. Agood many of them, whilst just as eager for judgment as the rest, resentpraise as patronage. It is certain that, in a very little while, this raw sensitiveness will die away, and leave a feeling of nationalsecurity, which will not need to be shored up by every wanderer'sopinion. At present the curiosity for the traveller's opinion is alitde embarrassing, and more than once I was reminded of a drawing ofDu Maurier's in _Punch_ where a big man standing over a little onedeclares: "If any man told me that was not a Titian I would knock himdown, and I want your candid opinion. "

There is a stage of national hobbledehoyhood and Australia has not yetgrown out of it. Vanity, shyness, an intermingling of tenderness andcontempt for outside opinion, a determination to exact considerationbefore yielding it--all these are characteristics. The working man issurly to the man who is better dressed than himself, not because heis naturally a surly fellow, but because he has not yet found a lessrepellent fashion of asserting independence. I shall come to theconsideration of the great colonial labour question by-and-by, but theattitude of the working man is curiously consonant with the monetarycharacteristics of the land he lives in. Labour is growing towards sucha manhood of freedom as has never been achieved elsewhere. It, too, hasreached the hobbledehoy height and has all the signs which mark thatelevation, the brief aspirations, the splendid unformed hopes, and thetouchy irascibility. 

I have said what I can to justify the dislike of England, but have byno means exhausted the explanations of the fact There are explanationswhich do not justify and the most important of all seems to me to comeunder that head. The greatest danger to the contented union of theEmpire is the protecting of a selfishness so abnormal as to excite angerand impatience. But since anger and impatience are the worst weaponswith which it is possible to fight, it will be wise to lay them by, and to discuss the question unemotionally. Australia is governed by theworking man. The working man has got hold of a good thing in Australia, and he has resolved to keep it and, if he can, to make it better. He hasgot it into his head that the one thing to be afraid of is the influx ofpopulation. He takes no count of the fact that all the wisest men ofthe country admit the crying need of people--that labour everywhere isneeded for the development of giant resources. His loaf is his, and heis quite righteously determined that no man shall take it from him. He is not in the least degree determined that he shall not take awayanother man's loaf; but that is a different question. England is the onecountry in the world which can, under existing circumstances, or undercircumstances easily conceivable, seek to send any appreciable number ofnew people into the colony. Therefore England is to be feared and hated, and any scheme which may be promulgated in favour of further emigrationis to be resisted to the uttermost. Men talk of war as the answer to anattempt to deplete by emigration the overcrowded labour markets of thehome country. No public man who sets the least value upon his positiondares discuss this question. The feeling is too deep-rooted and itsmanifestations are too passionate. The scheme propounded by GeneralBooth afforded an opportunity for a striking manifestation of this fact. Long before the nature of the scheme was known or guessed at, before anyof the safeguards surrounding it were hinted, it was denounced fromone end of the country to the other. It is not my present business toexpress any opinion as to the feasibility of the plan. The point is thatthe mere mention of it was enough to excite an intense and spontaneousopposition. Australia will never, except under compulsion, allow anylarge body of Englishmen to enter into possession of any portion of herterritories. The ports for emigration on a large scale are finally anddefinitely closed. 

The population of Australia is 3, 326, 000. These people have an area of3, 050, 000 square miles from which to draw the necessaries and luxuriesof life. Suppose it be allowed that one half the entire country is notand will not be habitable by man. Australians themselves would resentthis estimate as being shamelessly exaggerated, but the supposition is, so far as the argument goes, in their favour. Take away that imagineduseless half and every man, woman and child in the community would stillhave very nearly half a square mile of land if the country were equallydivided. It is evident that the populace is unequal to the properexploitation of the continent Let them multiply as the human race nevermultiplied before and they must still remain unequal to the task beforethem for many centuries. The cry raised is that of "Australia for theAustralians. " Well, who are the Australians? Are they the men of the oldBritish stock who made the country what it is, or the men who had theluck to be born to the inheritance of a splendid position, for whichthey have not toiled? It is the honest simple truth, and no man ought tobe angry at the statement of it--though many will be--that Australiawas built up by British enterprise and British money. It is a Britishpossession still, and without British protection, British gold, and thetrade which exists between it and Britain, would be in a bad way. Lookedat dispassionately, the cry of "Australia for the Australians" seemshardly reasonable. The mother country has a right to something of ashare in the bargain. 

The argument would be infinitely less strong if the Australians wereusing Australia. But they are not. The vast Melbourne, of which Victoriais so proud, holds half the population of the colony, and produceslittle or nothing. Melbourne is the city of brass plates. There are morebrass-plates to the acre in the thoroughfares which diverge fromCollins Street than could be found in any other city of the world. The brass-plate, as all the world knows, is the badge of thenon-producer--the parasite, the middleman, agent, call him what youwill--the man who wears a tall hat and black coat, and who lives ina villa, and lives on and by the products of the labour of others. Associety is constituted he is an essential when he exists in reasonablenumbers. In Melbourne his numbers are out of reason. For almost everyproducer in Victoria there is a non-producer in the capital. In theearly days men went into the country and set themselves to clear andtill the soil. That impulse of energy has died out and a new one hassucceeded it which is infinitely less profitable and wholesome. Thetendency is now towards the city. The one source of permanent wealthis neglected, and commerce and speculation occupy the minds of men whofifty years ago would have raised mutton and wool, corn and wine. Withevery increase of growth in the great city there is a cry for rurallabour to preserve the necessary balance of things. The call is notlistened to or answered, and Melbourne is a hundred times more abnormalthan London. London deals with the trade of the world, and a good halfof its population could not be dispensed with. Within its limits fiveand a half millions do the business of a hundred millions. In Melbournehalf a million do the business of another half a million, and thecountry necessarily suffers. No student of social economy can deny theposition, but the working man will have it otherwise. He is the rulerof Australia and the destinies of a people, pointed out by nature forgreatness, are stationary in his hands. He is worth studying, however, and to convince him may mean the salvation of a continent. There, ashere, the working man is the victim of a prodigious blunder--a mistakeso obvious that the on-looker wonders at his blindness. A month or twoago he was in the thick of a struggle which was everywhere called afight with capital. The real battle, however, was never with capital fora moment. The one engagement--and it ranged all along the linefor months--was between organised and unorganised labour, betweenthe unionists and non-unionists. Wherever a working man of the uniondeclared against the conditions imposed by the employer, a working manoutside the union accepted those conditions. The capitalist changedhis staff--that was all. The unionists were thrown permanently out ofemployment in large numbers, and when at last the strike fizzled out, their leaders made a melancholy proclamation of victory, which deceivednobody, not even themselves. The unionist clock in Australia has beenput back a year or two. It is probable that the men will know with whomthey have to fight before they are again lured into conflict. It is anold adage that much will have more. The Australian working man is thebest fed, the best paid, the best housed, and the least worked of allthe workers of the world. In the great towns house rent is dear, muchdearer than it has a right to be in so new and so wide a country. This is the consequence of the rush for secularisation and theensuing neglect of the resources of the land. Clothing is dear as theconsequence of protective imposts. The Australian working man is astaunch protectionist, being somehow persuaded that it is essential tohis interests that he should suffer for the benefit of his only enemy, the middleman. There are hundreds of restaurants in the second-ratestreets of colonial towns where you may see painted up a legend, "AllMeals--6d. " For that small sum a man may have a sufficiency of hotor cold beef or mutton, bread, tea and a choice of vegetables. I cantestify from personal knowledge that the meals are well cooked, wellserved and plentiful. I have eaten a worse luncheon in a London club orrestaurant than I found at one of these eating-houses in Sydney and havepaid five times the price, although it has to be confessed that forfive times the price one _can_ get a finer meal. More wholesome or moreplentiful fare no man need ask for. 

Well, as I have said, much will have more. The working man has got hiswhole programme filled up. There is one vote for one man, and about thatfact almost the whole land is jubilant--though the practical good of itmay as yet be a problem. The aspiration expressed in the old quatrain isfulfilled. 

 "Eight hours work, Eight hours play, Eight hours sleep, And eight 'bob' a day. "

The Eight Hours movement has been crowned with success, and there is amagnificent annual procession to commemorate it. It is announced that amovement is to be set on foot for the further reduction of the hoursof labour. Six hours a day has to be the limit of the future. The comicjournals, or to speak by the card, the journals which study to be comic, prophesy four hours, two hours, and then no hours at all; but thesecelestial visions are out of the working man's eyeshot. 

Here and there an individual may be found who, being entrusted with anirresponsible power, would not desire to use it tyrannically. But sincecorporations are never so moral, so high-thinking so forbearing asindividuals, corporate bodies tend always and everywhere to the misuseof their powers, and demand constantly to be held in check by someinfluence outside their own. The working man of the Antipodes is toldso often that all the power (as well as all the freedom and the honour)lies in his hands, that he is disposed to do strange things. 

But a mere glance at the history of two phases of the great strikeswhich have lately shaken Australian society may be of service. 

In New Zealand, where, under conditions similar to those of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, the labourer has grown to think himselfmore worthy of his hire than anybody else could possibly be, the fightbetween unionists and non-unionists, with capital as an interestedspectator, began on a curiously trivial question. A firm of printersand stationers in Christchurch were ordered to reinstate or dischargean employee. The firm declined to obey the mandate of the union, andan order went forth from the representatives of the latter body to theeffect that no one belonging to any of its branches should handle thegoods of the obdurate company. This was all very well in its way, until the order touched the railway hands, who are in the employ of thegovernment. The union appealed to the railway commissioners to remain"neutral" and not to carry the goods of the offending firm. Thecommissioners responded that they were the servants of the public; thatit was not part of their business to recognise the quarrel, but thatit was their business to carry for any and every citizen who did notinfringe their rules. The representatives of the union renewed theirappeal for "neutrality. " Why should these domineering commissioners takethe side of capital and fight in its interests? The commissioners againwrote that they were the public carriers, that they had no right torefuse to work for any law-abiding citizen, that they had no place orpart in the quarrel, and intended simply and merely to do the duty forwhich they were appointed. The din which arose on this final declarationwas at once melancholy and comic. 

Here was the government lending all its power to crush the working man. Here was the old class tyranny which had created class hatreds in theold country! This was what we were coming to after having emancipatedourselves from the trammels of a dead or effete superstition! Here wasa government so crassly wicked and purposely blind as to professneutrality and yet refuse to fight our battles! What had we--the workingmen of New Zealand--asked for? We asked that the government should holdour enemy while we punched him; and while they traitorously proclaimedtheir neutrality, they refused this simple request for fair play. Therefore are we, the working men of New Zealand, naturally incensed, and at the next election we will shake these worthless people out ofoffice, and we will elect men like Fish, who know what neutrality reallymeans!

