Ex Libns 
 K. OGDEN 
 
 i 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 P-A-^-^. 2_ Oi 
 
 \Z'% 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 T/>S ANGELES
 
 Recollections
 
 MEMOIRS OF EDWARD VAUGHAN KENEALY, 
 LL.D. By his Daughter, Arabella Kenealy. With 
 Photogravure Portrait of Dr Kenealy and sevecal other 
 Portraits and Illustrations. Demy 8vo, l6/- net. 
 
 THE RECORD OF AN AERONAUT, being the life 
 of John M. Bacon. By his Daughter, Gertrude Bacon. 
 With Photogravure Portrait and 62 Illustrations, Demy 
 8vo, 16/- net. 
 
 SOCIETY RECOLLECTIONS IN PARIS AND 
 VIENNA, 1879-1904. By an English Officer. With 
 numerous Portraits of Celebrities. Demy Svo, 12/- net. 
 
 MORE SOCIETY RECOLLECTIONS. By an English 
 Officer. With numerous Portraits of Celebrities. Demy 
 Svo, 12/- net. 
 
 MATILDA, COUNTESS OF TUSCANY. By Mrs 
 
 Mary E. Huddy. With Four Photogravure Plates. 
 Demy Svo, 12/- net. Second Edition, revised, with 
 additions. 
 
 GLIMPSES OF THE AGES, or, the " Superior " and 
 "Inferior" Races (so-called) discussed in the light of 
 Science and History. By T. E. S. Scholes, M.D. 
 Vols. I. and II., demy Svo, 12/- net each. 
 
 EDWARD FITZGERALD AND "POSH," "Herring 
 Merchants." Including a number of Letters from Edward 
 FitzGerald to Joseph Fletcher, or "Posh," not hitherto 
 published. Elucidated by James Blyth. With 16 Illus- 
 tions specially taken for the work. Cr. Svo, 4/- net. 
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR A ROYAL CHILD (Anna 
 Monica Pia, Duchess of Saxony), My Experiences 
 as Governess in the Household of the Countess 
 Montignoso. By Ida Kremer. With Photogravure 
 Portraits. Cr. Svo, 6/-. 
 
 JOHN LONG, Publisher, LONDON
 
 i 
 
 /^^-»>V>4 
 
 \)<XjsS~^ 0<NrU-yuj_ A-^Jv-ATV-fJV.
 
 Recollections 
 
 By 
 
 David Christie Murray 
 
 With Photogravure Portrait of the Author and a number of 
 
 Original Letters, of which one by George Meredith 
 
 and another by Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 are re-produced in fac-simile 
 
 London 
 
 John Long 
 
 Norrls Street, Haymarket 
 
 MCMVIII
 
 Copyright by John Long, 1908 
 All Rights Reserved
 
 M54'(iAZ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I 9 
 
 The Unlucky Day of the Fool's Month— High Street, 
 West Bromwich — My First Pedestrian Triumph — 
 The Common English Bracken — The Sense of 
 Beauty. 
 
 Chapter II 14 
 
 My Father— The Murrays— The Courage of Child- 
 hood — 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. 
 
 Chapter III . 28 
 
 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. 
 
 Chapter IV 42 
 
 A First View oi London — Charles Dickens — The 
 Photograph— On the Coach to Oxford — The Manu- 
 script of Ottr Mutual Friend — An Unpublished 
 Chapter— Dickens as Reader— The British Museum 
 Reading-Room. 
 
 Chapter V 53 
 
 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. 
 
 Chapter VI 6y 
 
 Towards Journalism — Dr Kenealy as Parliamentary 
 Candidate — The Wednesbury Advertiser — George 
 Dawson — The First Private Execution — Misprints — 
 The Black Country Sixty Years Ago — Aunt Rachel 
 Old Servants — Local Poets — Mining Dangers. 
 
 5
 
 Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter VII 84 
 
 George Dawson as Editor — Birmingham Politicians — 
 John Bright's Nervousness^ — The Black Lake Rescue 
 — The Pelsall Hall Colliery Disaster — Archibald 
 Forbes — Out of Work — Edmund Yates and The 
 JVor/d— The Hangman — Human Oddities — A Mislaid 
 Cheque — Hero Worship — Three Stories of Carlyle — 
 Journalism, 
 
 Chapter VIII 118 
 
 The House of Commons Press Gallery — Disraeli as 
 Orator — The Story of the Dry Champagne — The 
 Labour Member — Dr Kenealy's Fiasco — Mr Newdi- 
 gate's Eloquence — Lord Beaconsfield's Success — 
 " Stone-Walling " — Robert Lowe's Classics — 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 — Turkish Economy 
 — Memories of Constantinople. 
 
 Chapter X 159 
 
 Constantinople — The Massacre of Kesanlyk • — A 
 Sketching Expedition — Failure of Supplies — Cor- 
 respondent for the Scofsman and the Times — 
 Adrian ople — The Case of the Gueschofifs — 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 Law Relief — Charles Reade — The 
 Cloister and the Hearth— Wilkie Collins — The Figure 
 in Mediaeval Costume — Joseph's Coat — At Roche- 
 fort — Rainbow Co/d—The Anarchist — The Police — 
 The Text of Scripture. 
 
 6
 
 Contents 
 
 Chapter XIII 221 
 
 Eight Hours in Melbourne— The Australian Born — 
 Australians and the Mother Country — The Governor — 
 The Sydney Bulletin — The Englishman in Australia — 
 Australian Journalism — The Theatre — The Creed of 
 Athleticism — The Future. 
 
 Chapter XIV 257 
 
 Mr Rudyard Kipling and " Brugglesmith " — New 
 Zealand — Its Climate — People— Future— AV^j' Chum 
 — Sir George Grey. 
 
 Chapter XV 268 
 
 The Dreyfus Case — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Opinion 
 — Meeting at the Egyptian Hall — Interview with 
 Zola— Maitre Labori— M. Henri Rochefort— Major 
 Esterhazy. 
 
 Chapter XVI 285 
 
 A Few Letters — George Meredith — J. M. Barrie — 
 Advice on Going to America — A Statue to Washington 
 — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Right Hon. Joseph 
 Chamberlain, M.P. — Robert Louis Stevenson — 
 Mr Edmund Gosse on the Neo-Scottish School — 
 My Contemporaries in Fiction — Sir Arthur Conan 
 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, my mother once told me 
 that I came into the world on the unlucky day of 
 the fool's month. It was her picturesque way of 
 saying that I was born on the thirteenth of April. 
 I have often since had occasion to think that there 
 was a wealth of prophetic wisdom in the phrase 
 which neither she nor 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 of West 
 Bromwich, which in those days was a rather dole- 
 ful hybrid of a place — neither town nor country. 
 It is a compact business-like town now, and its 
 spreading industries have defaced the lovely fringe 
 of country which used to be around it. 
 
 Its great peculiarity to a thoughtful child lay in 
 the fact that even at his small rate of progress he could 
 pass in an hour from the clink, clink, clink on the 
 an\ ils of the poor nailmakers, who worked in their 
 
 9
 
 Recollections 
 
 own sordid back kitchens about the Ling or Virgin's 
 End, to a rural retirement and quiet as complete as 
 you may find to-day about Charlcote or Arden, or 
 any other nook of the beautiful Shakespeare country. 
 Since the great South Staffordshire coal fault was 
 circumvented, nearly all the wide reaches of rural 
 land which I remember are overgrown and defaced 
 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 
 o-ivino- 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 still- 
 ness of the summer fields, and more especially, as I 
 seem to remember, in a certain memorable hush 
 which came when afternoon was shading into even- 
 ing, you could hear the clank of pig-iron which was 
 being loaded into the boats on the canal at 
 Bromford, quite two miles away, and the thump of 
 a steam hammer at Dawes's foundry. 
 
 I have begun many a child's ramble by a walk 
 down Bromford Lane, to look in at the half-naked 
 figures there sweating and toiling at the puddling 
 furnaces, and have brought it to an end in the 
 middle of the fairy ring on Stephenson's hills, only 
 a couple of miles away, in what felt like the very 
 heart of nature's solitude. Thus the old parish, 
 which was not by any means an ideal place to be 
 born and bred in, had its compensations for a 
 holiday schoolboy who had Milton, and Klopstock, 
 and Bunyan at his finger-ends, and had hell and 
 the plains of heaven within an easy ramble from the 
 
 lO
 
 Recollections 
 
 paternal doorstep. But the special memory about 
 which I set out to write was the one which immedi- 
 ately follows on the baby experience already re- 
 corded. It is almost as brief and isolated in itself; 
 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 been the pride and glory of 
 our English fields, and the shame and disgrace of 
 English husbandry. In the days I write of, they 
 were veritable flower-gardens in their proper season. 
 What with the great saucer-shaped elderberry 
 blooms, and the pink and white dogroses, and the 
 honeysuckle, and the white and purple foxgloves, 
 and harebell and bluebell, and the starlike yellow- 
 eyed daisy, there was an unending harvest for hand 
 and eye. But the observation of all these things 
 came later. Below the hedges the common English 
 bracken grew, in occasional profusion, and it was a 
 young growing spray of this plant which excited in 
 my mind the very first sense of beauty I had ever 
 known. It was curved in a gentle suggestion of an 
 interrogation note. In colour, it was of a greenish- 
 red and a very gentle yet luxuriant green. It was 
 covered with a harmless baby down, and it was 
 decorated at the curved tip with a crown-shaped 
 scroll. There is really no need in the world to 
 describe it, for one supposes that even the most 
 inveterate Cockney has, at one time or another, 
 seen the first tender offshoot of the commonest fern 
 which grows in England. 
 
 From the time at which I achieved my first 
 
 II
 
 Recollections 
 
 pedestrian triumph until I looked at this delight and 
 wonder, I remember nothing. A year or two had 
 intervened, and I was able to toddle about unaided ; 
 but, for anything I can actually recall, I might as 
 well have been growing in my sleep. But I shall 
 never forget it, and I have never experienced any- 
 thing like it since. Whether I could at that time 
 think in words at all, I do not know ; but the 
 beauty, the sense of the charm of the slender, 
 tender thing went into my heart with an actual pang 
 of pleasure, and my companion reproved me for 
 crying about nothing. I don't remember crying ; 
 but I recall the question, and I know that nothing 
 has ever since moved me in the same way. 
 
 I was about nineteen years of age, I think, when 
 I first awoke to the fact that I had been born short- 
 sighted. I had 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 instructor represented them. 
 But it happened one starlight night, after I had 
 returned to civilian life, that a companion of little 
 more than my own age, who had always worn 
 spectacles in my remembrance of him, began to talk 
 about the splendid brilliance of the heavens. I 
 could discern a certain milky radiance, with here 
 and there a dim twinkle in it, but no more. I 
 borrowed my comrade's glasses, and I looked. The 
 whole thing sprang 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 the 
 child unchanged. 
 
 There is, or used to be, a little pleasure-steamer 
 
 12
 
 Recollections 
 
 which starts at stated times for a voyage on Lake 
 Wakatipu in New Zealand. For a while it passes 
 along a gloomy channel which is bounded on either 
 side by dark and lofty rocks of a forbidding aspect. 
 This passage being cleared, the steamer bears away 
 to the left, across the lake, and, beyond the jutting 
 promontory near at hand, there lifts into sight on a 
 fair day the first mountain of the Glenorchy Range. 
 When I first saw it, the sky at the horizon was 
 almost white ; but the peaks of the distant moun- 
 tains had, as Shakespeare says, a whiter hue than 
 white, and throuorh field-crlasses its outlines could 
 be perfectly distinguished. Then swung into sight 
 a second mountain, and a third, and a fourth, and 
 so on, in a progression which began to look endless. 
 There is a form of delight which is very painful to 
 endure, and I do not know that I ever experienced 
 it more keenly than here. The huge snow-capped 
 range gliding slowly up, " the way of grand, dull, 
 Odyssean ghosts," was impressive, and splendid, 
 and majestic beyond anything I have known in a 
 life which has been rich in travel ; but if I want, at 
 a fatigued or dispirited hour, to bathe my spirit 
 clear in the memory of beautiful things seen, I go 
 back, because I cannot help it, to that tender little 
 fern-frond in a lane on the edge of the Black 
 Country, which brought to me, first of all, the 
 message that there is such a thing as beauty in the 
 world. 
 
 13
 
 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 bookseller if there had been 
 any book buyers in the region. There was a good 
 deal of unsaleable literary stock on the dusty 
 shelves. I remember The Wealth of Nations, 
 Paley's Evidences of Christianity , Locke on the 
 Htiuian Understanding, and a long row of the 
 dramatists of the seventeenth century. I burrowed 
 into all these with zeal, and acquired in very early 
 childhood an omnivorous appetite for books which 
 has never left me. 
 
 There was a family legend, the rights and 
 wrongs of which are long since drowned in mist, 
 to the effect that our little Staffordshire branch of 
 the great Murray family belonged to the elder and 
 the higher, and the titular rights of the Dukedom 
 of Athol were held by a cadet of the house. My 
 father's elder brother, Adam Goudie Murray, pro- 
 fessed to hold this belief stoutly, and he and the 
 reigning duke of a century ago had a humorous 
 spar with each other about it on occasion. " I 
 
 14
 
 Recollections 
 
 presume your Grace is still living in my hoose," 
 Adam would say. 
 
 "Ay, I'm still there, Adam," the duke would 
 answer, and the jest was kept up until the old 
 nobleman died. Sir Bernard Burke knew of the 
 story, 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 to make it 
 worth investigation. My father had, or humorously 
 affected, a sort of faith in it, and used to say that 
 we were princes in disguise. The disguise was 
 certainly complete, for the struggle for life was 
 severe and constant, but there was enoug-h in the 
 vague rumour to excite the imagination of a child, 
 and I know that I built a thousand airy day-dreams 
 on it. 
 
 To me the most momentous episodes of life 
 appear to resolve themselves naturally into first 
 occasions. Those times at which we first feel, think, 
 act, or experience in any given way, form the true 
 stepping-stones of life. Memory is one of the most 
 capricious of the faculties. There is a well-known 
 philosophical theory to the effect that nothing is 
 actually forgotten or forgetable which has once 
 imprinted itself upon the mind. But, bar myself, 
 I do not remember to have encountered anybody 
 who professed to recall his very earliest triumph 
 in pedestrianism — the first successful independent 
 stagger on his feet. When I have sometimes 
 claimed that memory carries me back so far, I 
 have been told that the impression is an after- 
 thought, or an imagination, or a remembrance of 
 the achievement of some younger child. I know 
 
 15
 
 Recollections 
 
 better. It is an actual little fragment of my own 
 experience, and nothing which ever befell me in 
 my whole lifetime is more precise or definite. I do 
 not know who held my petticoats bunched up 
 behind to steady me for the start, nor who held 
 out a roughened finger to entice me. But I re- 
 member the grip, and the feel of the finger when I 
 reached it, as well as I remember anything. And 
 what makes the small experience so very definite 
 is, that after all this lapse of time I can still feel 
 the sense of peril and adventure, and the ringing 
 self-applause which filled me when the task was 
 successfully accomplished. There was a fire in 
 the grate on my right hand side, and beneath my 
 feet there was a rug which was made up of hundreds 
 of rough loops of parti-coloured cloth ; and it was 
 the idea of getting over those loops which frightened 
 me, and brought its proper spice of adventure into 
 the business. There is nothing before this, and 
 for two or three years, as I should guess, there is 
 nothing after it. That little firelit episode of in- 
 fancy is isolated in the midst of an impenetrable 
 dark. 
 
 Where a child is not beaten, or bullied, or 
 cautioned overmuch, it is almost always very 
 courageous to begin with. Where it survives the 
 innumerable mishaps incident to the career of 
 what Tennyson calls " dauntless infancy," it learns 
 many lessons of caution. But the great faculty of 
 cowardice, which most grown men have developed 
 in a hundred forms, is no part of the child's original 
 stock in trade. Even cowardice, in its own degree, 
 
 is a wholesome thing, because it is a part and 
 
 i6
 
 Recollections 
 
 portion of that self-protective instinct which helps 
 towards the preservation of the individual of the 
 race. But it would be a good thing to place, if such 
 a thing were possible, a complete embargo on its 
 importation into the infant kingdom. I suppose 
 the true faculty for being 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 
 cowardice is as rare as the genius for writing 
 great verse, or constructing a great story, or 
 guiding the ship of state through the crises of 
 tempest to a safe harbour. But every human 
 faculty may be cultivated, and this is a field in 
 which, with least effort, and with least expenditure 
 of seed, 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 in my mother's 
 household. Her chief occupation seemed to be to 
 instruct my brothers and sisters and myself in 
 various and manv methods of beino- terrified. 
 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 
 bewitch cattle, and cause milch kine to yield blood. 
 He had philtres of all sorts — noxious and innocuous 
 — and it was currently believed that he went lame 
 because, in the character of an old dog-fox, he had 
 been shot by an irate farmer whose hen-roost he 
 had robbed beyond the bounds of patience. He 
 used to discover places where objects were hidden 
 which had been stolen from local farmhouses, and 
 
 B 17
 
 Recollections 
 
 he was reckoned to do this by certain forms of 
 magical incantation. In my maturer mind, I am 
 disposed to beheve that he was a professional re- 
 ceiver of stolen goods, and I am pretty sure that 
 the modern police would have made short work of 
 him. But from the time that foolish, fat scullion 
 came into the household service, we were all im- 
 pressed with a dreadful sense of this gentleman's 
 potentialities for evil ; and darkened rooms and 
 passages about the house, 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 haunted every place of darkness. 
 He positively peopled the back kitchen to which 
 we went for coals. He haunted a little larder on 
 the left, and stood on each of the three steps which 
 led down to its red brick floor, whilst at the 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 corner of the darkened 
 chamber, and hidden in the chimney. That fat, 
 foolish scullion slept in the same room with my 
 brother and myself. He, as I find by reference to 
 contemporary annals, was seven at this time, and I 
 was five, and we got to know afterwards that the 
 sprawling wench grew hungry in the night-time, 
 and went downstairs to filch heels of loaves and 
 cheese, or anything our rather spare household 
 economy left open to her petty larcenies. And in 
 order that these small depredations should be 
 
 hidden, she used to play the ghost upon us, and I 
 
 i8
 
 Recollections 
 
 suppose it to be a literal 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 clean swoon of terror by the very simple expedient 
 of drawing up the hinder part of her nightdress, and 
 making a ghostly head-dress of it about her face. 
 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 in reserve. I had 
 rambled alone, as children will, along the High 
 Street on a lovely summer day, each sight, and 
 scent, and sound of which comes to me at this 
 moment with a curious distinctness, and I had 
 turned at the corner ; had wandered along New 
 Street, which by that time was old-fashioned 
 enough to seem aged, even to my eyes ; had 
 diverged into Walsall Street, which was then the 
 shortest way to the real country, and on to the Ten 
 Score ; past the Pearl Well, where Cromwell's 
 troops once stopped to drink ; through Church 
 Vale, and on to Perry Bar, and even past the Horns 
 of Queeslett, beyond which lay a plain road to 
 Sutton Coldfield, a place full of wonder and magic, 
 and already memorable to a reading child through 
 its association with one Shakespeare, and a Sir 
 John Falstaff, who afterwards became more intimate 
 companions. 
 
 I had never been so far from home before, 
 and the sense of adventure was very strong upon 
 me. By-and-bye, I found myself in what I still 
 remember as a sort of primeval forest, though a 
 broad country lane was cut between the umbrage- 
 ous shade on either side. I saw a rabbit cross the 
 
 19
 
 Recollections 
 
 road, and I saw a slow weasel track him, and heard 
 the squeak of despair which bunny uttered when 
 the fascinating pursuer, as I now imagine, first fixed 
 upon him what Mr Swinburne calls "the bitter 
 blossom of a 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 broadly along the route. Birds were 
 singing, and butterflies were fanning their feathery, 
 irresponsible way from shade to shade. I saw my 
 first dragonfly 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 harmless woods on either side. 
 Just there the road swerved, and I could hear a 
 halting footstep coming. Somehow, the Dudley 
 Devil was associated in my mind with that halting 
 step, and there was I, in the middle of a waste 
 universe, in which all the bird voices had suddenly 
 grown silent, and the companionable insects had 
 ceased to hum and flutter, left to await the coming 
 of this awful creature. The stammering step came 
 round the bend of the lane, and I saw for the first 
 time a person whom I grew to respect and pity later 
 on, but who struck me then with such an abject 
 sense of terror as I have sometimes since experi- 
 enced in dreams. 
 
 One might have travelled far before meet- 
 insf a more harmless creature. He was on the 
 local Plan of the Wesleyan Methodists, as I 
 
 found out afterwards. He had been a metal- 
 
 20
 
 Recollections 
 
 worker of some sort, and the victim of an explosion 
 which had wrecked one side of his face and figure, 
 and had made nothing less than a ghastly horror 
 of him. The upward-Hying stream of metal had 
 struck him on the cheek and chin, and had left him 
 writhen and distorted there almost beyond imagina- 
 tion. It had literally boiled one eye, which revolved 
 amid its facial seams dead-white in a sigfhtless orbit. 
 The sideward and downward streams had left him 
 with a dangling atrophied arm and a scalded hip, so 
 that he came down on me, with my preconceived 
 ideas about him, like an actual lop-sided demon. I 
 let out one screech, and fled ; but even in the act 
 of flight I saw the poor fellow's face, and read in it 
 the bitter regret he felt that the disaster which had 
 befallen him should have made him unbearable to 
 the imagination of a child. 
 
 A great many years after, when I was quite 
 a young man, and was invited to read a paper 
 on ** Liberty " before a society of earnest Wes- 
 leyan youths who called themselves the "Young 
 Bereans," this identical man stood 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 of Providence, and I 
 recall even now some fragmentary idea of the words 
 he used. " I was a handsome lad to begin with," 
 he said, " but God saw fit to deform me, and to 
 make me what I am." And now, when I am settling 
 down to these reminiscences in late middle age, the 
 most dreadful waking; sense of real horror, and the 
 first real touch of human pity, seem to meet each 
 other, and to blend. 
 
 21
 
 Recollections 
 
 It is fully half a century ago, for I could not have 
 been quite six years of age, when my brother Will 
 and I were taken to chapel on one very well-re- 
 membered Sunday evening. The preacher was 
 the grandfather of a gentleman who now lives in a 
 castle, and does an enormous trade in soap. His 
 theme was the omniscience of the Deity, and he 
 told his simple audience how the same God who 
 made all rolling spheres made the minutest living 
 things also, and all things intermediate. It was a 
 very impressive sermon for a child to listen to, and 
 I can recall a great deal of it to this day. It set my 
 brother's mental apparatus moving, and he thought 
 to such effect that he started a new theory as to the 
 origin of the universe. If God had made all things, 
 it appeared clear to him that somebody must have 
 made God. He suggested that it might have been a 
 policeman. I accepted this idea with an absolutely 
 tranquil faith, and I was immediately certain of the 
 very man. The High Constables Act was not 
 passed until some fourteen or fifteen years later, and 
 it was that Act which finally abolished the old 
 watchman and installed the policeman in his place, 
 even in our remotest villages. But I cannot recall 
 a time when there was not a police barracks in my 
 native High Street. Its inmates were all " bobbies " 
 or " peelers," out of compliment to " Bobby " Peel, 
 who called them officially into being in 1829. I 
 know no better grounds than those afforded by a 
 baby memory that the particular policeman whom I 
 supposed to have created the Creator was a some- 
 what remarkable person in his way. He was six 
 feet four in height, for one thing, and he was 
 
 22
 
 Recollections 
 
 astonishingly cadaverous. I once found a tremu- 
 lous occasion to speak to him, and as I looked 
 upward from about the height of his knee at God 
 Almighty's maker, I thought his stature more than 
 Himalayan. I forget what I asked, or what he 
 answered ; but the sense of incredible daring is with 
 me still. 
 
 I learned later that this elongated solemn coffin of 
 a man was the champion eater of the district. I am 
 notinclined to be nice in myremembrance of recorded 
 weights and measures; but they had him registered 
 to an ounce at the " Lewisham Arms," which was 
 only a yard or two beyond the police barracks, on 
 the road to Handsworth, where he figured as having 
 consumed a shoulder of mutton, a loaf of bread, a 
 pan of potatoes, and a dish of cabbage, each of such 
 and such a weight, in such and such a time. I 
 cannot be sure whether it were at this house of 
 entertainment, or at another in the neighbourhood, 
 where there was a glass case on view in which was 
 displayed the ashy remnant of a pound of tobacco 
 smoked, and the desiccated remnant of a pound of 
 tobacco chewed, within so many given minutes by 
 the local champion in these inviting arts. I am 
 pretty certain now that the local glutton was not 
 identical with the local champion consumer of 
 tobacco ; but at that time I heaped all these honours 
 on his head, and my belief in his original responsi- 
 bility for the launching of the universe was not, so 
 far as I remember, in any way disturbed by the 
 contemplation of these smaller attributes of power. 
 It is something, even in the flights of baby fancy, 
 to have known and conversed with the origin of 
 
 23
 
 Recollections 
 
 all created things. It is perhaps something of a 
 throwback to be forced to the recognition of that 
 
 o 
 
 prodigious figure as it really was. But, after all, 
 it is not quite impossible that a similar awaking 
 may await the grown man who imagines himself 
 to have mastered something of the real philosophies 
 of life. The cadaverous peeler with the abnormal 
 appetite fades out of recollection, and my next hero 
 is a blacksmith, who, in a countryside once rich 
 in amateur pugilists, had earned a local distinc- 
 tion for himself before he made a settlement for 
 life at the " Farriers' Arms," in Queen Street. His 
 name was Robert Pearce, and he dawns on me as 
 second hero because of a physical strength which 
 must have been remarkable even when all allow- 
 ance for the childish ideal is made. 
 
 Sir Ernest Spencer, who was for many years 
 the Parliamentary representative of my native 
 parish, was an infant schoolfellow of mine, and 
 on a birthday, or some other such occasion 
 for celebration, his father made him a present 
 of a small donkey ; and we two took the beast 
 to Bob Pearce's to be shod. I can see the 
 great, broad-shouldered, hairy farrier at this 
 minute, as if I saw him in a picture, with his 
 smoky shirt thrown wide open at the collar, 
 and his breast as bearded as his chin. When 
 the small beast was trotted in to the farriery, the 
 grimy giant laughed aloud. He stooped, and, 
 placing his great palm under the donkey's belly, 
 he raised the animal in one hand, and poised him 
 at the ceiling, swaying him here and there as if he 
 
 had been a weathervane in a high and varying 
 
 24
 
 Recollections 
 
 wind. I suppose that the donkey was a little 
 donkey ; but I am sure that he was only an averagely 
 little donkey, and that not one man in a British 
 regiment could have performed Bob Pearce's feat 
 with any approach to the air of ease and dexterity 
 he orave it. There was no effort at all about the 
 
 o 
 
 action, and no apparent idea that any exhibition of 
 strength was being offered. There was a conquer- 
 ing comic spontaneity in that exhibition of great 
 muscular power which irresistibly appealed to the 
 imagination, and made the Queen Street farrier a 
 god for years to come. 
 
 When I was sent to a regular day-school, 
 many years afterwards, there were legends 
 amongst us of this man's super-normal strength. 
 There was a 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 any surviving prejudice against the use of 
 names and places. His name was Tom Woolley, 
 and I saw Pearce set his bis: hand underneath the 
 chair on which he sat, and place him on an ordinary 
 table in a smoke-room for some slight wager of a pint 
 of beer or so. This was one of the ameliorations of 
 the rigours of a committee meeting, of which my 
 father was chairman, called to decide on the form 
 of the public reception of a returning Chartist, who 
 had spent six months in Stafford Gaol for the ex- 
 pression of such extreme opinions as are now daily 
 enunciated in the columns of The Times. 
 
 There are no such liars as schoolboys, and no 
 set of men could possibly be found who could as 
 religiously believe each other's lies as they do. 
 
 25
 
 Recollections 
 
 We used to invent for each other's delioht stories 
 about this particular hero which went beyond 
 grown-up credence altogether. But there are 
 some few narratives that survive the application 
 of the laws of evidence. For instance, it is re- 
 corded that, taking advantage of the temporary 
 absence of a rival smith, he carried away an anvil 
 under his cloak without exciting suspicion that he 
 was bearing any weight at all. 
 
 There was a pork butcher in the High Street 
 who sprang to the most dazzling height of fame 
 amongst the schoolboys and other well-practised, 
 self-believing liars of the parish. On the Wednes- 
 day the man was as mere and simple a salesman of 
 dead pig as might be found within the limits of the 
 land. On the Thursday he had obliterated the 
 memory of the achievements of Nelson and Six- 
 teen-String Jack. Surveying the circumstances 
 from a considerable distance, I am inclined to 
 think that there was some authenticity in the story 
 which sent the whole parish into a gaping admira- 
 tion. The tale was that the pork butcher had 
 gone money-hunting on the afternoon of that event- 
 ful day which made a hero of him. He had 
 gathered, so the local story ran, something like two 
 hundred pounds, and he made an incautious brag 
 of this fact in the bar-room of the old " Blue Posts," 
 at Smethwick, Midway up Roebuck Lane, which 
 was then without a house from end to end, three 
 men sprang out upon him from the shadows of the 
 bridge then just newly-erected across the Great 
 Western line of railway, over which, if I remember 
 
 rightly, no train at that time had ever travelled. 
 
 26
 
 Recollections 
 
 Then that pork butcher proved himself a paladin. 
 He thrust one of his assailants 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 the police station. 
 Even now, I believe this story to be true, or near 
 the truth ; and the sympathetic reader may fancy 
 what we boys made of the hero of it. I have 
 worshipped many people in my time, and I have 
 thrilled at the thought of many splendid deeds ; 
 but I have never since reached that high-water 
 mark of hero-worship at which I sailed when I 
 followed that pork butcher down the West 
 Bromwich High Street, and persuaded myself 
 beyond the evidence of my senses that he was ten 
 feet high. 
 
 27
 
 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 Educa- 
 tion — 'Plaster Medallions. 
 
 At the age of twelve I was taken from school 
 and set to work in my father's printing office. 
 There must have been a serious fall in the family 
 fortunes about this time, for a year earlier I had 
 been removed from the respectable little private 
 seminary I had hitherto attended and transferred 
 to a school of the roughest sort, where the pupils 
 paid threepence a week apiece to the schoolmaster 
 and we used to Sfive off the result of our lessons in 
 platoons. I learned a little freehand drawing here 
 in the South Kensington manner, for we had a 
 night school which was affiliated to the Art depart- 
 ment there, and our teachers came to us once a 
 week from Birmingham. I was secretly very 
 unhappy all this time, and brooded much on 
 the disguised prince idea among my rough 
 companions. 
 
 My way to school led me past the Champion of 
 England public-house, kept by the Tipton Slasher 
 — William Perry, from whom Tom Sayers after- 
 wards wrested the honours of the Prize Ring. I 
 
 28
 
 Recollections 
 
 got to know that knock-kneed giant well, and took 
 
 an enormous pride in my acquaintance with him. 
 
 I remember one summer evening, seeing him eject 
 
 an enormous fat Frenchman from his door — one of 
 
 the colony of artificers in glass which lived there at 
 
 this time. The champion's was the last house in 
 
 the parish, and beside it lay the Birmingham and 
 
 Worcester Canal. The big pugilist conducted his 
 
 captive to the bridge and dumped him down there 
 
 on the wall, the top of which was all frayed and 
 
 crumbled by the action of the towing ropes. The 
 
 fat Frenchman, who was good-naturedly tipsy, 
 
 picked up a loose half brick and tossed it after the 
 
 departing Slasher. The missile took him between 
 
 the shoulders, and he, turning in wrath, flung out 
 
 one windy buffet at his assailant, and toppled him 
 
 over the bridge into the canal. There was a 
 
 momentary flurry, and then a bystander lent the 
 
 immersed Frenchman one end of a barge-pole, and 
 
 he was drawn to the side, apparendy quite sobered. 
 
 The Slasher stood guffawing on the bridge, a little 
 
 crowd of loafers roared with laughter, and the fat 
 
 victim of the incident seemed as much amused by 
 
 it as anybody. He struck a burlesque fighting 
 
 attitude on the tow-path, and then went dripping 
 
 homeward. 
 
 This small episode was quite in tune with the 
 
 place and the time, and nobody thought it worth 
 
 more than a laugh. The good old Prize Ring was 
 
 even then sinking into disrepute and only the giant 
 
 fight of years later, when England and America 
 
 were matched against each other in the persons 
 
 of Tom Sayers and The Benecia Boy, gave 
 
 29
 
 Recollections 
 
 it a momentary flicker before, as it were, it fell 
 into the socket, and one form of British valour 
 died. 
 
 The Slasher was, of course, the central luminary, 
 but there were scores and scores of lesser liofhts 
 revolving round him. The fistic art in those days 
 was very generally practised and a stand-up fight 
 between two local champions was often undertaken 
 for the mere love of the thing. It was not at all 
 an uncommon practice for a party of eight to be 
 brought together, lots would be drawn, and four 
 would stand up against four, then two against two, 
 and the survivors of the competition would fight it 
 out between them. I witnessed many of these 
 contests and can bear evidence that there was less 
 rowdyism displayed than can be noted any day 
 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 
 anger of the crowd, for the laws of the game were 
 known to everybody and were universally respected. 
 I hope I am not going to sermonise often in the 
 course of this narrative, but I have always thought 
 that the legislative meddling with the Prize Ring 
 was a grave mistake. The hooliganism of modern 
 days was absolutely unknown at the time of which I 
 write and the roughest crowd might be relied upon 
 to see fair play between any chance pair of com- 
 batants. But the best of the sport was that it was 
 commonly carried on out of that pure hardihood 
 which at one time made the rougher sort of 
 Englishman the pick of the world for valour and 
 
 30
 
 Recollections 
 
 endurance. The sentimentalists and humanitarians 
 aboHshed the Prize Ring because of its brutahty, 
 and the result is that all sense of honour has 
 gone out among the rougher classes, and the 
 record of the police courts have familiarised every- 
 body with the use of the knife in private war- 
 fare, a thing almost unknown until the Prize 
 Ring was abolished. 
 
 I have very often thought it odd that I have 
 not even a fragmentary memory of the very 
 earliest steps in education. I recall quite easily a 
 time when I could not read, and the recollection of 
 one superb moment is very often with me. That 
 moment came with the reading of a story, entitled 
 The Mandans Revenge ; or, the Riccaree War Spear, 
 which came from the pen of Mr Percy B. St John, 
 and may still be found in some far-away number 
 of Chambers s Journal. I have never gone back to 
 that story. I have never had the courage to go 
 back. It would be something like a crime to 
 dissipate the halo of romance and splendour which 
 lives about 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 he could 
 not have written one such story as that my memory 
 so dimly, yet splendidly recalls, without having 
 made himself immortal. In sober truth, 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 thought the Mandans Revenge to 
 be. The curious part about this recollection to me 
 is, not that I should have found so intense a joy in 
 what was probably a very commonplace piece of 
 
 31
 
 Recollections 
 
 hackwork, but that the faculty of reading at all 
 was, as it were, sprung upon me, and that I re- 
 member clearly a feeling of surprise that I had not 
 discovered this wonderful resource before. In 
 effect, I said to myself, "This is the best thing I 
 have yet encountered, and I am never going to 
 do anything else, henceforward." Fortunately 
 for myself, I have not quite kept that promise, 
 though the printed page has never ceased to be 
 a joy. 
 
 In my father's shop we sold not only such 
 serious literature as the population cared to buy, 
 but we dealt, too, in the ephemeral. Mr J, F. 
 Smith wove stories for CasselPs Illustrated Family 
 Journal 2.ViA the London Journal which would have 
 made the fortune of a modern man ; and there was 
 one writer in Reynolds Miscellany who was most 
 delightfully fertile in horrors. In one chapter he 
 buried a nobleman alive in the family vault, and 
 described his sensations in his coffin so poignantly 
 that for weeks I was afraid to go to sleep lest I 
 should dream about him. My father was an un- 
 commonly well-read man ; but he made no attempt 
 to regulate my studies, except that now and then 
 he would suggest to me that I was wasting time in 
 the perusal of rubbish ; and I do suppose that, as 
 a boy, I read as much actually worthless stuff as 
 anybody ever did within an equal time. But I do 
 not know whether, after all, it matters very greatly 
 what a child reads, so long as he has full and free 
 access to the best of books. 
 