The Hon. Mr Fish was one of the labourers' faithful. The palpableinterference of the Commissioners wounded him profoundly. 

The more recent strike of the Queensland shearers has affordedopportunity for a display of an equal faculty of logic andreasonableness. The shearers, at loggerheads with the squatters, proposed to arrange their differences by arson. They threatened openlyto fire the grass upon those vast northern plains where fire is thething most to be dreaded amongst many and terrible enemies. They notonly threatened but they carried their threats into effect in manyplaces; and but for the exceptional rains, which mercifully interferedbetween them and their purpose, they would have created scenes ofboundless desolation. Here again a government has no sense of fair-play. Troops were sent to watch the shearers' camps and to prevent activehostilities. A natural thrill of horror ran through the country at thisautocratic and unwarrantable act. Here at the Antipodes we havefounded a democracy, and in a democracy the government motto shouldbe nonintervention. The unionist workmen roared with indignation atcountless meetings. Why were not the shearers allowed to settlethe dispute their own way? Why were the poor men to be threatened, intimidated, bullied by armed force? A continent cried shame. When, inthat eight hours' procession to which I have already twice referred theshearers' deputation rode by, they were received with rolling applauseall along the line, and a free people cheered the victims of oppression. 

In the middle of all this madness it was good to see that the greatestof the democratic journals had the courage of honesty and spoke its mindplainly. The _Melbourne Age_ is a very wealthy and powerful journal, butit risked much, for the moment at least, in opposing the mingledvoices of the populace. Excited leaders of the people denounced it inunmeasured epithets, and the crowd boo-hooed outside its offices inCollins Street, but the writers of the journal went their way unmoved, as British journalists have a knack of doing. 

I find here an opportunity of saying the most favourable word I cananywhere speak for the Australian Colonies. The Press is amongst thebest and most notable in the world. The great journals of Melbourne andSydney are models of newspaper conduct, and are nowhere to be surpassedfor extent and variety of information, for enterprise, liberality, and sound adhesion to principle, or for excellence of sub-editorialarrangement, or for force, justice, and exactness in expression. It isnot only in the greater centres that the Press owns and displays theseadmirable characteristics. Adelaide, Brisbane, Dunedin, Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington have each journals of which no city in the worldneed be ashamed; and when the limitations which surround them are takeninto consideration their excellence appears all the more remarkable andpraiseworthy. 

It is not unnatural perhaps that a man trained in English journalism andhaving worked in every grade of it should esteem it highly. But allowingall I can for personal prejudice and striving to look impartially uponit and its rivals, I am compelled to think it far and away the bestin the world. In Australia the high traditions of the parent Press arepreserved, and among many strange and novel and perplexing signs one canbut gratefully and hopefully recognise the splendid enterprise and thelofty sense of public obligation which guide the youngest school ofjournalism in the world. 

In one respect Australian journalism surpasses English. We have nothingto show which will at all compare with the _Australasian_ or the_Leader_; but it is easy to see that they and similar journals of othercities (which are all worthy of the same high praise) are establishedexcellences to local conditions. These great weekly issues give all theweek's news and all the striking articles which have appeared in thedaily journals of which they are at once the growth and compendium. They do much more than this, for they include whatever the gardener, the agriculturist, the housewife, the lady of fashion, the searcher ofgeneral literature, the chess-player, the squatter can most desire toknow. They provide for 'all sorts of tastes and needs, and between theirfirst sheet and their last, they render to their readers what we inEngland buy half a score of special journals to secure. The reason fortheir existence is simple. There is not population enough to supportthe specialist as we know him at home, and an eager and enquiring peoplewill be served. 

The first unescapable belief of the English traveller is that theAustralian is a transplanted Englishman pure and simple. A residence ofonly a few months kills that notion outright. Many new characteristicspresent themselves. To arrest one of the most noticeable--there isperhaps no such pleasure-loving and pleasure-seeking people in theworld. I wish now I had thought of securing trustworthy statistics withrespect to the number of people who present themselves on the colonialracecourses within the limit of a year. It would be interesting to knowwhat proportion of the population is given over to the breeding andtraining of horseflesh and the riding of races. The Melbourne peopleexult--and not unjustifiably--in the Melbourne Cup and on the spectaclepresented at its running. That spectacle is quite unique as far as Iknow. Neither the Derby nor the Grand Prix can rival it for its view ofpacked humanity, and neither can approach it for the decorous order ofthe crowd. Is it Jane Taylor who tells the story of an English village?I am not quite sure, but I remember the genesis. You must have a churchto begin with. For a church you want a parson and a parson must have aclerk. From this established nucleus grows everything. In Australia theybegin with the race-course. This statement is not to be accepted as asatiric fable, but as a literal fact. Nearly two years ago, travellingin the Blue Mountains--miles upon miles away from everywhere--I cameupon a huge board erected in the bush. The board bore this inscription, "Projected road to site of intended race-course. " There was not a housevisible, or the sign of the beginning of a house, but half-an-hourlater, in apparent virgin forest, I found another board nailed to abig eucalypt. It had a painted legend on it, setting forth that theseeligible building sites were to be let or sold. The solemn forest stoodeverywhere, and the advertisement of the eligible building sites wasthe only evidence of man's presence. It was for the benefit of futuredwellers here that the road to the site of the "intended race-course"had been "projected. "

Again there are more theatres and more theatregoers to the populationthan can probably be found elsewhere. The houses and the performancesare alike admirable. Like the Americans, the Australians endure manyperformances which would not be thought tolerable in England, but theymount their productions with great pomp and luxury. Whatever is best inEngland finds an early rendering in the great cities, and for seriouswork the general standard is as high as in Paris or in London. ThePrincess Theatre in Melbourne has given renditions of comic opera whichare not unfairly to be compared, for dressing, _mise-en-scéne_ andartistic finish to those of the Savoy. The general taste is for jollity, bright colour, cheerful music. Comedy runs broader than it does athome and some of the most excellent artists have learned a touch ofbuffoonery. The public taste condones it, may even be said to relish itto _finesse_. The critics of the Press are, in the main, too favourable, but that is a stricture which applies to modern criticism in general. There is a desire to say smooth words everywhere and to keep thingspleasant. 

Outside the southernmost parts of Victoria Australia has a climate, andthe people can rejoice in midnight picnics. In the glorious southernmoonlight one can read the small print of a newspaper. The air is coolafter the overwhelming furnace of the day. The moonlight jauntsand junketings are characteristic and pleasant, and they offer anopportunity for the British matron who flourishes there as here--heavenbless her--to air her sense of morals in letters to the newspapers. 

The creed of athleticism speaks its latest word here. The burial of pooryoung Searle, the champion sculler of the world, was a remarkable andcharacteristic sight. That he was a great athlete and a good fellowseems indisputable, but to the outsider the feeling excited by his earlyand mournful death looked disproportionate. Every newspaper, from thestately _Argus_ down to the smallest weekly organ of the village sanghis dying song. He was praised and lamented out of reason, even fora champion sculler. The regret seemed exaggerated. At his funeralobsequies the streets were thronged, and thousands followed in histrain. It was mournful that a young man should be struck down in thepride and vigour of his strength. It is always mournful that thisshould be so, but it is common, and the passion of the lament provokedweariness. The feeling was doubtless genuine, but it might possibly havehad an object worthier of a nation's mourning. 

Another fine athlete and good fellow is Frank Slavin, the prize-fighter. I have acknowledged a hundred times that I belong to a lost cause. Mysympathies are with the old exploded prize-ring. Righdy or wrongly, Itrace the growth of crimes of violence to the abolition of that gloriousinstitution. I want to see it back again, with its rules of fair-play, and for its contempt for pain and its excellent tuition in temper andforbearance. I am an enthusiast, and being almost alone, am thereforethe more enthusiastic. But I grew tired of the wild exultation inSlavin's prowess, the mad rejoicing over a victory which meant less thanit would have done in the days which I am old enough to remember. InAustralia better be an athlete than almost anything, except perhaps amillionaire. 

Take the average native and ask him what he knows of Marcus Clarke, ofJames Brunton Stevens, of Harpur, Kendal, or the original of Browning's_Waring_. He will have no response for you, but he will reel off for youthe names of the best bowler, the best bat, the champion forward, the cunningest of half-backs. The portraits of football players arepublished by the dozen and the score, and the native knows the names andachievements of every man thus signalled out for honour. In England theschoolboys would know all about these people, but in Australia the worldat large is interested. The bank clerk who has a recognised positionin a football team enjoys professional privileges which another maynot claim. His athletic prowess reflects upon him in his business. Hismanager allows him holidays for his matches, and is considerate with himwith regard to hours for training. 

From all this one would naturally argue the existence of a speciallyathletic people, but the conclusion is largely illusory. The worship ofathleticism breeds a professional or semi-professional class, but it issurprising to know how little an effect it has upon the crowd of citypeople who join in all the rites of adoration. The popularity of thegame is answerable for the existence of the barracker whose outwardmanifestations of the inward man are as disagreeable as they well canbe. The barracker is the man who shouts for his own party, and by yellsof scorn and expletives of execration seeks to daunt the side againstwhich he has put his money or his partisan aspirations. When he gathersin his thousands, as he does at all matches of importance, he issurprisingly objectionable. He is fluent in oath and objurgation, cursing like an inmate of the pit. This same man is orderly enough at arace meeting and takes his pleasure mildly there. 

The barracker and the larrikin are akin. The gamin of Paris, grown upto early manhood, fed on three meat meals a day, supplied with plenteouspocket money, and allowed to rule a tribe of tailors, would be alarrikin. The New York hoodlum is a larrikin with a difference. TheBritish rough is a larrikin also with a difference. The Australianrepresentative of the great blackguard tribe is better dressed, betterfed and more liberally provided in all respects than his _confrere_ ofother nations. He is the street bully, _par excellence_, inspired tothis tyranny by unfailing beef and beer. When Mr Bumble heard of OliverTwist's resistance to the combined authority of Mrs Sowerberry andCharlotte and Noah Claypole, he repudiated the idea of madness whichwas offered as an explanation of the boy's conduct. "It isn't madness, ma'am, " said Mr Bumble, "it's meat. "

There is the true explanation of the larrikin. He is meat-fed and isthereby inspired with ferocity, Darwin, if I remember righdy, tells of asheep which was gradually accustomed to a flesh diet. Its wool beganto take the coarseness of hair and the mild beast grew savage. The fore-runners of the larrikin were never very sheep-like in allprobability, for if one could trace his pedigree, it would in most casesbe found that he is the descendant of the true British cad. But he hasimproved upon the ancestral pattern and become a pest of formidablecharacteristics and dimensions. The problem he presents has never beenfaced, but it will have to be met in one way or another before long. The stranger is forced to the conclusion that magistrates are absurdlylenient. I recall a case of some few months ago where a gang of well-fedruffians assaulted an old man in Flinders Street, Melbourne. The attackwas shown to have been utterly unprovoked, and the victim's injurieswere serious. Three of the most active participators in the sport wereseized by the police and were each sent to prison for six weeks, Asentence of six months, with a brace of sound floggings thrown in, wouldhave gone nearer to meet the exigencies of the case; but there is awidespread objection to the use of the cat, the argument being that itis wrong to brutalise these refined young men by its application. Thesame spirit of false sentiment exists in England, but in a less markeddegree. 

Crimes of violence are of exceptionally frequent occurrence and itis still felt necessary to punish rape by the imposition of the finalpenalty. 

The democracy is determined to test itself completely and femalesuffrage seems to be within measurable distance. It is conceivable thatit may have a refining effect, and that it may act as a curative, thoughthe experiment is full of risk. The one-man one-vote principle, togetherwith the payment of members of the legislative chambers, has not, sofar, achieved the happiest conceivable results. The parliament of NewSouth Wales is occasionally notorious as a bear-garden. The late MrMacEhlone (who once informed the Speaker that, when he encounteredoutside an honourable gentleman, to whom the ruling of the chaircompelled him to apologise, he would "spit in his eye ") has a worthysuccessor in the presence of a Mr Crick. Sometime ago Mr Crick wasexpelled by an indignant house, wearied of his prolonged indecencies ofdemeanour, but his constituency sent him back untamed and rejoicing--hismission being to prove that the Ministry was composed of thieves andliars. The miserable charges dwindled into nothing; but one at leastof his constituents is persuaded that the debates, as printed in thenewspapers, would lose so much of sparkle if Mr Crick were banishedpermanendy from the house that the breakfast enjoyment of the publicmore than atoned for his presence there. The women are notoriouslydeficient in humour, and it is possible that, when they come to vote, the reign of Mr Crick and his like will be over. 

The best hope which lies before Australia at this hour is the federationof her several colonies. Her determination to keep her populationEuropean can hardly fail of approval, but the immediate work to her handis to consolidate her own possessions. The attempt to find material forsix separate parliaments in a population of three and a half millionshas, it must be confessed in all candour, succeeded beyond reasonableexpectations, but concentration will be of service. There will be alaudable rivalry between the colonies which will result in the choice ofthe fittest men, and a combination parliament will be a more useful anddignified body than has yet been assembled within colonial limits. But this is one of the smallest of the results to be anticipated. Theridiculous tariff restrictions which now harass individuals and restrictcommerce will pass away and with them the foolish hatreds whichexist between the rival colonies. At present if one desire to angera Victorian he has only to praise New South Wales. Would he wound aSydneyite in the fifth rib, let him laud Melbourne. There is a disputepending about the proprietorship of the Murray River. It lies betweenthe two colonies and New South Wales claims it to the Victorian bank. When it overflowed disastrously a couple of years ago, an irate farmeron the Victorian side is said to have written to Sir Henry Parkes, bidding him come and pump the confounded river off his land, andthreatening to agitate for a duty (by the gallon) on imported New SouthWales water. The dispute is nothing less than childish, but I have thepersonal assurance of the leading statesman of New South Wales that heis perfectly satisfied with the position. It is probable that he seesin the existing riparian rights a chance for a concession which may winconcessions in its turn. The Victorians are imminently dissatisfied andwould seem to have a right to be so. Federation is on all accounts to bedesired, but it has yet to be fought for, and will only be gained withdifficulty. Wise men long for it, but the petty jealousies of rivalstates will hold it back from its birth-time as long as delay ispossible. How infinitesimally small these jealousies are nothing shortof a residence in the land can teach anybody. Wisdom will have itsway in the long run, but the belief of the veteran leader of New SouthWales, that he will live to see the union of the Australian colonies, isa dream. It is a dream which only his political enemies will grudge him. 

The wide and varied resources of the country, and the ups and downswhich men experience, breed a merciless courage which in some of itsmanifestations is very fine. During my first stay in Melbourne thewaiter who attended to my wants at Menzies' Hotel brought up, withsomething of a dubious air, a scrap of blue paper, on which was written, "Your old friend------. " I instructed him to show my visitor in, and aminute later beheld the face of an old companion, a little more grizzledand wrinkled than I had last seen it, but otherwise unchanged. When wehad shaken hands and he was seated, I found that he was dressed likea common labourer; and in answer to my inquiry he told me, bravely andbrightly, that he had fallen upon evil times. "I should like a glass ofchampagne, old man, " said he when I asked him to refresh himself, "anda square foot will run to enjoy it. " We talked away, and he told me of ahistory of success and failure, and at last he explained the purposeof his visit. He wished to hear the three lectures I was advertised todeliver, and he had come to ask me for a pass. "I shall not disgraceyou, old boy, " he added, "I have been down on my luck for a couple ofyears past but I am not going to stay where I am, and _I have keptmy dress clothes_. " I do not know that I ever saw a finer bit ofunconscious courage, and the incident gave me a certain faith in thespirit of the colonies which has never left me. There is a gamblingelement in it no doubt but the ever present sense of hope is a great andvaluable thing. It finds such a place in a new country as it can neverhave in an old one. The English gentleman who in England had fallen tobe a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water would never have "kept hisdress clothes. " He would have known that he was permanendy under, but here the British pluck had rational hope of recovery, and on thatrational hope survived and even flourished. 

And this leads me back to that question of the self-confidence of theAustralian-born colonial with which I started. Hope looks so sure, thatwhat Australia wants and has not it seems self-evident in a little whileshe will have. And so she might if she would go the right way for it, and instead of keeping three-quarters of her sparse inhabitants intowns, would take the work that lies before her nose and subdue theland and replenish it; and instead of shutting the gates deliberately onrival labour, would draw the stranger to her coasts and pour populationon vast tracts of land which now lie barren and unproductive, but onlywait for the hand of man to break into beauty and yield riches. 

In a hundred ways timidity would have been criminal, but when one seesin what direction courage and hope have led the way, and to whateffort they have prompted, a little over-confidence looks pardonable. Everywhere the colonists have worked for the future. They have maderailways and roads which will not be fully used for many and many a day. Their public buildings are made to last, and are of dimensions noblerthan present needs can ask for. Generations to come will laud the wisdomand the generosity of the men of the last fifty years. In certain placesthere is an admirable spirit of emulation amongst private citizens whohave set themselves to beautify the towns in which they live. This isvery notable in Ballarat, where it has grown to be an excellent fashionto present the town with statues. Should that fashion continue andshould the same spirit of local patriotism prevail, Ballarat may growto be the Athens of the Southern Hemisphere. The plan is a little largeperhaps, but it is in the colonial fashion, and one would willinglybelieve in the chances of its ultimate justification. 

The unborn generations will have to thank their predecessors for someof the loveliest blessings of the world. Every town has its gardens, theproperty of the citizens. Those of Brisbane, Sydney, and Adelaide areextensively beautiful. But more beautiful than the grounds themselves isthe inscription which I found at the gates of the loveliest of themall. I wish I had the _ipsissima verba_ of it, for it seemed to becharacterised by an admirable simplicity and directness. The sense of itis this, --

 These gardens belong to the public and the owners are requested to protect their property. 

There to my mind speaks the true voice of democracy, and thatinscription afforded me the pleasantest spectacle I saw in the course ofmy two years pilgrimage through the Australias. 

CHAPTER XIV

 Mr Rudyard Kipling and Bruggksmith--New Zealand--Its Climate --People--Fortune--Ned's Chum--Sir George Grey. 

Whilst I was in Australia I found in the pages of the _Melbourne Argus_a very remarkable poem and an equally remarkable prose story which hadoriginally appeared in one of the great Anglo-Indian journals. They werealike anonymous, but it was quite evident that they came from the samehand. A few months later they were known to be the work of RudyardKipling; and when I returned to London the new writer was at the zenithof the literary firmament and was shining there like a comet. For thefirst few years of his career he looked inexhaustible, and whilst hewas still at his most dazzling best, he produced a litde masterpieceof roaring farce which, for sheer broad fun and high animal spirits, surpasses anything else I know in English fiction. The story iscalled _Bruggksmith_. I myself read it and still read it with intenseenjoyment, dashed with a very singular surprise, for the principalepisode in that story had actually happened to me some years beforeMr Kipling told it, and I had related it scores and scores of times inpublic and in private. I have a theory about this matter which I shallhere make it my business to unfold. But I must first relate my ownadventure. It was between Christmas Day and New Year's Day, and Iwas dining quite alone in the Grand Hotel at Dunedin, when a strangerentered and took his seat beside me. I paid no heed to him at first, butby and by he laid a hand upon my sleeve and said: "I believe that youare Mr David Christie Murray?" I pleaded guilty and turning round to mycompanion found him to be a person of a sea-faring aspect with a stubblybeard of two or three days' growth. He was smartly attired in a suitof blue pilot cloth with brass anchor buttons, and there was a bandof tarnished gold lace around the peaked cap which he nursed upon hisknees. His accent was of the broadest Scotch and his nationality wasunmistakably to be read in his sun-tanned, weather-beaten face. It waspretty evident that he had been drinking, though he was by no meansdrunk. "I'm proud and delighted beyond measure to meet ye, " he began. "Ihope ye'll do me the honour to shake hands with me. " He went throughthe ceremony with great apparent enthusiasm, and I had, indeed, somedifficulty in recovering my hand from him. "I'm a ship's engineer, "he went on, "and I can tell ye, sir, that for years past ye've been mytreasured companion; through mony and mony a lonely nicht on the rollingocean yer books hev been my treasured friends, and mony and mony's thetime I've laffed and cried over ye. Mon, but I'm pleased and proudto meet ye--pleased and proud. " I expressed my gratification at thisstatement as well as I could and he said, suiting the action to theword: "Ye'll not mind my ringing for a glass of whisky? I shall esteemit an honour to take a glass with ye and to be able to boast hereafterthat ye once stood a drink to me. " He got his drink and absorbedit gravely, with a wish that I might enjoy long life, health andprosperity. Now there was never a man who was better pleased than Iam to learn that he has given pleasure to another by his work. I dareimitate the candour of Oliver Wendell Holmes and confess that I am fondof sweetmeats, but one can have too much even of sugar-plums, and I wasgetting a little weary of my friend's ecstatics when he began to changehis tone. "Perhaps, " he said, "ye won't think me impertinent if I saythat your work is sometimes curiously unequal. Ye've written a lot inyer time that's very far from being worthy of ye. D'ye know that, nowI begin to think of it, I'm inclined to fancy that ye're aboot the mostunequal workman I've ever made myself familiarly acquainted with. " Hemaundered along on this theme for two or three minutes and at lasthe clinched the nail. "A lot of what ye've done, " he told me, "is themerest piffle, and if ye were to ask me for a candid judgment, I shouldsay that ye've never written but one work which has really expressedyour genius. I can't mind the name of it just at the moment, but there'snae doot at all about it; there's real power in it, there's plot, there's construction, there's style, there's knowledge of character. Mon! it's a great book; I'll mind the name of it in a minute. Ay! I'vegot it--it's the only thing ye ever wrote that maks ye worth your saltas a literairy mon and the title of it is _Lady Audleys Secret!_"

Now no man, neither Mr Kipling nor any other, could possibly haveevolved from his imagination a story like that which had already, yearsago, translated itself into fact. Mr Kipling is a man of such prodigiousresource and experience that he is the last man in the world to accuseof a plagiarism. It is just within the bounds of possibility, of course, that he may have heard some version of my story, but the theory to whichI cling is that there was, somewhere about that time, a Scottish ship'sengineer who played off that particular form of humour on two writingmen whom chance threw in his way, and that his victims were Mr Kiplingand myself. 