 Amongst my earliest literary treasures was 
 a fat, close-printed volume, the binding of which 
 
 12
 
 Recollections 
 
 had been torn away. I do not suppose it had 
 ever been issued in the form of a single volume ; 
 but it contained Roderick Random, Gil Bias, 
 The Devil on Two Sticks and Zadig ; or, the 
 Book of Fate, and it was my companion through 
 many hundreds of delightful hours. It is both 
 curious and touching to remember the innocence 
 with which one's childish fancy ranged through 
 those pages. I have not turned back to look at 
 my old friend, Asmodeus, for a good many years ; 
 but there is one episode in the story of the un- 
 roofed city in which an artist is unable to take his 
 mistress to a ball because she has no stockings, and 
 the brilliant idea occurs to him that he should paint 
 a pair upon her legs. There is a special sly 
 mention of the work upon the garter ; and the 
 whole business used to seem to me most magnifi- 
 cently comic. There was no more of a suggestion 
 of an impropriety about it than there was about 
 my breakfast bowl of bread and milk. It was just 
 simply, innocently, and gloriously funny ; and it 
 has long been my belief that the time at which it 
 is best that a reader should make acquaintance with 
 our rather indelicate old classics is the time of 
 innocence, when no grossness of suggestion has 
 a meaning, though the mind is fully open to the 
 reception of all the reader's own experience teaches 
 him to understand. 
 
 I suppose I am going to say a Scythian sort of 
 thing, but I do not remember any very keen 
 or special pleasure in my first encounter with 
 Shakespeare. Perhaps it came when I was too 
 young ; but at first the impression made upon me 
 c 33
 
 Recollections 
 
 was certainly much inferior to that produced by 
 Mr Percy B. St John, and he was only one of that 
 assembly of wonder-workers of whom the name- 
 less hacks of Reyiiolds and Bow Bells were 
 members. When it began to dawn upon me that 
 the spell he exercised was of another kind, I 
 cannot tell. I suppose that the conception of 
 his greatness slowly expanded with the expand- 
 ing mind ; but I know that I had come to 
 young manhood before any special sense of 
 wonder dawned. 
 
 After that first discovery of the power to read 
 at all, which came with the Manda7is Revenge, the 
 one salient thing in memory is the sudden finding 
 of Carlyle's Heroes and Sartor Resarhts. Some 
 literary-minded compositor in my father's employ 
 had placed the book in a rack of type-cases, and 
 had apparently forgotten it. It bore on many 
 pages the stamp of some Young Men's Christian 
 Association in a Northern town, and my literary- 
 minded compositor seems to have looted it. It 
 was my most valued possession for some years. 
 It was, no doubt, a very obvious 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 in my mind at a chance opening 
 of the pages at the first chapter of the Sartor f 
 The hurling satire of the opening paragraph — the 
 torch of learning having so illuminated every cranny 
 and dog-hole in the universe that the creation of 
 the world had now become no more mysterious than 
 
 34
 
 Recollections 
 
 the making of a dumpling, though concernino^ this 
 last there were still some to whom the question as 
 to how the apples were got in presented an insoluble 
 problem — this seized me with an amazement of 
 pleasure. I do not mean to say a presumptuous 
 thing at all ; but it is a simple fact that from this 
 first beginning of acquaintance with Carlyle, he 
 never once appeared to teach me anything in the 
 way of thought. I know he did so ; I know that 
 he profoundly coloured the fountains of my mind 
 for many years ; that long and long after the 
 experience I am recording, I thought Carlyle, and 
 wrote Carlyle ; and that neither the thinking nor 
 the literary mode could ever have occurred to me 
 without his influence ; but in my first reading of his 
 pages, he seemed to be telling me things which were 
 deeply implanted in my soul already. The truth 
 about the matter is, probably, that he dominated me 
 so completely that I did not think at all of domina- 
 tion. But all I know is, that I seemed suddenly to 
 have found an unexpected and hitherto unimagined 
 self. I leapt in transport to encounter a majestic 
 Me ; and in this impulse I can honestly aver that 
 there was no tinge of vanity. I should say, 
 rather, that it sprang from the utter humility 
 of the disciple who instantly, absolutely, and 
 unquestionably accepted the master's word. Be 
 these things as they may, the Carlylean gospel 
 came to me, not as a revelation of another's 
 mind, but as an unveiling of a something which 
 seemed to have been for ever rny own, though 
 until that great hour I had not dreamed of its 
 possession. 
 
 35
 
 Recollections 
 
 I do not propose to make any immediate flight 
 into sentiment. The thing for which I am trying 
 is a genuine recollection of the \vay in which the 
 growth of this emotion was marked within myself. 
 Things are very much otherwise to-day ; but nearly 
 three-score years ago there was a certain purposed 
 austerity practised by the most dutiful and praise- 
 worthy parents, which froze the natural budding 
 affections of a child. Before I had arrived at the 
 technical age of manhood, my father had become 
 the dearest friend I had in the world, and the 
 friendship lasted till his death ; but as a child I 
 feared him. He was by nature as kindly a man as 
 ever lived ; but he had been bred in the old rigid 
 Calvinistic creed of Scotland, and though I knew 
 very well, in later years, how his heart had rebelled 
 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 his character 
 based on the system of discipline in which he 
 devoutly believed would have been false in the 
 extreme, for the infliction of pain was actually 
 abhorrent to him. I remember how, on scores of 
 occasions, when I put him to the ordeal of ad- 
 ministering a hiding to mvself, his face would grrow 
 pale, and his hand would tremble. 
 
 Between my mother and myself there were 
 none of those intimacies of affection which make 
 life so happy to a child. The whole atmosphere of 
 the house repelled love, and its whole principle 
 seemed to be embodied in the belief that a child 
 should think despitefully of himself, and should 
 
 36
 
 Recollections 
 
 repress all natural ebullitions of fondness or of 
 gaiety. I have been trying hard to recall the 
 surname of the boy to whom my heart first flowed 
 out in a real affection, but memory fails me. He 
 was a schoolfellow of mine, and I guess that he 
 may have been of Scottish parentage, 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 to find a reason — why I should 
 have loved that small contemporary as I did. I 
 cannot say that he was conspicuously gifted in any 
 way. He was certainly no Steerforth to my 
 Copperfield, being neither distinguished for good 
 looks, nor for brilliance at his schoolwork, nor for 
 success in games. 
 
 It was at this time that there was an ebb 
 in the family fortunes, and I was hastily taken 
 away from a respectable private school in the 
 High Street, and sent, as I have explained, to 
 a big vulgar establishment a mile away, where 
 a crowd of some three hundred lads attended, at a 
 cost to their parents of threepence a week per head. 
 I did not stay there long, but whilst I was kept 
 there, by the strain on the family exchequer, I was 
 very unhappy. It was in the midst of a sore- 
 hearted loneliness that I encountered Gavin, who, 
 to the best of my belief, was the 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 of the 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 ten we must have 
 
 17
 
 Recollections 
 
 been — and we seemed to slide together like two 
 separate rainspots which meet upon a window-pane 
 in wet weather. We used to wander about the 
 stony playground, from which every blade of grass 
 was trampled, except in the remoter corners, and 
 to walk with our arms about each other's shoulders, 
 and to exchange almost daily such trumpery school- 
 boy treasures as we owned. I never had a child 
 sweetheart, and I never knew anybody with whom 
 I exchanged a caress, or bartered a word of real 
 kindness, until I fell in with this fascinating 
 young ragamuffin. I never spoke about him to a 
 soul, but he filled my thoughts night and day, and 
 I was never happy out of his society. I am guilty 
 of no exaggeration when I say that. The feeling 
 I had towards him was, in its own time, so tender, 
 so yearning, so complete in its absorption of my 
 whole nature, that it stands altogether apart in my 
 experience. And when, after a period of some six 
 months, perhaps, the family fortunes revived a 
 little, and I was restored once more to the society 
 of my own social equals, I was broken-hearted at 
 the thought of losing him. 
 
 The master of this rough school had a glimmer- 
 ing of the necessity for technical education, and on 
 occasional afternoons a chosen number of us were 
 drafted off into a biof class-room to watch some 
 craftsman working at his trade. One of these men 
 set the whole class on fire with a spirit of emulation. 
 He brought with him a number of medallions, a 
 quantity of plaster-of-paris, a stick or two of 
 common sulphur, and a small brazier, and he pro- 
 ceeded to show us how plaster casts were taken from 
 
 38
 
 Recollections 
 
 his medallions. The first part of the process was 
 to oil the surface of the medal, and to bind a strip 
 of brown paper about its edge, so as to form a 
 shallow little well. The next business was to melt 
 enough of the sulphur to secure a cast of the 
 medallion. This part of the process resulted in 
 the production of a most appalling smell, which 
 was not lessened in pungency when the odour of 
 singed brown paper was added to that of melting 
 sulphur. When the cast was cool it also was 
 bound round with brown paper, and a compound 
 of plaster-of-paris and water was poured over it. 
 When this had hardened, behold ! a snowy re- 
 production of the original medallion. We all went 
 quite wi.d about this process, and when the work- 
 man filled in the hollowed head in the mould — it 
 was a portrait of John Wesley — with the white 
 preparation, very carefully, by the aid of a small 
 spoon and a camel-hair pencil, we watched with 
 wonder for the next development. The craftsman 
 took a small quantity of 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 snowy bas-relief of the great divine set on a 
 golden-coloured background. From then until I 
 left the school there was an actual fever for the 
 making of plaster medallions, mainly from the 
 heavy, half-effaced Bolton pennies which at that 
 time were in circulation ; and among those who 
 were most devoted to this pursuit were my friend 
 Gavin and myself. 
 
 We made casts by the dozen and the score, 
 and when it was known definitely that I was 
 
 39
 
 Recollections 
 
 leaving the school, he gave to me his chef 
 
 d'ceuvre, in the shape of a reproduction in two 
 
 colours of a medal which had been struck to 
 
 commemorate the opening of the Crystal Palace in 
 
 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 purchase of materials ; and 
 
 one night, all being ready, I set to work to melt 
 
 my sulphur in a cracked teacup in the kitchen 
 
 oven. The whole family was assembled in that 
 
 apartment, for the sitting-room was never used 
 
 save upon unfrequent gala days, and before long 
 
 there were sniffs of bewilderment and suspicion at 
 
 the stench which began to fill the room. I had 
 
 not thought of this, and I was afraid for the life of 
 
 me to withdraw the teacup. It was a winter night, 
 
 and a great fire was blazing on the hearth, 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 there arose an odour of 
 
 mere and perfect Tophet, and the room was filled 
 
 with a sulphurous smoke. I confessed myself the 
 
 author of the mischief by trying to bolt, and I 
 
 suffered then and there. We were very near being 
 
 driven entirely out of house and home that night, 
 
 and I was very shy of reviving the experiment. 
 
 But my promise lay upon my conscience like a 
 
 cloud, I had to keep it. To fail in that would 
 
 have been an unspeakable disloyalty, and very 
 
 tremulously I made a new occasion when, as I 
 
 40
 
 Recollections 
 
 fancied, the coast was clear. It was not so dis- 
 astrous, in one respect, as the first, but the burning 
 sulphur again betrayed me, and the very natural 
 judgment was that I had been guilty of pure 
 contumacy. 
 
 41
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 A First View of London — Charles Dickens — The Photograph — 
 On the Coach to Oxford — The Manuscript of Our Mutual 
 Friend — An UnpubHshed Chapter — Dickens as Reader — 
 The British Museum Reading Room. 
 
 I WORKED in the ramshackle, bankrupt, old 
 printing office at home until I was nearly eighteen 
 years of age, and it was then decided to send 
 me to London to complete my education in the 
 business. 
 
 It is like an exhibition of the biograph, in which 
 the scenes depicted go by at such a racing speed 
 that it is difficult for the eye to follow them. 
 There is an instantaneous vision of the old kitchen, 
 seen at some abnormal unaccustomed hour of early 
 morning in the winter-time. Three o'clock on the 
 morning of January 3, 1S65. A gas-lit scene of 
 bustle and hurry. Gone. A minute's waiting in 
 a snow-powdered road, carpet-bag in hand, 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 white and glistening. An extra- 
 ordinary bustle and clamour. A phantasmagoria 
 of strangle faces and fiorures. Gone. A station all 
 
 in darkness, but full of echoes and voices. Gone. 
 
 42
 
 Recollections 
 
 A buffet at Oxford, and an instantaneous glimpse of 
 people scalding their throats with an intolerable 
 decoction called coffee extract. The figure of an 
 imperious guard with a waving lamp. The vision 
 of a stampede. Gone. Then an interlude of sleep, 
 during which an orchestra plays dream music, with 
 a roll, roll, roll of wheels as a musical groundwork 
 to the theme. Then Paddinorton, in a fogf — a real 
 London particular, now for the first time seen, felt, 
 tasted, sneezed at, coughed at, wept over. Dis- 
 tracted biographic figures rampant everywhere. 
 Gone. A vision of streets, populous, and full of 
 movement, but half-invisible in a pea-soup haze, 
 through which the gas that takes the place of day- 
 light most ineffectually glimmers. Gone. Then a 
 room, still gas-lit when it should be broad day ; a 
 table spread with napery none too clean ; a land- 
 lady in a dressing-gown and curl-papers ; and 
 breakfast. The biograph ceases to whirl by at 
 its original speed, and I can take breath here, 
 and can begin to analyse myself and my own 
 surroundings. 
 
 To begin with, this is London ; and to con- 
 tinue, I don't think much of it. This is a 
 London G:gg, and this is London bacon, and 
 this exiguous liquid which "laves the milk-jug 
 with celestial blue" is London milk. All the 
 flavours are strange. The atmosphere is strange. 
 The sight of a lady in curlpapers at lo a.m. is 
 strange. 
 
 Now, in setting down all these things, I begin 
 to take new notice of a fact which has lon^ been 
 
 o 
 
 familiar to me. It has been expressed by more 
 
 43
 
 Recollections 
 
 than one poet, and the reason for it may be found 
 in the works of more than one man of science ; but 
 the fact itself is that every one of these cinemato- 
 graphical exercises is associated with a special 
 odour. These special odours have each one so 
 often recurred that they have driven home certain 
 memories in such wise as to make them stick. The 
 fire in the old home kitchen had been "raked," as 
 we used to say in South Staffordshire, overnight, 
 and it gave forth a scent of smouldering ash which, 
 whenever and wherever I have encountered it, 
 has not failed to brinor back the scene in which 
 I smelt it first. There is an odour less easy to 
 define, but just as easy to recognise, in the air 
 of the morning street ; in the reek of horse and 
 harness going up Snow Hill ; in a 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 take 
 me 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 the first time as a free man, 
 and, to my own mind, master of my destiny. It 
 really 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 wings at the 
 bottom of some unfathomable cranny. The fog of 
 my first week in London is, I believe, historic, and 
 its five or six days of tearful blindness and catarrh 
 began to look as if they would reach to the very 
 crack of doom. Those fog-bound days, in which 
 
 44
 
 Recollections 
 
 it was impossible for a Midi and -bred stranger to 
 stray ten yards from his own door without hope- 
 lessly losing himself, are amongst the most 
 despondent and mournful of my life. But, on a 
 sudden, the dawning day revealed to me the other 
 side of the street in an air as crisp, clear, and in- 
 vigorating as the heart of any youngster, inured to 
 the smoke of the Black Country, could wish for. 
 Then what a joy it was to walk about amongst 
 the bustlingr crowds, readinor stories in the faces of 
 the passers-by, and identifying scores and hundreds 
 of people with the creatures of the great fiction 
 writers. Above all, the people whose life-long 
 friendship we owe to the works of Charles Dickens 
 declared themselves. I lived off the Goswell Road, 
 and that fact alone predisposed me to recognise Mr 
 Pickwick in any spectacled, well-fleshed old gentle- 
 man of benevolent aspect. I tumbled across Sam 
 Weller constantly. I was quite certain as to the 
 living personality of one of the Cheeryble twins. 
 When I knew him he was a tailor in Cheapside. 
 It was merely by the accident of time that the 
 shadows I identified with living men had assumed 
 a dress dissimilar to that of the early Victorian era, 
 and I think I may honestly say that for a month 
 or two, at least, my London was mainly peopled 
 by the creations of the author of Pickwick, Little 
 Dorrit, and Doinbey. 
 
 I never exchanged a word with Dickens in my 
 life ; but at this period, by some extraordinary 
 chance, I met him twice. I knew his personal 
 aspect well, for I had heard him read his own 
 works in Birmingham. I was, indeed, a unit in 
 
 45
 
 Recollections 
 
 the packed audience which greeted his very first 
 professional appearance as a platform exponent 
 of his own pages. That event took place at the 
 old Broad Street Music Hall in Birminofham, a 
 building which was superseded by the Prince of 
 Wales' Theatre. It was not easy to mistake so 
 characteristic a figure for that of any other man 
 living. 
 
 There used to be in Cheapside, at the time of 
 which I write, a window in which the Stereoscopic 
 Company exhibited the latest achievements in 
 photography ; and it was my custom, in the dinner 
 hour, to spend some odd minutes in front of this 
 display. I was impressed one day by a new life- 
 sized portrait of Dickens, an enlargement by a 
 process then quite novel. The hair and beard, I 
 remember, had a look of being made out of tele- 
 graph wire ; but the features were quite natural and 
 unexaggerated. I had taken a good look at the 
 picture, and had, indeed, so firmly fixed it in my 
 mind that I can positively see it now, and could, if I 
 were artist enough, reproduce it ; when, having an 
 unoccupied quarter of an hour 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 was looking at it with his head a little thrown 
 back, and somewhat set on one side, and his look 
 was very keen and critical. I gave a start which 
 attracted his attention, and, in the extremity of my 
 surprise, I am afraid that I stared at him rather 
 rudely. I looked back at the photograph, and I 
 looked back at the living face of the great master 
 
 of tears and laughter, who was then my reigning 
 
 46
 
 Recollections 
 
 deity. I can only suppose that my face was full of 
 a foolish wonder and worship, for when I had 
 looked from Dickens to the portrait again, and then 
 back to Dickens, the great man laughed, and gave 
 me a little comic affirmative nod, as much as to 
 say: "It is so, my young friend." With that he 
 turned briskly, and walked 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, on a coach which 
 travelled from Thame to Oxford. I climbed 
 that coach on purpose to enjoy the privilege of 
 sittinor next to him. He had a travellino- com- 
 
 o o 
 
 panion, who was nursing between his knees quite 
 a little stack of walking-sticks and umbrellas, and 
 I overheard a brief colloquy between him and 
 Dickens. 
 
 "Charles," said the man with the bundle, 
 " why don't you have your name engraved 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 about England without being 
 stared at, and pointed out and run after ; and 
 we know, from his own pen, that outside his 
 public hours he had a self-respecting passion for 
 privacy. 
 
 I came into contact with Dickens in a far 
 different way in the course of that spring. It is a 
 
 47
 
 Recollections 
 
 little boast of mine that I was the first person in 
 the world to make acquaintance with Silas Wegg 
 and Nicodemus Boffin and Mr Venus. My name- 
 father, David Christie, was chief reader at Clowes' 
 printing office in Stamford Street, Blackfriars, and 
 month by month as the proofs of Our Mutual 
 Friend were printed, it was his habit to borrow the 
 Dickens manuscript from Mr Day, the overseer of 
 the establishment, and to take it home with him for 
 his own delectation before it reached the hands of 
 the compositors. On each occasion, until I left 
 London behind me, Christie would wire me always in 
 the same phrase : "Dickens is here," and I would 
 eo down to his lodorinors in Duke Street and would 
 read aloud to him the work fresh from the master's 
 hand. It was written on long ruled foolscap on 
 rather darkish blue paper in a pale blue ink, and it 
 needed young eyes to decipher it. There were 
 only a few of such nights, but the enjoyment of 
 them remains as a remembrance. I shall never 
 forofet how he lauofhed over Mr Weofe's earlier 
 lapses into poetry : 
 
 e3& 
 
 " And my elder brother leaned upon his sword, Mr Boffin, 
 And wiped away a tear, Sir." 
 
 Hereabouts befell the first tragedy of my life. 
 In his time Christie had been "reader's" boy at 
 Ballantyne's, in Edinburgh, and in that capacity he 
 had laid hands with a jackdaw assiduity on every 
 scrap of literary interest which he could secure. 
 He had proof sheets corrected by the hands of 
 every notable man of his time. He had been 
 
 engaged for at least fifty years in making his collec- 
 
 48
 
 Recollections 
 
 tion, and he kept it all loosely tumbled together in 
 a big chest, which he used to tell me would become 
 my property on the occasion of his death. Amongst 
 other treasures, I remember the first uncorrected 
 proofs of Marntion and a manuscript play by 
 Sheridan Knowles. 
 
 When Christie died I was in Ireland, and 
 on my return to London I discovered that the 
 whole collection had been sold to a butterman 
 as waste-paper at a farthing per pound. There 
 was one literary relic, however, of inestimable 
 value ; it consisted of an unpublished chapter in 
 Our Mutual Friend, in which the golden dustman 
 was killed by Silas Wegg. Dickens excised this 
 chapter, had the type broken up, and all the proofs, 
 with the exception of this unique survival, were 
 destroyed. I am not ashamed to confess that 
 when I grot back to London and learned the fate 
 which had befallen my old friend's collection, I had 
 a bitter cry over it, which lasted me a good two 
 hours. Christie was a very accomplished man, and 
 was on terms of friendly correspondence with most 
 writers of his time. 
 
 I think that first and last I heard Charles 
 Dickens in everything he read in public. What 
 an amazing artist he was in this direction can be 
 realised only by those who heard him. A great 
 actor is always a legend. In these days he may 
 leave something behind him by means of the 
 phonograph and science may yet contrive such an 
 exhibition of facial display and gesture as will 
 enable those who come after us to appreciate his 
 greatness, but in a few years at the utmost, the last 
 
 D 49
 
 Recollections 
 
 man who sat spellbound under the magic of the 
 Dickens personality will have vanished from the 
 face of the earth and nothing but a record will be 
 left. 
 
 He depended, as I remember, in a most extra- 
 ordinary degree upon the temper of his audience. 
 I have heard him read downright flatly and badly 
 to an unresponsive house, and I have seen him 
 vivified and quickened to the most extraordinary 
 display of genius by an audience of the opposite 
 kind. The first occasion on which he ever read 
 for his own profit was in the old Broad Street 
 Music Hall at Birmingham, which for many years 
 now has been known as the Prince of Wales' 
 Theatre. There is so little that is subtle about his 
 work as a writer that it was surprising to find 
 what an illumination he sometimes cast over 
 passages in his work. For example, in his read- 
 ing of the Christmas Carol, there was one astonish- 
 ing little episode where the ghost of Jacob Marley 
 first appears to Scrooge. "The dying fire leapt 
 up as if it cried : I know him — Marley 's ghost." 
 The unexpected wild vehemence and weirdness of 
 it were striking in the extreme. He peopled a 
 whole stage sometimes in his best hours, and his 
 Sykes and Fagin, his Claypole and Nancy, were 
 all as real and as individual as if the parts had been 
 sustained by separate performers, and each one a 
 creature of genius. Who that saw it could forget 
 the clod-pated glutton, with the huge imaginary 
 sandwich and the great clasp knife in his hands, 
 boltino' the bulofinor morsel in the midst of the 
 
 torrent of Fagin's instructions, and complaining 
 
 so
 
 Recollections 
 
 "that a man got no time to eat his victuals in that 
 house." Concerning the scene between Sykes and 
 Nancy, Charles Dickens the younger told me a 
 curious story, at the time when I was writing for 
 him on All the Year Round. They were living at 
 Gad's Hill, and it was the novelist's practice to 
 rehearse in a grove at the bottom of a big field 
 behind the house. Nobody knew of this practice 
 until one day the younger Charles heard sounds of 
 violent threatening in a gruff, manly voice, and 
 shrill calls of appeal rising in answer, and think- 
 ing that murder was being done, he unfastened 
 a great household mastiff and raced along the field 
 to find the tragedy of Sykes and Nancy in full 
 swing. 
 
 I am afraid that like most newly emancipated 
 lads I used my freedom in many foolish ways ; but 
 most of them were harmless, and some of my 
 truancies from work were even useful to me. Do 
 what I would, I could not find the strength of will 
 to go and pick up types in a frowsy printing office 
 when the picture-gazing fit was on me ; and many 
 a time I shirked my duties for the vicious pleasure 
 of a long day's intercourse with Turner in the 
 National Gallery, or for a lingering stroll amongst 
 the marbles at the Museum. One never-to-be 
 forgotten day, my old name-father, David Christie, 
 lent me a reader's ticket, and I found myself for 
 the first time in that central citadel of books, the 
 Museum Library. I went in gaily, with a heart full 
 of ardour ; but as I looked about me my spirits fell 
 to zero. I knew that what I saw in the storied 
 shelves which run round the walls, under the big 
 
 51
 
 Recollections 
 
 glass dome, made but a little part of the vast 
 collection stored away below and around them ; 
 and the impossibility of making even a surface 
 acquaintance with that which lay in sight came 
 strongly home to me. 
 
 53
 
 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 with unfailing accuracy. On 
 25th May 1865, whilst I was staring at one of the 
 sunlit fountains in Trafalgar Square, and listening 
 to the bells of Westminster as they chimed the 
 hour of four, a venerable old spider in a blue uniform 
 with brass buttons, and a triple chevron of gold lace 
 upon his arm, accosted me without introduction and 
 asked me what I thought about life in the Army. 
 Until then, so far as I can remember, I had never 
 thought about the Army at all. My eighteenth 
 birthday was just one month and twelve days behind 
 me ; I had one and sevenpence in the wide world ; 
 I was smoking the last cigar of an expensive box, 
 in the purchase of which I had not been justified 
 by the means at my disposal ; and I was in mortal 
 terror of my landlady. It had been discovered at 
 the printing office of Messrs Unwin Bros., at which 
 I had been engaged as an "improver," that I had 
 no regular indentures, and I had been thrown upon 
 a merely casual employment amongst as undesir- 
 able and as hopeless a set as could have been found 
 at that time in my trade in London. Apart from 
 
 53
 
 Recollections 
 
 all these considerations, the world had come to an 
 end because a certain young lady, who, to the best 
 of my belief, is still alive, and a prosperous and 
 happy grandmother, had unequivocally declined to 
 marry me. The blue-clad spider had no need to 
 spread the web of temptation. I resolved in an 
 instant, and he and I adjourned to a backyard some- 
 where in the neighbourhood, for which I have long 
 since sought in vain. I rather fancy that the wide 
 spaces of Northumberland Avenue have displaced 
 it ; but, in any case, the route we took led us towards 
 the river, the smell of which comes back to my 
 nostrils at the moment at which 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 I married ? Was I an 
 apprentice ? Had I ever been refused for either of 
 Her Majesty's Services on account of any physical 
 defect ? Was I aware of any such defect as would 
 debar me from service? Had I ever been con- 
 victed of any crime or misdemeanour ? To all these 
 queries I was able to answer in the negative ; but, 
 whilst the solemn interrogation was going on, a 
 young man with his head full of flour, and his hands 
 and arms covered with little spirals and pills of 
 dough, appeared at the top of a neighbouring wall. 
 " Don't you believe a word of what that cove is 
 telling you," he counselled, and so disappeared, in 
 obedience to a rather urgent gesture from the blue 
 old spider. I took the shilling, and the spider 
 hinting that a dry bargain was likely to prove a 
 bad bargain, I expended it in two glasses of sherry 
 
 54
 
 Recollections 
 
 at some neighbouring "wine shade," to which he 
 conducted me — the sort of institution which the 
 Bodega Company has very advantageously super- 
 seded. It was a dirty place, with rotting sawdust 
 on the floor, and little hollows beaten into the 
 pewter counter, in which were small lakes of stale 
 wasted liquors of various kinds ; and the smell of 
 it, also, is in my nostrils as I write. I was in- 
 structed to present myself at St George's Barracks, 
 Westminster, at eleven o'clock on the following 
 morning, and was told that if I failed in that respect 
 I should become in the eye of the law a rogue and 
 vagabond, and should be liable to summary indict- 
 ment. I was dressed in my best, because I was 
 going out to tea that evening with an old family 
 friend in the Haymarket, a picture-restorer, whose 
 shop and studio were next door to the old Hay- 
 market Theatre. My host told me that at the very 
 last appearance of Madame Goldschmit (Jenny 
 Lind, the Swedish Nightingale), he had sat at his 
 open window, and had heard her sing as clearly as 
 if he had been one of a paying audience who spent 
 anything from a hundred pounds to a guinea to 
 enjoy that privilege ; and I can well believe him, 
 because I heard easily the quaint chuckle of old 
 Buckstone's voice through the open windows of the 
 studio. I am not sure at this distance of time, but 
 I think he was then playing the part of Asa 
 Trenchard, with Sothern, 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, and 
 
 55
 
 Recollections 
 
 wardrobe to solve my bill. That night I slept in 
 the great London depot barracks. I know perhaps 
 as well as anybody how Tommy Atkins has im- 
 proved in character and conduct since those days, 
 but I can aver that never before or since have I 
 encountered a crew so wholly shameless and 
 abominable as I found that night at St George's, 
 Westminster. It is not a pretty thing to be the 
 only decently bred and sober man amongst a howl- 
 ing crowd of yokel drunkards, whose every phrase 
 is built on a foundation of hitherto unconceived 
 obscenities. The night was enough ; and, with 
 three half-crowns in my pocket, paid to me as sub- 
 sistence money for the three days ensuing between 
 that date and the date of my departure, I betook 
 myself to a common lodging-house, and lived in 
 comparative decency. Some score of us, or perhaps 
 a dozen, went up together for surgical examination, 
 and were made to strip stark naked in each other's 
 presence. I had never objected to this amongst 
 my own kind and kindred, when one exposed one's 
 nudity by the side of the clean brook or yellow 
 canal in which we used to bathe in boyhood ; but 
 amongst this crew it was hard, and even terrible. 
 We had all been bathed, perforce, before the 
 medical examination began ; but a mere tubbing 
 does not cleanse the mind or tongue, and I loathed 
 alike the ceremony itself and the men amongst 
 whom I was forced to submit to it. 
 
 We marched through the London streets to 
 Paddington, and I, having ingratiated the sergeant 
 who escorted us by a drink or two, was permitted 
 
 to walk by his side, whilst the ragged, semi-drunken 
 
 56
 
 Recollections 
 
 contingent went rolling and cursing ahead. We 
 embarked for Bristol, and there spent a night at 
 the Gloucester Barracks, where a cross-grained old 
 sergeant, who had vainly tempted me to sell my 
 clothes, and to exchange them for a suit of rags, 
 compelled me to carry endless loads of coals up 
 endless flights of stairs. He began his intercourse 
 with me by addressing me in Greek, of which 
 language I knew nothing ; and he followed it with 
 a dog-French which, ignorant as I was, I was able 
 to detect. In the morningr we were taken aboard 
 the paddleship Appollo, bound for Cork, and I am 
 in debt to the chief officer of that craft for the 
 advice he gave me. " It's the ambition of these 
 beggars," he said, intending thereby the convoying 
 sergeants, "to land any decent chap at the barracks 
 looking like a scarecrow. There's a good half of 
 them no better than dealers in old clothes. You 
 take my advice : go to your regiment looking like 
 a gentleman. When you get your regimentals, 
 you can sell your civilian clothes for twice as much 
 as these sharks would give you." I followed the 
 advice thus given, and I had reason to be grateful 
 to the adviser. 
 
 The drunken, howling, cursing, foolish con- 
 tingent with which I started were scattered far and 
 wide from the Catshill Barracks at Cork, and I 
 travelled thence under the care of a sedate old 
 sergeant to Cahir, in Tipperary. The sergeant 
 was talkative and friendly, but I paid little heed 
 to him, for it was here, if I mistake not, that the 
 joy of landscape first entered into my soul. I have 
 an impression only of an abounding green and blue 
 
 57
 
 Recollections 
 
 in general, but one or two stopping-points are as 
 clear in my mind as if I had seen them yesterday. 
 Amongst them is some old grey stone bridge near 
 Limerick, where the train slowed down and my 
 Irish companion — Limerick born and bred, and 
 rejoicing to show his own country to a landscape 
 lover — declared that he had travelled almost dry- 
 shod over the backs of the salmon which once 
 thronged along that river. I had my doubts at the 
 moment as to the literal truth of this statement, 
 and I am not quite sure that I do not nurse them 
 still. Anyhow, the country struck me with that 
 deceptive sense of fruitfulness which besets every 
 Englishman on his first travels into the fertile 
 districts of Ireland ; and partly, perhaps, because I 
 was half a Celt to begin with, the "wearing of 
 the green " became then and there a symbol in my 
 mind. 
 
 Finally, at the end of a fairly long day's run — for 
 the cheaper kind of train travelled slowly in those 
 days — the convoying sergeant and I were dumped 
 down at the station at Cahir, which had not yet 
 become celebrated in that gorgeous fiction which 
 was woven about it in later years by the claimant 
 to the Tichborne estates. Night was falling as we 
 tramped through the village, and on the road 
 beyond we came across the ghostly shell of an old 
 castle, standing, I think, in the Byrne demesne, 
 which was packed full of jackdaws, who had caught 
 one or two human phrases from some half- 
 Christianised member of their fellowship, and who 
 woke the echoes in answer to our footsteps with a 
 
 hundred semi-human cries. They had only a 
 
 58
 
 Recollections 
 
 phrase or two amongst them, but they gave one 
 clearly the impression that they represented a 
 Babylonian crowd intent on insurrection. 
 
 I was passed from one sergeant to another 
 in the course of my transfer from St George's 
 Barracks to Clare in the county Tipperary, and 
 there was not one of them who did not try to 
 induce me to change a reputable garb 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 composed as ribald and foul- 
 mouthed a crew as I remember to have seen, and 
 long before I assumed Her Majesty's uniform, I 
 was sickened of the enterprise on which I had em- 
 barked. I think I am justified in saying that I 
 was instrumental in brino-ino^ about one orreat and 
 much needed reform. In those days, the recruit 
 on enlistment was supposed to receive a bounty 
 and a free kit ; as the thing was worked out by 
 the regimental quartermaster, he never saw one or 
 the other. He had served out to him on his 
 arrival at his depot a set of obsolete garments 
 which he was forbidden to wear and was compelled 
 to return to stores, when a new outfit at his own 
 cost had been supplied to him. My gorge rose at 
 this bare-faced iniquity, and as a protest against it, 
 I attired myself on my first Sunday in barracks in 
 the clothes which had been fraudulently assigned 
 to me, and joined the regiment on church parade. 
 I suppose no soldier had been so attired since 
 Waterloo, and my appearance was the signal for a 
 roar of lauofhter in which men and officers alike 
 
 59
 
 Recollections 
 
 joined, and which was not extinguished until I had 
 been ignominiously hustled back to quarters. In 
 the Fourth Royal Irish Dragoon Guards at least, 
 I know myself to have been the last man whom the 
 wicked system attempted to pillage in that fashion. 
 As a matter of course, I was marked from that 
 moment. 
 
 People who have a practical knowledge of 
 modern Army life tell me that things have changed 
 altogether for the better since those far bygone 
 days of 1865 ; and I am disposed to believe that 
 no such shameless swindles as were then perpe- 
 trated could possibly continue for a week under 
 existing conditions. A Press which makes us 
 familiar with all sorts of grievances, and an 
 inquiring Parliamentarian or two, would provide 
 a short shrift and a long rope for the perpetrator 
 of any such bare-faced robbery as I suffered under 
 when I first joined the Fourth Royal Irish Dragoon 
 Guards. The motive of my enlistment had no 
 remotest connection with the bounty offered. I 
 joined the Army simply out of that green-sickness 
 of the mind from which so many young men suffer, 
 and some nebulous notions of heroism in fallinof 
 against a savage foe in some place not geographi- 
 cally defined. But in the printed terms of the 
 agreement which I signed it was promised that I 
 should receive a three pound bounty and a free kit. 
 As a matter of fact, I received neither one nor the 
 other. I was served out, as I have stated, with an 
 absolutely obsolete uniform, which I was forbidden 
 to wear, and my bounty was impounded to pay 
 
 for regulation clothing. 
 