I was confidently assured in Australia that I might see New Zealandthoroughly in the course of a two months' trip, and when I set out tovisit it, it was my purpose not to extend my stay greatly beyond thatlimit. In effect, I found a year all too litde for my purpose. The physical aspects of the country alone are so extraordinary anddelightful that a lover of nature finds it hard to withdraw himself fromthe influence of their charm. New Zealanders delight to speak of theircountry as the Wonderland of the South. They are justified, and morethan justified. The northern island is an amazement, but its gruesomevolcanic grotesqueries please less than the scenic splendours of itssouthern neighbour. The sounds of the west coast more than rival theNorwegian fjords. Te Anau and Manipouri and Wakatipu are as fine asthe lakes of Switzerland. The forests, irreverently called "bush, " arebeyond words for beauty. A little energy, a little courage, might makeNew Zealand the pet recreation ground of half the world. The authoritiesare already filling its lakes with trout, and will by-and-by peopleits forests with game. There is a very large portion of country which, except for purposes of sport and travel, is not likely to be utilizedby man. The lake trout grow to enormous size, and as they multiply, andfood grows comparatively scarcer, they are learning to take the fly. It was an understood thing for years that there was no sport for thefly-fisher with the trout at Wakatipu, but that theory has died out, forthe very simple reason that the facts have altered. There is no reasonin nature why an acclimatisation society should not succeed in a veryfew years in making the south-west portion of the middle island anactual paradise to the sportsman. It is the plain duty of New Zealand toinvite the outside world to enter its borders, and, for once in a way, a plain duty is recognised. I shall remember, so long as I rememberanything, the three avalanches I saw and heard thundering down the sideof Mount Pembroke as I sat on a boat in the glassy waters of MilfordSound. In many and many an hour I shall see Wet-Jacket Arm and DuskySound again with their vast precipices, luxuriant forests, and rejoicingcataracts. I shall dream, thank heaven, of the awe and worship I felt asthe steamer crept round the edge of Rat's Point, and little by little, one by one, the white wonders of the Earnslaw range slid into view, until at last the whole marvellous, unspeakable panorama stood revealed, a spectacle the world may perhaps rival elsewhere, but cannot surpass. So long as I remember anything I shall remember a summer day on thebanks of the Poseiden. I sat on a fallen log on the track which leads toLake Ada; and the robins, in their beautiful fearless unfamiliarity withman, perched on my feet, and one feathered inquirer ventured even to myknee. The sunlight steeped the thick foliage overhead until the leavesshone transparent with colours of topaz and of emerald. The moss onthe trees was silver-grey and vivid green, and there were fingolds ofvermilion and cadmium, and scaly growths of pure cobalt blue; the mostamazing and prodigious riot of colour the mind can conceive. The riverran below with many a caverned undertone. 

In Sir John Everett Millais' latest days, I met him at a cricketmatch at Lord's, and made some attempt to describe to him the trulyindescribable riot and glory of the colour of the New Zealand forests. He turned to me with an odd mixture of petulance and humour and askedme: "Why the devil didn't you tell me all this when I could paint?"I believe he was the only man alive who could have translated thosesplendours truly. 

It is the desire of all good New Zealanders that the beauties of theircountry should be advertised. I offer this humble contribution to thatend with a willing heart. I shall be thankful to my latest day tohave seen those beauties which I have been able only to hint at. Thetraveller who misses New Zealand leaves unseen the country which, takeit all in all, is probably the loveliest in the world. The climatevaries from stern to mild. That of Auckland is warm and sluggish; thatof Dunedin keen, inspiring. Situate midway between the two you findperfection. Napier will be the sanatorium of that side of the world oneof these days. All over New Zealand one meets people who went out thereto die, twenty, thirty, forty years ago, and who are living yet, robustand hale. The air is fatal to phthisis, as it is also in Australia. The most terrible foe of the British race is disarmed in these favouredlands. Take it in the main, the climate of New Zealand is fairlyrepresented by that of Great Britain. The southern parts remind oneof Scotland, the northern of Devon and Cornwall. The variety of whichLesser Britain has so much reason to complain is absent. The Britishclimate is idealised in New Zealand. 

This fact alone is one of the utmost importance in the estimation ofthe future of the race. In similar environment the British people havealready pretty clearly shown what they can do, and in New Zealand Ifound myself absolutely unable to trace the beginning of a variationfrom the British breed. Dunedin, allowing for an influx of SouthernBritons, might be Aberdeen; Christ-church, population and all, mightbe planted in Warwickshire, and no tourist would know that it was notindigenous there. They call their local stream the Avon, and boatingthere some idle summer days, I easily dreamed myself at home again, andwithin bow-shot of the skyward-pointing spire which covers the bonesof Shakespeare. It is, I believe, a fact that the stream is christenedafter another river than that which owes its glamour to the poet's name, but in a case of this kind mere fact matters little, and the inhabitantsthemselves are, for the most part, quite willing to ignore it. 

It was in New Zealand that I made my first practical acquaintance withthe stage. I have already spoken of that remarkable child actor whom Ibrought over to England and introduced to the London public in my owncomedy of _Ned's Chum_. I saw him first in _Little Lord Fauntleroy_, and I expressed myself in such terms about him to his manager that I wasoffered a commission to write a play in which he should be the principalfigure. I was making holiday just then, and having nothing to detain me, I anchored myself in one of the quietest places in the world and threwmyself into my task with so much vigour that in a fortnight the comedywas completed, and within a month from its inception was produced atAuckland. Sir George Grey who was then, though he had long retired fromoffice, the tutelary genius of the place, supplied me with the meansfor the production of such a stage illusion as can hardly have been seenelsewhere. The second act of the comedy was supposed to take place inthe heart of the New Zealand bush. "That's a thing, " said Sir George, "which no scene-painter's brush can imitate; you must have the realthing upon the boards. " And straightway he gave me an order for thecutting down of any number of forest trees I might require in his owngrounds at Cawai. How these were got into the theatre I do not remember, but the scene produced by their aid was the most perfect and beautiful Ican remember to have seen. They were braced by invisible wires, andthe severed trunks were concealed behind mounds of real forest mossand cart-loads of last year's withered leaves. There was an artificialwaterfall on a level with the upper entrance and the back cloth conveyedthe impression of an illimitable vista. As anybody may guess who has theslightest knowledge of work behind the scenes, the preparation of thisspectacle and its removal necessitated two tediously protracted waits, but the audience appeared to think that the show atoned for tedium, andour only three performances in Auckland were an overwhelming popularsuccess. The author--good, easy man--naturally attributed that successat the time to the charm of the comedy, but though that went wellenough in other places later on, it never afterwards secured the sameenthusiastic acceptance. It was the realism and originality of theforest scene which did the trick. Its glories were evanescent, and onthe third night the characters, who had moved amidst all the splendoursof full summer, were straying under brown and withered autumn leaves. 

There are few of us who have not discovered that the affability of adistinguished man may be amongst the most disagreeable of all humancharacteristics, though when one encounters the real thing which hasits root in nature and not in policy it is certainly amongst themost delightful. In Sir George Grey one knew it instinctively to bespontaneous; the man seemed to have been born out of his time; he was asurvival from another age, In South Africa, South Australia and inNew Zealand he proved himself almost an ideal manipulator of men, andwherever he went he reaped a harvest of personal affection. Nobodymeeting him without a knowledge of his record would have guessed thathe was in the presence of a man distinguished alike as a diplomatist, asoldier and a scholar; he would have been conscious only of a singularlyunassuming urbanity and charm. His manner with children was patriarchal. I was strolling one day during my stay in Auckland with that childactor for whom I had written my comedy of _Ned's Chum_, when we met theex-governor of the colony at the foot of Mount Eden, now a green turfedslope and at one time a volcano. "Look here, " said the boy to thevenerable welder of Empire, "you take my ball and see how far you canthrow it uphill. " "Certainly, " said Sir George. He threw the ball to aconsiderable distance and it settled in a hollow on the hillside. Thechild raced after it, and before he returned the veteran statesman andmyself had each forgotten all about him and were deep in the history ofAuckland. By-and-by the young gentleman came back again and tuggedat the skirt of the diplomatist's frock coat. "I've been standing upthere, " he complained, "for three or four minutes calling coo-ee, andyou never answered once!" "Did I not?" the statesman answered, "now thatwas very wrong of me. You try me again and you will see that I shall notmisbehave myself next time. " The child sped away in pursuit of the ballwhich Sir George once more threw for him, and in a litde while we heardhis call. The old gentleman responded to it and the boy came racing backto have the game repeated, and throughout the whole of our ramble whichlasted for an hour or two, the game was carried on with a tirelesspersistence on the child's side and an unflagging patience on SirGeorge's. He was talking to me with great animation about the Maorilegends which he had himself been the first to collect and translate, but he never neglected to respond to the child's call, and left him, Iam sure, under the impression that he was the one person of interest inthe party. 

CHAPTER XV

 The Dreyfus Case--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Opinion--Meeting at the Egyptian-Hall--Interview with Zola--Maître Labori--M. Henri Rochefort--Major Esterhazy. 

One of my hobbies for the last forty years has been the study ofcharacter in handwriting. It is pretty much with the various forms ofcaligraphy as it is with the human face or with the human voice. Thevast majority of faces that one sees are essentially commonplace, but each has somehow an individuality of its own. Handwriting hasits physiognomy, and everybody who has been accustomed to a largecorrespondence knows how instinctively and unfailingly he recognises acaligraphy which has been presented to him only twice or thrice. It wasas a result of my pursuit of this hobby that I first began to takea real interest in the Dreyfus case. When the first rough and readyfacsimiles of the famous _Bordereau_ and of the authentic lettersof Captain Dreyfus were published side by side, it struck me with animmediate amazement to conceive that any person who had given even themost casual attention to this study of handwriting could possibly havesupposed that the various documents had emanated from the same hand. Theforgery of a signature is one of the simplest businesses in the world, but the truly deceptive forgery of a document of any length is anabsolute impossibility--an impossibility as complete as would attend thecontinued personification of a dual character by the most skilful mimicunder the observation of one who was able to maintain a sustained andmicroscopic examination of the two. 

It was an article in the _Strand Magazine_ communicated by that eminentstatistician, Mr Holt Schooling, which first enabled me to form ajudgment in this matter, and until it and its accompanying photographsof original documents were brought to my notice, I had taken no morethan an ordinary passing interest in the case. But since it hadbeen decided, on the strength of an imagined resemblance between thehandwriting of the prisoner and that of the author of the _Bordereau_, I had not a moment's hesitation in arriving at the conclusion that thecharge against him was unfounded and absurd, and it seemed to me to beno less than a duty to bring other people to the conclusion which I sostrongly held. It was not easy. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote to me:--

 "My dear Murray, --Its being a week-end will prevent my coming up for I have always several visitors. I hope when you can come down you will let me know. Very much interested in your views upon the Dreyfus case. I fancy that the Government may know upon evidence which they dare not disclose (spy or traitor evidence) that he is guilty and have convicted him on a bogus document, --Yours very truly, "(Sgd. ) A. Conan Doyle. "

For nine long days I went over the photographs of the authentic lettersand the incriminating _Bordereau_ with a powerful magnifier, and in theend I succeeded in establishing no fewer than twenty-two distinct andcharacteristic differentiations between them. I had already enteredupon the preparation of an alphabetical synopsis when I learned of theexistence of that work of monumental patience and research which hadbeen prepared by Monsieur Bernard Lazare of Paris, and a consultation ofits pages showed me that part of the work I had undertaken had alreadybeen performed by Monsieur Gustave Bridier, an acknowledged expert inhandwriting in Switzerland. 

I caused all the documents at my disposal to be photographed on glass, and thus prepared I betook myself from my home in North Wales to London, where I found an immediate and enthusiastic helper in the person of MrJ. N. Maskelyne of the Egyptian Hall. He lent me the use of the mostpowerful oxyhydrogen magnifying lantern in London and prepared for mea great screen on to which the photographs could be most delicately andaccurately thrown in an enormously magnified form. Until the fact ofmy intended demonstration was announced by the Press, I had not theremotest idea as to the intense interest with which the case wasregarded by the British public. 

I had caused it to be announced that anybody desiring to be presentmight secure a ticket of admission by forwarding to me a stampeddirected envelope. The Egyptian Hall seated about 360 people, and Ireceived applications which would certainly have enabled me to fill thevast auditorium of the Albert Hall twice over. The result was that I wasenabled to make a choice, and when the night arrived the little hall waspacked with the pick of the brains of London, drawn from both Houses ofParliament, from the Bench, the Bar, the diplomatic services of Europe, the Royal Academy, the learned professions generally and the Press ofLondon. When a page of the _Bordereau_ was first thrown upon the screenside by side with the authentic handwriting of the prisoner at Devil'sIsland, I knew that I had my work cut out for me, for there weremurmurs everywhere of "Identical!" "Damnatory!" "That settles the wholequestion, " and so on. The mood of the audience was not to be doubted foran instant, but I knew my case and I was confident. Litde by little, asdemonstration succeeded demonstration, the temper changed, and at theconclusion I achieved a triumph such as I have never before or sinceenjoyed. I hope sincerely that I do not take more credit to myself forthat night's work than I deserve, but so far as I could judge there wasnot one of my hearers who went away unconvinced. The Metropolitan Presswoke up and in its turn awakened the yet more influential journals ofthe provinces, who exert an intenser as well as a narrower influence, and in a very little time there came a reverberating boom in answerfrom the other side of the Atlantic. Before the lecture was delivered Ireceived many threatening letters from truculent Frenchmen, who regardedany foreign criticism of the evidence on which Dreyfus had been foundguilty as an insolent assault upon the honour of the French army. Two ofmy correspondents threatened me with assassination if I should dare tocarry out my project, and scores of them expressed themselves in termsof indignation and contempt. The most popular idea appeared to be thatI was a hireling in the employ of the Jews, and that I was being veryhandsomely subsidized to take up the cudgels in a base and disgracefulcause. I confess that I rather wished that this idea of a subsidy weretrue, for in time and money I had spent considerably more than I couldlegitimately afford, but the truth remains that Mr Maskelyne and I stoodthe whole racket and that, so far as we were concerned, there might aswell have been no Israel in Great Britain or outside it. 

It was this incident in my career which brought me acquainted with EmileZola, for whose work I had until that time felt a profound aversion. Ido not profess to be in sympathy with that work even now, but I gotto know the man and to recognise his purpose. When he published in thepages of _L'Aurore_, his famous article entitled "J'accuse, " and wasbrought to trial on account of it, I went over to Paris, eager to meethim and to assure him that the intelligence of the world outside theboundaries of France was entirely with him. I reached Paris a day beforethe trial was appointed to begin, and I made my way at once to theoffice of the _Steele_, where I applied to my old friend, Monsieur YvesGuyot, for an introduction. He refused it flatly: "The man, " he said, "is up to his eyes in responsibilities and labour. Every moment he canspare is given to consultation with Maître Labori, who is engagedto defend him, and I must refuse in his own interest to trouble himfurther. " It was impossible not to recognise the justice of MonsieurGuyot's plea, but when all was said and done I felt that I was there asone of the rank and file in a losing cause, and that I had something ofa right to be near my leader. "I assure you, " said M. Guyot, in partingfrom me, "that nothing will persuade Zola to receive a stranger at thistime. He is one of those publicists who hate publicity, and he knows youalready as one of the bitterest critics of his literary methods; it isquite hopeless to dream of bringing you together now. " In my perplexityI bethought me of Monsieur Bernard Lazare who, as Zola's acknowledgedchampion in the Press, was in constant communication with him, and whohad sent to me an enthusiastic appreciation of the effect of my Londonlecture. I went to see him and in one minute over the telephone aninterview was arranged for six o'clock that evening. I was there to theminute, but at the entrance to the Rue de Bruxelles I was stopped bya posse of _gendarmes_ and subjected to a vigorous examination. Zola'shouse was like a castle in a state of siege. It became evident later onthat he was under police protection and that it was felt necessary toguard him against the violence of the mob, but it appeared at firstsight as if he were a pre-judged criminal whose escape it was necessaryto make impossible. When the gates of the courtyard were at last openedreluctantly to me, I was ushered into a chamber which might have beenone of the exhibition rooms of a dealer in _bric-à-brac_. There was asedan chair in one corner, and it was hardly possible to move withoutdisturbing some Japanese or Chinese grotesquerie in brass or porcelain. 

I waited here alone for half an hour and then in came Zola with bothhands hospitably outstretched. "Vous parlez Français?" he began, "Bien!"and with that he thrust me to a sofa and talked as I never heard mantalk before. "We know all, " he said, by way of exordium, "all, all, all!and here is the history of this lamentable case. " That half-forgottenAmerican chronicler of English manners--Mr N. P. Willis--somewheredescribed Disraeli as "talking as a racehorse runs. " That was Zola's waythat evening; he threw himself headlong into his narrative and hetalked with head and feet and arms and shoulders. His speech was almostincredibly brilliant and painted, but I have very often thought sincethen that in the constant preoccupation of his mind with this one themeand the constant repetition of the strongest points he had to make, he had acquired, as it were, the faculty of threading all hisconversational pearls upon a single string, and that he was, in fact, presenting himself to his latest audience with a discourse which wasalready finished and polished at Adunguen. He gave me a description ofthe scene of Dreyfus's public degradation on the Champ de Mars which waslike a chapter of Carlyle's _French Revolution_ at first hand. It wascrammed with detail and so intensely dramatic that it made the scenelive over again. I asked him at last in surprise: "But surely you werenot there?" "No, " he explained eagerly, "I was not there, but you knowmy method; I have had the scene described by a thousand eye-witnesses, and at last I have reconstructed it for myself. " He told me of theprospect for the defence and described the man upon whom the burdenwould mainly rest--"un véritable géant, " he told me with a voice torally an army in retreat. 

I met Maître Labori in Court next morning and admired the coolintrepidity of his defence, though it was only when he came to addressthe jury that he gave us a real touch of his quality. I know little ofthe French method of judicial procedure, but anything more transparentlyhollow than the pretence of justice which was offered to Emile Zola itwould not be easily possible to conceive. Whenever the defending counselput a question to any one of the witnesses for the prosecution whichbade fair to touch the marrow of the case, Monsieur Delegorgue consultedwith his colleagues and invariably closed the consultation by saying:"La question ne sera pas passée. " In that case it was Labori's habit toanswer: "I shall have to enter an interpolation, " which he did, tothe effect that the progress of the case was arrested for a space ofanything from five minutes to a quarter of an hour, until he had drawnup his formal protest. Meanwhile the courtyard of the Palais de Justicewas rigorously closed against all who could not establish a right toentry, but outside the railings a great mob continually surged, and atsuch times as they could escape from their scholastic labours an army ofstudents marched up and down singing: "Conspuez Zola!" to a tune roughlybased on the air of "La Donna é mobile. " Evening after evening Zolaand his defenders had to escape from the court under the shelter ofa cavalry escort, and on occasion the crowd made an ugly rush in itseffort to get at them. 

I was standing near the locked gate in the great courtyard awaiting theoutcoming party, when I witnessed an episode which was very prettilyillustrative of one aspect of the popular mind. In the crowd outside, close to the railings, stood a big man and a little one. I don't knowwhether I was in at the beginning of the altercation, or if it had beenled up to in any way, but what I heard and saw was this. "Tu es juif, n'est ce pas?" said the big man, with a sort of bullying jocundity. "Mais oui, monsieur, " the little man assented. "Ah!" said the other, "you wear your nose too long for your face. " With that simple butsufficing explanation, the big man hit the little man on the obnoxiousfeature and felled him to the pavement. There was a bit of a studentrush at that moment, and the crowd went over the prostrate figure, buta detachment of the _gardes de ville_ which happened to be near at hand, went in and rescued him, and he was borne away all muddy and tatteredand bleeding. 