 60
 
 Recollections 
 
 This initial struggle made me from the first a 
 personage of mark in the regiment ; for when I 
 was summoned to my first parade, I had deliber- 
 ately donned the clothes which had been dealt out 
 to me from the quartermaster's stores, and pre- 
 sented myself to public view in a uniform which 
 had probably been seen on no parade ground in 
 England since Her late Majesty's accession to the 
 throne. It was a sufficiently solemn proceeding on 
 my own part, for I was warned that I was being 
 guilty of a military misdemeanour of the gravest 
 sort. But if the thing was serious to me, it was a 
 matter of rejoicing comedy — or even, if you like, 
 of screaming farce — to the troops who were paraded 
 for church that Sunday morning. Men fairly 
 shrieked with laughter at the si^ht of the old 
 Kilmarnock cap, the ridiculous tailed jacket, and 
 the rough shoddy trousers bagging at the seat. 
 The officers made an attempt at decorum which 
 was not too successful ; and I was hustled from the 
 ground, and escorted to the guard-room, for the 
 high crime and misdemeanour of presuming to 
 appear in the clothes which had officially been 
 served out to me. I appeared at the orderly-room 
 next morning, and underwent a severe wigging 
 from the officer who was in temporary command 
 of the regiment; but the incident was mercifully 
 allowed to close with a mere reprimand. It did a 
 little good, perhaps, for I never knew any other 
 recruit to be served out with an utterly obsolete 
 and useless kit so lono- as I remained with the 
 regiment ; but, until the hour at which my dis- 
 charge was purchased, I was taught that it was not 
 
 6i
 
 Recollections 
 
 conducive to personal comfort to rebel against any 
 form of tyranny and extortion which might be 
 condoned by tradition in the Army. 
 
 Honestly, I do not think that I look with a 
 jaundiced eye upon my remembrances of that most 
 unhappy time, but, as I remember, to have had an 
 education a little better than that of the average 
 ploughman, and to show an inclination to be smart 
 and quick at duty, was a certain passport to the 
 hostility of the non-commissioned officers of the 
 time. They regarded themselves, as I am now 
 inclined to fancy, as a sort of close corporation, 
 and I cannot help thinking that they felt it a kind 
 of duty to themselves to repress the ambitions of 
 any youngster who seemed likely to be marked for 
 promotion. A mere recruit, who had not yet 
 learned the simple mysteries of the goose-step, had 
 registered an objection to being robbed at the 
 outset of his career, and had thereby revealed 
 himself as a person of dangerous ideas which, if 
 pursued to their ultimate, would make an end of 
 all manner of illegitimate profits ; and I am not 
 careful to suggest that any special aptitude for a 
 soldier's life on my own part was responsible for 
 the dead set which was made at me by all the 
 non-coms, of the regiment. There was one troop- 
 sergeant-major, as already stated, who was currently 
 known throughout the corps as The Pig. A furious 
 and determined attempt was made upon his life by 
 a man named Lovell, who was sent to a military 
 convict prison for twelve years, if I remember 
 rightly. Now, I have never heard of any 
 
 ordinarily decent officer, commissioned or non- 
 62
 
 Recollections 
 
 commissioned, being assaulted by a subordinate ; 
 and the civilian observer of Army life may be 
 assured ^ithat, almost without exception, whenever 
 that kind of thing occurs, petty tyrannies and 
 intermeddlings on the part of the superior are 
 answerable for it. I met this particular man on 
 one occasion only. I suppose that I had been 
 pointed out to him as the young insubordinate 
 who had dared to trespass on tradition by wearing 
 the clothes served out to him. He stopped me in 
 the middle of the barrack square at Cahir, and 
 offered me a solemn warning: "You go on as 
 you've begun, young man, and we'll make life hell 
 to you." I do not claim that I am in any special 
 sense a lover of justice, but I know that my gorge 
 rose less at the sense of personal injury, than 
 against a scheme of organised robbery ; but, 
 luckily for myself, I refrained from answer, 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 a playful chum of mine, whose name was 
 Barlow, laid a little trap for me. " Oxford," says 
 he, " who do you think is the ugliest beggar in the 
 regiment ? " I answered, without hesitation, 
 " Serjeant So-and-So ; " and Sergreant So-and-So 
 was at that very moment coming — miching mallecho 
 — through the stables. He heard both the question 
 and the answer, and he was naturally displeased. 
 From that hour whatever chance I might have had 
 of a peaceful life in the regiment disappeared. The 
 non-coms, began to lay plots against me, and I 
 
 63
 
 Recollections 
 
 recall one day in particular, after weeks of rain, 
 during which the horses' legs had been thickening 
 for want of exercise, we got out into a very muddy 
 menage with what we called the "young horse 
 ride." I was mounted on a most unmanageable, 
 untrained beast, and before the work was over he 
 was in a lather from nose to tail, and I was encased 
 in mud from the spur to the chrome-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 bit and bridoon and stirrups, and then 
 to fall to upon the grooming of the horse. My ugly 
 sergeant had found a collaborateur, who wanted to 
 know what the blank blank I meant by leaving my 
 horse to shiver in the cold whilst I loitered about 
 this customary duty. I set to work upon the horse 
 at once, and, as the collaborating sergeant dis- 
 appeared at one stable door, my ugly friend turned 
 up at the other, wanting to know why the blank 
 blank I had not oiled my stirrup irons. I took up 
 the discarded oil-rag with all activity; the ugly man 
 vanished, and his collaborateur 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 since the wisdom of 
 silence, and I began to groom with a will. When 
 my ugly friend once more appeared with a command 
 " to the stirrup irons ; " back I went, forboding the 
 disaster which swiftly came. The accommodating 
 friend of the ugly man swooped down, and I was 
 haled before the officer on duty on a charge of having 
 
 thrice neglected to obey a given order. But the 
 
 64
 
 Recollections 
 
 colonel of our regiment, the late Sir Charles 
 Cameron Shute, since then for many years Member 
 for Brighton, was at headquarters. He was a good 
 deal of a martinet, but he was justice incarnate. I 
 told my story, and I offered him my witnesses. His 
 word to me was a simple right-about-face and march ; 
 but, as I put on my forage cap in the anteroom, I 
 heard him thundering at the accusing sergeants to 
 the effect that he would not have his recruits bullied, 
 that he would not endure to have plots laid against 
 them, and that on any repetition of the manoeuvre 
 now exposed, he would break the pair of them, and 
 return them to the ranks. 
 
 And here occurs what is to me a very curious 
 reminiscence. A dear old great-aunt of mine had 
 purchased my discharge, and had furnished me with 
 money to go home. We were then stationed at 
 Ballincollig, in County Cork, and I had secured a 
 suit of civilian toggery from a Cork tailor. I was 
 waiting for the jaunting car which was to carry me 
 to town, when my ugly friend heaved in sight, and, 
 finding- a man in civilian dress with the 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 an officer in passing. Discover- 
 ing his error, he was very angry, and he began to 
 cite all the pains and penalties to which a man was 
 liable who smoked a cigar within a given distance 
 of some powder-magazine which then existed there. 
 When I had pointed out to him the fact that I was 
 twenty yards beyond the limit, I promised him, 
 with all the sincerity of youth, that whenever and 
 
 wherever I might meet him in civil life, I would do 
 E 65
 
 Recollections 
 
 my honest best to give him a hiding for the twelve 
 months of misery he had caused me. It was years 
 before I saw him again, and he did not know me. 
 I had grown a beard, and an increasing shortness 
 of sight had forced me to the use of an eyeglass. 
 He was a commissionaire at some glassworks which 
 stand opposite to the offices of a journal with which 
 I have 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 was suffering from hernia and pulmonary 
 consumption ; and when I left the place, after see- 
 ing the picture on glass which I had been invited to 
 view, I enjoyed the sweetest vengeance of my life- 
 time in tipping the ex-sergeant half-a-crown, and in 
 leaving him without any disclosure of my own 
 identity. 
 
 66
 
 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 srravitated into 
 journalism in any case ; but it was poor old Dr 
 Kenealy, who was afterwards famous as the intrepid, 
 if ill-tempered, counsel for the Tichborne Claimant, 
 who gave me my first active impulse towards the 
 business. The Borough of Wednesbury had just 
 been created, and my own native parish was a part 
 of it. The Liberals chose as their candidate one 
 Brogden, who had been unseated for bribery at 
 Yarmouth, a fact in his history which did much 
 to enliven trade amongst the local fishmongers, the 
 bloater becoming, as it were, the Tory ensign in all 
 processions and in all public meetings at which the 
 Liberal candidate addressed his future constituents. 
 Two or three men, who afterwards became well 
 known, nibbled at the constituency, and went away 
 again. Among them were the late Samuel Waddy, 
 O.C., and Mr Commissioner Kerr, who issued an 
 electioneering address of astonishing prolixity, pre- 
 facing it with the statement that he had no time to be 
 brief. But Brogden's only real opponent was poor 
 
 ^7
 
 Recollections 
 
 old Kenealy. There was, of course, a Conservative 
 candidate in the field ; and, rightly or wrongly, it 
 was said that Kenealy had been brought down in 
 his interest to split the Liberal vote. 
 
 I found the doctor one night addressing a 
 mere handful of people in a vast building which 
 would have accommodated two or three hundred 
 for every unit he had before him. That was 
 the first occasion in my life on which I wore 
 a dress suit ; and amidst the unwashed, coally- 
 flannelled handful, I daresay that my expanse 
 of shirt front, and the flower in my button- 
 hole, made me conspicuous. I was a red-hot 
 Liberal in those days, for no better reason, probably, 
 than that my father held that form of creed, and I 
 was quite persuaded that Kenealy was a paid im- 
 postor. So when, 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 doctor paused and looked at me, but said 
 nothing at the moment. By and by he flowed on : 
 "When I go to the poll with ten thousand of the 
 working men of this constituency behind me," and 
 I chimed in with a cry of "When, doctor, when ? " 
 This time the orator fixed my flint, as the Americans 
 used to say. He surveyed me from top to toe, and 
 he said quietly, and in a tone of deep commisera- 
 tion : "I pity that drunken blackguard." My first 
 impulse was to spring upon the platform, and to 
 throw the speaker from it ; but it was so obvious 
 that I could not clear myself of the imputation cast 
 upon me in that way that I surrendered the idea in 
 
 the very instant in which it occurred to me. I 
 
 68
 
 Recollections 
 
 searched in my own mind for a retort, but I searched 
 in vain ; and I spent a good part of that night in 
 the invention of scorching phrases. But the 
 exercise afforded me no reHef, and on the followino- 
 day I sat down and wrote my first newspaper 
 article. 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 as my delight, printed it in all the glory 
 of leaded type. I believe I was under the im- 
 pression that it would kill Kenealy ; but, as all the 
 world knows, the poor man survived for years, and 
 died from wholly different causes. That was the 
 determining incident in my career, and for months 
 afterwards I wrote the Advertisers leaders with- 
 out any sort of agreement, and without receipt or 
 expectation of any kind of pay. It is not because 
 I imagine my work to have been exceptionally 
 brilliant that I am disposed to think that I must 
 have seemed a sort of heaven-sent blessing to my 
 editor (whom I do not remember, by the way, ever 
 to have seen) ; but at least I did a good share of 
 his work for nothing. I have addressed larger 
 audiences since then ; but I have certainly never 
 been puffed up with such a sense of my own power 
 and value as I had in writing those pompous, 
 boyish essays, in which I trounced Disraeli, 
 and instructed Gladstone and the chairman 
 of the local Board of Guardians in the art of 
 administration. 
 
 I have always held that there is no training for 
 a novelist like that of a journalist. The man who 
 
 69
 
 Recollections 
 
 intends to write books describing life can hardly 
 begin better than by plunging into that boiling, 
 bubbling, seething cauldron called journalism. The 
 working journalist is found everywhere. Is there 
 a man to be hanged? — the working journalist is 
 present. Exhibitions, processions, coronations, 
 wars, whatever may be going on, wherever the 
 interest of life is richest and the pulse beats fastest, 
 there you find the working journalist. There is no 
 experience in the world which really qualifies a man 
 to take a broad, a sane, an equable 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 I have 
 ever known, but one who was a born idle man and 
 loved to talk and talk, and so left no record of 
 himself — I went to dear old Dawson and said, 
 "You are starting a journal, and I want to be on 
 it." What is the bottom rung of the ladder ? Well, 
 my work was to report police court cases and 
 inquests. I do not know of a lower rung. I had 
 ambitions and ideas of my own, but I went for 
 whatever came in my way, and I have not repented 
 it until this day, although a good opening into 
 business life awaited me if I chose to accept it in 
 preference. 
 
 Almost the first "big thing" I recall in my 
 
 experience was the first private execution which 
 
 took place in the English provinces. It was at 
 
 Worcester, when a man named Edmund Huofhes. 
 
 plasterer's labourer, was hanged for the murder of 
 
 his wife. I have often thought that if that man's 
 
 70
 
 Recollections 
 
 story had only been rightly told, if there had only 
 been a modern Shakespeare round about, there 
 was the making of a new tragedy of Othello in it. 
 His wife had run away with her paramour no fewer 
 than three times, and each time he had followed 
 her and fetched her back. But the last time she 
 refused to come back and cruelly mocked him. 
 He left her, saying that he would see her once 
 asrain. He borrowed a razor from a friend, 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. I 
 was told to apply to the sheriff for permission to 
 be present at the execution. I devoutly hoped that 
 permission would be refused, but it was not. I 
 shall not forget the sensation that overcame me as 
 I left the gaol on the night before the man was to 
 be hanged. It was wintry weather and a storm 
 was breaking. The sky seemed, in fact, to be 
 racked with the storm clouds. But through them 
 there was one open space with one bright star 
 visible. That star seemed to carry a promise of 
 something beyond, and I went away somewhat up- 
 lifted, though sick and sorry notwithstanding. 
 
 When I went to the prison next day I, for the 
 first time, bottomed the depths of human stupidity. 
 The wretched man was pinioned and led up to the 
 scaffold. I pray God I may never see such a sight 
 again. The man was just one shake of horror. 
 The prison chaplain, who had primed himself 
 rather too freely with brandy — it was his first 
 
 71
 
 Recollections 
 
 experience of this duty — walked in front of the 
 prisoner reciting the " Prayers for the Dead." 
 The poor condemned wretch, who was gabbHng 
 one sentence without ceasing, and who was so 
 terribly afraid as to be cognisant of nothing save 
 the fact that he was afraid, had nineteen creaking 
 black steps, newly-tarred, to mount on reaching 
 the scaffold. He turned to the warder and muttered 
 '* I can't get up," but the latter slapped him on 
 the back with the utmost bonhomie, and said, 
 " You'll get up all right." He did get up and they 
 hanged him. On the evening of the same day I 
 read the amazing proclamation in the evening 
 papers that " the prisoner met his fate with forti- 
 tude." Yet I never in my life saw anything so 
 utterly abject as that man's terror. I have since 
 then come to the belief that the average man has 
 learned the measure of expression of emotion by 
 what he sees in the theatre. In the theatre a man 
 has to make his emotions visible and audible to a 
 large number of people. But in real life deep 
 emotion is silent — I have always found it so. This 
 was my first lesson in this particular direction, and 
 I came to the conclusion that the averaee observer 
 has no faculty for reading the expression of human 
 emotion at all. Only for the sake of that reflec- 
 tion have I ventured upon this really gruesome 
 story. 
 
 Somewhere about this time there appeared in 
 Birmingham the first illustrated provincial news- 
 paper ever issued in England. It was called the 
 Illustrated Midland News, and its editor-in-chief 
 
 was Mr Joseph Hatton. France and Germany 
 
 72
 
 Recollections 
 
 were at death-grips with each other, and I wrote 
 many sets of war verses for the new venture, and 
 made something Hke the beginning of a name. It 
 was at this time that I first experienced an agony 
 which has since recurred so often that by dint of 
 mere repetition it has worn itself away to nothing. 
 I encountered my first misprint, a thing bad enough, 
 in all conscience, to the mere prose-writer, but to the 
 ardent youngster who really believes himself to be 
 adding to the world's store of poetry, a thing 
 wholly intolerable and beyond the reach of words. 
 Brooding over the slaughtered thousands of Sedan, 
 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, is kept in mind only by the misprint 
 which blistered every nerve of me for weeks. 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 of things to say to that compositor if 
 ever I should meet him, and to the printer's reader 
 who passed his abominable blunder. The most 
 indurated professional writer who takes any in- 
 terest in his work likes it to appear before the public 
 
 73
 
 Recollections 
 
 without this kind of disfigurement ; but it is only 
 the beginner who experiences the full fury of pain 
 a misprint can inflict, and I think that even the 
 beginner must be a poet to know all about it. 
 
 Talking of misprints carries my mind at least a 
 year farther forward than I should just yet allow it 
 to travel. Mr Edmund Yates, who was at that 
 time on a lecture tour in America, brought a story 
 he was then writing for the Birmingham Morning 
 News, under the title of " A Bad Lot," to a rather 
 sudden and unexpected conclusion, and I was 
 suddenly commissioned, in the emergency, to follow 
 him with a novel. I wrote a first instalment on the 
 day on which the task was offered me ; but I had no 
 experience, and no notion of a plot, and before I 
 was through with the business, I had so entangled 
 my characters that my only way out of the im- 
 broglio I had myself created was to send every 
 man Jack and woman Jill of them, with the excep- 
 tion of the hero and the heroine, to the bottom of 
 a coal mine, where I comfortably drowned them all. 
 In the last chapter my hero asked the lady of his 
 heart, "Are there no troubles now?" and the lady 
 of his heart responded, "Not one, dear Frank, not 
 one." And then I wrote, very neatly, and in 
 brackets, the words, " White Line," a professional 
 instruction to leave the space of one line blank 
 between the foregoing and the following paragraphs. 
 And the " comp." who was entrusted with my copy, 
 being obviously inspired of Satan, set out the 
 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." 
 
 74
 
 Recollections 
 
 I think the error was repaired in time ; but I re- 
 member that the author of it was forcibly invested 
 by his comrades with a leather medal, and that the 
 whole establishment below stairs revelled in beer 
 at his expense. In the same journal appeared a 
 report of a speech delivered by its own editor, who 
 having said of Shakespeare, " We turn to the words 
 of this immortal writer," had a " t " knocked out for 
 him, and was represented as having spoken of 
 " this immoral writer." I was with the dear old 
 chief at the time at which the blunder was discovered 
 and the most eloquent conversationalist at that 
 time alive in England surpassed himself. The 
 offendinof "reader" was a married man with a 
 family, and a hard-working, conscientious creature, 
 as a rule, and he escaped with the mildest wigging, 
 though I should not like to have been responsible 
 for the consequences which might have ensued had 
 he been present at the instant of discovery. 
 
 For a good many years it had been my habit to 
 tramp of a Sunday night some five or six miles out, 
 and some five or six miles home, to hear George 
 Dawson preach at the Church of the Saviour ; and 
 it was thus that I learned that he was to be 
 the editor of a new daily newspaper, the Birming- 
 ham Morning News, and, as I have already 
 said, I was employed by him at 25s. a week. 
 He left little behind him to justify the belief I 
 had in him, which was shared, by the way, by 
 a good many thousands of people. I reckon him 
 to have been, upon the whole, potentially the 
 greatest man with whom I ever rubbed shoulders. 
 He was a very wide, though possibly a somewhat 
 
 75
 
 Recollections 
 
 shallow, student ; he was, without exception, the best 
 talker to whom I have ever listened. He possessed 
 a certain magnetic quality which extorted in a really 
 extraordinary degree the worship of thinking young 
 men ; and there was no man in his own day who 
 was more courageous in the expression of his beliefs, 
 though they were often enough likely to cost him 
 dear. I cannot think of him as ever having enter- 
 tained an intellectual fear. He was honesty per- 
 sonified ; but his heart had established a curious 
 mastery over his mind. He was telling me one 
 day in New Street that promiscuous charity was a 
 curse to the community, and that it was a man's 
 duty to button up his pocket at the first sound of a 
 beggar's whine. While he was still intent upon 
 this moral lesson, he gave a half-crown to a mendi- 
 cant Irishwoman, who did most 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 of those whom he inspired ; but he 
 left next to nothing as a lasting memento of his own 
 genius. The truth is that, when he took pen in 
 hand, the genial current of his soul was frozen. In 
 print he was curiously stiff and unimpressive ; and 
 it has been one of the wonders of my lifetime that 
 a man so wise, so learned, and so original should 
 have left so faint a trail behind him. 
 
 I suppose that really no greater stroke of luck 
 could possibly have befallen a student of the oddities 
 of human nature than to have been born in that 
 desolate Black Country sixty years ago. Almost 
 everybody was an oddity in one way or another and 
 
 that defacing School Board which has ground the 
 
 76
 
 Recollections 
 
 lower middle class of England and its labouring 
 population into one common monotony had not yet 
 laid a hand upon the people. They spoke a very 
 beautiful old English there, full of the quaint plurals 
 long since obsolete in most other places. " Shoon " 
 and "housen," for example, and now and then a 
 double plural — a compromise between the ancient 
 manner and the new — would creep into their speech ; 
 "eysen" was the plural of "eye," "peasen" the 
 plural for " pea ; " and the patois was rich with many 
 singularities which I have known often to be 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 a field as any crafts- 
 man in the art of fiction ever had a chance 
 to glean in. It is an impertinence for a man to 
 speak of his own work, but I have often thought 
 in my own story of Aunt Rachel, there is at least 
 an adumbration of what a man aimed with real 
 sympathy and humour might have done with the 
 people of that place and time. When I say that 
 the characters in Aunt Rachel are all real, I do 
 not mean to make the foolish boast that they are all 
 alive. I mean simply to say that they are all 
 sketches from the life and are as true to their own 
 lineaments as my hand could make them. The old 
 musical enthusiast who, having heard Paganini, laid 
 down his bow for ever because he could be content 
 with nothing less than the great virtuoso's perfec- 
 tions, was a maternal great-uncle of mine, and the 
 pathetic little story of the manner in which the 
 
 77
 
 Recollections 
 
 life-long severance between himself and his sweet- 
 heart was brought about is literally true. ''Aunt 
 Rachel " herself in her extremely starched and 
 dignified old age was a constant visitor at my 
 mother's house. She had, for a space of something 
 like forty years, had charge of successive genera- 
 tions of children in a stately country house in 
 Worcestershire, and when she was honourably 
 pensioned and retired, she used to boast, in her 
 prim way, that she was not unacquainted with the 
 airs and graces of the higher powers. She must at 
 least have reached the a^e of fourscore when on 
 one occasion she had lingered at my mother's house 
 until darkness fell. The cottage she lived in was a 
 mile away and was approached by a somewhat 
 lonely road. My brother Tom, at that time a 
 stalwart lad of eighteen, was suggested to her as an 
 escort. The little old lady drew herself up to the 
 full height of her dignity. It was a saying of hers 
 that she could not by any loyal person be described 
 as a female of inferior stature, since she was but one 
 barleycorn less in height than Her Most Gracious 
 Majesty Queen Victoria. She rebuked my mother 
 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 to consider." 
 
 One meets rarely at this time the example of the 
 attached old school of servants, who used to identify 
 themselves with the household to which they 
 ministered. The faithful servant of the antique 
 world is dead, but I remember dozens of instances 
 in my childhood where even in establishments as 
 humble as our own, a domestic who had entered 
 
 78
 
 Recollections 
 
 into service in early childhood had stayed on until 
 age or a by no means premature marriage put an 
 end to the association. One of my mother's maids 
 stayed with her for a matter of some thirty years 
 and finally left her to share the destinies of a work- 
 ing mason. The honest fellow had just fulfilled 
 a profitable, small contract in so satisfactory a 
 manner that he was offered something bigger which, 
 in due time, was followed by a something bigger yet. 
 In a while, Jane was keeping her carriage, but on 
 her frequent visits to her old mistress her de- 
 meanour never changed, unless one could read into 
 it a trifle of apology for her rustling silk dress and 
 black kid gloves. She developed a love for long 
 words which had not distinguished her in her earlier 
 years, and this tendency betrayed her into occasional 
 malapropisms, the best of which is perhaps worth 
 preserving. My mother was a very notable house- 
 wife and trainer of domestic servants. It was her 
 pet hobby to take some neglected little draggle- 
 tail from the workhouse and to turn her into an 
 efficient maid-of-all-work. When this self-imposed 
 duty was accomplished, the maid invariably went 
 elsewhere in search of higher wages, so that my 
 mother was rarely without some slatternly little 
 pupil whom she was drilling into ways of household 
 order. Jane came one day in her rustling silks and 
 streamers to announce a discovery. ** The very 
 girl you want, ma'am ; I am sure you could turn 
 her into a perfect treasure." "Well, Jane," said 
 my mother, "you know what I want. I want 
 three qualities in a girl and if she has them, I can 
 make a good servant of her. I want her to be 
 
 79
 
 Recollections 
 
 honest and wilHno^ and clean. Is she honest?" 
 "As the day, ma'am," says Jane. "And is she 
 wilHng ? " " Oh, as wilHng as the rising sun, 
 ma'am." "And is she clean?" " Clean, ma'am," 
 says Jane, raising her black gloved hands to 
 emphasise the affirmation, "she's scrofulously 
 clean ! " 
 
 And then the poets ! there was not a parish or 
 a hamlet for a good ten miles round but had its 
 own acknowledged bard. There were continual 
 tragedies happening in the coal mines. Men were 
 much more careless in the handlino- of naked liofhts 
 than they are now, and the beneficent gift of the 
 Davy lamp was looked on with mistrust. The 
 machinery by which the men were lowered to their 
 work was often inadequate. There was nothing 
 like a scientific system of ventilation and fatalities 
 were appallingly frequent. Whenever one happened, 
 the local bard was ready with his threnody and the 
 little black-bordered, thick leaflets were sold at one 
 penny apiece for the benefit of the survivors. 
 The prince of the poetic throng in my day was one 
 Alfred Randall whom I used to encounter on 
 Sunday mornings on his way to chapel dressed in 
 black broadcloth, with huge, overlapping, rhinocerine 
 folds in it — for, as I have remarked elsewhere, a 
 Black Country tailor who had supplied the customer 
 with merely cloth enough to fit him, would have 
 been thought unpardonably stingy — a very high false 
 collar tied at the back of the neck by a foot or two 
 of white tape which as often as not trailed out 
 behind, a woollen comforter dangling almost to his 
 
 toes whatever might be the season of year, and the 
 
 80
 
 Recollections 
 
 hardest looking and shiniest silk hat to be had for 
 love or money — these were Mr Randall's Sabbath 
 wear, and it always struck me as a child that he had 
 very much of the aspect of a cockatoo in mourning. 
 He was a preternaturally solemn man and when I 
 felt that I could command my features, I used to like 
 to talk with him about his Art, and hear in what 
 manner his inspirations occurred to him. " It's no 
 credit to me," he used to say, with a sort of proud 
 humility, " it's a gift, that's what it is." Mr 
 Randall's views were not always engaged on tragic 
 themes, and I have the most delightful recollections 
 of a pastoral of his entitled : — " Lines on a Walk I 
 once took on a Day in May into 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. My father was generally his 
 own proof reader, and when I went to him with the 
 first impression and began to read to him from the 
 manuscript, I was really very terribly afraid. My 
 father was a man who hid a orreat deal of tender- 
 ness and humour under a very stern exterior, and I 
 felt that it was my duty in his presence to go 
 through my share of the proof-reading with a grave 
 
 F 8l
 
 Recollections 
 
 and business-like countenance. I approached one 
 couplet with 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 father laughed also. I believe that 
 was the first real, honest, human communion that 
 he and I had ever known together, and Mr 
 Randall's poem did more to make us friends and to 
 break down the life-long shyness which had existed 
 between us than anything else I can remember. 
 I remember this gem from Randall's hand concern- 
 ing a comrade who met death by his side in 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 was something truly remarkable. 
 One would barely encounter a working miner at 
 that time who had not, on face or hands, a deep 
 blue mark like an irregular tattoo, branded where the 
 blast of the exploding gas had driven the coal-dust 
 into his skin, and every man thus marked had been 
 in imminent peril of his life at least once, and had 
 probably found himself in the midst of a dozen or a 
 
 score of his dead comrades. After one of my own 
 
 82
 
 Recollections 
 
 earliest descents into the underground region of the 
 old Staffordshire ten-yard coal, I found myself in a 
 great dimly lighted hall, where the men were pur- 
 suing the dangerous task of cleaning out the pillars 
 which had hitherto been left to support the roof. 
 This was a 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. We were perhaps half a 
 dozen yards apart when right between us from the 
 invisible roof, thirty feet above, a cartload of rocky 
 fragments fell without warning. A foot this way 
 or that and one or other of us must inevitably have 
 been crushed. It was the first close and immediate 
 danger of which I had been conscious in my life, 
 and I do not scruple to say that it set me trembling 
 and shaking and left me with a curious sense of 
 emptiness and nausea. But the old doggy just 
 cocked his eye towards the invisible roof and looked 
 down at the heap of debris, and saying, "That 
 stuck up till it couldn't stuck up no longer," went 
 on quite composedly with his meal.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 George Dawson as Editor — Birmingham Politicians — John 
 Bright'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 Georore Dawson's amanuensis after a rather curi- 
 ous and unusual fashion. In his unclerical suit of 
 Irish homespun and his beaded slippers, with a well- 
 blacked clay between his lips, he would roam up 
 and down the Turkey carpet of the editorial room 
 and talk about some topic of the day, and in that 
 fashion he would make his daily leader. " Now," 
 he would say, "take that to your own room and 
 get as much as you can of it into a column." I 
 made no notes, for I had a verbal memory in those 
 days like a steel rat-trap. But I used to go away 
 charored sometimes with matter enouo^h for a news- 
 paper budget, or nearly, and it was my business to 
 condense and select 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 
 at these times. Talking of Disraeli, whom he 
 hated vehemently, he said: "The man has been 
 writing all his life of the great Asian mystery 
 
 without guessing that he is the greatest Asian 
 
 84
 
 Recollections 
 
 mystery alive. His politics are romantic, his 
 romances are political, and he himself is a fiction 
 founded on fact." Of another person whom I will 
 not name, he said : " 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 oi Half Hours with the 
 Best Authors, bound in man's skin ; he is in- 
 tellectually impotent, he never begot an idea." 
 
 But he could be as generous in praise as savage 
 in condemnation, and his occasional lapses into 
 tenderness of mood were very sweet and touching. 
 I recall one night at the Church of the Saviour, 
 after his return from a holiday in Rome, when he 
 told us how he had purposely lost himself in the 
 viler quarters of the city. The noon-day sun beat 
 down, eliciting abominable stenches and revealing, 
 without compromise, the ugly squalors of the 
 region. He walked on right into the country, 
 strolled on the Campagna, and at night-fall regained 
 the city by something like the same route he had 
 chosen in leaving it. The garish sun was down. 
 The evening dews had laid the foul odours. The 
 moon was at the full. Every ugliness was turned 
 to beauty. Vile things were transfigured in that 
 softening light. "Christianity," he said, "is the 
 moonlight of the soul." It was not a complete 
 saying, but Dawson was a creature of intimations. 
 He startled one sometimes by an intellectual 
 crudity, but he had always reserve. 
 
 There are many still living who remember the 
 truly astonishing eloquence and devotion of those 
 improvised prayers of his at the Church of the 
 
 85
 
 Recollections 
 
 Saviour. Old mouthing George Gilfillan, by the 
 way, author of the Bards of the Bible and other 
 deservedly neglected works, wrote to Dawson when 
 his conofreo^ation built this church for him : " You 
 have started the Church of the Saviour, but you 
 will never be a saviour to the church." To which 
 the other George fittingly responded "that the 
 Church had its Saviour already and it was a plain 
 man's business to preach His plain meaning." But 
 those prayers ! They were the mere breathing of 
 a strong, sane soul towards an infinite hope, an 
 infinite possible good, a great half-revealed Father- 
 hood. Doubt faltered there, hope exulted. I 
 have not heard from other mortal lips — I do not 
 hope to hear again — such an expression of humble 
 hope and doubt, such a tone of complete abasement 
 before the Divine Ideal, such a final triumphant 
 note of praise in the far-off haven to which creation 
 moves. 
 
 The best result of the life of my dear old chief 
 was the effect he had upon the municipal spirit of 
 that town of Birmingham. It was not then a city 
 in those days to which he devoted so large a por- 
 tion of his many gifts and his great energies. Such 
 men are the salt of orreat communities. Not so 
 endowed as to command the armies of the world, 
 missing something of the ambition, or the vanity, 
 or the push of potential greatness in its wider 
 spheres, they gain in force by the very limits of 
 the current to which they commit their powers. 
 Many a generation will go by before the capital of 
 the Midlands wholly forgets the influence of the 
 man whose character I have so feebly indicated 
 
 86
 
 Recollections 
 
 here, who was to its teeming- thousands the light- 
 house of honesty, and who 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 to encounter. I owed to him a personal 
 acquaintance with the leading politicians of the 
 town. John Skirrow Wright — of whom Dawson 
 always spoke as the "great Liberal party " — a big, 
 noisy, vehement, jovial man, whom the phrase 
 accurately fitted ; Dr R. W. Dale, the Archbishop 
 of the Nonconformists of his day and many 
 others. 
 
 On one memorable afternoon, he introduced me 
 to John Bright. I do not think 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 public speaking as any 
 man in England. Have you any acquaintance 
 with the old nervous tremor still ? " " No," said 
 Dawson, " or if I have, it is a mere momentary 
 qualm which is gone before I can realise it." 
 " Now, for my part," said the great Tribune, " I 
 have had practice enough but I have never risen 
 to address an audience, large or small, without 
 experiencing a shaking at the knees and the sense 
 of a scientific vacuum behind the waistcoat." 
 
 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 was promoted and became the recognised 
 descriptive writer on the staff. Throughout 
 my journalistic experience I have been for- 
 
 ^7
 
 Recollections 
 
 tunate in one respect. The men under whom I 
 have worked have, for the most part, had the 
 knack of extorting one's best, and one of the ways 
 of extorting the best of an enthusiastic youngster 
 is to let him know cordially when he has done 
 well. I shall never foro^et the flush of resolve 
 which came over 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 was the first really great chance I had 
 had. I was just newly married at the time and 
 supposing my work to be over for the day I was 
 taking my way homeward, when the printer's 
 "devil" overtook me after a breathless run and 
 told me that I was wanted at the office. I went 
 back to learn that there was a mine on fire at 
 Black Lake, some seven miles away, and I was 
 bidden to go and see what was to be seen 
 there. 
 
 A hasty search through the time-table showed 
 that there was no train running in that direction for 
 an hour or two and so I was bidden to take a hansom 
 and to use all despatch. The scene of the disaster 
 lay a mile or two past the house in which I was 
 born, and by the time at which I reached this point 
 I could see that the tale was true. It was a per- 
 fectly still and windless evening with an opalescent 
 sky, and far away I could see a great column of 
 smoke rising like the stem of a giant mushroom 
 and over it a canopy of smoke like the mushroom's 
 top, and as I drew near I could see that the lower 
 part of the column was faintly irradiated by the 
 flames at the bottom of the pit shaft. The mine was 
 
 88
 
 Recollections 
 
 situated in the midst of an open field and there was 
 a great surging crowd about it which made way 
 for me at a word. Round about the bed shafts 
 of the mine, the downcast and the upcast, a little 
 space was held voluntarily clear and half a dozen 
 men in coaly flannels were standing there. A 
 little tin pot of an engine in a miniature of an 
 engine-house was labouring and panting at a little 
 distance, and almost as I arrived upon the scene, 
 the great iron bucket capable of containing as I 
 should judge some five or six hundred gallons, 
 was brought from the upcast, lowered there, set 
 upon a trolley and then run along the rails until 
 it could be emptied into the shaft in which the 
 fire was ragfinof. 
 