The sport of Jew-baiting went on quite merrily all over Paris at thistime, and on the Place Bouge, on the Sunday afternoon on which M. HenriRochefort elected to surrender himself to the prison authorities, therewas at least a score of merry little chases in which a hundred or so ofwhooping and roaring citizens would pursue some member of the unpopularrace until he found refuge amongst the soldiery or the police, when hewas hustled on to take his chance amidst another portion of the crowd. There was more horse-play than anger in all this, and cases in whichserious mischief was inflicted were rare. But the mob was in a highlyexplosive state for all that, and any sturdy attempt at resistance orself-defence might at any moment have led to bloodshed. 

The surrender of M. Rochefort was really, when all things areconsidered, one of the drollest spectacles I have ever seen. Thatvenerable political firebrand had been adjudged guilty of contemptof court and had been sentenced to seven days' imprisonment as afirst-class misdemeanant. He was mulct in some inconsiderable fine aswell, and he was allowed to suit his own convenience and fancy as to thetime and manner of surrender. He chose to present himself to his gaolerson a Sunday, and to arrive in an open carriage at the head of a smallprocession. All Paris turned out to see him. There were fifteen thousandtroops along the line of route, and fifty thousand more of all armsquartered near at hand. Why there should have been any necessity for thecollection of such a force, or for the provocation of a possible riotunder the conditions, it was difficult to see. The crowd groaned andcheered with tremendous enthusiasm, and when at last somebody waved atri-colour flag from an upper window, it went roaring mad with cries of_Vive Rochefort! Vive la France! Vive Fannie!_ In the end it dribbledaway quite peacefully, overflowing into all the neighbouring cabarets, or trailing off homeward through the dusk and mud. Here and there astreet orator found his chance and gathered a crowd about him, but thesewere quietly moved on by the police, and before seven o'clock, that partof Paris had resumed its normal aspect. I tried hard to discover someintelligible reason for this curious outburst of popular feeling, but Icould find none except that the condition of the popular mind was suchthat almost any excuse for gathering in crowds, and indulging in noisycheers and groans, was welcome as a sort of safety valve. 

Whilst that travesty of a trial was going on, and every suggestionin favour of the accused was being trampled on, and every one of thechartered liars who had sworn falsely for the honour of the army wasbeing bolstered by the authority of the court, I had many opportunitiesfor conversation with Zola, and in the course of one of them, he offeredme an almost passionate justification of his literary methods. He didnot complain, he said, that he had been misunderstood; he had beencharged with being a pornographist and with revelling in filth andhorror for their own sake. "It is not so, " he declared, "but look you! Ilove and revere this beautiful and noble France, and I believe that shehas yet a splendid destiny before her. At this moment she seems to liedead and drowned beneath a river of lies, but she will yet revive andjustify herself. I picture her, " he went on, marching up and down theroom, "as a great suffering angel stricken down by a disease which onlya cruel cautery can cure. It has been the aim and effort of my life toapply that cautery, and if I am fated to be remembered in the future, the future will do me justice. " All this left me as far as ever from anapproval of the methods he defended, but it was absolutely impossible todoubt his sincerity. 

Two English journalists, who were at that time resident in Paris and whofelt strongly at the time that the notorious Major Esterhazy was amuch maligned and injured man, engineered an interview between him andmyself. The major, it appeared, was extremely anxious to be rightlyunderstood by the British public. He complained that on severaloccasions he had consented to be interviewed by the London Press andthat in each case his statements had been maliciously distorted. Heasked me if I would represent him truly and would allow him to tell hisstory without comment. I made the promise and, of course, I kept it, butas a matter of fact he had no case to offer. He described the generalstaff of the French army as _un tas de scélérats_, and he alleged thathe had been hounded down by his enemies and betrayed by those who hadpretended to be his friends. As he talked he leant forward in his chair, tapping the parquet nervously with his walking-stick, and every now andthen sending a curiously furtive glance in my direction, for all theworld as if he were asking in his own mind: "Have you found me out yet?""I would ask nothing better, " he told me, "than to put myself at thehead of my regiment and to march my men through Paris, and to shoot downevery Jew who lives in it. I would shoot them down like rabbits, 'sansrancune et sans remords. '" He flashed that strange furtive glance at meand took his walking-stick in both hands: "I have a dream, " he went on, "it comes to me often. I see myself in a room where the walls are whiteand the ceiling is white and the floor is white, and all my enemies arethere before me. I rush amongst them with this stick only and I strike, and I strike, and I strike until the walls are red and the ceiling isred and the floor is red. Ah! I shall have my turn one day. " I wired allthis meaningless farrago to the _Daily News_ that night, but with muchmore nonsense to the same effect, and on the following day it was allduly printed. I mention this little fact for a reason. In M. AnatoleFrance's novel, _L'Anneau d'Améthyste_, which appeared much later thanthe account of my interview with Esterhazy, a character is introducedwho talks precisely in that gentleman's manner and who, amongst otherthings, relates that identical dream; from which one gathers that hemust have told it more than once. It was most probably a habit of his, for all his phrases had a manufactured air, and he seemed much more likean actor reciting a familiar part than as if he spoke on the spur of themoment. Later on, as everybody knows, he sold a confession in whichhe proclaimed himself the author of the _Bordereau_. Later still herepudiated the confession, though by that time there was no doubt in anysane man's mind that it was true. So long as the _affaire Dreyfus_ isremembered, Esterhazy will in all likelihood be regarded as a villainof the very deepest dye; but so far as I can make him out, he sufferedmerely from a total absence of moral and mental responsibility. He seemsreally to have persuaded himself that he was an ill-used man, and untilcircumstances became too strong for him, to have acted in accordancewith his own queer code of honour. 

I have listened to many 'great speakers in my time, but never to one whodisplayed such fire and force and fluency and so wide an emotional rangeas Maître Labori. When he arose to address the jury for the defence, he seemed to hurl himself into his subject with every fibre of souland body. He gesticulated with all the vehemence of a man engaged ina deadly bout with the rapier, and the impetuous torrent of his speechdashed on as if nothing could arrest it. I remember thinking to myselfthat twenty minutes of this would bring him to the limit of his forces, but he went on for hours, as if he were incapable of fatigue. At onepoint of his speech he used the words: "Un héros comme Zola. " There weresome two hundred privileged spectators of the scene, all squeezed into asort of pen at the extreme end of the court, and nearly everyone of themheld a latchkey in readiness, so that he might whistle down it if theorator afforded any opportunity for derision. A shrill scream of soundrose as Labori uttered the words. He paused and faced squarely roundupon his interrupters, turning his back on the tribunal. Theclamour lasted for a minute and then died away, and then with a coldincisiveness, in strange contrast with his previous manner, he addressedthe crowd. "I repeat the phrase--a hero like Zola. I tell you that hiscourage, his honesty and his devotion will be held in reverence byhis countrymen long after you have sunk into your unremembered andunhonoured graves. " He towered there in silence for a full half minuteand there was not so much as a murmur of reply. "Eh bien!" he said, "jerésume, " and turning round to the tribunal he took up his speech atthe point at which it had been arrested. The rebuke was enough; he wasinterrupted no more. 

Zola read a statement in his own defence and was in a condition ofpitiable nervous agitation from the beginning of it to the end. Thefoolscap pages he held in his hand quivered as if they were stirredby the hot air rising from a stove, and in his anxiety to be heardthroughout the court he pitched his voice too high. In the middle of hisaddress it cracked harshly and the packed crowd at the end of the courtbroke into derisive laughter. He too turned upon the scoffers, but notas Labori had done before him. He was not on his own ground as the greatadvocate had been, and he seemed to search for words that would notcome. The incident, however, seemed to brace him for a while and for aminute or two he read in a firmer tone, though that pathetic tremorof the papers he held still went on and sometimes seemed to make itdifficult for him to read. 

When at last the tragic farce was over, the foregone conclusion arrivedat and the sentence of fine and imprisonment pronounced, I found Zolaalone at home in a state of profound dejection. "I don't pity myself, "he said. "I am not to be pitied but this poor France, ce pauvre France. "He returned to the words again and again. "I thought, " he said, "thatone had only to light the torch of Truth and to throw it into that pitof darkness to make everything clear, but they have stifled the flamewith lies. It is finished, it is all finished. " I ventured to tell himthat I could not and would not believe it, that the verdict of the Courtof Cassation was the merest nothing in comparison with the verdict ofthe world which he had beyond doubt secured. France would come to reasonyet. He refused to be cheered, and saying that he was in need of rest, bade me goodnight dispiritedly and went to bed. Now that the trial wasover I had no further business to detain me in Paris, but I saw him byappointment next day before I left for London. He was in full fightingtrim again. "We shall do something yet, " he said; "despair wins nobattles and there are still honest men in France. " I made a farewellcall on Maître Labori and found him so husky that he could barelyspeak, but he poured scorn on the idea that he had worn his voice by theprodigious effort of that sustained relation. He had been so imprudentas to drive home in the humid air of a January evening and he had caughta cold. For his own part he was quite sanguine of ultimate success--notsanguine only, but assured. "We shall win yet, " he prophesiedconfidently. "No cause ever failed in the long run which had such anarray of truth behind it. " He might well have added that no cause eversucceeded which had behind it such a battalion of lies and liars as wasranked upon the other side. 

CHAPTER XVI

 A Few Letters--J. M. Barrie--George Meredith--Advice on Going to America--A Statue to Washington--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, M. P. --Robert Louis Stevenson--Mr Edmund Gosse on the Neo-Scottish School-- _My Contemporaries in Fiction_--Sir A. Conan Doyle--Mr. Joseph Hocking--Robert Buchanan--Mr. E. Marshall Hall, K. C. 

[Illustration: Meredith1]

[Illustration: Meredith2]

[Illustration: Meredith3]

[Illustration: Meredith4]

 _Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray. 15th December 1893. _

 My Dear Christie Murray, --Your book (my book) followed me up here, where I had to come unexpectedly two days after our dinner. It is delightful. I accept your challenge, and do hereby undertake to talk to you at tremendous length the first time we meet again about the making of another novelist. Not that he, worse luck, has had anything like such varied experiences. I hope you will go on with the second volume you promise. You will find a capital chapter for it in the _Pall Mall Magazine_ Xmas number. I thought that dog worth all the Xmas tales I have read this year. Its death is almost unbearably pathetic, and so comic all the time. The illustrator rose to his chances in one picture, when Punch struts past the bull-dog. The one thing I wonder at is what you say of acting, I would argue that everyone with imagination must find delight in the stage, but I can't understand the author of _Aunt Rachel_ having a desire, or rather a passion, to exchange a greater art for a smaller one. It is not smaller, you hold. But surely it is, as the pianist is less than the composer. I need not tell you again what it is to me to have the dedication. The whole arrangement of this house has been altered to give the book its place of honour, the positions of hundreds of books has been altered, the bringing of a small bookcase into a different room led to the alteration of heavy furniture in the other room, a sofa is where was a cupboard, flowerpots have been brought inside, and red curtains have given place to green. This is a fact. 

 I hope you are flourishing, and with best regards to Mrs. Murray, --Yours ever, (Sgd. ) J. M. Barrie. 

 _Letter of Advice sent by a Distinguished American to David Christie Murray prior to a visit to America on a Lecturing Tour_. 

 Friday, 7th September. 

 My Dear Old Friend, --I am sending. . . . Some letters for you by this same post. They are to three splendid fellows, full of power to help you, and certain to be eager to use it

 If I could have seen you personally, I had it in mind to say many things which don't lend themselves to pen and ink. Some of them perhaps can be put down with a minimum of awkwardness. 

 You are primarily, in the American mind, an eminent novelist. They have read you (in printed cheap editions) by the score of thousands. They think of you as a cousin of Dickens, Thackeray, Reade and the rest. Now that is your rôle marked out for you by God. Stick to it, wear reasonably conventional clothes, cultivate an intelligently conventional aspect, and do not for your life say anything about the stage or the latter-day hard luck you have had, or anything else which will not commend itself to a popular sense which, although artistic on one side is implacably Philistine on the other. They have a tremendous regard for Reade. Carry yourself as if you were the undoubted inheritor of the Reade traditions. Think how Reade himself would have borne himself--then strike out from it all the bumptious and aggressive parts--and be the rest. 

 Two things destroy a man in America. One is the suggestion of personal eccentricity, Bohemianism, etc. The other is a disposition for criticism and controversy on their own subjects. The latter is the more dangerous of the two. It is a people devoured by the newspaper habit, like the Irish or the old Greeks of the Areopagus. They ask every few minutes "What is the news?" Thousands of smart young men are hustling about fifteen hours a day to answer that ceaseless question. If it occurs to any one of them anywhere to say: "Well, here is a cocky Englishman who is over here to make some money, but who is unable to resist the temptation to harangue us on our shortcomings"--just that minute you are damned--irrevocably damned. That one sniff of blood will suffice. The whole pack will be on your shoulders within twenty-four hours. 

 Yet, don't mistake me. These same newspaper men are nice fellows, kindly to a fault, if you avoid rubbing them the wrong way. Swear to yourself that you will be genial and affable with every human soul you meet, and that you will never be betrayed into an argument--on _any American subject_, mind--with any living being, from the bartender up. It is not so hard a rule, old man, and observing it vehemently day and night will make all the wide difference to you between miserable failure and a fine and substantial success. 

 You will meet two classes of men--scholarly men like my friends, who will take you to clubs where writers, thinkers, students, etc. , congregate, and less scholarly but not less likeable ordinary newspaper men. Live your life as much as possible among these two classes. You will catch swiftly enough the shades of difference between the two. It is the difference between, say, the Athenaeum and the Savage. Only there is next to no caste spirit, and points of similarity or even community crop up there between the two which couldn't be here. The golden key to both is unvarying amiability. 

 You are better calculated than most men I know to charm and captivate them all. They will delight in your conversation and in you, and they will see to it that you have a perfect time and coin money--if only you lay yourself out to be uniformly nice to them, and watch carefully to see that you seem to be doing about as they do. 

 A good many minor people--hotel baggagemen, clerks, etc. , tram conductors, policemen and the like--will seem to you to be monstrously rude and unobliging. You will be right; they are undoubtedly God-damned uncivil brutes. That is one of the unhappy conditions of our life there. _Don't_ be tempted even to wrangle with them or talk back to them. Pass on, and keep still. If you try to do anything else, the upshot will be your appearing somewhere in print as a damned Britisher for whom American ways are not good enough. The whole country is one vast sounding board, and it vibrates with perilous susceptibility in response to an English accent. 

 Don't mention the word Ireland. Perhaps that is most important of all. You will hear lots of Americans--good men, too--damning the Irish. Listen to this, and say nothing, unless something amiable about the Irish occurs to you. Because here is a mysterious paradox. The America always damns the Irishman. It is his foible. But if an Englishman joins in, instantly every American within earshot hates him for it. I plead with you to avoid that pitfall. The bottom of it is paved with the bones of your compatriots. 

 So I could go on indefinitely, but I have already taxed your patience. Briefly then--

 1. Express no opinions on American subjects, political, social or racial-save in praise. 

 2. Be polite and ready to talk affably wit everybody; men who speak to you in a railway train, or the bar tender or the bootblack, quite as much as the rest. 

 3. Avoid like poison eccentricities of dress and all contact with actors an theatrical people. 

 4. Rebuff no interviewer. Be invariably affable and reserved with him talk literature to him, and reminicences of Reade, Matthew Arnold, Dean Stanley, anybody you like especially mention things in America which you like, and shut-up about what you don't like. 

 5. Keep appointments to a minute. No one else will, but they respect immensely in others. 

 6. Bear in mind always that people think of you as a big novelist, and will be only too glad to treat you at your own valuation, gently exhibited or rather suggested by courteous reserve. There is nothing they won't do for you, if only you impress them as liking them, and appreciating their kindliness, and being studious of their sensibilities. 

 Take this all, my dear Christie, as from one who sincerely wishes you well, and believes that you can and should do well. It lies absolutely in your own hands to make a fine personal and professional reputation in America, and to come back with a solid bank account and a good, clear, fresh start. You have lots of years before you; lots of important work; lots of honest happiness. You were started once fair on the road to the top of the tree. Here is the chance to get back again on to that road. I am so fearfully anxious that you should not miss it, that I take large liberties in talking to you as I find I have done. Write to me at Attridge's Hotel, Schull, County Cork, where I shall be from 14th to 20th September, to tell me that you are not offended. Or if you are offended, still write to me. And I should prize highly the chance of hearing from you from the other side, after you have started in. 

 And so God be with you. 

 _Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, 8th May 1896_. 

 My Dear Christie Murray, --I have been in Egypt and have only just got back and received your note. Poor Holmes is dead and damned. I couldn't revive him if I would (at least not for years), for I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards _pâté de foie gras_, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day. Any old Holmes story you are, of course, most welcome to use. 

 I am house-hunting in the country, which means continual sallies and alarms, but I should much like to meet you before I go away, to talk over our American experiences. I do hope you are not going to allow lecturing to get in the way of your writing. We have too few born story-tellers. -- With all kind regards. Yours very truly, (Sgd. ) A. Conan Doyle. 

 _Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray (undated)_. 

 My Dear Sir, --I think that your idea of a statue to Washington to be erected by public subscription in London is an admirable one. The future of the world belongs to the Anglo-Celtic races if they can but work in unison, and everything which works for that end makes for the highest. I believe that the great stream which bifurcated a century ago may have re-united before many more centuries have passed, and that we shall all have learned by then that patriotism is not to be limited by flags or systems, but that it should embrace all of the same race and blood and speech. It would be a great thing--one of the most noble and magnanimous things in the history of the world--if a proud people should consent to adorn their capital with the statue of one who bore arms against them. I wish you every success in your idea, and shall be happy to contribute ten guineas towards its realisation. --Yours very truly, (Sgd. ) A. Conan Doyle. 

 _Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, 6th May 1897_. 

 Dear Sir, --I have to acknowledge with thanks the receipt of your letter of May 1st I thoroughly appreciate the spirit of your suggestion, but am inclined to doubt its wisdom at the present time. I do not see how any human being on either side of the Atlantic can dispute the good-feeling already entertained towards the United States by every class of the population here. I am afraid, however, that it is not generally reciprocated, and the Americans are apt to misunderstand some of our efforts to conciliate them, and to attribute them to less worthy motives. I have heard several distinguished Americans protest against the "gush, " as they call it, in which we indulge. Under these circumstances, I think the project of a statue to George Washington should be, for the present, postponed, --I am, yours truly, (Sgd. ) Joseph Chamberlain. 

 _Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, 22nd February 1897_. 

 29 Delamere Terrace, Westbourne Sq. , W. 

 My Dear Sir, --May a delighted reader of your articles in the _Sun_ presume on a very slight acquaintance with their author to say how greatly he admires them? The paper on Dickens seemed to me to dissolve that writer's peculiar charm with a truer alchemy than any criticism I had ever read. And now that with such splendid courage you tilt against the painted bladder-babies of the neo-Scottish school, --with so much real moderation too, with such a dignified statement of the reasons for such a judgment, --I cannot rest, I must say "Bravo. " The distinction between the false North Britons (mere phantoms) and the true Stevenson and Barrie (real creatures of the imagination, if sometimes, in their detail, a little whimsical, even a little diminutive) is put so admirably as I had not yet seen it put. 

 I am eager for next Sunday's article, and as long as these papers continue I shall read them with avidity. I detect in every paragraph that genuine passion for literature which is so rare, and which is the only thing worth living the life of letters for. 

 Pardon my intrusion, and accept my thanks once more. -- Believe me to be, faithfully yours, (Sgd. ) Edmund Gosse. 

 _Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray (undated)_. 

 Undershaw, Hindhead, Haslemere

 My Dear Murray, --I shall be delighted and honoured to have a first glance at the ms. I never read anything of yours which I did not like, so I am sure I shall like it, but there are degrees of liking, and I will tell you frankly which degree I register. 

 Now you will bear that visit in mind and write to me when you are ready and your work done. --With all kind regards, yours very truly, (Sgd. ) A. Conan Doyle. 

 _Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray (undated)_. 

 Undershaw, Hindhead, Haslemere. 

 My Dear Murray, --I have just finished your critical book and think it most excellent and useful. I couldn't help writing to you to say so. It is really fine--so well-balanced and clear-sighted and judicial. For kind words about myself many thanks. I don't think we are suffering from critical kindness so much as _indiscriminate_ critical kindness. No one has said enough, as it seems to me, about Barrie or Kipling. I think they are fit--young as they are--to rank with the highest, and that some of Barrie's work, _Margaret Ogilvy_ and _A Window in Thrums_, will endear him as Robert Burns is endeared to the hearts of the future Scottish race. 

 I have just settled down here and we are getting the furniture in and all in order. In a week or so it will be quite right. If ever you should be at a loose end at a week- end, or any other time, I wish you would run down. I believe we could make you happy for a few days. Name your date and the room will be ready. Only from the 16th to the 26th it is pre-empted. --With all kind remembrances, yours very truly, (Sgd. ) A. Conan Doyle

 _Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray. 9th Sept. 1897_. 