 This poor attempt to extinguish the flames was 
 continued for perhaps a quarter of an hour, but at 
 last one of the little band said, "This is no eood, 
 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 eo down." The coal- 
 smeared men were all standingr close together and 
 they looked at each other with faces pale beneath 
 the grime. For a second or two none of them 
 spoke, but at last one said, "Will you make one.^" 
 and the 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 sulky 
 seeming acquiescence. I had at the moment no 
 idea as to what it was actually proposed to do, but 
 the plan was soon made clear. What the first 
 speaker had called " stinktors " turned out to be 
 litde barrel-shaped objects about one foot by two. 
 
 89
 
 Recollections 
 
 They were called " I'extincteur," and they contained 
 some gas which in combination with water was 
 fatal to fire. But when I reflected that in a confined 
 space like that into which they proposed to venture, 
 any gas which was fatal to fire would in all pro- 
 bability be fatal to human life, I almost wondered 
 if the men were mad. Mad or no, they made their 
 preparations with a deliberate swiftness which 
 showed that they knew perfectly well what they were 
 about. The man who had first proposed the 
 venture was the first to set out upon it. The large 
 iron bucket, technically called " bowk," was attached 
 to the steel wire rope which hung about the 
 smouldering shaft. The man stepped into this, 
 the chain was passed about his waist, he was 
 smothered in heavy flannels which were 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 was swung into the smoke. 
 The word was passed to the engine-room, the little 
 tin pot of an engine began to pant and snort 30 or 
 40 yards away and the man dropped out of sight. 
 The coal -smeared comrade who had charge of the 
 twine paid it out delicately fathom by fathom. It 
 was the only link between the adventurer down 
 below and the chance of life, and the merest tug at 
 it would have caused an immediate reversal of the 
 engine and would have brought him back to bank. 
 But no signal came, and for anything that anybody 
 there could have told, the man below might have 
 been suffocated by the smoke. There was not a 
 sound to be heard but the creaking of the wheel as 
 
 it revolved above the shaft and the hoarse panting 
 
 90
 
 Recollections 
 
 of the little engine, and the crowd which had by 
 this time grown to vast dimensions waited in so 
 tense a silence that there was something awful 
 in it. 
 
 How long we waited I cannot tell, but at last the 
 signal came. The word was flashed to the engine 
 room and the rope came gliding swiftly upwards. 
 The hero was comatose and was hanging all limp 
 and loose by the chain which had been passed about 
 his waist. He was seized, swung to one side and 
 lowered and landed and one great fiery flake of 
 flannel as big as a man's hand fell from the rough 
 garments in which he was swathed from head to 
 foot. A bottle of whisky came from somewhere 
 and was put to his lips and in a while he recovered 
 consciousness though he was still gasping and chok- 
 ing and his eyes were streaming. In the meantime 
 another man, as good as he, was ready, and he 
 came back, as it turned out afterwards, blinded for 
 life, but neither that nor anything that fear could 
 urge could stay the rest, and man after man went 
 down and faced that lurid smoke and hell of darkness 
 undismayed, until at last their valour won the day 
 and they brought out every man and boy and 
 beast. One coaly giant yelled, "That's the lot," 
 when the last batch came up, and then the crowd 
 went mad, weeping, cheering, dancing mad. I 
 have seen many deeds of valour in my time, 
 both in peace and war, but I have never seen 
 anything to match the Black Lake rescue for de- 
 liberate couraore. 
 
 I feel inclined to say less about the courage dis- 
 played by the members of the next rescue party 
 
 91
 
 Recollections 
 
 whose work I saw, for the very sufficient reason 
 that I was a member of it. To tell the honest 
 truth, I had not the remotest idea that I was court- 
 ing any sort of danger. At the Pelsall Hall colliery, 
 which lay two or three miles from Walsall, there 
 had been an inrush of water from some old deserted 
 workings near at hand, and twenty-two miners were 
 imprisoned. The water filled the shaft to a depth 
 of sixty feet, and so the rescuers were really hope- 
 less of being able to pump the mine clear before 
 the prisoners had been reduced to a state of absolute 
 starvation. There was always the certainty that the 
 inrush of water 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 
 the first body was recovered. 
 
 I began my friendship with Archibald Forbes 
 at Pelsall, and I began it in a rather curious 
 fashion. The place was a wretched little mining 
 village with a solitary beer shop in it, and there 
 was only one house in which it was possible to 
 secure decent accommodation. I bargained with 
 its tenant for a bed, and agreed to pay him 
 half-a-crown a night for the accommodation. 
 Forbes had made a precisely similar arrangement 
 with the woman of the house, and there was but 
 a single bedroom to be disposed of. Neither of 
 us knew anything of the other's bargain until the 
 following morning. Forbes was under the belief 
 that an attempt at descent was intended to be made 
 that niofht, and that it was to break into an old 
 abandoned air-way which had long been bricked up 
 
 at the side of the shaft, and was believed to lead to 
 
 92
 
 Recollections 
 
 the stables of the mine which were situated at a 
 point above the level of the flood. 
 
 The dialect of the Black Country, when spoken 
 at its broadest, is not easy for a stranger to under- 
 stand. I, as a native of the district, was of course 
 familiar with it, but Forbes was out of his element 
 altogether, and might almost have tried talking 
 chockjaw. I, knowing perfectly well that the in- 
 tended attempt could not be made for at least twenty- 
 four hours, went away with a comfortable mind and 
 slept in Bailey's cottage. When I left the door next 
 mornine I saw stridincr towards me through the 
 mud a very begrimed and unprepossessing-looking 
 figure. It was, after all, a man with a two days' 
 beard, a very dirty face, a collarless, grimy shirt, 
 who wore heavy ankle Jack-boots, and had his 
 trousers rolled above his ankles. This person 
 accosted me brusquely. "What are you doing in 
 that cottage there ? " he asked me, and I asked in 
 turn, "what business of his that might be." He 
 told me he had hired and paid for the only available 
 bed in the house from the landlady, and I told him 
 that I had hired and paid for the same accommoda- 
 tion throusch the landlord. The strang'er claimed 
 precedence, and was good enough to tell me that 
 if he found me attempting to infringe upon his 
 privileges he would take the liberty of throwing me 
 out of the window\ I was five-and-twenty at this 
 time, stood five feet eleven in my socks, and 
 reckoned myself a pretty good man with my hands. 
 as a pupil of the old Slasher had a right to be, and 
 in considerable wrath at the strano-er's insolence, I 
 drew myself up shoulder to shoulder with him, and 
 
 93
 
 Recollections 
 
 told him hotly that that was a game that two might 
 play at. There came a quiet humorous gleam 
 into his eye, and when he looked at me for half a 
 minute he burst into a great roar of laughter. 
 •' Newspaper man?" he asked me. I answered in 
 the affirmative, and he stretched out an unwashed 
 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 simply delighted to meet him. 
 We struck up an immediate friendship but in an 
 hour he turned into bed and I saw him no more 
 until the following morning when I believed that I 
 had made of him an enemy for life. I learned at 
 the mine head the hour at which the rescue party 
 was to descend and I made arrangements to join it. 
 Then I walked in to Walsall and there hired a 
 saddle horse which I bestowed in the stables of the 
 beer shop. This done, I made my way back to the 
 mine and found the party just in readiness to make 
 the descent. There were six of us, all told, and the 
 little contingent was captained by Mr Walter Neas, 
 who, partly as a reward for gallantry as I believe, 
 was afterwards appointed manager of Her Majesty's 
 mines in Warora, Central India. We were all 
 lowered in a skip together and the position of the 
 air-way having been precisely ascertained one man 
 lay face downwards on the skip's bottom and broke 
 through the brickwork with a pick. The sullen 
 waters of the pool were only some eight or ten feet 
 beneath us. The bricks splashed in one after the 
 other until there was a space large enough for a 
 
 94
 
 Recollections 
 
 man to whirl himself into it, and one by one we 
 entered the passage. It was a tremendous scramble, 
 and here and there the roof of the place had sunk 
 so 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 a 
 face of brick, the wall of the stable for which we 
 were bound and beyond which there was some faint 
 hope of finding the imprisoned men. The sound 
 of our picks elicited no response though we paused 
 more than once to listen, but the wall being at 
 length broken down, we entered the stable and I 
 was the first of the party to perceive the dead 
 body of a man who sat leaning against the wall 
 of coal lookinof for all the world like a wax-work 
 figure. 
 
 I was holding a candle to the dead man's face and 
 we were all gathered round when the light went out 
 suddenly as if it had been quenched in water. In 
 a second we were in pitch darkness and our leader 
 called out " Choke damp — back for your lives," and 
 in the pitchy darkness back we struggled. I have 
 forgotten to say that water was running down the 
 air-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 along by 
 the draught of air. I was last but one and was 
 saved many of the bruises and excoriations which 
 befell the leader. The warning voice would come 
 out of the darkness, "duck here," or "hands and 
 knees," and on we toiled, panting and perspiring, 
 until we reached the shaft and were all drawn up 
 again. I dried myself roughly before a roaring 
 
 95
 
 Recollections 
 
 fire in the hovel of the mine and then made all 
 
 haste to the beer shop where I mounted my horse 
 
 and rode full tilt into Birmingham. The paper had 
 
 gone to press early that night and the press was 
 
 already clanking when I rode into 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 two large type columns and with 
 
 the copy of the paper in my pocket, I rode back to 
 
 Pelsall. There I found Forbes at breakfast — he 
 
 asked where I had been and I produced the paper 
 
 and showed my work in silence. He read it 
 
 through without a word of comment, good, bad 
 
 or indifferent, laid it down upon the table and left 
 
 the room. I heard him rummaging about in the 
 
 chamber overhead and by and by he came down 
 
 with a portmanteau in his hand and without a 
 
 word or a look left the house. I thought that he 
 
 was 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 the Ludgate Bar, which 
 
 was then a great resort of the bigger men among the 
 
 London 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, and poor brilliant young Evelyn 
 
 Jerrold. Forbes greeted me boisterously, and, 
 
 springing from his seat, clapped me upon the 
 
 back. He took me to 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 
 
 96
 
 Recollections 
 
 the only man who 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 
 the lanoruao-e of the natives." I never had a better 
 or more generous friend than Forbes. 
 
 The World Journal, founded by Edmund Yates, 
 was just then entering into its first dawn of success. 
 Forbes had been asked to write a series of articles 
 for it on a subject which, as he confessed, had no 
 particular charm for him. He handed it over to 
 me and that gave me my first chance in the higher 
 journalism of London. But I am running far ahead 
 now and there is much to tell before my narrative 
 arrives legitimately 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 to recon- 
 struct it. How or by whom they were advised I 
 never knew, but a person who had no acquaintance 
 either with finance or with journalism was 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 in which to do it, 
 and in the space of a few weeks after the arrival of 
 the newcomer, I was free to seek my fortune in 
 London. By the good offices of the late Charles 
 Williams, war correspondent on the staff of the 
 Morning Advertiser, I was introduced to Colonel 
 Richards, the editor of that journal, and did actually 
 secure a berth as gallery reporter, but I was 
 suddenly called back to the country by a grave 
 domestic trouble, no less than the illness of my 
 
 wife, which terminated fatally eight or nine weeks 
 G 97
 
 Recollections 
 
 later. When I returned to London my 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 care I could exercise 
 
 they dwindled at an appalling rate. I abode in a 
 
 shabby little back bedroom in a lodging off the 
 
 Gray's Inn Road and sat at my table wrapped in an 
 
 ulster to prevent myself from freezing, whilst I 
 
 wrote, and sent broadcast prose and verse, essays, 
 
 short stories, journalistic trifles of every kind. All 
 
 were iornored or returned. 
 
 Where the handsome offices of the Daily News 
 
 now stand in Bouverie Street, there was at that 
 
 time a doleful place of resort for life's failures. It 
 
 was called the Sussex Hotel. The habittids of the 
 
 place were for the most part broken journalists and 
 
 barristers, some of whom were men of considerable 
 
 native talent and attainment. They were mostly 
 
 given to drink, but they contrived to maintain at 
 
 least such an outward semblance of respectability as 
 
 enabled them to loaf about the Fleet Street offices 
 
 and bars without being actually the objects of 
 
 derision. I do not suppose that there is anywhere 
 
 at this time such a contingent to 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 of which had a look of having been 
 
 washed in tobacco juice and dried up a chimney. 
 
 When a guest had paid his money, he was supplied 
 
 with a key and about an inch of thin candle, which 
 
 was affixed by its own grease to a broken shard of 
 
 pottery. I spent about six weeks there and during 
 
 the latter part of the time at least, my one daily 
 
 98
 
 Recollections 
 
 meal consisted of a hard-rinded roll and thick 
 chocolate. My belongings had all dwindled away, 
 and at last I found myself penniless and homeless 
 in the midst of London. 
 
 It is not, when all is said and done, a very 
 dreadful thing for a healthy man to be without 
 food for a few days, nor is it such a hardship as the 
 fastidious might fancy to snatch one's nightly rest 
 on the benches of the Embankment. I passed four 
 nights there, chivied with the rest 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 things in 
 themselves, but where the iron enters into a man's 
 soul in such conditions is when he feels that his 
 degradation is unmerited and knows that he has 
 powers within him which, if he could find a vent for 
 them, might lead him on to fame and fortune. The 
 exasperating raging bitterness of this, the grudging 
 envy with which he looks at those more fortunate 
 than himself, whose intellectual equipment he 
 despises, these are the things which sear the 
 heart. 
 
 I had resolved — let come what might come — 
 that I would never go home to confess myself a 
 failure. The thing, of course, might have had a 
 trao-ic endinof • there have been thousands of trao"ic 
 endings to such enterprises as that in which I was 
 engaged, but in my case, fate ordered otherwise, 
 I have told the tale elsewhere, but it will bear 
 re-tellino-. I was driftinof about Fleet Street, 
 mournfully conscious of the extent to which my 
 
 99
 
 Recollections 
 
 appearance had deteriorated, of the unblacked 
 boots and the yellow linen, and the general air of 
 being unkempt and unwashed, when I found myself 
 standing in front of the window of a filter-maker's 
 shop, close by old Temple Bar. In this window 
 were displayed a number of glass domes, under 
 each of which a little jet of water tossed about a 
 cork ball. The ball would soar sometimes to the 
 roof of the dome and would then topple over, some- 
 times to be caught midway upon the jet and some- 
 times to fall to the bottom, but always to be kept 
 drenched and dancing in a melancholy futile way. 
 I was comparing it with myself when a hand was 
 clapped upon my shoulder and a jolly voice 
 accosted me. The speaker was John Lovell, the 
 president of the Press Association, which had its 
 offices in Wine Office Court hard by. He could 
 not have failed to be aware of my condition, but he 
 gave no sign of having observed it and asked me if 
 I could spare the time to earn a couple of guineas, 
 by writing " a good, sea-salt, tarry British article 
 about Christopher Columbus." Time pressed, he 
 told me, and he was too busy to undertake the 
 article himself. If I would accompany him to the 
 office, he would supply me with the necessary 
 materials and would pay money down for the work. 
 On to the office I went with him, with a sudden 
 bright confidence that here at last the lane of ill- 
 luck had found a turning. I was ushered into a 
 little private room, and writing materials were set 
 before me. In a couple of hours I sent in my copy, 
 and there came back to me at once a pill-box, on 
 the lid of which was inscribed in a very delicate 
 
 lOO
 
 Recollections 
 
 handwriting-, " The prescription to be taken im- 
 mediately." The box being opened was found to 
 contain two sovereigns and two shilHngs, wrapped 
 in cotton wool, and I went away to break a fast 
 which was then entering on its fifth day. My next 
 proceeding, after having somewhat refurbished 
 myself, was to go back to the dingy old hole 
 in Bouverie Street and to write an article on 
 " Impecunious Life in London." 
 
 During the brief run of the Illustrated Mid- 
 lands News, to which I had been a frequent con- 
 tributor of verse, the late Richard Gowing, then 
 editor of the School Board Chronicle, had officiated 
 as Mr Joseph Hatton'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 pages swiftly over, he 
 decided to accept it. It ran, I think, to two and 
 thirty pages, and I received his cheque for ten 
 shillings and sixpence a page. 
 
 Thus armed, I felt more than fit to face the 
 world again, and it was whilst I was yet in this 
 new flush of fortune that I walked into the Ludgate 
 Bar as already recorded, and for the second time 
 encountered Archibald Forbes. 
 
 And now began a period of halcyon weather. 
 A kinder, more discerning and more helpful chief than 
 Edmund Yates no aspiring young journalist ever 
 had. He was as genial and as quick to recognise 
 honest effort as Dawson himself, and he knew ten 
 times better what he wanted, and a thousand times 
 more about the taste and temper of the public. 
 
 lOI
 
 Recollections 
 
 He had conceived the idea of a series of articles on 
 our civiHsation, in which the writer should deal 
 with the sores and oddities of it, and into this 
 work I plunged with all the splendid vigour and 
 avidity of youth. I chose the hangman as my first 
 theme, because I happened to have had an acquaint- 
 ance with a gentleman of that profession, and to 
 have been engaged in some personal dealings with 
 him. His name was James Smith, and he lived 
 about midway between Rowley Regis and Dudley. 
 I held that property in trust for my infant daughter, 
 and the rents were collected for me weekly by a 
 little lame clockmaker named Chesson. At one 
 time my business often led me along that road, and 
 I was familiar with the figure of a great, sprawling, 
 muscular-looking, idle fellow, who, whenever I 
 passed him, was leaning across the garden-gate in 
 his shirt 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 so much as a passing salutation 
 with a sinMe human creature. The rents came in 
 regularly for some time, and then it was reported 
 to me that my idle tenant had not paid. Time 
 went on, and the idle tenant never paid. I deter- 
 mined to look into the thing myself, and I set out 
 with the lame clockmaker to interview the man. 
 He was sprawling over the gate as usual when we 
 reacned his cottage, and, to my surprise, the little 
 lame man lagged some yards behind and refused to 
 approach him. I explained my errand to the idle 
 
 tenant, and he lugged out a handful of half-crowns. 
 
 1 02
 
 Recollections 
 
 "That cove," he said, indicating the clockmaker 
 " 'as never been a-nigh me this four months. The 
 money's always bin 'ere for 'im if 'e'ed a-come for 
 it. What d'you take me for.'* " he asked savagely. 
 "I ain't a wild beast, am I ? It's Government 
 work, and somebody's got to do it." It turned out 
 upon inquiry that my collector had actually paid 
 three or four weeks' instalment out of his own 
 pocket, rather than face the hangman, after he had 
 discovered the nature of his trade. I am not 
 writing melodrama, but it is a simple fact that I 
 have never seen a man more profoundly distressed. 
 The hangman's speech was broken and obstructed, 
 his face worked strongly, and there was an actual 
 glint of moisture in his eyes. He and my collector 
 had been cronies until his dreadful secret was sur- 
 prised, and had shared many a friendly half-pint 
 together. 
 
 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 at Barnsbury, and shared 
 rooms with a struggling water-colour painter, who, 
 for the most part, in default of patrons, worked for 
 the pawn-broker — a harum-scarum, ripe-hearted 
 Irishman; and on the Sunday on which I turned 
 out my first contribution to the World, he sat paint- 
 ing and smoking close at hand, and I read out to 
 him, paragraph after paragraph, as I wrote. Those 
 days are gone, but the glow, the passion, the very 
 rage of achievement, which possessed one's work, 
 
 are not to be forgotten. The work took Yates's 
 
 103
 
 Recollections 
 
 fancy mightily, and he had the good sense and 
 generosity 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 with a good 
 heart and made for himself many foes, but a 
 more loyal colleague and leader it would have 
 been hard to find. 
 
 My search for human oddities led me into 
 strange places and made me acquainted with 
 strange people. The most astonishing and com- 
 plete example of human vanity and pretence I ever 
 encountered was one of these. He was a pave- 
 ment artist and he had a pitch outside the railings 
 of the great terminus in Euston Road, where he 
 used to sit and patronise London. There was 
 something in the fellow's look which invited me, 
 and when I got into conversation with him, I 
 learned that nothing but jealousy had kept him 
 from taking a high place as a scene-painter, and 
 that artists of far less merit than himself had a 
 place, year after year, on the line at the Academy. 
 Where he had picked up his phrases it was of 
 course impossible to guess, but he talked a good 
 deal of the dissipation of the grey matter of the 
 
 brain, which resulted from his artistic occupation. 
 
 104
 
 Recollections 
 
 He had one awful daub which he called "The 
 Guardship Attacked," in which was depicted a 
 vessel, broadside on to the spectator, wedged very 
 tightly into the sea and sky of an impossible blue, 
 with little pills of white smoke clinging to a port- 
 hole here and there. This work he told me was 
 his " chef de hover," and he volunteered to furnish 
 me with a copy of it on cardboard for half a crown, 
 and to deliver it at my lodgings for his 'bus fare 
 and a drink. I closed with that proposal and in a 
 week's time he brought the work to me. My 
 chum's painting tools and easels were scattered 
 about the room in which I received him, and a 
 dozen or so of sketches in various stages of progress 
 were propped up on the buffet and the mantelpiece. 
 He surveyed these with an ineffable sniff and said : 
 " Oh ! I perceive you are a brother of the brush." 
 I took him outside to give him his promised drink 
 and found that he was accompanied by an elderly, 
 bearded, incredibly dirty man, who dealt in chick- 
 weed, and who shared his room with him in Gees 
 Court, Oxford Street. This fearsome person was 
 absolutely alive with vermin and his unkempt grey 
 beard was as the wrinkled sea. The pavement artist 
 ordered a drink for him at my expense and when 
 he had consumed it, he told me that I was a patron 
 of the arts and wanted to embrace me. I held him 
 off by the aid of an umbrella, and his companion 
 told me that he had been a beneficed clergyman of 
 the Church of England, and a companion for dukes 
 and princes. However that might have been, the 
 wretch had certainly the unmistakable no accent 
 
 of a gentleman and spoke with a certain beery 
 
 105
 
 Recollections 
 
 eloquence which reminded one of poor Tom 
 Robertson's Eccles. 
 
 My acquaintance with these gentlemen led me 
 to a somewhat familiar knowledge of Gee's Court. 
 I have not been near the place now for more than 
 thirty years and, for aught I know to the contrary, 
 it may long since have been wiped out of existence. 
 But when I knew it it was an awful place, the haunt 
 of thieves and prostitutes, the vilest offsprings of 
 the streets of London. What with the aid of the 
 Scripture-readers, the various nursing and charit- 
 able sisterhoods, and the young medical accoucheurs 
 in their fourth year, with whom I scraped acquaint- 
 ance, I got 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 
 which it was approached from Oxford Street, a 
 young policeman stopped me and asked me if I 
 knew where I was going. I told him that I was 
 quite intimate 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 a 
 fiver." My investigations had by this time brought 
 me acquainted as I have said already with all 
 manner of queer people. Amongst others I recall 
 an omnibus driver who told me that he was the 
 rightful heir to a big estate by Guilford. At my 
 invitation he told his story, and he began it with 
 this astounding proclamation : " It's like this, sir," 
 he began, " my grandfather died childless," and 
 when I failed to disguise my amusement he ex- 
 plained. " He was not really my grandfather but 
 
 he was my father's uncle and we always called him 
 
 1 06
 
 Recollections 
 
 orrandfather." Then he went into a lone and 
 tangled statement of which I could neither make 
 head nor tail, but the fact remained clear that in 
 his own opinion he ought to have been a millionaire 
 or thereabouts, and by rights able to pass his time 
 in smoking cigars and drinking champagne wine, 
 which he appeared to regard as the summit of 
 human felicity. 
 
 The contract I had made with Edmund Yates 
 was for a series of thirteen articles, and when it 
 was fulfilled, there was no more immediate work 
 for me to do and another little period of stress set 
 in. But in the meantime I had written a little 
 handful of short stories, and one of these, entitled 
 An old Meerschaum, I sent in to Messrs Chatto 
 & Windus. It owed its immediate acceptance to 
 an accident. Mr George Augustus Sala had 
 agreed with that firm to supply a two-part story 
 entitled Dr Cupid. For some reason or 
 another the second part of this story was never 
 forthcoming, and my copy arriving in the nick of 
 time was used to stop the gap. It brought me a 
 regular commission, and month by month there- 
 after, for quite a considerable time, I contributed 
 a short story to the Belgravia Magazine, Very 
 early in the history of this connection a curious 
 accident happened. I was looking forward to a 
 cheque for seventeen guineas and it came to me 
 as a surprise when, from paymasters so scrupulously 
 punctual, no cheque arrived at the date fixed for 
 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 in the 
 
 107
 
 Recollections 
 
 Post Office and not particularly well paid, grew 
 exigent. The supply in the cupboard became 
 scanty and yet scantier. I found my way to "my 
 uncle's " once more, and week after week went by 
 until I was once more face to face with that grim 
 phantom of actual want which I had already once 
 encountered. Partly from pride and partly from 
 fear of disturbing a valuable arrangement, I re- 
 frained from any approach to my publishers, but at 
 last when I had decided upon it as an unavoidable 
 necessity, a slatternly little maid came in with a 
 dirty mildewed envelope between finger and thumb 
 and said she thought that it was addressed to me. 
 I pounced upon it and there, all soaked and be- 
 draggled but still quite legible, I found the cheque^ 
 which had been sent to me nearly a month before, 
 and it had been by some accident dropped into the 
 area where it had lain unregarded all this time. 
 There was a feast that night, but the truth is that 
 life was one constant vicissitude, an unfailing series 
 of ups and downs, of jolly happy-go-lucky rejoicings 
 with comrades who were equally careless with 
 myself, and of alternating spells of hardship. 
 "Literature," said Sir Walter, "is an excellent 
 walking stick but a very bad crutch," and so in 
 truth I have found it all my days. 
 
 As one is drawn into late middle-age there are 
 few thinofs more affectinsf and in a measure more 
 surprising than the recollection of the ardent hero- 
 worship of one's youth. Whether, if my dear old 
 chief were back again and I could survey him in 
 the light of a riper experience than I had during 
 
 his lifetime, I should still be able to offer him such 
 
 io8
 
 Recollections 
 
 an undivided fealty as I paid him then, I cannot 
 guess ; but all the other gods of youth and early 
 manhood, with one exception only, have fallen 
 somewhat into the sere and yellow leaf. For some 
 six or eight enthusiastic years, I was saturated 
 with Carlyle ; I thought Carlyle and talked and 
 wrote in unconscious Carlylese, and one day when 
 in the library 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 this 
 time of day, pathetic to remember. I knew him 
 from his portraits at a glance and I was assured of 
 his identity, if any assurance had been necessary, 
 by the profound and flattering deference which was 
 paid to him by the officials and by the unanimity 
 with which the students in the big circular hall 
 found it necessary to pass the place at which he 
 had taken his seat. He was not there more than 
 a quarter of an hour, and during that time he be- 
 haved quite like an ordinary mortal except when 
 he once produced a dark red handkerchief of 
 enormous size and broke the silence of the place by 
 a nasal blast which sounded like a trumpet call to 
 arms. When he arose to go I arose also and 
 followed him ; I could no more have helped it than 
 if he had been a magnet and I a bit of iron filing. 
 He walked to Oxford Street and took a seat in a 
 'bus bound for Chelsea. I followed and sat 
 opposite, hardly daring to lift my eyes to him 
 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 watched until 
 
 the door closed behind him. 
 
 109
 
 Recollections 
 
 A week later Dawson was lecturing at the Birk- 
 beck Institute and I went to hear him and after- 
 wards drove with him to the Victoria Hotel at 
 Euston where he was staying for the night. I told 
 him of the tremendous adventure just recounted and 
 he asked me if I would like to meet Carlyle. 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 Chelsea only to hear 
 him speak and to be able to boast that I had shaken 
 him by the hand. " No need for that," said Dawson, 
 " I'll take you to him one of these days, when I hsve 
 an hour or two to spare in town," and then he began 
 to tell me that he had often thought of leaving be- 
 hind him some intimate record of his association 
 with the great man whose most popular and familiar 
 translator he himself had been to the people of 
 England. " But," he acknowledged, " I have 
 always been too busy or too idle and I begin to 
 fear that that duty will never be performed. I'll 
 tell you what," he added suddenly, " I'll hand the 
 whole thing over to you if you care to have it. I 
 make a point of going now and then down to Rick- 
 mansworth, where I had my first cure of souls and 
 where there are still a few of my old friends left. 
 We'll go down there together and have a quiet day." 
 Dawson began straightway to open, as it were, a 
 bag of samples. He told me three stories of 
 Carlyle ; they were all I ever had from him, for 
 that was the last occasion on which we met. I 
 learned that when Carlyle, who was then engaged 
 in the preparation of those seven tremendous 
 
 volumes of The Life of Frederick the Great, made 
 
 no
 
 Recollections 
 
 an excursion into Germany for the purpose of 
 getting a view of his hero's battlefields, Dawson was 
 one of his travelling companions — the other was a 
 German gentleman who, according to my old chiefs 
 account, did a great deal of what he called the 
 underground work on which Carlyle's monumental 
 edifice was reared. The trio, if I remember rightly, 
 rested at Munich and the historian expressed a wish 
 to find some quiet place in which he could assort 
 his notes and at the same time enjoy a day or two's 
 repose. Dawson and his companion set themselves 
 to work and found a charming little farmhouse 
 within easy distance of the city. "And between 
 ourselves," said he, " we weren't sorry to be left for 
 a little while to our own devices ; we were like a pair 
 of schoolboys broken loose. We went to the theatre 
 and afterwards dropped in to listen to the music in 
 the Beer Garden and altogether we made rather a 
 late night of it. We were breakfasting in the open 
 air at our hotel the next mornino- about eleven o'clock 
 when suddenly I spied Carlyle with his coat tails 
 flying and his old felt hat rammed on angrily any- 
 how. He was gesticulating wildly with his walking- 
 stick and began to talk whilst he was twenty yards 
 away. " Ca* ye that a quiet place .-*" he shouted, 
 " ca' ye that 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 
 barking for a mile around ; and that," he said, cast- 
 ing both hands to heaven as if he were appealing 
 for a judgment on some heart-breaking iniquity, 
 " and that's your notion of a quiet place ! " The 
 
 culprits looked guiltily at each other, but for the life 
 
 III
 
 Recollections 
 
 of them they could not refrain from smiling ; 
 the smile became a laugh in spite of effort, and 
 Carlyle, after one withering glance at the pair of 
 them and one frenzied exclamation of " Ma Goad ! " 
 dropped suddenly into a chair and laughed up- 
 roariously. 
 
 When Emerson was in England, Carlyle and 
 Dawson were his companions on his visit to Salis- 
 bury Plain. They went to Stonehenge together 
 and on that day Carlyle was in one of his saddest 
 and most pessimistic moods. Life was not worth 
 livinof — the whole world was rotten and wrono- — and 
 he wondered, like the old monk in Longfellow's 
 Golden Legend, why God didn't lose his patience 
 with it wholly and shatter it like glass. Men were 
 fools and liars, and impostors and quackery reigned 
 supreme. "And in 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 to sit 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 which Dawson related it. At the time 
 of that visit to Germany of which I have already 
 spoken, there was no Prussian Empire. Bismarck 
 may, even then, have dreamed of it, but what is 
 now a united Germany was split into an infinite 
 number of little principalities. In one of these, a 
 Serene Transparency — or some personage of that 
 order — held rule over a handful of subjects. It 
 happened that he was a profound worshipper of 
 Carlyle, regarding him as the greatest humorist, 
 philosopher and historian of his age. He wrote to 
 
 112
 
 Recollections 
 
 Carlyle a letter full of German enthusiasms, begging 
 him to name an hour at which he could present 
 himself for the personal delivery of his homage. 
 " But," said Carlyle, "we are in the man's territory 
 and it is only in the fitness of things that we should 
 pay our respects to him." Accordingly the two 
 set out together and reaching the palace proposed 
 to send in their names. They were encountered 
 by some kind of glorified flunkey, an official of the 
 toy court of the principality — who assured Carlyle 
 that it was impossible to present him to the Serene 
 Transparency in the costume he was then wearing. 
 Carlyle wanted sardonically to know what was the 
 matter with the costume, and the major-domo in- 
 stanced his hat. Carlyle tore the hat savagely from 
 his head and punched it two or three times before 
 he thundered : If His Serene Transparency ob- 
 jected to the hat he might object ; it was the only 
 hat the philosopher owned and he had no immediate 
 intention to provide himself with another! And 
 whilst he was brandishing the hat and raging at the 
 astonished major-domo, who should appear on the 
 scene but His Serene Transparency, who rushed 
 forward and, falling on his knees, embraced the 
 legs of the amazed philosopher. Dawson declared 
 the whole scene to have been beyond pen and 
 pencil. Carlyle's face was a wonder for wrath 
 and astonishment, but that of the court official 
 was beyond speaking for amazement. Who or 
 what he supposed the visitor to be was altogether 
 beyond conjecture ! 
 
 I was still waiting for that promised invitation 
 to Rickmansworth when Dawson died. He had 
 
 H 113
 
 Recollections 
 
 suffered for some years, though he did not know 
 it, from an aneurism of the aorta, and the bursting 
 of the aneurism into the larynx was the cause of 
 death. He used to say that he should pray to be 
 taken suddenly and to be spared the misery of a 
 prolonged deathbed. He had his wish, for it was 
 all over in a few minutes and was absolutely pain- 
 less. I was staying with a chum of mine in his 
 chambers in Dane's Inn — long since gone the way 
 of all stone, bricks and mortar. My host came in 
 with a newspaper and laid it on the table before 
 me with his finger on a cross-headed paragraph, 
 " Death of George Dawson, M.A." Nothing in 
 all my experience had ever hit me so before, and 
 whatever may be held in reserve for me, nothing 
 can ever so profoundly affect me again. The 
 whole world went dark and empty — George 
 Dawson dead! He had been my man of men, for 
 years my dearest friend and helper, my Moses in 
 the spiritual wilderness through which it is the 
 doom of every young and ardent soul to travel, 
 and with his going, everything seemed blank and 
 waste. 
 
 If you search all the professions round, you 
 will not find one in which men display such an 
 extraordinary divergence of intellect and acquire- 
 ment as you will if you turn to journalism. There 
 are men employed in that craft who are better 
 qualified for Cabinet rank than half 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 born to be hodmen. With one 
 
 of the latter species I was officially associated for 
 
 114
 
 Recollections 
 
 a year. He is now dead and no truth can hurt 
 his feelings any more, but I think he was about 
 as ienorant and self-satisfied an ass as I can re- 
 member to have encountered anywhere. There 
 was one thing to be said for him : he had mastered 
 the intricacies of Pitman's shorthand system and 
 wrote it almost to perfection. You might rely 
 upon him to get down in his note-book every 
 word he heard, or thought he heard, but in tran- 
 scription he sometimes achieved a most extra- 
 ordinary and unlooked-for effect, as for example : 
 A meetinof of the Licensed Victuallers' Association 
 was held in the lower grounds at Aston, and Mr 
 Newdiofate — the member for North Warwickshire 
 — presided over it, and during the annual address— 
 what else the right honourable gentleman had to 
 say I have long since forgotten — he wound up by 
 quoting a verse from Lord 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 right honourable gentleman, 
 who resumed his seat amidst loud and prolonged 
 cheers, concluded by remarking that however 
 it might represent itself to others it appeared 
 to him that the only true nobility consisted in 
 goodness, that kind hearts were better than 
 coronets, and that simple faith was more to be 
 esteemed than Norman blood." Somehow this 
 
 115
 
 Recollections 
 
 passed the printer's reader and appeared in all 
 the glory of type the following morning. It fell 
 to my lot to take the criminal to task, but he dis- 
 armed me by a mere turn of the hand. " I don't 
 call it fair," he said, in his soft, insinuating Rother- 
 ham accent, " to expect a man to have all English 
 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 as an instruction to all shorthand writers 
 that it's a reporter's duty to make good speeches 
 for bad speakers. I have got down what he said 
 right enough, but I thought I'd touch him up a 
 bit ! " 
 
 On another occasion the improver of Tennyson 
 came across from the Town Hall to the office with 
 the final "turn" of an address which had just been 
 delivered by Mr Bright to his constituents. " I'm 
 in a bit of a difficulty," he explained to me breath- 
 lessly, "there's old Bright been havering about in 
 his customary manner and he has been talking 
 about Hercules and some kind of stables. I got 
 a 'j ' and an *n' down on my notes, but I forgot 
 to vocalise the word and I can't remember it." I 
 suggested Augean. "That's it," he said joyfully, 
 " but, my word ! what a memory you've got to be 
 sure ! " 
 
 One almost incredible example of mental agility 
 
 he gave me. He came to me one day beaming 
 
 with an unusual complacency, and announced that 
 
 he had made a discovery. He had an absolutely 
 
 hairless, shining dome of head, and he confided to 
 
 ii6
 
 Recollections 
 
 me the fact that the boys in Rotherham seventeen 
 years ago had nicknamed him " bladder o' lard." 
 " I could never make out what they meant by it," 
 he said, "until this morning I was standing in front 
 of my looking-glass shaving, and it came to me at 
 a run — they gave me that nickname because I'm 
 bald ! " 
 
 117
 
 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 sessional appointment in the 
 gallery of the House of Commons. Some member 
 of the reporting staff of the Daily News was 
 disabled or had gone upon the spree. Anyway 
 the staff was shorthanded for a night, and I was 
 told that I could earn a guinea by presenting my- 
 self to the chief at the House of Commons, and 
 that there would probably be very little indeed to 
 do for it. I attended accordingly and found that my 
 whole duty for the evening consisted in inscribing 
 on three separate sheets of paper, " Murray follows 
 Murphy — Pullen follows." I got my guinea and 
 was instructed to appear again on the following 
 afternoon when I found a very different condition 
 of affairs prevailing. Every bench was packed, 
 the side galleries were full, and it would have been 
 impossible to squeeze another person into the 
 Stranger's Gallery above the clock. A great field 
 night was toward, and from the time at which I 
 first entered the box at about 4 o'clock in the 
 
 afternoon until two the following morning, my 
 
 118
 
 Recollections 
 
 pencil was kept going without cessation, note- 
 taking or transcribing. 
 
 I have quite forgotten what the fight was 
 about, but it was then that I first caught sight 
 of the parliamentary heroes of the time. 
 Gladstone was in his place with Hartington 
 and Bright and the rugged Forster, and Sir 
 William Harcourt and all the rest of his hench- 
 men. Disraeli sat impassive opposite with folded 
 arms and closed eyes, with his chin resting on his 
 breast. The only clear impression I brought out 
 of the rush and hurry of the night was that whereas 
 Disraeli, whenever it came to be my turn to be in the 
 reporter's box, was apparently sound in slumber 
 and utterly oblivious of all that was going on, he 
 rose an hour after midnight and presented a 
 masterly analysis of the whole debate, interspersed 
 with snatches of a fine ironic mockery. His 
 method as an orator was far from being impressive 
 or agreeable, his voice was veiled and husky, and 
 once or twice when he dropped the ironic vein and 
 affected to be serious, he seemed to me to fall 
 into burlesque. "It would be idle," he said, and 
 there he brought his elbows resoundingly to his 
 ribs, "to suppose" — and there the elbows came 
 down energetically again — " that at such a crisis" — 
 and here was another repetition of the grotesque 
 gesture — " Her Majesty's Ministers " — more rib and 
 elbow work — " would endeavour," and so on and so 
 on, in what seemed to one listener at least to be 
 the merest insincerity. His irony was perfect, 
 his assumption of earnestness a farce. Robert 
 
 Lowe was put up to answer him, and after 
 
 119
 
 Recollections 
 
 coughing out a score or two of biting trenchant 
 phrases, with a page of notes almost touching 
 his white albino eyebrows and the tip of his 
 nose, every sentence punctuated with a roar 
 of laughter, cheers and protests, he sat down. 
 Among the speakers I heard that night were Mr 
 Beresford Hope and Sir Wilfrid Lawson, the latter 
 of whom offered to the House quite a sheaf of 
 carefully prepared impromptu. Again I got my 
 guinea, and again I was asked to appear on the 
 following night, and at the end of that week, the 
 defaulting member of the staff not having again 
 put in an appearance, I was formally enrolled for 
 the rest of the session. I do not profess to record 
 in anything like their chronological order the 
 events which most impressed me, but many scenes 
 occur to me as being worth remembering. 
 
 Perhaps the most remarkable example of 
 Disraeli's careless audacity was afforded on the 
 occasion on which, in the House of Commons, he 
 contrived to denounce his great rival as a liar, 
 without infringing the etiquette of 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 gallery after all other 
 members of his staff had left the House, and to 
 watch proceedings until the Assembly was ad- 
 journed. On one occasion, I remember, I was on 
 duty for seventy-two hours. That was when Parnell 
 made his famous stand against the Government, 
 and the Irish members went off in detachments to 
 sleep at the Westminster Hotel and came back in 
 
 detachments to keep the parliamentary ball a-rolling. 
 
 1 20
 
 Recollections 
 
 Disraeli's famous escapade was made on another 
 occasion in the small hours of the morning and so 
 far as I know I am the only surviving eye and ear 
 witness of the occurrence. Shortly before the 
 dinner hour on the preceding evening, somebody 
 brought up from the lobby to the gallery the in- 
 telligence that Mr Disraeli had called for a pint of 
 champagne, and that was taken to indicate his 
 intention to make a speech. When Mr Gladstone 
 was bent upon a great effort, he generally prepared 
 himself for it by taking the yolk of an egg beaten 
 up in a glass of sherry. Mr Bright'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, 
 whilst Chancellor of the Exchequer made ready to 
 enter the oratorical arena by taking a glass of iced 
 water at the bar, being moved to his choice of 
 a stimulant by considerations of economy. Mr 
 Disraeli then was reported to the gallery as 
 having taken his half-bottle, and very shortly 
 afterwards he slipped into the House from behind 
 the Speaker's chair and assumed his accustomed 
 seat. Some quite inconsiderable Member of the 
 Conservative party was on his legs, and we all 
 supposed that on his chiefs arrival he would bring 
 his speech to a close. He prosed along, however, 
 until the House adjourned for dinner, and Disraeli's 
 opportunity was for the meantime lost. He left 
 the House at the hour of adjournment 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 seemed to have no 
 bearing whatever upon any business the House 
 
 121
 
 Recollections 
 
 could possibly have in contemplation. " Mr 
 Speaker, sir," he began, "it will be within the 
 memory of many right honourable and honourable 
 gentlemen, members of this House, that one of the 
 most distinguished ornaments at an earlier period 
 of its history was the late greatly lamented Sir 
 Robert Peel. One of Sir Robert Peel's most in- 
 timate friends was Colonel Ellis, a less distin- 
 guished member of this Assembly. Colonel Ellis, 
 sir, was a noted authority in all matters relating 
 to gourmandising and his opinion was especially 
 respected with regard to the quality of wines. 
 At the time of which I speak, champagne was a 
 liqueured and sugared beverage, mainly relegated 
 to the use and for the enjoyment of the ladies." 
 
 The House sat in an amazed speculation as to 
 whither the orator was being led by this extra- 
 ordinary exordium, but Mr Disraeli flowed on un- 
 moved. 
 
 "It happened that a friend upon the continent 
 sent to Sir Robert Peel a case of dry champagne, 
 a beverage then almost unknown in this country. 
 Sir Robert invited Colonel Ellis to dine with him 
 and to taste and to pronounce upon the novel 
 beverage, and when the repast had been discussed, 
 Sir Robert turned upon his guest and inquired 
 of him, with a solemnity befitting the occasion : 
 ' Pray, Colonel Ellis, what is your opinion of dry 
 champagne ? ' To which Colonel Ellis, with a 
 solemnity equal to Sir Robert's own, responded : 
 ' I believe that the man who is capable of saying 
 that he likes dry champagne, is capable of saying 
 anything.' Now, sir, it is not within my purpose 
 
 122
 
 Recollections 
 
 or my province to charge the right honourable 
 gentleman who controls the destinies of the party- 
 opposite with tergiversation, but this I will say 
 that, on my honour and my conscience, I believe 
 that he is capable of declaring that he is fond of 
 dry champagne ! " 
 
 This astonishing sally was greeted with roars 
 of laughter and cries of disapproval, neither of 
 which moved the speaker in the least. The in- 
 cident somehow remained unreported, but one can 
 easily fancy the avidity with which it would have 
 been pounced upon by the alerter journalism, of 
 modern days. 
 
 Mr Thomas Burt was the first workinor man to 
 be returned to Parliament, where his sterling 
 qualities of character and his unassuming and 
 natural demeanour made a very favourable impres- 
 sion. But a year or two after his return, he was 
 joined by a Labour representative who displayed the 
 characteristics of altogether a different sort. For 
 one thing, he was a vulgarly overdressed man, and 
 he used to sprawl about the benches with out- 
 stretched arms, making his cry of condescending 
 patronage heard in answer to any utterance of 
 which he might approve from such inconsiderable 
 persons as Gladstone or Harcourt or Forster. His 
 " Hear, hear, hear," was the very essence of a self- 
 satisfied and unconscious insolence. He was a man 
 who would have patronised the angel Gabriel, and 
 he was quite unconscious of his own offensiveness 
 until he tried his hand upon Disraeli, when he found 
 his level once for all and with a ludicrous swiftness. 
 
 He and Mr Burt had together backed a Bill which 
 
 123
 
 Recollections 
 
 was intended to do something to ameliorate the 
 condition of the coal-miners of this country, and at 
 the annual slaughter of the innocents, Mr Disraeli 
 announced that it was the intention of the Govern- 
 ment to carry on the measure. The statement had 
 already fallen from his lips and he had just entered 
 on another sentence when the intolerable patronising 
 voice broke in, "Hear, hear, hear," " Hear, hear 
 hear," as if a very great personage with too great 
 a consciousness of his own greatness were express- 
 ing his approval of the conduct of a little boy. 
 Disraeli stopped dead short in his speech and one 
 of the finest bits of comedy I can remember to have 
 seen ensued. He closed his eyes and began very 
 deliberately to fumble about the breast of his frock- 
 coat within and without in search of something 
 which he was evidently not over anxious to find. 
 Alighting at last on the object of this perfunctory 
 search he produced an eyeglass and, still with closed 
 eyes, he lifted the skirt of his coat and polished the 
 glass upon its silken lining. It began to occur to 
 Mr Disraeli's patron that all this slow pantomime 
 was in some way directed to his address. The 
 House waited, with here and there a rather nervous 
 expectant laugh. The Labour member, who was 
 originally thrown abroad in his 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 wilted like 
 a leaf on a hot stove, and when Disraeli finally 
 screwed his glass into his eye and, after surveying 
 
 him for two or three dreadful seconds, allowed the 
 
 124
 
 Recollections 
 
 glass to fall and resumed his speech at the very 
 word at which he had broken off, the patron of 
 the House was an altogether abject figure. The 
 assembly literally rocked with laughter and Mr 
 Burt's colleague never, never, never ventured to 
 pat Mr Disraeli on the back again. 
 
 It does not fall to the lot of every self-sufficient 
 ass who finds himself returned to Parliament and 
 who imagines that he can at once make a fio-ure in 
 that assembly to learn his place in so abrupt a 
 fashion, but there is no gathering in the world in 
 which a man so inevitably finds his proper level. 
 Poor Dr Kenealy had gifts enough to have carried 
 him to a high place almost anywhere, but unfortun- 
 ately for himself he came into the House in a mood 
 of passionate defiance against the world. He chose 
 to defy the rules of the Assembly at its very thres- 
 hold. It has been the custom from time im- 
 memorial for a new member to be introduced by 
 two gentlemen who are already officially known 
 to Mr Speaker. I happened to be in the box 
 apportioned to the Daily News when the Doctor 
 attempted to evade this rule and to present himself 
 before the Speaker without the customary cre- 
 dentials. He was of course forbidden to enter and 
 after some unseemly altercation outside the bar, 
 two members were found to volunteer to introduce 
 him. He marched up the House with his umbrella 
 in one hand and the certificate of the Returning 
 Officer in the other, his eyes flashing a quite un- 
 necessary defiance, poor gentleman, behind his gold- 
 rimmed glasses, and his whole figure placed as if for 
 
 instant combat. It was probably by an inadvert- 
 
 125
 
 Recollections 
 
 ence that he hung his umbrella upon the Speaker's 
 mace, but it was certainly counted as an act of 
 intentional discourtesy against him. He was sent 
 to Coventry from the first, and he was so sore and 
 angry that he was almost fore-doomed to bring 
 himself into trouble. 
 
 Kenealy succeeded in placing on the paper a 
 motion in favour of triennial Parliaments very 
 shortly after his first unfavourable introduction 
 into the House. It was long after midnight when 
 he rose to speak. He began at the beginning and 
 favoured us with an analysis of the characteristics 
 of the first gathering of a representative assembly 
 under Alfred the Great. Sir Wilfred Lawson 
 almost immediately rose to inquire whether the 
 hour were not somewhat too advanced for a dis- 
 quisition on parliamentary history, the facts of 
 which were available to everybody, and Kenealy 
 passionately retorted that he was in possession 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 
 members solemnly filed away, leaving Kenealy to 
 address the Speaker, the clerks at the table and a 
 handful of reporters in the gallery. He struggled 
 on for awhile, but by and by a member returned 
 and drew the attention of the Speaker to the very 
 obvious fact that there were not forty members 
 present. The Speaker rose under his canopy and 
 waved his cocked hat solemnly towards Kenealy 
 and then towards the other occupant of the House. 
 
 "There are not forty members present," he said 
 
 126
 
 Recollections 
 
 solemnly, "the House is now adjourned." That 
 was the result of Dr Kenealy's first essay and in 
 his second he came to final and irremediable orrief. 
 
 o 
 
 In a crowded House, he arose to impeach his 
 enemies and traducers. He was ploughing along 
 and I was fighting after him in my own gouty, in- 
 efficient shorthand, when one of the strangest pre- 
 monitions of my life occurred to me. He said "If 
 any of these unjust aspersions are cast anew upon 
 me" — and I seemed to know as absolutely what he 
 was going to say as if the whole thing were a play 
 which I had seen rehearsed a score of times. I 
 thought, " I hope to heaven he won't say that," and 
 he went on in the very words my mind forebode. 
 " If these unjust aspersions are cast upon me, I shall 
 shake them from me as the lion shakes the dew- 
 drops from his mane." There was a second's 
 silence as he paused, and then there was a crash of 
 laughter with peal on peal to follow. Three times 
 I have known the House of Commons surrendered 
 to illimitable mirth and on each occasion the victim 
 of its derision is somewhat pitiable. But poor 
 Kenealy ! 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 
 manner gone out of him. That he could find a 
 voice at all after such a scathing was an evidence 
 of his courage, but with that unfortunate sentence 
 he had shot his bolt. He never attempted to 
 address the House again. I do not remember even 
 to have seen him within its precincts after that 
 
 catastrophe. 
 
 127
 
 Recollections 
 
 It is not impossible there may have been a 
 little touch of gratified malice in that Homeric 
 laugh which killed Kenealy's parliamentary career, 
 but there was certainly not a trace of it in that 
 heroic peal of mirth which dismissed Mr Newdigate 
 from the scene of his parliamentary activities. Mr 
 Newdigate was undoubtedly a dull man, he was 
 undoubtedly an eccentric, but he was just as 
 certainly a gentleman and he enjoyed everybody's 
 esteem. He was a long-backed Tory squire who 
 for many years represented the Northern Division 
 of the County of Warwick. His chief virtues 
 were that he rode straight to hounds, that he 
 dispensed an open-handed old-fashioned hospit- 
 ality to his hunt and that he voted regularly and 
 faithfully with his party. There was no man who 
 could more quickly empty a full House than he. 
 The very sight of him on his feet created a 
 stampede, and throughout his parliamentary life it 
 had been his lot to empty benches. But at last 
 his chance came. Our present King, then Prince 
 of Wales, was about to visit India, and the Govern- 
 ment proposed a vote of £60,000 to enable him 
 to do the thing in proper fashion. Mr Peter 
 Taylor, a distinguished Radical of that time, rose 
 to move the previous question, and then Mr 
 Newdigate, in recognition, as one supposes, of the 
 faithful party service of many years, was allowed 
 to support the Government resolution. Just for 
 once in his life the House did not empty at his 
 rising ; his chance was here, the coveted oppor- 
 tunity of a lifetime, and in his own way he proceeded 
 
 to take advantage of it. In sepulchral tones he 
 
 128
 
 Recollections 
 
 assured Mr Speaker that if this vote were refused 
 
 the loyal feelings of this country would receive a 
 
 blow, and the popular confidence in that House 
 
 would receive a blow, and the loyal sentiment of 
 
 the Empire would receive a blow ; and as he piled 
 
 up the agony of his speech, he stooped lower and 
 
 lower, driving his right hand down at the end of 
 
 each period with a sledge-hammer force until the 
 
 blow landed, not on the public conscience or the 
 
 loyalty of the Empire, but on the white hat of one, 
 
 Mr Charley, who sat directly below him and who in 
 
 a second was bonneted to the very shoulders. 
 
 Now Mr Charley wore a very tall white hat and it 
 
 was his habit to wear his hair rather long, and as 
 
 he struggled to release himself from the obscurity 
 
 into which he had been plunged, the lining of the 
 
 tall white hat turned inside out and his long hair 
 
 rose with it until he appeared to be expanding 
 
 himself like some elastic snake. One gentleman 
 
 on the front bench below the gangway actually 
 
 fell from his seat and rolled upon the floor, and 
 
 the House laughed itself almost into hysteria, 
 
 whilst the hapless orator stood waving in apologetic 
 
 dumb show. Now here was a tragedy indeed : to 
 
 have the dream of a whole lifetime at last actually 
 
 realised and concrete and then to see it go to ruin 
 
 in that way. So swift 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 did not profoundly sympathise with the 
 
 sufferer, and Mr Newdigate never attempted to 
 
 speak again at least in my time. He and Mr 
 
 Whalley were the two members of the House who 
 I 129
 
 Recollections 
 
 were the stern and unfaltering enemies of the 
 Jesuits. They saw the emissaries of Jesuitry 
 everywhere and were unceasing in denouncing all 
 their wicked wiles, but it was notorious that each 
 cast an eye askance upon the other and each 
 was rather inclined to be persuaded to believe 
 that his pretended fellow-crusader was a Jesuit in 
 disguise. 
 
 On the nio-ht on which Disraeli's orovernment fell 
 he gave the House of Commons a last proof of his 
 unconquerable " cheek and pluck." The Marquis of 
 Hartington had delivered a speech which every- 
 body knew to have sealed the fate of the party in 
 power, but the great Jew statesman rose up imper- 
 turbable and audacious to the last. " There is, sir," 
 he said in that veiled voice of his which sounded 
 as if it were struo-a-Hnor throuo-h dense foo" and 
 could indeed only have been made audible through- 
 out the chamber by a trained master in elocution — 
 "there is in war a manoeuvre which is well known. 
 First the cavalry advance creating dust and waving 
 sabres, then a rattle of musketry is heard along 
 the line, and next the big guns are brought into 
 play, and when the dust and smoke have cleared 
 away the force which has created it is found to 
 have removed to a considerable distance. This 
 manoeuvre, sir, is known as the covering of a re- 
 treat and this manoeuvre has been executed with an 
 admirable adroitness by Her Majesty's Opposition 
 this evening." He knew, of course, that he was 
 beaten, he knew that in an hour's time the reins of 
 Government would have passed from his own hands 
 
 to those of his rival, but he took defeat with his 
 
 130
 
 Recollections 
 
 own sardonic gaiety and made a claim for victory 
 with his expiring breath. 
 
 I had a curious Httle instance of this 
 indomitable vein in him one summer mornino- 
 when the House had risen after sunrise and I 
 overtook him on his way to his official resi- 
 dence. The street was empty and he was crawl- 
 ing along leaning heavily on his walking stick and 
 clasping his left hand on the small of his back 
 with a gesture which bespoke him as being in 
 severe pain. He heard my footstep behind him 
 and turned ; his careless and apparently unseeing 
 glance had crossed my face a score of times and he 
 could not fail to have known at least that he was 
 known to me. At the second at which he became 
 aware of me, he drew himself to his full height and 
 stepped out with the assured gait of a man in full 
 possession of health and strength. He twirled his 
 walking stick quite gaily and he maintained that 
 attitude until I had passed him by. I had not the 
 heart to look back afterwards. I saw him once 
 again and once only. One afternoon whilst I was 
 sitting writing in my lodgings I received a tele- 
 gram from Mr Robinson, afterwards Sir John — then 
 the inspiring genius of the Daily News, instruct- 
 ing me to repair to the office. On arriving 
 there, I received instructions to repair at once to 
 the House of Lords and there, no other journalist 
 being present, I witnessed the formal installation 
 of Lord Beaconsfield. There were four peers 
 present in their robes of scarlet and ermine and 
 their beaver bonnets and the Lord Chancellor was 
 seated on the woolsack. An attendant brought a 
 
 131
 
 Recollections 
 
 scarlet cloak, and a very shabby and faded garment 
 it was indeed, and adjusted it about the shoulders of 
 the neophyte. The second attendant handed to 
 him a black beaver which he assumed, then he was 
 led in a sort of solemn dance to the four quarters of 
 the House, at each of which he made an obeisance. 
 Finally he was conducted to the Lord Chancellor 
 and the ceremony came to an end. Everybody 
 supposed that Disraeli's career had come to an end 
 also, and I myself was one of the mistaken prophets. 
 I was writing at the time a weekly set of verses for 
 May/air, a sixpenny Society journal long since 
 defunct, and in the next issue of that journal I took 
 Mr Disraeli's formal installation for my theme. I 
 remember two verses which may perhaps be allowed 
 to serve as an expression of the almost universal 
 opinion of the time, an opinion which everybody 
 now knows to have been contradicted in the most 
 extraordinary fashion by the happenings of the 
 next four years. I wrote : — 
 
 "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." 
 
 132
 
 Recollections 
 
 The House of Lords had proved a grave for so 
 many brilHant reputations which 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; Mr Punch's cartoon of Lord John 
 Russell's entry into the House of Peers is not 
 forgotten. The meagre little figure in robes and 
 coronet is shown slinking by Lord Brougham 
 similarly attired, and the latter addresses the 
 arrival, saying, "You'll find it very cold up here, 
 Johnnie." 
 
 I was in the House also when Mr Biggar intro- 
 duced the great parliamentary art of " stone-wall- 
 inpf." Mr Bioro-ar would take the first half-dozen 
 blue books he came across, and would begin to 
 read aloud whenever any new measure of which he 
 disapproved was about to be introduced. At half- 
 past two he would begin to read, and continue, 
 oblivious of the passing of the hours, until the time 
 after which no new measure could be introduced. 
 Sir Wilfrid Lawson, in his characteristic way, 
 "wanted to know if the hon. member were in 
 order in reading to himself for sixty minutes at a 
 stretch? " Mr Speaker, who at that time was Mr 
 Brand, rolled out the instruction that " the honour- 
 able member must make himself audible to the 
 chair." Mr Biggar forthwith put three blue books 
 under each arm, and taking up his glass of water 
 said, " I will come a little nearer, Mr Speaker," 
 and came. Mr Speaker told him on one of these 
 occasions, " So far as I can understand the line 
 you are taking, I do not see how these matters are 
 related." " I will establish the connection by and 
 
 133
 
 Recollections 
 
 by, sir," replied Mr Biggar. This art of "stone- 
 walling" was practised in the House for a number 
 of years until at last the rules were so altered as 
 to make it impossible. It was remarkable how 
 quickly a member found his level in the House. 
 If he started with the idea that he would "boss" 
 the House he would quickly find that the House 
 " bossed" him. 
 
 I only heard Bright make one speech in the 
 House. It was an impromptu one, and the orator 
 was not at his best. But Bright in a passion was a 
 person to be listened to. I heard him at Birming- 
 ham just after his appointment to the Presidency 
 of the Board of Trade. A Conservative banker 
 opposed his re-election, and Bright was very much 
 annoyed, in fact he was profoundly indignant at 
 being opposed. When he came on the Town Hall 
 platform, that horse-shoe in the forehead, of which 
 Sir Walter Scott speaks as becoming visible in 
 moments of excitement, was flashing out scarlet. 
 He plunged into his speech at once. He did not 
 say " Ladies and gentlemen," or " Electorate of 
 Birmingham," or anything of the kind. " I call it 
 a piece of impertinence," he began, "and unsur- 
 passed in my knowledge of political history that 
 here in this home of freedom, and now at this hour 
 when the fetters you have worn for a lifetime are 
 but newly smitten from you, while your limbs are 
 yet sore with their chafing, and the sound of their 
 clanking is yet in your ears, that a Tory should 
 come forward and ask your permission — to do 
 what? — to rivet those fetters anew upon you. 
 Will you give him that leave.-* " And in one voice 
 
 134
 
 Recollections 
 
 eight thousand people answered "No," which 
 sealed the doom of the banker. 
 
 Robert Lowe afforded one of the most note- 
 worthy instances of a man who, having made a fine 
 reputation in the House of Commons, failed to 
 sustain it in the House of Lords. I did not myself 
 witness the scene of his discomfiture, but I had the 
 story of it at first hand within ten minutes of its 
 happening. The unfortunate gentleman was so 
 short-sighted that he could 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 address to the Upper House ; he had contrived 
 in the nervousness natural to the occasion to mix 
 his memoranda, and finding himself unable to re- 
 arrange them, he sat down discomfited, and he 
 appears to have accepted that one disaster as final. 
 
 In the Commons he had been a brilliant figure. 
 I have good personal reason to remember his most 
 striking effort. His speech had relation to an Army 
 Reform Bill, and it was a mosaic of the aptest and 
 most wittily applied literary quotations. It was of 
 so fine a literary quality that I very much doubt if 
 there were a score of people among his hearers 
 who were able fully to appreciate its excellence. 
 
 Those who could follow his allusions were de- 
 lighted beyond measure, and the House took its cue 
 from them and laughed and cheered uproariously 
 at many things it did not understand. Mr Glad- 
 stone acted as a sort of fugleman, and his rejoicing 
 chuckle at some happy ironic application of a 
 Virgilian or Homeric phrase was a cue which was 
 instantly seized upon. Lowe was always a terror to 
 
 135
 
 Recollections 
 
 the reporters, for he spoke at a pace which no steno- 
 grapher's or phonographer's pen could follow, but 
 it was not merely the speed of his utterance which 
 made him so impossible. He would boggle at the 
 beginning of a sentence, and would stammer over 
 it until the reporter was half wild with expectancy, 
 and then he would be away at racing pace, gabbling 
 at the rate of three or four hundred words a minute. 
 I was in the reporter's box when Mr Lowe caught 
 the Speaker's eye on this particular evening, and 
 the chief of the staff, who sat next to me, gave me 
 an urgent whisper, "We want the fullest possible 
 note of this." I suffered a twenty minutes' agony. 
 I believe that for many years after I had left the 
 national talking-shop, I was credited with having 
 been one of the lamest shorthand writers who ever 
 sat there, and in my anxiety and with the certainty 
 of failure before my eyes, I fell into such a state of 
 agitation that my hand perspired so that my pencil 
 would not mark a line upon the paper. I threw it 
 down in despair and stared upward at the painted 
 ceiling, listening for all I was worth, and determined 
 to rely upon what was then a really phenomenal 
 memory. 
 
 "What are you doing ?" my chief whispered to 
 me. '* For God's sake leave me alone ! " I answered. 
 He gave a moan and went to work feverishly at a 
 supplementary note. The orator sat down amidst a 
 great burst of cheers, just as my relief tapped me on 
 the shoulder, and I walked away to committee room 
 No. 1 8, which was then used by the gallery 
 reporters as a transcribing room, feeling assured 
 
 as I walked along the corridor that my career as a 
 
 136
 
 Recollections 
 
 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 all 
 Westminster. His note-book was tucked in his 
 armpit and he was rubbing his hands delightedly. 
 " That's parliamentary eb-quence, if you like," he 
 said as I came up with him ; "there's nothing loike 
 that been heard in the House of Commons these 
 thirty years. There's hardly a scholar in the 
 classics left in the House." We sat down side by 
 side, and when we had been at work in silence for a 
 minute or two, the old scholar turned to me and 
 asked, " Did you happen to catch that phrase of 
 Sam Weller's ? " I gave it to him without difficulty 
 and then an inspiration occurred to me. The 
 stammering tongue had plundered Father Prout 
 and the prophet Malachi, Dickens and Ingoldsby, 
 Pope and Smollett and Defoe, and as it chanced he 
 had made no literary allusion in English which did 
 not recall some long familiar text to my mind, I 
 offered a bargain. If O'Hanlon would give me the 
 classical stuff in respect to which I was in Pagan 
 darkness, I would give him the English with which 
 he was less well acquainted. We exchanged notes 
 and between us we turned out an excellent if a 
 somewhat compressed and truncated report. I felt 
 that I was saved, and on the following morning, I 
 made an anxious survey of the work of my rivals. 
 O'Hanlon represented The Advertiser, and I found 
 that the report of a big meeting of the Licensed 
 Victuallers' Association which had been held some- 
 where in the provinces had swamped him. He
 
 Recollections 
 
 was cut down to a mere paragraph and as for the 
 other journals — The Times ^ The Telegraph and 
 The Standard — they were all hopelessly at sea. 
 There was but one report of that amazing discourse 
 which was even distantly worthy of it, and that was 
 in The Daily News. I received a special letter of 
 congratulation from Mr J. R. Robinson who, to the 
 day of his death, persisted in regarding me as a 
 classical scholar of exceptional acquirements. I 
 never had an opportunity of undeceiving him or I 
 would certainly have taken it, but I have since been 
 content to regard this as an example of the hap- 
 hazard way in which reputations are sometimes 
 made. I learned, many years after, that I was still 
 remembered in the Q-allerv as the man who took a 
 note of the most difficult speech of its year by 
 staring at the painted ceiling. 
 
 It was surprising to notice to what heights party 
 feeling ran amongst the reporters in the gallery. 
 When Mr Gladstone came into power, hundreds of 
 malicious and impossible stories were current about 
 him amongst the supporters of the Opposition, and 
 in the little Tabagie at the foot of the gallery stairs 
 in which most of our spare hours were spent, there 
 were heated discussions in which his eloquence, his 
 financial capacity and his scholarship were all 
 decried. I remember one occasion when the 
 veteran of The Daily Telegraph staff walked into 
 the room with the announcement that " that eternal 
 old woman was on her legs again," and a general 
 orroan went round. I was, and have never ceased 
 to be, an ardent admirer of Mr Gladstone's character 
 and genius, and I used constantly to chafe at his 
 
 138
 
 Recollections 
 
 belittling by little men, but I never found a real 
 opportunity for the expression of my own opinion 
 until one day when I was sent down to report the 
 annual outing of the Commissioners of Epping 
 Forest. We had a jolly day, winding up with a 
 very substantial dinner and a drive back to London 
 in a string of open brakes. There was a basket of 
 champagne aboard the brake in which I found a 
 seat, and it turned out that nobody in the whole 
 assembly was in possession of anything which could 
 be utilised as a champagne opener. One gentleman, 
 however, was very skilful in knocking off the necks 
 of the bottles, and before we were half-way home 
 we were all in a state of great contentment and 
 joviality. There was a rather noisy discussion 
 about politics and, with one exception, my com- 
 panions were all fierce opponents of Gladstone. I 
 fired at last — I daresay the champagne had some- 
 thing to do with it — and I ventured to tell those 
 gentlemen that they seemed to me to be crawling 
 about beneath the instep of a great man's boot, 
 under the impression that they were taking an 
 architectural survey of the man. " You will have," 
 I said, " to travel to a telescopic distance before 
 you will be able to realise his proportions," and 
 there I burst into quotation : 
 
 " 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 
 
 139
 
 Recollections 
 
 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, everybody would at least know that it 
 was a quotation, and that it could not conceivably 
 have been an impromptu, but one man turned on 
 another and said: "By Jove! that's eloquence," 
 and a orentleman at the rear of the brake asked me 
 out of the darkness why I didn't make a try for 
 Parliament, and assured me that I had a future 
 there before me. 
 
 140
 
 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 than a year later war between 
 Russia and Turkey was declared. In the early 
 spring of the year, the opposing forces were playing 
 a game of long bowls across the Danube, and very 
 soon the forces commanded by "the divine figure 
 of the North," as Mr Gladstone most infelicitously 
 styled the Czar, had set foot upon the enemy's 
 country. Just before this happened, I received a 
 visit from a gentleman who announced himself as 
 Colonel Keenan, the English representative of the 
 Chicago Times, who wanted to know if he could 
 enlist my services for the campaign. I assented 
 eagerly, some sort of a hurried contract was drawn 
 up between us, and on the morrow I was away, 
 bound for Schumla, proposing to take Vienna en 
 route, and thence to steam down the Danube to the 
 theatre of the war. I found that the Donau Damp 
 Schiff Company had despatched its last steamboat 
 to the Black Sea twenty-four hours before I reached 
 Vienna and that the service was temporarily sus- 
 pended. There was nothing for it but to go on to 
 
 141
 
 Recollections 
 
 Trieste and to take boat to Constantinople. I 
 found the city proclaimed in a state of siege and 
 filled with all the rascaldom and ruffiandom of 
 Tripoli and Smyrna^ who held the respectable por- 
 tion of the community in terror, so long as they 
 were quartered there. 
 
 There was an encampment of these gentry about 
 five thousand strong between the city and that 
 dreary and dirty canal which enjoys the romantic 
 appellation of " the sweet waters of Europe." 
 They were soon to be let loose for the suppression 
 of a wholly imaginary Bulgarian insurrection, and 
 it was they and their comrades who, together with 
 the Bashi-Bazouks, carried the banner of rapine, 
 fire and slaughter throughout the land. They gave 
 us a mere taste of their quality before they had 
 occupied their quarters for a week. A Greek lady 
 and her daughter, drawn by curiosity, ventured 
 through their lines. They were subjected to un- 
 speakable outrages and, together with their coach- 
 man, were cruelly murdered ; and after this 
 occurrence, the city never breathed freely until 
 they were marched away up country. After their 
 dispersal the authorities appear to have paid but 
 little attention to their commissariat and they were 
 left to live by pillage. Many months later I 
 ventured to ask an officer of the reo^ulars on what 
 principle they were supposed to be paid. " Payes ? " 
 responded the gentleman whom I questioned, "ils 
 ne sont pas pay^s, ils volent." 
 