 148 Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lanes. 

 My Dear Sir, --Will you kindly excuse the liberty I take in writing? I have just bought and read your new book _My Contemporaries in Fiction_. And feel that I must thank you. The task you assumed was, I think, necessary, and your estimate of the various writers just, and on the whole generous. I know my opinion is of little value, but I have long felt that several of our modern novelists were appraised miles beyond their merits, and I have often wished that some man of position, one who could speak candidly without fear of being accused of being envious, would give to the world a fair and fearless criticism of the works of novelists about whom some so-called critics rave. Thousands will be glad that you have done this, and I hope your book will have the success it deserves. 

 It will be a matter for thankfulness, too, that you have tried to do justice to George Macdonald, and to give him the place he deserves. To read the fulsome stuff which is so often written about Crockett, and then to think that Macdonald is quietly shelved, is enough to make one sick at heart Certainly, I shall do all that lies in my power to make your work known. 

 I do wish, however that you had devoted a few pages to one who, a few years ago, loomed large in the literary horizon. I mean Robert Buchanan. I know that during these last few years he has poured out a great deal of drivel, but I cannot forget books like _The New Abelard_, and especially, _God and the Man_. It is a matter of surprise and regret that one of Buchanan's undoubted powers should have thrown himself away as he has done. All the same, the man who wrote _God and the Man_ and _The Shadow of the Sword_, hysterical as the latter may be, deserves a place in such a book as yours, and an honest criticism, such as I am sure you could give, might lead him, even yet, to give us a work worthy of the promise of years ago. 

 I am afraid you will regard this letter as presumptuous, nevertheless, I am prompted by sincere admiration. Years ago I read _Joseph's Coat_ and _Aunt Rachel_, and still think the latter to be one of the tenderest and most beautiful things in fiction. I also remember the simple scene which gave the title to the book called _A Bit of Human Nature_, and shall never cease to admire what seems to me a flash of real genius. Consequently, when I stood close by you at a "Vagabond's" dinner, on the ladies' night some months ago, I was strongly impelled to ask for an introduction, but lacked the necessary audacity to carry out my one time determination. 

 Again thanking you for a book which has afforded me a genuine pleasure to read, besides giving me much mental stimulus, --I am, dear sir, yours very truly, (Sgd. ) Joseph Hocking. 

 _Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray. 17th June 1897_. 

 Dear Murray, --I am getting so weary of controversy that I must decline to take part, directly or indirectly, in any more. Possibly, in the heat of annoyance, I may have said harsh things about Mr Scott, but if so, I have forgotten them, and I think all harsh things are better forgotten. I am sorry, therefore, to hear that you are on the war-path, and wish I could persuade you to turn back to the paths of peace. You are too valuable to be wasted in this sort of warfare. I daresay you will smile at such advice from _me_, of all men, but believe me, I speak from sad experience. 

 I was sorry to hear about the fate of your play, but 'tis the fortune of war, and I hope it will only stir you to another effort which may possess, not more merit, possibly, but better _luck_, which now-a-days counts more than merit. --With all good wishes, I am, yours truly, (Sgd. ) Robert Buchanan. 

 _Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, Sept. 1st_. 

 "Merliland, " 25 Maresfield Gardens, South Hampstead, N. W. 

 Dear Christie Murray, --I thank you for your kind breath of encouragement, and am very glad that my _Outcast_ contains anything to awaken a response in so fine a nature as your own. It was very good of you to think of writing to me on the subject at all. 

 I can't help thinking that men who still hold to the old traditions should stick together and form some kind of a phalanx. I was not sorry, therefore, to hear that you had expressed yourself freely about the craze of a noisy minority for formlessness and ugliness in realistic literature. Ibsen's style, regarded merely as style, bears the same relation to good writing that the _Star_ newspaper does to a Greek statue. I don't myself much mind what morals a man teaches, so long as he preserves the morality of beautiful _form_, but at the rate we are now going, literature seems likely to become a series of _causes célèbres_ chronicled in the language of the penny-a-liner. And over and above this is the dirty habit, growing upon many able men, of examining their secretions, always an evident sign of hypochondria. 

 I am awaiting with much interest your further steps on the plane dramatic. Meantime, I hope I shall see more of you and yours. With kind regards. --Truly yours, (Sgd. ) Robert Buchanan. 

 _Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray. 17th January 1905_. 

 75 Cambridge Terrace, W. 

 Dear Sir, --I trust you will forgive my writing you, but I cannot make use of another man's brains without some acknowledgment. For years I have been a reader of the _Referee_, and of late years nothing has interested me more than the articles above the name of Merlin on the front page. This week you have put the real issue so clearly and so freely, that I am going to avail myself of it tonight in my speech at Blandford, and I hope I have your permission so to do. If only a few more men would grasp difficult subjects as boldly and broadly as you do, we should be a better and a happier people. --Yours very faithfully, (Sgd. ) E. Marshall Hall. 

[Illustration: Stevenson1]

[Illustration: Stevenson2]

[Illustration: Stevenson3]

[Illustration: Stevenson4]

CHAPTER XVII

 Sixtieth Birthday

Yesterday I attained my sixtieth birthday. It is not yet old age, butthe posting-stations between old age and myself grow fewer with whatlooks like a bewildering rapidity. The years are shorter than they usedto be. What a length lay between the anniversaries of childhood and eventhose of young manhood! How little tedious was the road! And now howbrief and tiresome has the journey from one point to another grown toseem! One turns and glances back on the traversed road, "looking overTime's crupper and over his tail, " as the elder Hood put it, and itlooks like a ribboned path through a cemetery. The little child-wifeand the baby lie yonder far away. Nearer, and yet afar off, the grey oldfather is asleep. There, between them, is the lad with whom I sharedall my early joy in books. Oh! the raptured miles we walked, seeingeach other home by turns, till long after midnight, each exposing tothe other's view the jewels gathered in the past few days. The memorialstones are everywhere, and they grow thicker as the road winds on. Andsaddest of all are the places where one sees the tokens, not of lostfriends but of dead ideals. Here a faith laid itself down, tired out, and went to sleep for good and all. A cypress marks the place, to myfancy, Here a hope made up its mind that it was not worth while to hopeany longer, and foundered in its tracks. There is an ambition, unburied, to be sure, but as dead as Cheops. "Old wishes, ghosts of broken plans, and phantom hopes. "

"It's a sair sicht, " as Carlyle said, looking up at the skies on astarry night; and one asks, in a mood of some despondency, what one hasgot to show for it all?--the loss, the pain, the disappointment, thedisillusion. But, come now, let us look the thing fairly and squarelyin the face. Is not Despondency disposed to state her case somewhat tooemphatically? Am I, or am I not, flatly exaggerating in this summary oflosses? Would I have the little child-wife back again if I could?Can her loss after this lapse of well nigh two score years have leftanything, at most, but a humanising tenderness in my memory? She is apretty and engaging recollection, and has been no more at any time forwhole decades, and to pretend that she is a grief is frankly to importhumbug into sentiment. And what had I but a sense of pious thanksgivingwhen my grey old father laid down the weary burden of many years andthe crushing pains of hernia, and the breathless agonies of a dreadfulasthma? If I pretend that I would willingly have stretched himout longer on the rack of this tough world, I am no better than asentimental liar to myself. I know in my heart of hearts that I was gladto let him go. And the lost faith? I believe with all my soul that Ihave found a better. And the lost ambitions? What were they but ababy's crying for the moon? There was a time when I could say with WillWaterproof, in the _Lyrical Monologue made at the Cock_:

 "For I had hoped by something rare To prove myself a poet: But while I plan and plan, my hair Is grey before I know it"

But to one's own plain commonsense it is the poorest kind of business atthe present time of life to sit down and grizzle because one proved inthe long run _not_ to be a poet. I will not deny a certain inevitablemelancholy in the retrospect, taking it all round. Yet even whilst Ifeel this, there is an inward protest. The loss is not all loss. Thegame of life is one in which we gain by losing, and lose by gaining. In _The Ghost's Bargain with the Haunted Man_ it was a part of theagreement that the man should forget all the sorrows he had ever known. In that atrophy of the heart which followed in that frozen seal whichbound down every rill of human sympathy and pity, I know that there isthe presentment of a great and lasting truth. No man's nature is ripeneduntil he has known many griefs and losses, nor will it ripen until theyhave bitten into him as frost bites into the fallow earth to fertiliseit, and opens it to the uses of sun and air and rain. 

There are, of course, things quite apart from loss and the destructionof old ideals which encumber the path of coming of age with troubles ofone sort or another. The air is thick with the shadows of regret. It isseventeen years since I shot my first wild boar, and more than fifteensince the last deer; a stag of twelve tines, as I am a christened man, fell to my gun. It is thirteen years since I rode into the central pahof the King's Country in New Zealand, and I have never crossed a horsesince then. It is a quarter of a century since I saw the heights ofTashkesen, and heard the Turkish and Russian guns roaring defianceat each other; and the sporting days, and the exploring days, and thefighting days are all over. I shall never again stand knee-deep in snowthrough the patient hours waiting for the forest quarry to break cover. Think of the ensuing lumbago! I shall hear the thrilling boom of thebig guns no more. I shall never again penetrate into the freshness of avirgin land. I shall see no more the hammer of the midday sun beat itsgreat splashes of light from the snow-clad summits of the Rockies andthe Selkirks. The long and the short of it is that I am transformed frommy old estate of globe-trotter and observer of events and nature intothe land of suburban old fogeydom, and the point to touch, so far as Iam personally engaged, is whether really and truly I do very much anddeeply regret the change. Not very deeply, after all, I am disposedto think. His workshop bounds all to the old fogey who has lived out agreat many of his friendships, but within its limits what sights may henot see? Calais, first seen of Continental towns, is still a possessionof my own. The Paris of 1872 is mine, the Rhine and the Rhine fall, Vienna, Berlin, the Alps--the Austrian Alps, the Australian and NewZealand Alps--they are all mine. Kicking Horse River is mine, and thesteely whirl of the lower rapids of Niagara before they reach the fall. And, in clear view of the ideals which would shake me from my seat, Ihave but one answer to offer them. My shabby study armchair is the seatfrom which I look compassion on a struggling world, as a man fairlydrowned and accepting his fate might look on fellow mariners yet onlyin process of drowning. Fill the mind with memories of thingswhole-heartedly attempted! You have failed or half-failed. Everybody hasfailed or half-failed who ever tried to do anything worth doing. You arenot more unblest than the average of your kind.