 One of my fellow-passengers from Trieste was 
 
 a young German officer who had fought through 
 
 the Franco-German campaign and had now 
 
 142
 
 Recollections 
 
 obtained leave to volunteer on the Turkish side 
 against Russia. He was the grandson of an Irish 
 peer, but his father had long filled some diplomatic 
 office in Berlin. On his death the family had 
 settled in Germany and the young officer of whom 
 I speak was a naturalised subject of the emperor. 
 He and I put up at the Byzance Hotel together 
 and there a strange thing happened. A fellow- 
 o-uest at the hotel came to dinner one eveninor with 
 a young French officer, a very handsome, alert and 
 gallant fellow, whom I got to know intimately 
 afterwards. His host sat him down at the ^ad/e 
 d'hote opposite the young German, and almost 
 from the first it was to be seen that the two looked 
 at each other in a curious way. By and by the 
 Frenchman arose and drawing his host aside made 
 a whispered communication to him and withdrew. 
 It turned out afterwards that the two men had been 
 engaged on different sides in the great cavalry 
 charge at Gravelotte. When the opposing regi- 
 ments met, there was a tremendous 7neUe after the 
 first shock, and the Frenchman had engaged both 
 the young German officer whom he now en- 
 countered and his brother, the latter of whom fell 
 by his hand. They had never met before nor did 
 they ever encounter afterwards, but the recognition 
 on both sides was instantaneous. Captain Tiburce 
 Morisot — that was the Frenchman's name — made 
 another curious recos^nition of which I was a 
 witness. I was dining with him at the Hotel 
 Misseri when there entered a big stalwart fellow 
 who sat down opposite to us. " I beg your pardon," 
 said my entertainer, speaking across the table, 
 
 143
 
 Recollections 
 
 "but I think that you and I have met before some- 
 where." " So I was thinking," the big man 
 answered ; " I was trying to size you up in my own 
 mind but I can't manage it." " Were you ever in 
 Africa?" the other asked him. "Yes," the big 
 man answered, " I spent some years there." " Big 
 game shooting?" asked my host. " Yes," said the 
 other. " Do you remember coming across a party 
 of Frenchmen who were cutting a military road ?" 
 He named the region, and the man who was in- 
 terrogated answered "Yes," he did remember it. 
 "You brought a giraffe's heart into the camp," 
 said Morisot, " and asked leave to roast it at our 
 fire." "I did," the other answered, "and, by 
 Jove! you're the man who was in command of 
 that party." They renewed their acquaintance 
 with a cordial handgrip, and clinked glasses 
 together. The big Englishman was Colonel 
 Archibald Campbell, afterwards known as Schipka 
 Campbell, and there was a story told of these two, 
 which is perhaps worth relating. They went up 
 to Schumla together, and there for week after 
 week they lived in a deadly monotony which was 
 varied only by the intrusion of an occasional shell, 
 hurled by one of the Russian guns from the other 
 side of the river. " It's getting horribly dull here," 
 said the Frenchman one day. " Suppose we go 
 and sit, by way of a change, on the fortifications 
 and get shelled at." The suggestion was probably 
 made in a purely humorous mood, but the Scotch- 
 man chose to appear to take it seriously and said 
 that it was a very good idea. In all likelihood the 
 answer was as humorously meant as the sugges- 
 
 144
 
 Recollections 
 
 tion, but each carried on the game with so much 
 gravity that in the end they did actually go and 
 sit upon the glacis, where they smoked their pipes 
 until such time as a big shell burst between them, 
 when the Frenchman hinted that they had done 
 enough for honour, and the pair leisurely withdrew. 
 And here I recall 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 Savage Club, and one night I encountered 
 there a number of old campaigning men — news- 
 paper correspondents, artists, and doctors — who 
 were swopping battle yarns among themselves, and 
 who were all agreed with respect to one thing — the 
 extraordinary exhilaration which came of being 
 under fire. Now I have been under fire for weeks 
 together in my time, and I am free to confess that 
 I never liked it. I am going to be quite honest ; 
 I never showed the white feather, but I know quite 
 well that many a time in the course of that campaign, 
 if I could have bolted without disgracing myself in 
 my own eyes, I should have done it. I stuck to 
 my place because it was my place, but not in the 
 least degree because I liked to be there, and all 
 this talk about the exhilaration of being shot at, 
 and the maddening pleasure inspired by it, hit me 
 very hard indeed, and set me probing my own mind 
 to ask if I were not, as a matter of fact, a coward 
 who had just managed to disguise the truth from 
 himself and others. I went out of the club that 
 night in a melancholy mood, and as I was wander- 
 ing purposelessly along the Strand, I felt a hand 
 upon my shoulder and, turning round, saw Archibald 
 
 K 145
 
 Recollections 
 
 Forbes beside me. "You look hit, young 'un,'" 
 said he, "come and have a drink." He drew me 
 into the Gaiety bar, and there, over a whisky and 
 cigar, I unfolded my trouble. " My boy," said 
 Forbes, " I have been through seventeen campaigns, 
 big and little, and 1 have had a bit of experience. 
 You can make your mind quite easy, and the first 
 thing you can do is to go back to your club and 
 give those fellows my compliments — Archibald 
 Forbes's compliments — and tell them that they are 
 liars to a man ! " I did not take that message, 
 which was delivered in a form more emphatic than 
 I have given to it, but I went away a good deal 
 comforted. 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 end 
 willing to confess to a very serious knowledge of 
 his position at such a time. In the course of a 
 sieofe men oret inured to it, but even then there is 
 no particular fun about it, and merely to sit still 
 and endure is anything but a cheerful experience ; 
 to be on the move towards the enemy is altogether 
 another matter. 
 
 I remember, for instance, an incident which 
 occurred at Guemlik, when a rifle bullet passed 
 so close by my left ear, that for a minute or two 
 I was deafened on that side, and the ear itself was 
 hot with the passing of the bullet. I remember 
 that I yelled out to the little party which accom- 
 panied me, " We're under fire ! " and flinging myself 
 from my horse, dragged him into the shelter of a 
 coppice. We held a council of war there, and it 
 
 was finally decided that we should ride straight 
 
 146
 
 Recollections 
 
 into the village and trust to what might happen. I 
 had been compelled by the military authorities to 
 travel with an escort, and I had with me four 
 mounted Zaptiehs, a sergeant, my interpreter, and 
 a fellow-correspondent. We all remounted and 
 made a rush at the village, which was not more than 
 three hundred yards away. We tore along at the 
 charge, and what with the speed and the risk and the 
 uncertainty, it was certainly all very thrilling, and 
 even in a sense enjoyable. When we clattered into 
 the cobbled street, we found a solitary Bashi-Bazouk 
 armed with a Winchester repeating rifle. Him, 
 the sergeant of my escort questioned. " Had he 
 fired a shot lately?" "Evvet," said the insolent 
 ruffian, with a grin, answering in the affirmative. 
 "What had he fired at ? " asked the sergeant." 
 " A small bird," was the answer. " Had he fired 
 in the direction of the highway ? " the sergeant 
 asked him again. "Evvet," once more. "And 
 had he seen a party coming along the highway ? " 
 the sergeant asked. " Oh, Evvet ! " The sergeant 
 rode towards a dilapidated wattled fence and 
 wrenched from it a thick stake with which he 
 administered such a hiding to that Bashi-Bazouk 
 as I never saw one man bestow upon another before 
 or since. 
 
 Good old Father Stick seemed to play a very 
 large part in the Turkish administration. On the 
 march to Plevna, for example, I saw two high 
 military dignitaries chastised in the presence of 
 their fellow-officers. What they had done or failed 
 to do I did not know, but I arrived upon the scene 
 just in time to see each man step out in turn, fold 
 
 147
 
 Recollections 
 
 his arms and with bent head submit himself to half 
 a dozen resounding blows across the shoulders. It 
 was no perfunctory ceremony, but the two took it 
 quite quietly and went back to their separate posts 
 of duty looking as if nothing at all had happened. 
 A third example of the kind took place at the 
 military hospital at Adrianople. Dr Bond Moore 
 had charge there and one day I was with him when 
 one of the irregular troops was brought in with a 
 broken leg. The doctor dressed the limb with a 
 dilution of carbolic acid and fixed it in a plaster 
 bandage. He left the man fairly comfortable, and, 
 through his interpreter, promised him a speedy 
 recovery. But two days later, in the course of our 
 rounds, we came upon the patient and found him in 
 a state of dreadful suffering-. On investioation it 
 was found that the bandao^e had been changed and 
 that the limb was hopelessly distorted, the toes 
 being turned inwards in such a fashion that even 
 had the man recovered he would have been a help- 
 less cripple for the rest of his days. The bandage 
 was huddled on anyhow, and Moore tore it away 
 to discover to his horror, that the brown limb below 
 it was hideously blanched and inflamed. It turned 
 out on inquiry that a young Turkish haakim, who 
 had watched the operation at which the limb was 
 first set, had taken it into his head to rearrange 
 the dressing before the plaster case in which the 
 limb was bound had dried, and he had improved 
 upon the process he had witnessed, pretty much as 
 an intelligent monkey might have done, by apply- 
 ing a dressing of undiluted carbolic acid. I have 
 
 rarely seen a man in such a towering rage as Bond 
 
 148
 
 Recollections 
 
 Moore 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 or could 
 invent on the spur of the moment, he begged me to 
 send for my interpreter who arrived in a minute or 
 two, and drew from the sufferer a description of the 
 man who had so mishandled him. Bond Moore 
 sent for that man, and having made sure of him, 
 kicked him the whole lenorth of the corridor and 
 finally sent him flying down a lengthy flight of 
 stairs, where, very fortunately for himself, he fell 
 upon a load of hay which had just been delivered 
 for the use of the cavalry regiment which was 
 stabled below the hospital. The indignant haakim 
 hobbled off straightway to the military commandant 
 of the city and lodged a complaint as to the manner 
 in which he had been treated by his English 
 colleague. In less than a quarter of an hour he 
 was back again and the Pasha with him, a little, 
 black-avised man with a beard like wire, who bore 
 a malacca cane in very truculent fashion. He was 
 quivering with anger, and he demanded in fluent 
 French an explanation from Bond Moore in a 
 manner which was peremptory in the extreme. 
 Bond Moore knew no more of French than he did 
 of Turkish, but my interpreter having explained 
 the position, the Pasha turned round upon the 
 complainant and, after a few curt and angry 
 questions, set about him with the malacca cane 
 until he roared: " Amaan, Eccellenza, amaan ! " 
 (which, being interpreted, is " have pity,") and 
 finally took to his heels and ran for it with the 
 irate little Pasha in full cry after him. 
 
 149
 
 Recollections 
 
 Of course it would be useless to deny the exist- 
 ence of the delio^ht in battle which affects some 
 natures, but I am perfectly sure that it does not 
 come as the result of standing still to be shot at. 
 I have seen some extraordinary examples of cool 
 courage and at least one of perfect panic, but the 
 circumstances in which I saw the last, disposed me 
 to understand and to sympathise with it. We were 
 quartered at Tashkesen shortly after our enforced 
 retreat from Plevna. The village in which we lived 
 was two or three miles from the actual front of war, 
 and on a certain foggy morning I set out with a 
 little hill pony to visit the fortifications. I may as 
 well make one bite at the whole story, and to do 
 this I must go back to the time when I was at 
 Vienna and had just discovered that it was impos- 
 sible to make my way to Schumla by the Danube. 
 At the Engl'scher Hof Hotel in that city I met a 
 gentleman who had for years been engaged in a 
 military survey of the Balkan country. He had 
 been under some sort of contract with the Turkish 
 Government, but on the very eve of the campaign, 
 the authorities had refused to pay him a sum of 
 ^12,000 which he reckoned to be due to him for 
 his labours and expenses, and at considerable risk 
 and difficulty he had contrived to smuggle his map 
 out of Constantinople. He was on his way to St 
 Petersburg with it and eventually disposed of it to 
 the Russian Government. Without it the Russian 
 army would never have been able to force the 
 passage of the Balkans and I always traced the 
 defeat of the Turks to that poor economy of 
 ;^i 2,000. The map was the most extraordinary 
 
 150
 
 Recollections 
 
 thine of its kind I have ever seen. It consisted of 
 a ofreat number of thin wooden slabs of about a 
 foot square on which were modelled in wax all the 
 mountains and passes of the Balkan range, built 
 exactly to scale and showing every road and by- 
 path. 
 
 Now at Tashkesen the Russians were in 
 possession of this map, with the result that they 
 were able to adjust their guns to the precise range 
 of positions which were out of sight. The road by 
 which I travelled on that foggy morning was being 
 swept by shell, the evident purpose being to 
 prevent provisions and supplies from being 
 carried along it to the troops in front. Pro- 
 bably from want of ammunition, the cannonade had 
 been suspended from seven o'clock in the morning 
 until about eleven, and I 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 in front of me ; another and another 
 followed. One which had been discharged at a 
 higher elevation than the rest burst overhead, and 
 I began to feel extremely nervous. I dismounted 
 and led my pony into the wood on the right hand 
 side. I had not penetrated ten yards into the 
 wood when a shell burst in front of me and in 
 something like panic I dragged my little steed 
 across the road and sought a shelter in the wood 
 on the opposite side. Crash ! came a shell in front 
 of me as I entered, and this time nearer than ever. 
 Now it is one thinor to be in imminent danorer in 
 the midst of your comrades or even when you have 
 the companionship of a single friend, and it is 
 
 151
 
 Recollections 
 
 another to find yourself surrounded by a ring of 
 
 fire when you are absolutely alone and have nobody 
 
 to lend you countenance. The memory of that 
 
 time will always make me pitiful to the man who 
 
 runs away. For one instant I was on the edge of 
 
 an absolute surrender to physical fear. How I got 
 
 a grip of myself I really do not know. I was 
 
 certainly m.ost horribly afraid and my nerve was 
 
 almost gone, when I remembered that on a previous 
 
 journey I had passed a great outcrop of granite 
 
 rock, which afforded a perfect shelter. I reflected 
 
 that it was just as dangerous to go back as to go 
 
 on, and I estimated that my refuge was only two 
 
 or three hundred yards in front of me. With this 
 
 aim in mind, I mounted again and rode uphill as 
 
 fast as my mount could carry me. When I reached 
 
 my shelter the shells were howling and screaming 
 
 and bursting everywhere, but I sat in perfect safety, 
 
 and by and by recovered my self-possession. I 
 
 had been there perhaps an hour and had begun to 
 
 write an account of my morning's adventure when 
 
 I heard a wild voice pealing down the road and the 
 
 stumbling clatter of a horse's hoofs at a dangerous, 
 
 breakneck speed, and the horseman passed and in 
 
 his passage, swift as it was, we recognised each 
 
 other. I knew the man quite well ; he was an 
 
 English doctor, and I felt as keen a pang of pity as 
 
 I have ever experienced in my life as I recognised 
 
 in him that condition of abject surrender to fear 
 
 from which I had myself so recently escaped. 
 
 Heaven alone knows how ! I had touched the 
 
 line and had somehow been saved from going over 
 
 it ; the man who went howling past me had 
 
 152
 
 Recollections 
 
 touched the line and crossed it. He was holdinof 
 on to the front of his saddle and his horse's reins 
 were trailing loose and broken ; his face was livid 
 and he was yelling with sheer terror at the top of 
 his voice. He was gone in a flash and I learned 
 afterwards that within an hour of his arrival at the 
 village, he put in his papers on some plea of 
 urgency, and immediately went down country. 
 Years afterwards I brought my wife to town to 
 hear an afternoon lecture from Mr Bennett Burleigh, 
 who was just back from one of his numerous cam- 
 paigns. We were staying on for the theatre, and 
 in the interim we dined at the Criterion. A ofentle- 
 man in evening dress came in with a theatre party 
 consisting of three ladies. He busied himself for 
 a while in arranging his party and then sat down 
 facing me. Our eyes met, and I do not remember 
 to have seen a man more painfully embarrassed. 
 He blushed until his very ears were pink, and if I 
 could have found the courage I would have taken 
 him aside and have made to him a confession 
 which might possibly have soothed his mind. 
 
 A reputation for coolness in danger, like other 
 reputations, is often got without much deserving. 
 At the time of the Russo-Turkish war, the railway 
 had its terminus a few miles beyond Tatar Bazard- 
 jik. I was travelling north with a party of English 
 doctors and we alighted at the station there for 
 refreshment. We had been misinformed about the 
 length of time for which the train halted there and 
 were hurriedly summoned by the guard when it was 
 already in motion. The engine-driver slowed down 
 until it was possible, by hard running, to overtake 
 
 153
 
 Recollections 
 
 our carriage. I was in heavy riding boots and 
 somewhat hampered by that fact, and just as my 
 fingers touched the brass guard at the side of the 
 compartment, I tripped on a ground wire and fell 
 beneath the approaching train in such a fashion 
 that the carriage wheel was actually between my 
 thighs. I clutched the marche-pied with both arms 
 and clung on with all my might. The revolving 
 wheel was actually rubbing at the inside of my legs 
 and the spurs were torn from the heels of my boots. 
 How I executed the manoeuvre I shall never know, 
 but before the train was brought to a standstill, I 
 was on my knees on the marche-pied and was being 
 helped into the railway carriage by one of my 
 companions. I suppose that it must have been the 
 most imminent moment of danger I have ever 
 known, but I can testify quite honestly to one queer 
 thing — I was absolutely without fear — and with a 
 horrible death actually grazing me, I was as coolly 
 self-possessed as I ever have been in the whole 
 course of my life. But there was the shock of 
 consciousness awaiting me. I was violently sick a 
 moment later, and for nights and nights to come, I 
 experienced a horrible nightmare, in which all the 
 terrors which might have seemed natural to the 
 situation laid hold upon me. 
 
 In the Grande Rue de Pera there was a cafe 
 chantant which was run by one Napoleon Flam. 
 There was a little silver hell attached to it where 
 there was a roulette table with twenty-four numbers 
 and a double zero. There were always plenty of 
 flying strangers who were prepared to throw away 
 their money here, and I fancy that the fat Greek 
 
 154
 
 Recollections 
 
 who presided over the table made a fat thing of it. 
 In the concert room, the superannuated artistes of 
 the poorer kind of Continental concert hall shrieked 
 and grimaced and ogled, and after every item of the 
 show, the performer came round with an escallop 
 shell into which the more generously disposed 
 dropped small copper coins. The place was nearly 
 always crowded with men in black frock-coats and 
 crimson fezzes. Ill-starred Valentine Baker had been 
 employed by the Sublime Porte to create an English 
 gendarmerie, and this fact had brought a large 
 number of English military men into Constanti- 
 nople, who were anxious to enlist under his banner. 
 Many of them were men who had done good service 
 in their day and held unblemished records, but there 
 is no disguising the fact that a large contingent of 
 the discredited riffraff of the British army was 
 collected in the city at that time. The "Concert 
 Flam " was the accepted rendezvous for both sets, 
 and on my second night in Constantinople I went 
 thither in company with the young Irish-German 
 officer, of whom I have already spoken, and an 
 American newspaper correspondent who had been 
 in the city long enough to know the ropes. 
 
 Young Von A. was a big, genial fellow, full of 
 animal spirits, and on this particular occasion, Bacchi 
 plenus. He was under the impression that all the 
 little swarthy men who sat about him in their red 
 fezzes and their black frock-coats were Turks. He 
 was boiling over with enthusiasm for the Turkish 
 cause, and he had picked up a patriotic phrase or two. 
 The spirit moved him to rise in an interval of the 
 stage performance and to bawl out aloud the words : 
 
 155
 
 Recollections 
 
 ** Chokularishah Padishah," which, being interpreted, 
 signifies, "May the Sultan live for ever!" His 
 enthusiasm was not contagious, for the assembly 
 consisted almost entirely of people who did not care 
 a copper whether the Sultan lived for ever or died 
 next morning. There were lifted eyebrows and 
 cynical stares, but the young gentleman was not in 
 a condition to regard these and he went on to cry : 
 " muscove dormous ! " signifying that a Russian was 
 a hog, and drawing a masonic forefinger across his 
 throat to indicate what, in his opinion, ought to be 
 done with him. The youngster stood there, big and 
 burly and jolly, and meaning, I am quite sure, no 
 harm to anybody, when a little Greek, who was 
 seated opposite to him, said, "Je suis muscove, 
 monsieur," and the lad leant across the marble table 
 and aimed a mock buffet at him which unfortunately 
 reached him and rolled him over as if he had been 
 a ninepin. At the "Concert Flam" a porcelain 
 coffee cup weighed something like a quarter of a 
 pound, and half a dozen of these came hurling at 
 the offender from various parts of the room. There 
 were big mirrors all round the cafe reaching from 
 the ceiling to the dado ; one or two of these were 
 smashed, and, before one could say "Jack Robin- 
 son," the wildest disorder reigned and all the place 
 was in a melee. The nine or ten Englishmen who 
 were there ranged themselves round the originator 
 of the disturbance, who was really in some moment- 
 ary danger. The whole posse 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 fla^s of all nationalities huno- about the little
 
 Recollections 
 
 hall dependent from short wooden lances with gilt 
 heads, and these our assailants tore down and used 
 as weapons against us. The conflict was brief and 
 decisive ; numerically there were perhaps six to one 
 against us, but we ended by forming in lines, and 
 the barbarous Eng-lish fashion of strikinor straight 
 irom the shoulder sent the enemy in a hurry 
 towards the narrow and winding stair which afforded 
 the only exit from the place, and here, in the 
 exhilaration of the moment, two of our party did an 
 unguarded thing ; they took to dropping the 
 fugitives in the rear over the banister on to the 
 heads and shoulders of the crowd below. We were 
 left masters of the field but, as it happened, the 
 *' Concert Flam " was situated right opposite to the 
 lowest Greek quarter, the Rue Yildiji, I think it 
 was called, and it was approached under a low arch 
 by a dirty flight of stone steps. Up these steps 
 thronged a great crowd of people armed with any- 
 thing they could snatch up at the moment — frying- 
 pans, pokers, fire shovels, and any article of domestic 
 use which at short notice might be turned into a 
 weapon of defence. Luckily for us there was one 
 cool head amongst us. Schipka Campbell, who 
 had not then earned the title by which he was 
 afterwards so widely known, was there, and he took 
 command of the party. We were all armed, but 
 though we displayed our weapons for the intimida- 
 tion of the mob we were gravely cautioned not to 
 fire a shot on peril of our lives. The Grande Rue 
 de Pera was raging when we reached it, but we 
 slipped out one by one, each man revolver in hand, 
 and ranged ourselves aorainst the wall. I cannot 
 
 o o 
 
 157
 
 Recollections 
 
 recall that a solitary blow was struck, but I know 
 that the people in the rear of the crowd were in a 
 mighty hurry to get at us and that those in front 
 were in equal haste to retire, and little by little we 
 made our way to the Byzance Hotel where the 
 gates were closed and barred against the crowd. 
 Shortly afterwards the Chief of the Consular Police 
 was amongst us making inquiries into the origin 
 of the hneute. He took an official note of the 
 occurrence and drank a glass of wine or two and 
 smoked a cigar with us, but we never heard any 
 more about the business, and though we strolled 
 thereafter into the " Concert Flam " quite freely, we 
 suffered no molestation. 
 
 158
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Constantinople Continned — 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 deHghtful I had ever encountered anywhere. 
 At the first dinner at which I sat down we were 
 served amongst other things with red mullet, 
 stuffed tomatoes and quail — all excellent of their 
 sort and admirably prepared. Red mullet, tomates 
 farcies and quail appeared again for breakfast and 
 were not to be despised, but red mullet, tomates 
 farcies and quail for luncheon, began to be a trifle 
 tiresome, and when all three appeared again at 
 dinner and at the next day's breakfast and luncheon, 
 there were some of us who beo'an to hunger for a 
 change. We made a little party and we went 
 across to the Valori restaurant. Here we en- 
 countered a polyglot major-domo, who spoke all 
 languages of Europe indifferently ill. " What can 
 we have for dinner?" asked our spokesman. 
 "Ret moiled, domades varcies, et qvail ! " He 
 smiled ineffably and evidently thought that he was 
 offerinor us food for the orods. We ate touo-h 
 
 *3 t_* ^y 
 
 beefsteak, fried in oil, and cursed the delicacies of 
 the country. The diners at Valori's made up the 
 
 159
 
 Recollections 
 
 first really polyglot assembly I had ever seen. 
 There were Bulgarian notables — caring apparently 
 to speak their own language only — Spanish Jews 
 from Eski Zaghra, Greeks, Turks, Germans, 
 Italians, Armenians, Englishmen, native volunteers 
 for the Polish legion then formincr, and a Croat 
 gentleman with bejewelled handles to his private 
 arsenal of lethal weapons, and starched expansive 
 white petticoats. Our major-domo was somehow 
 equal to them all, and when the rush of service was 
 partly over, I found an opportunity to ask him how 
 many languages he spoke. He answered in a tone 
 of apology and regret : " Onily twelluv, ich habe 
 vergessen les autres ! " 
 
 A day or two later I encountered the official 
 interpreter of the Persian Embassy who spoke 
 English as perfectly as I did and apparently all the 
 languages of the civilised world beside. I asked 
 him seriously how many tongues he professed to 
 have mastered, and his reply was this : " If you 
 ask me in how many languages and dialects I can 
 converse, I suppose I should have to say seventy 
 or eighty, but if you confine me to those in which 
 I can construct a grammar I should have to tell 
 you fifteen at the outside. No man can really say 
 he knows a language until he can construct a 
 grammar for it." 
 
 So much for a special detached faculty which I 
 have found in the possession of people who are 
 otherwise entirely stupid 
 
 The utter lawlessness of the Asiatic troops, 
 by whom Constantinople was supposed to be de- 
 fended, gave me a fair foretaste of things to come. 
 
 1 60
 
 Recollections 
 
 It was certainly rather a curious thing that in a 
 country about which I 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 was the discoverer of the fields of massacre 
 in the district of the Rose Gardens. I found twelve 
 hundred unburied dead, all hacked and mutilated, 
 in a vineyard near Kesanlyk. I found Kalofer a 
 smokinof wilderness, without a livinor soul left out 
 of a population of twelve hundred. I found Sopot 
 a howling desolation, where only the village dogs 
 were left alive. Day by day, for weeks, I travelled 
 stealthily in the rear of the roving bands of Bashi- 
 Bazouks and Zeibecks who were laying the country 
 waste and slaughtering its Christian population ; 
 but it was more than an Englishman's life was 
 worth to show himself among them, and I 
 never came near enough to see them actually 
 engaged upon their dreadful business, except 
 during one week, when, from one of the lower 
 slopes of the Balkans, I could see the whole 
 horizon red with the flame of burning villages, 
 and could sometimes even hear the shrieks of 
 outragfed women. 
 
 But in all this time I never heard a shot fired, 
 so far as I can remember, until I came to the 
 Schipka, where a long-drawn artillery duel was 
 dragging on in the pass between the guns of Sulie- 
 man Pasha and General Gourko. Correspondents 
 and doctors lived at that time, for the most part, at 
 a respectful distance from the scene of that 
 monotonous action. We were quartered at Schipka 
 Keui, where we pitched our tents on the edge of a 
 
 L l6l
 
 Recollections • 
 
 forest of wild plum trees, and spent our idle time 
 as best we could, whilst we waited for develop- 
 ments. Amongst us was the English volunteer 
 on the Turkish side, mentioned in the last 
 chapter, who bore the rank of Colonel, and remem- 
 bered by his old comrades as Schipka Camp- 
 bell. He was a man of the most extraordinary and 
 daring valour, and I really believe that he found a 
 keen joy in danger. He was full of a scheme for a 
 night attack upon a position which Gourko had 
 taken up in a height which the Russians called St 
 Nicholas Crag, and he got leave, after a good deal 
 of characteristic procrastination, to go into the 
 forts, and thence to take a sketch of the country 
 he desired to travel in the night-time. I was very 
 eager to see things closer at hand than I had been 
 able to do till then, and it was arranged that I 
 should accompany Campbell on this sketching 
 expedition. By the side of the winding mountain 
 way a sort of covering wall had been built 
 for some hundreds of yards, to shelter passing 
 troops and convoys from the observation of the 
 enemy. It was a rather flimsy structure, and it 
 could have been beaten down by a single gun in an 
 hour or two ; but I suppose that the rocks which 
 commanded it from the other side of the pass were 
 inaccessible to artillery. In one place the ground 
 dipped, and formed a cup-like hollow, and, the big 
 guns having brought down a good deal of rain by 
 their constant firing, a pond had gathered here, and 
 had sapped the foundations of the wall. There 
 was left a clear space of rather more than a dozen 
 
 yards, and this place was thickly strewn with 
 
 162
 
 Recollections 
 
 splashed bullets which had struck the face of the 
 overhanging rock. There was probably a good 
 cartload of spoiled lead strewn there, and the dark 
 face of the rock was pitted all over with grey bullet- 
 marks. 
 
 Campbell informed me, in a casual sort of way, 
 that there were always some hundreds of the 
 enemy's infantry on the lookout for a passenger at 
 this point, and that we were sure to draw a volley. 
 Now, I had no really pressing business to persuade 
 me onward, and I had no special liking for the 
 prospect ; but Campbell scoffed at the very thought 
 of danger. Even if the enemy were expecting us, 
 he urged, a man could clear that space in quicker 
 time than a bullet would take to travel from the 
 opposite side of the pass, and it was just as likely 
 as not that by nipping across quickly we might fail 
 to draw fire at all. This had an air of reason about 
 it, but I was not nearly so curious to see the forti- 
 fications as I had been. I represented that the two 
 journals for which I was working at that time had 
 no other representative on the ground, that big 
 events were probably imminent, and that it was my 
 duty to preserve a whole skin in the interests of my 
 employers. Upon this Campbell assured me of his 
 belief that I was funking, and I immediately con- 
 curred with him. It was a mere matter of fact, and 
 I saw no ground on which I could dispute it. I 
 have never run away from anybody or anything — 
 though I have wanted to do so upon occasion — but 
 I am not fond 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 
 
 163
 
 Recollections 
 
 open space, and turned crouching on the other side. 
 It has turned me cold a thousand times to think 
 about it since ; but I was just in the act of nerving 
 myself for a run when he impetuously waved me 
 back, and a perfect tempest of lead fell shrieking 
 on the face of the rock. Had I obeyed 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 the volley. One 
 splashed bullet struck the rock some yards above 
 me, and fell to the ground flattened to something 
 like the form of a five-shilling piece, with irregularly 
 starred edges. I stooped to pick it up, but it was 
 at almost a melting-heat. I dropped it quickly, and 
 then, 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 quite honest, I 
 had no pleasure in the adventure, and I was careful 
 not to return until the shades of night had fallen. 
 
 The gentleman from Chicago, at whose instiga- 
 tion I had gone out to Turkey, had supplied me 
 with a sum of forty pounds, and had undertaken 
 to deposit more to my account at the Ottoman 
 Bank. I called at that establishment daily and 
 found news of no remittance. I was in the mean- 
 time vainly moving the Turkish authorities for a 
 teskerai, which would authorise me to go up country. 
 No remittance, no leave to move, the hotel bill 
 growing to really alarming proportions, the outlook 
 was unpleasant ; in a while it had grown no less than 
 desperate. I bombarded the Chicago man with 
 cablegrams as long as I could afford it, but no 
 
 answer came, nor have I, from that day to this, 
 
 164
 
 Recollections 
 
 received any explanation of the circumstances which 
 induced him to send me out and then to leave me 
 stranded. I had already made application to the 
 British Consul, Mr Fawcett, afterwards Sir John, to 
 secure for me a passage home, when I was delivered 
 from my embarrassments by as remarkable a chance 
 as ever befell me in my life. After leaving the 
 Consul's office, I strolled into the Valori wardens, 
 which were a dreary waste of small pebbles and coarse 
 gravel, with an oasis here and there consisting of a 
 painted iron table and a few painted iron chairs, 
 where men of all nationalities sat sipping vishnap 
 and limoni, and extinguishing by their Babylonian 
 chatter the strains of a very indifferent band, I was 
 making the circuit of the gardens in tolerably low 
 spirits ; I had expended my last piastre, had emptied 
 my cigar-case, had listened to a violent objurgation 
 from the landlord of the Byzance Hotel and was 
 now bound home at the expense of 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 of ignominy, and whilst I was 
 floundering in the depths of my despondency I heard 
 a voice speaking in English. "There you are — 
 the Weekly Dispatch — Constantinople in a state of 
 siege. If I could find the man who wrote that 
 article, I should like to commission him to-morrow." 
 Now it happened that I had written that article and 
 had sent it home within a day or two of my arrival. 
 I had not even known that it had been accepted 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 concluded a bargain with the 
 
 165 V tei .
 
 Recollections 
 
 authorised agent of the Scotsman, had agreed to 
 
 accept the services of an interpreter, and had 
 
 arranged, with a taskerai or without one, to take 
 
 the 7.30 train to Adrianople from the Stamboul 
 
 station. There followed a hurried interview with 
 
 the Vice-Consul, Mr Wrench, at which it was 
 
 arranged that my hotel bill should be defrayed 
 
 from future earnings, my baggage was released by 
 
 the Consular influence, and next morning, at the 
 
 appointed hour, my dragoman and I were being 
 
 pulled across the waters of the Golden Horn 
 
 by a pair of sturdy caiquejees, and were bound 
 
 for the front. With what a rebound of high 
 
 spirits on my part it is quite impossible to say ! 
 
 I thoucrht I had never seen so beautiful a 
 
 morning, and indeed the scene, apart from all 
 
 considerations of mood, was very charming. The 
 
 receding hill of Galata, with its bowers of green, 
 
 its mosques and minarets and palaces, lay steeped 
 
 in the early sunrise, and looked as lovely as a 
 
 dream. 
 
 It was on the eve of the Feast of Bairam 
 
 that we set out, and when we arrived at 
 
 Adrianople, the city was illuminated and the street 
 
 was filled with joyful crowds. News had arrived 
 
 to the effect that a pitched battle had been fought 
 
 between the Russian army and the forces of 
 
 Raouf Pasha, and the Turks were reported to have 
 
 been magnificently victorious. But Adrianople saw 
 
 another sigrht next morninor when the trains from 
 
 Yeni Zaghra, where the action had taken place, 
 
 crawled slowly into the station with their burden 
 
 of one thousand two hundred wounded. To one 
 
 166
 
 Recollections 
 
 who was new to war, the spectacle of this one 
 thousand two hundred was a reminder of its 
 horrors. There was a good deal of talk about the 
 Russians having fired on the white protective 
 fiag, but if they had broken the rules of civilised 
 combat in that way they had been but indif- 
 ferent marksmen, for no one of the long row of 
 carriages was so much as scarred. It was evident, 
 however, that the trains had been unskilfully 
 driven and that there had been checks and 
 shocks upon the road, for the wounded, who had 
 been bestowed along the benches at the beginning 
 of the journey, were lying all higgledy-piggledy on 
 the floor when they arrived. I helped to carry 
 some of them from the train to the rough eight- 
 wheeled springless arabas in which they were borne 
 to hospital. In these wretched vehicles the wheel 
 was not a cycle but an octagon, and the wounded, 
 who were jolted along the street, filled the air with 
 cries of agony. I made an immediate dash to the 
 scene of conflict and there I encountered seventeen 
 officers who, with the exception of the wounded I 
 had seen already, were the sole survivors of Raouf's 
 army of seventeen thousand. One man, an artillerist, 
 who had been educated at Chatham and who spoke 
 English faultlessly, gave me the history of yester- 
 day's battle. The man had looked at doom, and there 
 was doom 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 for 
 every man." 
 
 In Philipopolis I was introduced to the Gues- 
 
 choffs, a Bulgarian mercantile family who had been 
 
 167
 
 Recollections 
 
 established there for some generations. The two 
 sons had been educated at Owen's College, Man- 
 chester, and might easily have passed anywhere for 
 Englishmen. One of them was Deputy Vice-Consul 
 for Great Britain and the other held a similar office 
 for the 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 over the household. But a fortnight later 
 I was amazed to learn that the father and the two 
 sons had alike been arrested on a charge of treason, 
 that they had all three been tried before a military 
 tribunal and condemned to death, whilst the whole 
 of their possessions had been sequestrated by the 
 commandant of the city, Ibrahim Pasha. This was 
 in no special degree an affair of mine, but as soon 
 as I heard the news I hastened back to Philipopolis, 
 and in the course of a hurried interview with 
 Mr Calvert, the British Vice-Consul, the con- 
 clusion was arrived at that the official position 
 of the two younger men was of a character to 
 afford them some protection against proceedings 
 of so summary a nature. It became entirely 
 obvious as the result of a mere surface inquiry 
 that the charge against the Gueschoffs had been 
 trumped up by the military authorities simply and 
 purely because they were wealthy people, and 
 the commandant saw his way to a handsome 
 windfall. 
 
 Armed with such scanty proofs as I could 
 gather, I set out for Constantinople and, arriving 
 there in the space of two days, I laid my case 
 before Sir Arthur Laird, who was then our 
 
 1 68
 
 Recollections 
 
 Ambassador to the Porte, and the Honourable 
 
 Horace Maynard, who was Minister for the United 
 
 States. Sir Arthur was a pronounced Philo-Turk 
 
 and would not for a moment believe that any such 
 
 abominable intrigue as I suggested could have 
 
 occurred to the mind of any Turkish official. He 
 
 received me with marked coldness and I felt from 
 
 the first that I could make no headway with 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 his case I 
 
 shall insist upon a new trial and in the meantime 
 
 the execution shall be suspended." A fortunate 
 
 chance threw me into communication with Lady 
 
 Laird, who was less violently prepossessed in favour 
 
 of the Turkish Government than her husband. She 
 
 promised me her most cordial assistance, but for 
 
 three days I hung about Constantinople in a fever 
 
 of apprehension, waiting for the imperial firman, 
 
 by virtue of which I trusted to secure an arrest of 
 
 sentence. 
 
 The execution of the three Bulofarian merchants 
 
 was fixed for eio-ht o'clock on the morning of 
 
 the ensuing Saturday, and late on Wednesday 
 
 night the longed-for document came into my hands. 
 
 I attempted at once to telegraph the news to 
 
 Philipopolis, but the wires had been cut in a score 
 
 of places and communication was impossible. The 
 
 next train up country started at seven o'clock in 
 
 the morning and it seemed as if I had ample time 
 
 before me, but somewhere in the neighbourhood of 
 
 Adrianople a culvert had been blown up by the 
 
 Bulgarian insurgents and we were brought to a 
 
 169
 
 Recollections 
 
 decisive standstill. There was nothing for it but to 
 complete the journey on horseback and here 
 I. was heavily handicapped by the fact that I had 
 mastered but a scattered phrase or two of the 
 language, and had the greatest difficulty in making 
 my wants known. At length, by good hap, I 
 encountered a Bulgarian who spoke a little French 
 and by his aid I contrived to get a mount. The 
 moon was almost at the full and it was absolutely 
 impossible to miss the road. I set out upon my 
 journey with a better heart than I should have had 
 if I had known what I learned afterwards. The 
 whole district between Adrianople and Philipopolis 
 had been suddenly overrun by the Irregulars, who 
 were carrying everything before them with fire and 
 sword. Luckily for me they shunned the high road 
 and devoted their attentions to the outlying villages. 
 Anything at once more dreary and more exasper- 
 ating than that ride I cannot recall. I was badly 
 mounted at the first and at each succeeding stage, 
 when after an infinitude of difficulty and misunder- 
 standing I had secured an exchange, it seemed to 
 be always for the worse. Some two months before 
 at Kara Bounar, I had been affected by a touch of 
 dysentery and this assailing me anew when my 
 journey was only half through, made progress 
 dreadfully difficult. But in the failing light of 
 Friday evening the great rock on which Philipopolis 
 is built came into sight and I could afford to make 
 the last stage of my journey at a foot pace, with the 
 certainty that I held a good nine hours in hand. I 
 rode to the Roumelia Khan, the hostel at which I 
 
 had left my interpreter, and thence after a hurried 
 
 170
 
 Recollections 
 
 meal, he and I set out in search of the commandant 
 who, with his staff, had taken possession of the 
 mansion of some Bulgarian notable. I produced 
 the firman, duly signed and sealed, and demanded 
 that, in accordance with its provisions, the prisoners 
 should be removed, under safe escort, for re-trial at 
 the port of Varna. The Pasha — a little man with 
 a close-cropped beard, which looked like black 
 varnished wire — glanced at the document and angrily 
 pronounced it an impudent forgery. I have not 
 often seen a man so inspired by rage ; the hand in 
 which he held the official document was apparently 
 as steady as a rock, but all the while he talked to 
 us, the stiff paper rustled noisily. He declared that 
 the execution should proceed and he threatened to 
 hang me with the others. It was not at all impos- 
 sible in the existing condition of the country that he 
 miorht have ventured on that course, but I saw fit 
 to remind him that I was for the moment the 
 authorized representative of Great Britain and the 
 United States, and that if he did violence to me in 
 that capacity Turkey would be wiped off the map 
 of Europe in a fortnight. The little commandant 
 spoke French, and he surprised me greatly when 
 I spoke of '' Les Etats Unis,'' by interjecting in 
 a tone of incredulous scorn : " Les Etats Unis ! 
 ou sont les Etats Unis ? " My interpreter broke 
 in volubly with the statement that Les Etats 
 Unis were twenty times the size and had twice 
 the power of Great Britain, and he and the 
 little Pasha were both shouting together when, 
 as Providence would have it, Mr Fawcett, the 
 
 British Consul-General, was announced. His 
 
 171
 
 Recollections 
 
 presence calmed the storm at once and he sternly 
 bade Ibrahim to obey the "firman," on peril of 
 his own head. 
 
 The Gueschoffs were duly deported, were re- 
 tried and acquitted, and were allowed, I believe, to 
 retire to Odessa until the close of the campaign. 
 After that they returned to Philipopolis and, accord- 
 ing to the latest news I had of them, were prosper- 
 ing exceedingly. I had many other things to see 
 to for months to come, but it surprised me 
 somewhat to find that no communication reached 
 me from them after they were known to be in 
 safety. I had a notion that the salvation of three 
 lives at some personal 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 when it was brought back suddenly by my 
 encounter with another Bulgarian merchant, 
 Melikoff by name, whom I met one fine summer's 
 day at the Strand end of Waterloo Bridge. I had met 
 him at the Gueschoffs' table and I asked for news 
 of them. Such intelligence as he had to give was 
 wholly favourable ; they were all well and prosper- 
 ous. I suo-aested to him that I thoug^ht it at least 
 a little odd that no one of them had ever thought 
 it worth while to send me a line. "Well," he 
 answered, in some embarrassment, "they found it 
 impossible to recover a very large part of their 
 property when they got back to Philipopolis, and 
 for some time I can assure you that they were in 
 considerable straits." I answered that they could 
 scarcely have been in such straits as not to be able 
 
 to buy a postage stamp, but the upshot of the 
 
 172
 
 Recollections 
 
 matter was simply this : At the time at which I 
 had been able to be of service to them I was the 
 representative of the Scotsman and the Times, and 
 was supposed to be something of a personage. It 
 was impossible at the time for them to have offered 
 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 sleeping dogs lie and to 
 say nothing at all about the matter. I might, it 
 appeared, have made some kind of claim against 
 them which, though I could not have enforced it 
 legally, they would have been bound in honour to 
 recoo-nise. I told him that this did not quite 
 accord with British ideas of gratitude, but he 
 appeared to think that he had offered a perfectly 
 satisfactory explanation. It was quite obviously 
 beyond him to conceive that I could have extracted 
 any satisfaction from a mere acknowledgment of 
 service rendered, or that such an acknowledgment 
 would not have been used as the foundation for 
 some more substantial claim. 
 
 As Edmund Burke said years ago, " It is impos- 
 sible to indict a nation," but my experience does 
 not lead me to believe that the Bulgarians are a 
 grateful people. In Kalofer, for example, I was 
 introduced under circumstances of dramatic secrecy 
 to a refugee who was hiding for his life and who 
 had been concealed for days in a dark cupboard 
 with a sliding panel. I shall never forget the face 
 of the haggard and fear-stricken wretch who 
 crawled out of that hiding-place into the light of a 
 solitary candle, or the enthusiastic protestations of 
 gratitude on the part of his wife when I proposed
 
 Recollections 
 
 that he should disguise himself as a farm labourer 
 and should take a place amongst the men who were 
 driving down for me a set of empty arabas to 
 Philipopolis. The simple plan succeeded and the 
 fugitive got over the frontier. The wife was very- 
 eager to show how much she felt beholden to me. 
 Her husband had been a rose-grower and she had 
 for sale a quantity of the precious attar which she 
 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 some small amount 
 of ready money was essential to her purpose. I 
 bought from her five very small phials each con- 
 taining perhaps a spoonful and a half of the liquid. 
 She assured me that the essence was absolutely 
 pure and that I could hardly have secured its like 
 for love or money elsewhere. I was not the best 
 pleased man in the world when I discovered that 
 she had palmed off on me a perfumed olive oil, 
 which, by the time I examined it in Constantinople, 
 had turned rancid. 
 
 When I was engaged in the administration of 
 the Turkish Benevolent Fund, the raising of which 
 was mainly due to the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts, 
 the fact that I was bound upon an errand of mercy, 
 and that I was instructed not to spare relief by any 
 consideration of religion or race, enabled me to 
 penetrate into parts of the disturbed districts into 
 which I should not otherwise have dared to venture. 
 In the course of my journey I came to Kalofer, 
 where I found a singularly intelligent and attractive 
 little Bulgarian boy whom I resolved to rescue 
 from the almost certain starvation which lay before 
 
 174
 
 Recollections 
 
 him. His father had been the Vakeel of the place 
 and the child of course had been decently reared. 
 He was pinched and pallid with hunger, and he had 
 but a single garment, a pair of the baggy knicker- 
 bockers worn by the peasants of the district, which 
 enveloped him from heel to shoulder. I got him 
 decently attired, and in a while managed to place 
 him in the care of a colleague in Constantinople, 
 and when I left the country my brother-in-law, 
 Captain William Thompson, who was engaged in the 
 Levantine shipping trade, gave him a free passage 
 to Liverpool, where for the space of some months 
 he lived with my sisters, the younger of whom 
 turned schoolmistress for his advantage, and began 
 to teach him English. Mr Crummies used to 
 wonder how things got into the papers, though 
 perhaps he was under some slight suspicion of 
 havino- contributed to their circulation. How the 
 news of the young Bulgarian's arrival in England 
 o-ot there I do not know, but there was a consider- 
 able journalistic fuss about him, and the result was 
 that a wealthy Bulgarian family, resident in Man- 
 chester, made overtures to my sister, and with my 
 free consent, formally adopted the child. Before 
 this happened he paid them a preliminary visit 
 during which he was presented with a pony, and a 
 male domestic was told off specially to his service. 
 When his adoption was finally decided upon he 
 went back to my sister's house in Liverpool to 
 gather up his belongings and to say good-bye. 
 The little ingrate refused to say one word of fare- 
 well to either of them. " I not English any longer," 
 he declared, " I Bulgar again," and Bulgar through 
 
 175
 
 Recollections 
 
 and through he was, to my thinking, sure enough. 
 It is quite true that you can't indict a nation, but I 
 shall need some persuasion before I go out of my 
 way again to be of use to any member of that 
 particular section of the human family. 
 
 176
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Retrospect — Return to London — Interview with Mr Gladstone 
 at Hawarden — Reminiscences. 
 
 The memories of that adventurous year in Turkey 
 come thronging back so quickly that it Is hard 
 to choose amongst them. In the retrospect it 
 looks 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 our hardships 
 made fun for us at times. I suppose you can 
 know more about a man In a month if you go 
 campaigning with him than you might find out In 
 the course of years in a mere stay-at-home exist- 
 ence. Little generosities and selfishnesses display 
 themselves more freely when commons are running 
 short and shelter is scanty than they do amongst 
 those who, in the phrase of Tennyson's northern 
 farmer, " has coats to their backs, and takes their 
 regular meals." One British gentlemen we had 
 with us during the siege of Plevna was a perpetual 
 source of joy to me. He was a sort of human 
 jackdaw, the picker-up of unconsidered trifles ; and 
 especially in the way of provender and of medical 
 comforts he took care to be well provided whatever 
 might befall the rest of us. It happened one day 
 during the siege that some member of our party 
 discovered in some huckster's shop in the village 
 
 M 177
 
 Recollections 
 
 a couple of bottles of rum. He bore these 
 triumphantly to the two-storeyed hut in which the 
 greater 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 the malice 
 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. It gives 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 in- 
 cessant 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 : 
 
 178
 
 Recollections 
 
 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 song was sung and the last tale 
 told, and we betook ourselves to rest. Our jack- 
 daw friend, for economic reasons, had found a 
 lodging elsewhere. He found it better to drop in 
 upon the rest of us when there was anything special 
 going than it would have been to forage for himself 
 By the time at which he left us, it had turned much 
 colder, and the rain was freezing as it fell. The 
 village streets were covered with a slippery verglas 
 and here and there, where a siege shell had fallen, 
 there was an embarrassing hole, not easily to be 
 distinguished in the ni^ht-time from the merest 
 puddle. There was scarcely a light agleam in the 
 whole village, and it is not at all a thing to be 
 surprised at that our jackdaw lost his way and had 
 a stumble or two into the icy pools which beset 
 him. He did succeed at last in finding the hut in 
 which he lived, or rather, he found the site of it, 
 for an i8 centimetre shell had burst there in his 
 
 absence and the hut was not. We were making 
 
 179
 
 Recollections 
 
 our apology for breakfast in the dusk before dawn 
 when he returned to us. He was clothed in a thin 
 armour of ice from head to foot and it trickled from 
 him in little showers as he stood forlornly before us. 
 The hardest heart must needs have pitied him, but 
 it was he himself who gave the pathos of the show 
 away. " Has nobody got a cup of tea ? " he asked. 
 " Tea," cried Bond Moore, who had a special mis- 
 liking for him, " tea, you " (the blank may be 
 
 filled in according to fancy, on the understandingthat 
 it was neither polite nor complimentary) •' there's no 
 tea within five hundred miles." " Oh ! " said the 
 unhappy man, " I wish I had never come on this 
 campaign, I do so miss my little comforts ! " There 
 was nobody there, I am sure, who would have been 
 much shocked if, in the circumstances, our jackdaw 
 had been even blasphemously profane. A man in his 
 condition may say almost anything and may expect 
 to be forgiven, but at this most inadequate bleat we 
 yelled with laughter, and the poor jackdaw stood 
 staring at us with eyes of suffering wonder for a 
 full three minutes before we could rouse ourselves 
 to attend to his necessities. 
 
 When I first went out to Turkey I was very 
 much under the domination of Mr Gladstone's 
 opinion. I was quite full of the unspeakable Turk 
 and his wickednesses and was quite as anxious as 
 the great Liberal statesman himself to see the 
 " sick man " bundled out of Europe bag and 
 baggage. But when I began to move about the 
 country and to meet, as I was forced to do, men 
 of all sorts and conditions among its native popula- 
 tion, my sentiments with respect to the Turk 
 
 1 80
 
 Recollections 
 
 underwent a thorough and rapid change. The 
 real people, the men of the commercial and artisan 
 classes and the rank and file of the army, are 
 amongst the best people I have ever known. 
 Their religion enjoins them to sobriety, and as a 
 race they are brave, truthful and kindly, and I 
 never met one authentic instance in which an act 
 of cruelty was chargeable to the men of the 
 regular forces. The hordes of Bashi- Bazouks, of 
 Smyrniotes and Tripolites were of course a set of 
 most unspeakable ruffians, and there are probably 
 no more deplorable specimens of human nature in 
 the world than are to be found amono- the Paris- 
 bred spawn of the harem. 
 
 Almost immediately on my return to London I 
 lunched with Canon Liddon of St Paul's. Our 
 talk naturally turned upon the campaign, and in 
 the course of it I o^ave him an account of the 
 affair at Guemlik, as being typical of whatever 
 disturbances had taken place between the citizen 
 Turk and the Bulgarians. When General Gourko 
 first broke into the great plain south of the Balkans 
 with his Cossack advance guard, the Christian 
 population rose rejoicingly to receive them and 
 persuaded themselves without difficulty that the 
 rule of their Mahommedan masters was dead and 
 done with then and there. They were supplied 
 with arms and were urg-ed to revolt. There is no 
 doubt whatever that they had a great deal to 
 complain of. They had been under the heel of 
 official oppression for centuries, although in that 
 respect they were not much worse off than their 
 Mahommedan neighbours, but they were a despised 
 
 i«i
 
 Recollections 
 
 and abject race who ate forbidden food and who 
 Hved in an almost inconceivable condition of 
 personal uncleanness. To the Turkish peasant 
 dirt is anathema maranatha ; in his own station of 
 life he is the cleanest man in the world, and if there 
 is any dirtier person to be found than a Bulgarian 
 peasant, as I knew him in the war year, I can only 
 say that I have not yet discovered him. The 
 Christian population (God save the mark !) were 
 forbidden by law to bear arms, and they were 
 cowards by tradition. Villagers of the two races 
 lived peacefully enough together, though there was 
 an open disdain on the one side always and a 
 smoulderinor hatred on the other. 
 
 It befell that in a neighbouring village the 
 Bulgarians broke into revolution, and all the able- 
 bodied Turks in Guemlik sallied out to the 
 assistance of their countrymen, leaving only a few 
 infirm old men and the women and children. The 
 Guemlik Christians, being persuaded that the 
 fighting force would never return, rose en masse 
 and put every Turkish soul to death. The 
 massacre was characterised by a terrible ferocity ; 
 the bodies of the dead were hideously mutilated 
 and were all hurled pell-mell into the well at the 
 Turkish end of the village, and all the houses of 
 that quarter were looted and burned down. Con- 
 trary to the expectations of the victors, the Turkish 
 residents returned triumphant. They took their 
 revenge ; they put the Christians to the sword, 
 fired the Christian houses, and filled up the Christian 
 well with corpses. The account was quite equally 
 
 balanced, but it is certain that the Bulgarians made 
 
 182
 
 Recollections 
 
 the first move in the game. It was so everywhere, 
 so far as my experience went, wherever the citizen 
 Turk was drawn into the conflict. Nothing viler 
 than the conduct of the Government in letting 
 loose its vast hordes of irregular soldiery with 
 license to slay and pillage an unarmed population 
 could possibly be conceived. But what I was con- 
 cerned to prove was that the Mahommedan 
 villagers had no part or lot 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 
 teleeram to him and ascertained that he would be 
 willing to receive me at Hawarden on the morrow, 
 and armed with a brief letter of introduction, I set 
 out next day, and found the great Liberal states- 
 man placidly dozing in an armchair in a little study 
 on the ground floor of the house. At first he 
 hardly seemed to recognise why I was there, but in 
 less than a minute he became astonishingly alert, 
 and providing himself with hat and walking-stick 
 took me out into the park. He walked at an ex- 
 traordinary pace and plied me with questions in 
 those ringing, rolling, parliamentary tones of his, 
 with which I had been familiar in the House of 
 Commons two or three years before. He could 
 not for one instant lay aside his platform manner, 
 and before I had been in his society for two minutes 
 I appreciated the statement attributed to Her late 
 Majesty Queen Victoria, that Mr Gladstone always 
 addressed her as if she were a public meeting. 
 Every sentence was rounded, polished and precise, 
 every syllable had its particular rhythmic weight and 
 
 183
 
 Recollections 
 
 value, and with it all there was a certain suavity 
 and courtesy which, for my own part, I thought very 
 eracious and charminor. I had heard one of his 
 remarkable Budget speeches and knew already with 
 what ease he handled figures, but he surprised me 
 more than once by his quickness in calculation. 
 He was questioning me as to Turkish methods of 
 taxation : population of a province so many — 
 piastres per head of population so many — what was 
 the precise value of the piastre ? Twopence and a 
 fraction of a farthing. — Ah ! in pounds sterling that 
 would be approximately so much. He made his 
 reckoning with lightning rapidity and he was 
 always accurate, as I could tell, having all the 
 figures at my fingers' ends just then. 
 
 After two hours' hard walking, he took me in 
 to luncheon. We were by this time in the thick of 
 our theme, and on our arrival at table he banished 
 the servants from the room and himself carved at 
 the sideboard and handed round the dishes. He 
 ate his own meal standing, and he carried on his 
 questions all the while. I do not know if he had 
 then made his famous rule about the seventy-two 
 bites to a mouthful, but I certainly thought him 
 anything but deliberate in eating. Whether he 
 took much or little I could not tell, but he was 
 certainly talking all the time, and I shall never 
 forget the noble sonorosity of the tone with which 
 he approached me with a dish in either hand and 
 asked : " Can I assist you to another potato, Mr 
 Murray?" The simple query was offered in the 
 finest parliamentary manner. There were present 
 
 at the meal the members of the family and one 
 
 184
 
 Recollections 
 
 guest beside myself, a Mr Howard, a corpulent, 
 silent gentleman, who accompanied us when we 
 went out into the park again. We recommenced 
 our walk at about two o'clock, and kept it up until 
 the evening shades were growing pretty thick about 
 us. I was inclined to be pretty glad when it was 
 over, for though I was as hard as nails at that 
 time, being fresh as I was from the severe training 
 of the campaign, I was walked almost off my legs. 
 The talk went on ding-dong all the time, and in 
 the course of it my host asked me with what 
 weapons the Zaptiehs — the mounted police who 
 were relied on to keep order — and the irregulars 
 who were committing unchecked atrocities every- 
 where, were respectively armed. I was compelled 
 to tell him that the Zaptiehs carried an old-fashioned 
 matchlock, whilst the Irregulars were in great part 
 armed with the Winchester repeating rifle, which 
 was then the latest invention of destructive science. 
 The corpulent visitor had long since resigned the 
 effort to keep within hearing. Gladstone faced 
 round, and in those noble, oratorical tones of his 
 called out, *' Is it not odious, Howard; is it not 
 odious ? " The gentleman appealed to was utterly 
 out of earshot, and came trotting briskly towards 
 us to find out what the question meant, but Glad- 
 stone was away again at score, and he was again 
 out-distanced in a minute. Gladstone spoke of the 
 duty which was imposed upon him to turn out the 
 Government of Lord Beaconsfield, of whom he 
 invariably spoke as Mr Disraeli. I ventured to 
 say to him, " You will have to fight for that, sir," 
 
 when he turned upon me with a most vivid gesture, 
 
 185
 
 Recollections 
 
 and striking his walking-stick upon the pathway 
 with such vehemence that he made the gravel fly, 
 answered me, "Aye, sir, and we shall fight." 
 When the time came for me to go, he accompanied 
 me to the hall, and with great courtesy assisted me 
 into my overcoat with his own hands. It was a 
 rather remarkable-looking garment, that overcoat, 
 and one of a sort not often seen in England, but I 
 had passed through London so rapidly that I had 
 had no time to replenish my wardrobe. The 
 garment itself was woven of camel's hair, and it 
 was lined with bearskin. As he was helping me 
 into it he asked, "Where did you obtain possession 
 of this extraordinary garment, Mr Murray?" "I 
 bought it, sir, in Bulgaria," I answered. "Ah," 
 said he, with a perfectly grave face and falling back 
 a step to look at it, " I have had much to say of 
 the Bulgarian atrocities of late years, but this is the 
 only one of which I have had ocular demonstra- 
 tion." 
 
 I met Mr Gladstone afterwards at a big 
 social function which was engineered by the late 
 William Woodhall, some time member for Stoke 
 and Master of the Ordnance. Finding him un- 
 occupied and alone, I ventured to ask to be recalled 
 to his remembrance. " No need for that, Mr 
 Murray," he answered, "no need for that," and 
 plunged back straightway into the talk at Hawarden 
 as if it had taken place only yesterday. There were 
 all manner of amusements provided for Mr Wood- 
 hall's guests, and into one of them at least he 
 plunged with the delighted enthusiasm of a boy. 
 
 Poor Charles Bertram, the conjurer, was there, and 
 
 1 86
 
 Recollections 
 
 it was arranged that a hand of Napoleon should be 
 played under his direction between the statesman 
 and Sir Francis Burnand, then editor of Punch, 
 " You, gentlemen, must decide between you," said 
 the conjurer, "as to who is to 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 to what he was to lead and what 
 to play in sequence, securing for him all five 
 tricks out of an apparently impossible hand. He 
 was immensely delighted and interested, and held 
 a very animated conversation afterwards with 
 Bertram on the art of conjuring. 
 
 A good many years later yet, when I brought 
 over from Australia the nucleus of a comedy com- 
 pany to perform here in a piece of my own writing, 
 I had amongst them a very remarkable child actor, 
 whose name was Leo Byrne. He played the title 
 role in my comedy of Neds Chum, and when the 
 provincial run of the piece was over he was em- 
 ployed by Sir Henry Irving to play the child's part in 
 Lord Tennyson's tragedy of Becket. Mr Gladstone 
 was present at one performance, and not wishing 
 for some reason of his own to be identified by the 
 public, took his seat out of view of the audience on 
 the prompt side of the stage. Whilst the curtain 
 was down, Mr Gladstone took the fictitious son of 
 the Fair Rosamund on his knee and began to 
 question him. " You come from Australia, my 
 little man ? " he said. " Yes, sir," the boy 
 answered. " And what do you think of England ? '" 
 he was asked. " I think it is being ruined by the 
 
 Liberal Party," Master Byrne responded. The 
 
 187
 
 Recollections 
 
 great man laughed and suffered him to escape, 
 which I am told he did very willingly. Mr Bram 
 Stoker afterwards took the child apart and told 
 him that one of these days he would be very proud 
 of havinsT been taken on that old orentleman's knee. 
 "Oh! I know," the imp responded, "it's old 
 Gladstone ; I don't want to be bothered with 
 him. I have promised another boy to go and 
 spin tops with him behind the scenes." 
 
 i88
 
 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 PoUce — The Text of Scripture. 
 
 Whilst I was still engaged on the staff of the 
 Birmingham Morning News, as I have mentioned 
 previously, Mr Edmund Yates was runnino- 
 through its columns a novel which he entitled A 
 Bad Lot. He was lecturing in America at the 
 time, and must have been living a hand to mouth 
 life with his story, for he brought it to an 
 abrupt and rather disastrous conclusion. When 
 the final instalment of copy was received there was 
 a momentary consternation in the office. New 
 arrangements were pending, but we had supposed 
 ourselves to have at least two months in hand. In 
 these circumstances my chief came to me and asked 
 me if I thought that I could fill the gap. I was 
 simply burning for a chance to try my hand at 
 fiction, and I leapt eagerly at the opportunity. I 
 began that very day and I wrote a chapter which I 
 am quite sure must have led my readers to expect 
 a tolerable weekly entertainment for some time, but 
 I had no plot in mind and I had not the remotest 
 notion as to whither I was o-oine. I struo-o-led on 
 
 week by week and succeeded, as I now believe, in 
 
 189
 
 Recollections 
 
 producing absolutely the most formless and in- 
 coherent work of fiction which was ever put in type. 
 Scores of letters were sent week by week to the 
 editor protesting against its continuance, and at 
 last I had worked all my characters into such a 
 tangle that, with the exception of the hero and 
 heroine and a few subordinates, whose fate it was 
 not necessary to particularise, I sent them all into 
 a coal-mine, flooded the workings and drowned the 
 lot of them. 
 
 A very able and kindly critic told me that 
 this amorphous first attempt at fiction had flesh 
 and blood but no bones, and I have learned since 
 that in writingr a work of imao^ination as in much 
 more serious enterprises, the first essential is to 
 be aware of your own purpose. For some years 
 afterwards I tried my hand on the short story, but 
 before I left England for the Russo-Turkish cam- 
 paign, I had embarked upon a more ambitious 
 work, which finally took shape in A Lifes Atone- 
 ment. In the hurry of departure I forgot my manu- 
 script and left it at my lodgings. I had quite 
 resigned myself to think it lost, but when I re- 
 ceived my first commission for a three-volume 
 story, it occurred to me that the manuscript was 
 worth inquiring after, and it surprised me agree- 
 ably to find 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 ever noticed so far as I know ; it 
 
 190
 
 Recollections 
 
 was, from beginning to end, a wholly unconscious 
 
 plagiarism of David Copperfield. Had there been 
 
 no Peggotty, there would have been no Sally 
 
 Troman ; had there been no Steerforth, there 
 
 would have been no Gascoigne. The greater part 
 
 of the fable and nearly all the characters I owed to 
 
 Dickens, and yet I can aver in perfect honesty that, 
 
 at the time of writing and for years afterwards, I 
 
 was entirely unconscious of the fact. One thing in 
 
 the book, in any case, was real. I sent my tragic 
 
 hero wandering about the country, finding shelter 
 
 in all manner of low lodcrinor-houses, and livino- 
 
 generally the life of a tramp. Before I put him to 
 
 that experience I went through it religiously myself, 
 
 and for a whole seven weeks in the summer, after 
 
 my return from Turkey, I was "on the road" as a 
 
 casual tramp. It was my purpose to prove in my 
 
 own person what I knew very well already, namely, 
 
 that it was, as most unhappily it still is, actually 
 
 impossible for a poor man honestly in search of 
 
 work, to make his way through England and to 
 
 hold body and soul together without infringing the 
 
 law in one way or another. 
 
 I found that it was not possible. Well, I had 
 
 seven weeks of it. I went under the name of 
 
 " David Vane, compositor," as of course, I knew 
 
 something about the printing trade. My clothes 
 
 were shabby at the outset, but were utterly in rags 
 
 when I had done. "David Vane" had many 
 
 strange adventures, but the funniest was reserved 
 
 for the close. I may say that I took a ten-pound 
 
 note with me, and through the Post Office sent 
 
 portions of it on before me and walked towards it. 
 
 191
 
 Recollections 
 
 When I got to the " George " at Hereford I had 
 ;^7, 13s. 6d. left out of the /^lo. I slept in work- 
 houses or in the fields ; the professional term for 
 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 me to the 
 " George " at Hereford, with the initials *' D.C.M." 
 at the side. In it I had a change of clothes and a 
 shaving kit. When I got into Hereford I had had 
 no shave for three or four weeks, my boots were 
 absolutely worn out, my clothes were rags and 
 tatters, and exposure to the sun had tanned my 
 face. I drew my money at the Post Office at 
 Hereford, and carrying 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 waiter with a professional napkin. 
 He looked up the street, down the street, and 
 across the street, smiling all the time — a proprie- 
 torial sort of smile. I talked to him from below — 
 one always speaks from below with a sense of 
 disadvantage — and said, '* I want a room." He 
 gave a wave of his napkin 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 the fool. I said, "I want a 
 room." He looked at me stolidly, but suddenly I 
 discovered my portmanteau in a corner. I claimed 
 it at once and mounted the stairs, the waiter fol- 
 lowing with his curiously feline footsteps, and 
 murmuring at intervals, "Well, I am !" He 
 
 said it with great conviction, but he took me to the 
 
 192
 
 Recollections 
 
 bath room nevertheless. I got a shave, changed 
 my suit, and, as I was something of a dandy at the 
 time, I affected certain airs as to the arrangement 
 of my watch-chain and the Hke. I came out clean- 
 shaven and with an eye-glass, and generally look- 
 ing as different from the man who went in as it was 
 possible to imagine. On the stairs I found my 
 waiter ready, and when he saw me he said most 
 
 emphatically that he was . He took me to the 
 
 coffee room, where I had a meal. He stood 
 behind my chair, and by means of a mirror 
 opposite I saw him keep saying to himself that he 
 
 was . I stayed in Hereford for some time, 
 
 both to rest and to write articles about my experi- 
 ences, which appeared in May/air, a society paper, 
 long since dead. I took a private room, and this 
 particular waiter seemed to be told off to attend me 
 in all my doings. Everything seemed to surprise 
 him ; he could not measure me up at all, and he 
 
 was continually saying that he was , although 
 
 I knew quite well that he wasn't. 
 
 One day his worship the Mayor of Hereford 
 called to see me. When I asked the waiter to 
 
 show his worship up he said that he was . The 
 
 mayor was a flamboyant sort of individual, and 
 said, " Now, Mr Christie Murray, Lord Lyttelton is 
 in Hereford, and is most par-tic-ular-ly interested 
 in the subject of which you are treating in Mayfair. 
 He will be delighted to meet you, and I have 
 arranged with his lordship that you shall meet him 
 at my house (the mayor's house) at 7.30 on Friday. 
 You will not fail his lordship ? " I said that I would 
 not for the world, and I escorted his worship to 
 
 N 193
 
 Recollections 
 
 his carriage. At the door he turned and said, 
 ** Half-past seven on Friday, Mr Christie Murray, 
 at my house, to meet Lord Lyttehon. Profoundly 
 disappointed if you don't turn out. His lordship 
 will be grieved, Mr Murray." The mayor having 
 gone I turned round- — to encounter 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 sincerity that 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 to appeal for shelter at the workhouse 
 means that he will be detained until every chance 
 of obtaining employment is lost. I remember 
 an unfortunate fellow, whom I overtook near 
 Tewkesbury, a man of about sixty as I should 
 judge, who was sitting by the roadside cooling his 
 blistered heels in a little runnel of clear water, and 
 crying quietly to himself as he tried to rid his 
 finofers of the tar which stuck to them after his 
 workhouse morning's experience of oakum picking. 
 I sat down beside him and 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 as a journeyman watchmaker. 
 He had risen to be an employer, and had kept a 
 small workshop in Coventry, but misfortune had 
 overtaken him and he had failed in business. The 
 immediate cause of his distress was that he had 
 received notification that employment at his trade 
 
 of watchmaker was open to him at Evesham. The 
 
 194
 
 Recollections 
 
 poor fellow was quite penniless and had been com- 
 pelled to walk ; his strength had failed him by the 
 way, and he had had to take refuge in the work- 
 house. In payment for his lodging, his two chunks 
 of dry bread and his pint of skilly, he had been 
 compelled to pick his quantum of oakum. The 
 man's fingers were, of course, as delicate as a 
 lady's, and in the course of our talk he held them 
 out to me, showing the tips all raw and bleeding 
 and thick with tar. He sobbed bitterly as he told 
 me that he would be unable to do a hand-stroke at 
 his trade for at least a fortnight. He carried with 
 him letters of recommendation which ougrht to have 
 guaranteed him from any such usage as that to 
 which he had been condemned. He had tried to 
 show them to the labour master, but he had been 
 waved contemptuously aside, and had been forced 
 by threats of being imprisoned as a refractory 
 pauper to betake himself to the task imposed upon 
 him. 
 
 It need hardly be said that all the men one 
 encountered were not of this type. I met one 
 engaging ruffian who unbosomed himself to me 
 with the utmost frankness. " Oi meets o^enelmen 
 on the road," he said, " as arsks me why Oi don't 
 gaow to wurk ; a great big upstandin' chap loike 
 you, they sez, loafin' abaht and doin' nothin' — why 
 it's disgraiceful I Well, I sez, guv'nor, I sez, 'ow 
 can Oi go to wurk ? Oi'm a skilled wurkman, I sez, 
 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- 
 
 195
 
 Recollections 
 
 aged man and what ham Oi to do to yearn my means 
 of loiveH'ood." He added with a wink that there 
 was only one hand comb-maker in business in that 
 wide district 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 
 rascal would very rarely have occasion to present 
 himself as a casual pauper at the Union workhouse, 
 but had he done so, he and the unfortunate watch- 
 maker would have been treated on perfectly equal 
 terms. 
 
 The whole system of casual poor law relief is 
 about as rotten and as stupid 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 to the nature of the labour executed, or as to the 
 hours over which that labour shall be extended. 
 The habitual loafer knows perfectly well the places 
 where life is made easy to him, and as a matter of 
 course avoids those in which the fare is poorest and 
 the work most arduous. The honest seeker after 
 work knows nothing of these things and the whole 
 iniquitous and idiotic system is at once a direct 
 bribe to the inveterate work-shirker and a scouro-e 
 to the honest and industrious poor. I published 
 the result of my own researches into it in the 
 columns of May/air now nearly thirty years ago, 
 and suggested a very simple and easy remedy for 
 its defects. I had some hope that I might be 
 attended to. The late Lord Lyttelton, Mr 
 Gladstone's friend, was at one time disposed to 
 take the matter up, but his melancholy death put an 
 
 end to that, and recent inquiries assure me that the 
 
 196
 
 Recollections 
 
 old intolerable methods of casual 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 it cropped up 
 as inevitably in my work as King Charles's head in 
 Mr Dick's Memorial, but at least it has enabled me 
 to feel that few writers of fiction in my time have 
 gone nearer to reality in their studies than myself 
 I certainly worked the little mine that I had opened 
 for ail that it was worth, and readers of mine who 
 give themselves the trouble to remember will 
 recall the wanderings of the hero of Skeleton Keys^ 
 of Frank Fairholt, of Hiram Search and of young 
 George Bushell. Speaking of Hiram Search 
 naturally reminds me of Charles Reade. I dedi- 
 cated the book in which Hiram appears to that 
 great writer and sent a copy of it to him with what 
 I daresay was a somewhat boyish letter. I have 
 the terms of my dedication in mind still, and I 
 remember that I wrote of a great genius which has 
 always been put to lofty uses. Reade's letter in 
 response has always held a place amongst my 
 treasures. "It is no discredit," he wrote, "for a 
 young man to appreciate his seniors beyond their 
 merits." I have always thought that very noble 
 and modest and well-said. Reade is the only one 
 of the writers who in my own boyhood were already 
 reckoned great with whom it was my happiness to 
 come into personal contact. 
 
 I have met with but four men in my experience 
 who have been distinguished by that splendid 
 urbanity of manner which was once thought to 
 
 197
 
 Recollections 
 
 express the acme of high breeding. Charles Reade 
 was one of them. I never knew him intimately- 
 enough to get beyond it, but that he himself could 
 break through it upon occasion was known to every- 
 body. A beautiful, stately cordiality commonly 
 marked his social manner, but he could be moved 
 to a towering rage by an act of meanness, treachery 
 or oppression ; and in his public correspondence he 
 was sometimes downright vitriolic. Hardly any- 
 thing could have excused the retort he flung at 
 some 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 am pro- 
 foundly learned, while you are ignorant as dirt." 
 It was true enough, but perhaps it was hardly 
 worth while to say it in that fashion. Nearly all 
 his life he was embroiled in controversy of one sort 
 or another. He spent himself in the exposure of 
 abuses and the people whom he exposed assailed 
 him rashly. He took prodigious pains to be 
 accurate, and before he assaulted the prison system 
 in It's Never Too Late to Mend, or the conduct of 
 private lunatic asylums in Hard Cash, he had 
 gathered and indexed huge volumes of information 
 culled from every available source. These 
 memoranda he called nigri loci. His system of 
 indexing was so precise that he could lay an instant 
 finger on any fact of which he was in search, and 
 nobody who ventured to impugn his facts escaped 
 from him unmutilated. In one instance, a barrister 
 was so misguided as to tell him publicly that a 
 legal incident in one of the two books I have 
 
 mentioned was obviously impossible and absurd. 
 
 198
 
 Recollections 
 
 Reade was down upon him like a hammer : " The 
 impossibility in question disguised itself as fact and 
 went through the hollow form of taking place " on 
 such and such a date, in such and such a court, and 
 the proceedings were recorded in volume so and so, 
 on certain pages of the official Law Reports for a 
 given year. His adversary was left with no better 
 resource than to charge him with hurling un- 
 digested lumps of official documents at the head 
 of the public ; and this left his equanimity undis- 
 turbed. 
 
 But it was when they charged him with 
 plagiarism that his critics hit him on the raw. 
 About the time when I first knew him somebody 
 started a controversy with respect to his story of 
 The Wandering Heir, and the accusation was 
 made that he had lifted a page or two out of Swift's 
 Polite Conversations. ''Oi course I did," said 
 Reade to me, "but the essence of a plagiarism is 
 that it shall have some chance of oroino- undetected : 
 it is the appropriation to one's self of the property 
 of another with the intent to display it as one's 
 own, and to me it was impossible to suppose that 
 a writer like Dean Swift was so obscure that I 
 could play a trick like that with him with impunity. 
 A recognisable quotation is not a plagiarism. 
 They brought the same charge against me because 
 I translated the etchings of Corot into accurate 
 English. The sources 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 if he can. It is perfectly true that I 
 
 milked three hundred cows into that bucket, but 
 
 199
 
 Recollections 
 
 the butter I churned was my own." It seems 
 scarcely fair to have brought such an accusation 
 against a writer who not only made no disguise of 
 his literary methods, but who so openly proclaimed 
 and defended them. 
 
 In the last page of The Cloister a?id the 
 Hearth he acknowledoes his debt to the a"reat 
 Erasmus, for example, in these very noble and 
 eloquent phrases : — " Some of the best scenes in 
 this new book are from his mediseval pen and 
 illumine the pages where they come ; for the 
 words of a orenius so hio^h as his are not born to 
 die : their immediate work upon mankind fulfilled, 
 they may seem to lie torpid ; but at each fresh 
 shower of intelligence Time pours upon her 
 students, they prove their immortal race ; they 
 revive, they spring from the dust of great libraries ; 
 they bud, they flower, they fruit, they seed from 
 cfeneration to veneration, and from ao;e to ag'e." The 
 professional critics have never been just to Reade, 
 but it is a fact that I have never encountered a 
 workman in the craft of fiction who did not reckon 
 him a master among the masters. It has 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 imaginative literature. When Mr 
 Conan Doyle, as he then was, was lecturing in the 
 United States, we met one evening at the Parker 
 House in Boston, and he said one thing about that 
 immortal book which I have ever since thought 
 memorable. *' To read The Cloister and the 
 Hearth'' he declared, " is like going through the 
 Dark Ages with a dark lantern." And indeed the 
 
 200
 
 Recollections 
 
 criticism is true. You travel from old Sevenbergen 
 to mediaeval Rome and every man and woman you 
 encounter on the way is indisputably alive, though 
 there is no he or she amongst them all who has a 
 touch of modernity. They are of their epoch, 
 from Denys of Burgundy to the Princess Clselia, 
 from the mijaurde of the Tete D'Or to the tired 
 and polished old gentleman who for the time being 
 presides over the destinies of the Church of Rome. 
 Here, for once, a prodigious faculty for taking 
 pains is used with genius, and the chances are that 
 the author of this monumental work, despised as he 
 too often was as a mere sensationalist in his own 
 day, will survive a score of his contemporaries who 
 are even at this hour, by common critical consent, 
 placed over him. 
 
 He was always fighting against some legal 
 oppression. In the latest case in which I knew 
 him to be engaged, an attempt had been made by 
 a wealthy ground landlord to squeeze an un- 
 protected widow lady out of her rights and to 
 compel her to surrender the house and grounds 
 which had belonged to her deceased husband. 
 With the impetuosity which distinguished him in 
 such matters, Reade flungr himself into the conflict. 
 It was enough for him to know that an injustice 
 was being done or attempted to fire him at the 
 centre. He caused to be inscribed on the outer 
 wall of the garden of the mansion in dispute the 
 words, " Naboth's Vineyard," and he used to relate 
 with great glee how a Jew old clothesman one day 
 translated this into " Naboth's Vinegar," and after 
 a wondering reading of it, said: "Good Lord! I 
 
 201
 
 Recollections 
 
 should have taken it for a orentlemanth houth." 
 
 o 
 
 "From which," said Reade, quaintly, "you may 
 conclude that Houndsditch thumbs not the annals 
 of Samaria ! " 
 
 That shapeless production Grace Forbeach had 
 one idea in it which I was able to use later on to 
 some advantage. In those days a writer of fiction 
 expended much more care upon the actual mechan- 
 ism of his plot than seems to be thought necessary 
 nowadays. Even a man of the genius of Charles 
 Dickens did not feel himself at liberty to work un- 
 trammelled by the exigencies of some intricate and 
 harassing framework of invention on which he 
 made it his business to hang all his splendours of 
 description and his observation of human character. 
 The power of the plot in English fiction found its 
 culmination in the work of Wilkie Collins, whose 
 Moonstone is probably the finest piece of mere 
 literary cabinet-making in the world. All the 
 younger writers of his time were strongly under his 
 domination and it was quite a necessity for us to 
 have some merely mechanical central idea round 
 which we could evolve a story which, in its serial 
 form, should keep the reader perpetually upon the 
 tenterhooks of expectation. Such an idea I had 
 stumbled on in Grace Forbeach^ where one of the 
 characters was made feloniously to possess him- 
 self of his own property and thereby rendered 
 himself liable to penal servitude. I elaborated this 
 notion \n Joseph! s Coat and made the development 
 of the whole fable dependent on it. 
 
 Leaving forgotten Grace Forbeach out of the 
 reckoning, JosepJis Coat was my third novel in the 
 
 202
 
 Recollections 
 
 order of writing and the second in order of publica- 
 tion. The second half of A Lifes Atonement was 
 written under difficulties which would have been 
 absolutely insurmountable if it had not been for 
 that spirit of camaraderie which distinguished the 
 jolly little Bohemian set amongst whom I had 
 fallen. One chum who lived over an undertaker's 
 shop in Great Russell Street found me house-room, 
 and I had a resource from which, for the space of 
 some ten weeks, I was entitled to draw one pound 
 a week, which came to me in rather an odd fashion. 
 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 allow- 
 ance for the Sunday. A loaf and a tin of Chicago 
 beef stocked the larder, and that being once at- 
 tended to, the remnant of my income served for such 
 necessaries of life as beer and tobacco, and pen and 
 ink and paper. The bargain I had made with Messrs 
 Chambers was that I should receive one-half payment 
 for the book — one hundred and twenty-five pounds — 
 on delivery and acceptance, and the other half on 
 the conclusion of the serial publication of the story 
 in their journal. This left an interval of twelve 
 months between the two payments, and the first 
 was all but exhausted when my second commission 
 from the firm reached me. It was then drawing 
 towards the close of the year, and Mr Robert 
 Chambers wrote me to say that the writer with 
 whom he had bargained to follow A Lifes Atone- 
 ment had broken down in health, and asking if I 
 were in a position to supply her place. I went off 
 
 post-haste to Edinburgh and saw him there, and it 
 
 203
 
 Recollections 
 
 was arranged between us that I should deliver to 
 him six chapters of an original novel per week, 
 that I should remain in the neighbourhood of 
 Edinburgh in order to give him opportunity for 
 consultation from time to time, and that whilst the 
 book was being written I should receive a living 
 wage. He recommended me to locate myself in 
 Portobello, and there in the dead season I had no 
 difficulty in finding lodgings. 
 
 I had scarcely deposited my portmanteau when 
 I set to work. I besian to write without the faintest 
 idea of a plan, and for the first day or two I swam 
 boldly enough along the stream of chance. The 
 first chapters pleased Robert Chambers greatly 
 and he was wise and generous enough to say so. 
 For six tremendous weeks I wrote, beginning 
 punctually every morning at eight o'clock and 
 pretty generally bringing the day's work to a finish 
 in the neighbourhood of midnight. I gave myself 
 two half-hours for exercise and rambled in all sorts 
 of weather about the sands and the deserted 
 promenade. I was approaching the end of the 
 work when a very curious experience befell me. I 
 was sitting towards the end of the day's labour at 
 my table when I felt suddenly that somebody was 
 standing just behind me. The impression was so 
 strong that I turned round hastily and made a sur- 
 vey of the little room. There was nobody there 
 and I went back to work aorain. The feelino^ re- 
 turned so often that I repeatedly found myself 
 turning round in the middle of a sentence, but in 
 an hour at most I was able to dismiss the fancy 
 
 for the time. I got to bed too excited and too 
 
 204
 
 Recollections 
 
 tired to sleep, and whilst I was lying there in the 
 dark, the idea of that fancied presence came back 
 again. It was standing at my bed-head in the 
 darkness, and though I knew that to be a physical 
 impossibility because the bed and the wall were close 
 together, I found myself no longer able to dismiss 
 the image. I went to sleep in spite of it at last, but 
 at the instant at which I sat down at my table to 
 take up the thread of last night's work, it was there 
 again. Little by little it assumed shape and colour 
 in my imagination, until at last it was as clearly 
 present to me as if I had seen it with my bodily 
 eyes. I have it before me at this instant ; it was 
 the figure of a man in mediaeval costume, in trunk 
 and hose and doublet, and his clothing was red on 
 one side and yellow on the other. The face, so far 
 as it could be seen, was cadaverous and cruel, but 
 half of it was concealed by a black vizor of velvet, 
 through which lamped a pair of dark, unwinking 
 eyes. The figure was there all day and every 
 minute of the day, but I pegged stolidly on and 
 gave as little heed as I could to it. But that night 
 when I had got to bed, a development occurred. 
 The figure took up that impossible position at my 
 head, and I became aware that it had, balanced 
 over its shoulder, an axe with a broad back and 
 an edge like a razor, with which it stood in act to 
 strike. 
 
 I got out of bed and re-lit the lamp, re- 
 filled my pipe and sat down to think things over. 
 Wherever I went, the figure was behind me and 
 always in the same threatening attitude. I began 
 
 to talk to it at last in set phrases: "I know per- 
 
 205
 
 Recollections 
 
 fectly well what you are," I said; "you are an 
 inhabitant of the land of Mental Overwork. I'm 
 going to hold you at arm's length, because if I 
 allowed you to take liberties, you might grow 
 dangerous. We will travel together if you will 
 insist upon it until this 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 from Edinburgh to 
 London, then from London by the long sea-route 
 to Antwerp ; from Antwerp to tranquil little Roche- 
 fort in the Belgian Ardennes ; and it was not until 
 I found myself one day with my easel and my paint- 
 box sketching some quaint bulbous old trees in the 
 Avenue des Tilleuls, that I woke up to the fact that 
 I had lost him. He came back to me once more 
 and once only. I think it was owing to the fact 
 that a fire had occurred at the printing premises of 
 Messrs Grant & Co. in Turnmill Street, in which 
 the manuscript of a work of fiction had been 
 destroyed, that I was asked by my old friend 
 Gowing to put extra pressure upon myself for the 
 completion of a story on which I was engaged for 
 him. It was a question of days and almost of hours, 
 and I remember that at the last, from Friday 
 morning until late on Sunday night, I wrote almost 
 incessantly, snatching an hour or two's sleep in an 
 armchair, only when Nature imperatively demanded 
 it. I delivered the manuscript in person on Monday 
 morning and as I was walking home along Holborn, 
 I suddenly became aware of the presence of my old 
 
 unpleasant comrade. I gibed at him with a feeling 
 
 206
 
 Recollections 
 
 of perfect security, but I was brought to a halt by a 
 sudden horrible discovery — the paving-stone in 
 front of me was not a real paving-stone at all but a 
 mere paper imitation, with an actually measureless 
 8fulf below it. The delusion was so real and con- 
 vincing that I was able to pursue my way only by 
 the most desperate resolution, and all the way to 
 Fitzroy Square, where I was living at the time, the 
 fear clung to me. I took a liberal dose of whisky, 
 went to bed and slept the clock round, and woke to 
 find the whole thing vanished. 
 
 I spent five happy years at Rochefort, and 
 althouofh when I first went there I had no idea of 
 staying for more than three or four weeks' rest 
 and quiet, it was actually eighteen months before I 
 left the place at all. 
 
 In dealing with my experiences in the Press 
 gallery of the House of Commons, I had occasion 
 to speak of the curious premonition which assailed 
 me at the instant at which the unfortunate Dr 
 Kenealy made use of the rhetorical symbol of the 
 dewdrops and the lion's mane. I do not know that 
 I have any right to claim the possession of any 
 psychic faculty which goes beyond the ordinary, 
 but I do know that that sort of premonition of a 
 cominor circumstance has not been at all rare in mv 
 experience. Something very like it befell me whilst 
 I was living at Rochefort, and in that instance it 
 proved of signal service to me. I wrote the final 
 scene of Joseph's Coat on a certain wintry day 
 and was within a page or two of the conclusion of 
 the story when I was called to luncheon. In the 
 
 ardour of work I had allowed the fire to die out in 
 
 207
 
 Recollections 
 
 my bedroom stove, and encountering on the stairs 
 a certain lout, whose name was Victor, who did duty 
 about the stables of the hotel, I gave him instruc- 
 tions to see to it. Ten minutes later a dreadful 
 inspiration occurred to me, and I dashed upstairs. 
 The man was kneeling before the stove and was in 
 the very act of striking a lucifer match when I 
 arrived. A glance at my writing-table showed me 
 that the impulse on which I had acted was only too 
 well-founded. The man had taken a dozen pages 
 of my manuscript, and an instant later he would 
 have set them blazing. In those days I wrote on 
 an unruled large quarto, and since it was my habit 
 to crowd sixteen hundred words into a page, the 
 loss of time and labour would have been, at least, 
 considerable. I recovered my MS. all crumpled 
 and dirty, and I applied to that ostler pretty nearly 
 all the opprobrious names in his language with 
 which I was acquainted. " Mais, monsieur," the 
 criminal responded, " le papier etait deja gate ; vous 
 avez ^crit la-dessus." If this had been intended 
 as a literary criticism, it might possibly have been 
 justified, but seeing that it was offered by a man 
 who could not read, there was something in the 
 frank imbecility of it which disarmed me, and I 
 daresay that the shout of laughter with which I 
 received it was just as incomprehensible to the man 
 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, I mistook it for an Arcadia, but a 
 more intimate knowledge of it and the acquaintance- 
 ship I formed with the village doctor and the 
 
 208
 
 Recollections 
 
 doyen of the little local cathedral served to un- 
 deceive me. It was full of poverty and of all the 
 more sordid forms of vice which everywhere seem 
 inseparable from physical distress and overcrowd- 
 inof. I tauorht both the medico and the cleric to 
 appreciate the flavour of Scotch whisky, and on 
 many a score of winter nights I used to sit and 
 listen to them whilst they engaged in long discus- 
 sions on the Christian faith. The venerable doyen 
 laboured hard to convince the doctor, who was an 
 Agnostic of the aggressive type. " La religion," 
 said the latter, on one occasion, "est une bonne et 
 belle chose pour les femmes, les enfants et les 
 imbeciles," but in spite of their antagonism in this 
 respect, they worked together with a devotion 
 which was beyond praise amongst their poor. The 
 priest used to tell the doctor that he would have 
 been the best of Christians if he had only known it, 
 and the doctor used to assure him in return that he 
 would have been the best of men if only his mind 
 had never been distorted by the fables of the 
 Church. They met on the common ground of 
 benevolence and scholarship and I think they were 
 a pair of the most lovable old fossils I have ever 
 known. The doctor was a man of prodigious 
 attainment and I often used to wonder what had 
 induced such a man to bury himself in such a place, 
 until I learned that the genial old bachelor book- 
 worm had known a day of romance long before, and 
 that the lady of his choice had, on the very eve of 
 marriage, resigned herself, like Carlyle's Blumine, 
 to wed someone richer. The romance spoiled his 
 
 career, but it was a godsend for his native village, 
 o 209
 
 Recollections 
 
 where he laboured till the day of his death, expend- 
 ing the whole of his professional income in works 
 of charity. He has no place in this simple record 
 apart from my affectionate remembrance of him and 
 these remembrances may be taken simply as a 
 flower laid in passing on the burial mound of an old 
 friend. 
 
 The hunting lodge of Leopold, King of the 
 Belgians — the Chateau des Ardennes, as it is 
 called — is situate some half a dozen miles from 
 Rochefort, on the road to Dinan on the Meuse. It 
 was a favourite relaxation of mine when I found 
 myself in want of exercise and a holiday, to mount a 
 knapsack and to stroll to Dinan, which is only a 
 score of English miles away. On one of these 
 jaunts I had my only interview with a reigning 
 monarch. I was sauntering homeward in the dusk 
 of a summer's evenings when I saw at the gate of 
 the chateau, a tall, gaunt figure with a long, 
 peaked beard, a pheasant's feather stuck in the 
 ribbon of a bowler hat, and trousers very dis- 
 reputably trodden into rags behind. As I passed 
 him he raised his hat and o^ave 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 me connaissez 
 alors ? " I responded that everybody knew the 
 King of the Belgians and I added that I had never 
 ventured to enter His Majesty's dominions with- 
 out carrying his portrait with me. " Comment 
 done !" said His Majesty, and when I produced a 
 brand new five-franc piece, the jest enjoyed a 
 greater prosperity than it deserved. We got into 
 
 2IO
 
 Recollections 
 
 conversation on the strength of it and he stood for 
 perhaps five minutes chatting not unintelligently 
 about EngHsh books and authors. 
 
 The years I spent in Rochefort were, I think, 
 the happiest and most fruitful of my Hfe, but the 
 last piece of work I did there came very near 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 just taken over 
 the editorship of the Corn/nil magazine, the price 
 of which he had reduced to 6d. My story — By 
 the Gate of the Sea — had been the last to appear 
 in the original series founded by Thackeray, and 
 I was invited by Mr Payn to inaugurate the new 
 and cheaper issue. With this purpose I wrote 
 Rainbow Gold, and since it was Mr Payn's un- 
 breakable editorial rule not to take any work into 
 consideration until its last line was in his hands, 
 and he at this time was in a mighty hurry about 
 his literary supplies, I had to undertake again 
 pretty much such a spell of work as I had under- 
 taken with Val Strange, and with an almost 
 equally unfortunate result. My methods of work 
 have often brought me near a nervous breakdown, 
 and by the time at which Rainbow Gold was 
 finished, I was all but a wreck. It had been 
 arranged between the editor of the Cornhill and 
 myself that the completed copy of my book should 
 be in his hands on a given date, and for some 
 reason I was afraid to trust it to the post, and 
 determined to carry it to London and deliver it 
 with my own hands. For this purpose it was 
 necessary that I should catch the Malle Des Indes 
 
 211
 
 Recollections 
 
 early on the Sunday morning at Jemelle two miles 
 away. I had a little leather case constructed, in 
 which to carry my manuscript, and this I had seen 
 more than half completed on the Thursday after- 
 noon. I strolled into the shop of the village 
 cordonnier on Saturday morning to ask why it had 
 not been delivered, and I found the man busy on a 
 duplicate of it which he promised to deliver before 
 the evening. It came out on inquiry that he had 
 sold the case I had ordered to a person who de- 
 scribed himself as a commercial traveller, and who 
 was staying at the Chevaux Blancs, a little hotel 
 in the village which was frequented by people of 
 his class. I satisfied myself that the work would 
 be done in time, and when it was delivered in the 
 course of the evening, I naturally supposed that 
 there was an end of the matter. I met the 
 purchaser of my box on the platform at Jemelle, 
 and we travelled by the same train as far as Lille. 
 There I got another momentary glimpse of him 
 and thenceforth saw him no more. 
 
 I travelled on to Dover without adventure, 
 but there, as I was quitting the boat, I was 
 encountered by a man who, although he was in 
 plain clothes, was immediately recognisable as 
 a member of the police force. He laid his hand 
 upon my shoulder and said : " I beg your pardon, 
 but I must ask you to accompany me to the 
 captain's cabin." I not unnaturally asked him 
 why. He pointed to the box I held and asked 
 if that were my property. I answered of course 
 in the affirmative and he said in quite the 
 official manner that he must trouble me to go 
 
 212
 
 Recollections 
 
 with him, and made a motion to relieve me of 
 my burden. I handed the box to him and 
 he conducted 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 another whether I had 
 not left the village of Rochefort by such and such 
 a train in the morning. I answered both questions 
 without hesitation, and I noticed that my inter- 
 locutor looked a little puzzled. I was asked next 
 what I was carrying in that leathern case, and, by 
 way of answer, I unlocked the box and produced 
 my manuscript. There was a curious restraint 
 visible in the manner of my examiners when I 
 performed this simple action, and I could not in 
 the least understand it at the time, although its 
 reason became clear enough a minute later. " I 
 beg your pardon, Mr Murray," said the man who 
 had first laid a detaining hand upon me, " there 
 has been a mistake, but we were compelled to do 
 our duty." He intimated that I was at liberty to 
 go, which in some heat I declined to do, until I had 
 received some explanation of this arrest of a private 
 citizen bound on legitimate affairs. I had missed 
 the tidal train, and I represented that this had 
 caused me some inconvenience. 
 
 Then the truth came out. The hotel des 
 Chevaux Blancs, in innocent seeming little Roche- 
 fort, had been for some months past a hot-bed 
 of European anarchy. The people who went 
 and came there were surrounded by spies, and 
 
 the police of Dover had been advised by tele- 
 
 213
 
 Recollections 
 
 graph, of the departure of a noted anarchist, 
 who was carrying precisely such a box as that 
 in which I had bestowed my manuscript. Before 
 I left Dover, it transpired that a man had been 
 arrested in Folkestone who was carrying with 
 him enough of Atlas dynamite to have wrecked 
 a whole square. The movements 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 two boxes had 
 been laid on the same bench on the platform at 
 Jemelle, and I have often since pictured to myself 
 the imbroglio which might have ensued if they 
 had been accidentally exchanged. It could not 
 have lasted long in the nature of things, but it 
 would certainly have afforded me a new ex- 
 perience. 
 
 I have had a good deal to do with the police 
 in my time, as most working journalists have, and 
 this reminds me of one or two adventures which, if 
 I had preserved a chronological order in my 
 narrative, should have been told earlier. Before I 
 left Birmingham I became acquainted with an 
 officer who afterwards became eminent in the 
 service of Scotland Yard. The fashion in which 
 we were introduced to each other was sufficiently 
 dramatic. It was an hour after midnight in a 
 heavy rain and the place was Pinfold Street, at the 
 back of the premises of the Birmingham Morning 
 News. A bedraggled woman ran shrieking up- 
 hill with cries of " help " and " murder," and behind 
 her staggered a drunken ruffian brandishing a club 
 
 which, when we came to examine it later, proved 
 
 214
 
 Recollections 
 
 to have been sawn from the top of an old-fashioned 
 mahogany bedstead. It was simply rounded at 
 one end and square and heavy at the other, and it 
 would infallibly have done the business of any 
 person with whose head it had come in contact. I 
 was encumbered with a heavy ulster which was 
 buttoned down almost to my feet and I should 
 certainly have been too late to prevent mischief, 
 but just as the pursuer came within striking dis- 
 tance an aeile fiofure darted round the corner and 
 the murderous-minded drunkard dropped like an 
 ox in the shambles at a single blow. The new- 
 comer was a plain-clothes policeman and he had 
 used a pair of handcuffs as a knuckle-duster and 
 had taken the ruffian clean on the point of the 
 chin. I accompanied him and his captor to the 
 Moor Street police station and got a paragraph out 
 of the incident before the paper went to bed. 
 
 I saw no more of my plain-clothes man for a 
 month or two and then an odd circumstance threw 
 us together again. My father, who was still carrying 
 on business in West Bromwich, was a letterpress 
 printer only, but he received an occasional order 
 for copperplate and lithographic work which he 
 handed over either to a Mr Storey in Livery 
 Street, or to the firm of W. & B. Hunt in New 
 Street. I had been over to call on him one 
 evening and he had asked me to attend to some 
 slight commission with either of these firms. I 
 called first on the Livery Street man, whose 
 establishment was just outside Snow Hill station, 
 and found him looking at a queer copperplate 
 
 impression which lay on the counter before him. 
 
 215
 
 Recollections 
 
 " There's something uncommonly queer about this," 
 
 he said, " and I don't know that I ought to go on 
 
 with it ; it strikes me very forcibly that an attempt 
 
 is being made to forge a Russian note and that this 
 
 is a part of the process." The lines on the paper 
 
 made a sort of hieroglyphic puzzle which it was 
 
 quite impossible to decipher. I asked him what 
 
 he intended to do with it and he answered that he 
 
 would fulfil his order and set the police upon the 
 
 track of the people who had given it. I went on 
 
 to Messrs Hunt's printing works in New Street 
 
 and there I found one of the partners poring over 
 
 what at first sight looked like a replica of the 
 
 impression I had just seen. I said nothing about 
 
 the matter and nothing was said to me, but when I 
 
 had transacted my business and had got out into 
 
 the street again the first man I encountered was 
 
 my plain-clothes policeman. I told him that I 
 
 thouofht I was on the track of a little bit of business 
 
 in his line and I took him back into the office of 
 
 the copperplate printer and introduced him. It 
 
 had just occurred to me that if the two plates I had 
 
 seen were accurately registered they might fit into 
 
 each other and make out a consecutive document, 
 
 and so in the sequel it proved to be. A gang of 
 
 Polish forgers had conceived the idea that in a 
 
 foreign country it would be possible to get two 
 
 separate engravers to imitate each a portion of a 
 
 fifty-rouble note and they had made arrangements 
 
 to do their own printing when they had secured 
 
 the plates. I made arrangements with my detective 
 
 that he should bring me first hand and exclusive 
 
 information with respect to the development of the 
 
 216
 
 Recollections 
 
 case and within eight and forty hours he had effected 
 his arrest and I was the only journahst in the town 
 who was allowed to know anything about it. Had I 
 stayed on in Birmingham I might have developed a 
 sort of specialism in this direction, but circumstances 
 drifted me away and it was not until some years 
 later that I met my friend again and found him to 
 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 most remarkable 
 little stories I remember to have heard. 
 
 There was a manufacturing jeweller in Camber- 
 well whose name was Whitehead, who had a show- 
 room somewhere in the neighbourhood of St. Paul's 
 Cathedral. Seventeen years there had been in his 
 employ a commercial traveller in whom he reposed 
 the completest confidence. This traveller had a 
 very pretty turn for the invention of ornamental 
 designs in (gold and precious stones and he was an 
 accomplished draughtsman. In his journeys about 
 the country he carried with him a tray of pinchbeck 
 and of coloured glass, which represented in dupli- 
 cate a tray of real jewellery and precious stones 
 which was kept under lock and key at the show- 
 room. It happened, whether by accident or design, 
 that the one tray was substituted for the other, the 
 pinchbeck imitations being left in the jeweller's 
 safe and the real thing carried away by the com- 
 mercial traveller. The fact of the substitution was 
 not discovered for some days and by that time the 
 traveller, following his ordinary route, should have 
 been in Manchester or Liverpool. He was wired 
 to at both places but no reply was received from 
 
 217
 
 Recollections 
 
 him. Not a doubt of the man's probity entered 
 into his employer's mind, but when all efforts to 
 trace him had failed the jeweller became alarmed 
 for the safety of his employe and communicated 
 with the police. 
 
 Now, as fortune would have it, the young 
 Birmingham detective had been sent up to 
 London at this time and, calling at Scotland 
 Yard, he had put into his hands some copies 
 of the document by which the police were 
 circulating the news of the traveller's disappear- 
 ance, together with a woodcut reproducing a 
 photograph which had been taken some years 
 before and had willingly been surrendered to Mr. 
 Whitehead by the traveller's wife, who was natur- 
 ally in great distress concerning him. It was the 
 general impression at the time that he had been 
 decoyed away and murdered for the sake of the 
 valuable property he carried, which was of such a 
 nature that it might easily have been disposed of by 
 the criminal — the orold beingf melted down and the 
 precious stones being disposed of in the ordinary 
 way of business. At Euston Station that afternoon, 
 on his way back to Birmingham, the provincial 
 detective had one fellow-traveller to whom, but for 
 one singular little circumstance, he would probably 
 have paid no heed whatever. The fellow-traveller 
 had one article of luggage only, but he seemed to be 
 unusually anxious about it. It was a hat-box and 
 when he had placed it on the rack overhead he 
 appeared to be unwilling to leave it out of sight for 
 more than an instant at a time. He arose a score 
 
 of times to readjust it and when he was not occupied 
 
 218
 
 Recollections 
 
 in that way he kept a constant eye upon it. " I'm 
 
 no great Scripture reader," said the detective to 
 
 me, in telHng me the story, "but when I was a kid 
 
 my mother used to read the Bible to me every day 
 
 and one text came into my mind when I saw that 
 
 cove so anxious about his hat-box : * Where the 
 
 treasure is, there will the heart be also.' It kept 
 
 coming back into my mind and somehow I got to 
 
 thinking that if it had not been for certain things 
 
 about him the man in the carriage would have been 
 
 very like the man whose portrait and description I 
 
 had just been looking at. The man described had 
 
 features of a marked Jewish cast and so had the 
 
 man in the carriage, but the man described had red 
 
 hair, thick red eyebrows and a beard and moustache 
 
 of the same colour. The man in the carriage was 
 
 clean shaved and his hair and eyebrows were as 
 
 black as a crow's back, but I had got the idea in my 
 
 mind and I couldn't get it out again, and when he 
 
 turned his face sideways 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 downright certain of him from that very 
 
 minute. He got out at Rugby, taking his hat-box 
 
 with him, and as I had no funds with me I was 
 
 afraid I was going to lose him, but he only went 
 
 into the refreshment room for a glass of beer and a 
 
 sandwich and came back with me and travelled 
 
 comfortably on to Birmingham. There he engaged 
 
 a room at the Queen's Hotel for the niorht, and 
 
 having locked up his hat-box in it he went away to 
 
 order a supply of clothes and linen, as I found out 
 
 219
 
 Recollections 
 
 afterwards. I nipped down to Moor 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 with a fellow-ofhcer and 
 we nabbed him at his bedroom door. He nipped 
 out a revolver 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, was 
 every one of the missing jewels. He had torn the 
 velvet lining out of the case and had thrown every- 
 thing into it pell-mell and wrapped it up in two or 
 three towels so, I suppose, that the contents of the 
 hat-box couldn't jingle. My getting him was just 
 an accident from start to finish, and if it had not been 
 for that text of Scripture I should never have given 
 the man a second thought, but it was reckoned a 
 smartish capture and it ended in my promotion and 
 mv comino^ here." 
 
 220
 
 CHAPTER XIIP 
 
 Eight Hours Day in Melbourne — The Australian Born — Aus- 
 tralians and the Mother Country — The Governor — TJie 
 Sydney Bulletm — 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 my blood as the final episode of 
 the procession of Eight Hours Day in Melbourne. 
 The day was wintry and dismal. Early rains had 
 threatened the dispersal of the patient crowds which 
 lined the roads ; the pavements were muddy and 
 the sky was lowering. The march of the trades 
 bodies did little to dispel the gloom of the day for 
 the one onlooker concerning whose sentiments I am 
 authorised to speak. The vast crowd gave each 
 trade a reception as it passed, and sometimes the 
 marchers passed below the Treasury windows and 
 cheered the governor. There was plenty of noise 
 and enthusiasm, but I was unawakened until the tail- 
 end of the procession came. Two brakes drew up 
 below the governor's standing-place, and some score 
 of grey-bearded men rose up in these vehicles and 
 
 '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. 
 
 231
 
 Recollections 
 
 waved their hats with vigour, whilst the whole 
 orderly mob roared applause at them and Lord 
 Hopetoun himself clapped his hands like a pleased 
 boy at the 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, and the 
 faces of a good many were bronzed with years of 
 sun and wind. Over the leading vehicle was sus- 
 pended a strip of white cloth, and on this was 
 painted the words, " The Pioneers." These men 
 were the makers of Victoria, the fathers of the 
 proud and populous city which lay widespread 
 about us. There is no need to be eloquent about 
 Melbourne. Too many people have sung its praises 
 already. But it is one of the cities of the world ; it 
 has a population of over half a million ; it has its 
 churches, its chapels, its synagogues, its theatres, its 
 hotels ; it is as well furnished in most respects as 
 any other city of its size ; and these grey men yet 
 staunch in body, bronzed and bright-eyed, were 
 among the beginners of it. When I first visited 
 Melbourne I was introduced to a man who, between 
 the present site of the Roman Catholic Cathedral 
 and the present site of the Town Hall, had been 
 " bushed " for a whole day and lost in the virgin 
 forest. I knew already how young the city was, 
 how strangely rapid its growth had been ; but 
 I did not realise what I knew, and these elderly 
 strangers' bodily presence made my thought con- 
 crete. That beautifully appropriate and dramatic 
 finish struck the same chord of wonder, but with a 
 fuller sound. 
 
 The city is commonplace enough in itself, but 
 
 222
 
 Recollections 
 
 the Victorian, quite justifiably, refuses to think so. 
 Men come back from London, and Paris, and 
 Vienna, and New York, and think Melbourne the 
 finer for the contrast. In reality, it is very very far 
 from being so ; but it is useless to reason with 
 patriotism and its convictions. The men of Victoria 
 run devotion to their soil to an extreme. I was told 
 an exquisite story, for the truth of which I had a 
 solemn voucher, though it carries its evidences of 
 veracity and needs no bolstering from without. An 
 Australian-born — he came of course from that 
 Gascony of the Antipodes 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 young friend," said the 
 Englishman, when they had explored the noble 
 old building, "you have nothing like that in 
 Australia." "My word," said the colonial export, 
 " no fear ! You should just see the Scotch church 
 at Ballarat ! " 
 
 The tale is typical. I would tell it, in the hope 
 that he would find it an open-sesame to many 
 things, to any fair-minded and observant man who 
 was going out to Victoria. It is a litde outrageous 
 to the stranger, but in it the general public senti- 
 ment is drawn in grand outlines, magnified many 
 times, but not in the least caricatured. The 
 patriotic prejudice goes everywhere. It lives at the 
 very roots of life. Truthful men will tell you that 
 London is vilely supplied with cabs in comparison 
 with Melbourne. They believe it. They will tell 
 
 you that the flavours of English meats, game, fruits 
 
 223
 
 Recollections 
 
 and vegetables are vastly inferior to those they 
 know at home. And they believe it. To the un- 
 prejudiced observer Melbourne is the worst cabbed 
 city in the world, or amongst the worst. A gour- 
 met would find a residence in Australia a purgatory. 
 For my own part, I have learned in a variety of 
 rough schools at whatsoever meat I sit therewith to 
 be content. In matters of gourmandise I am content 
 wi' little and cantie wi' main 
 
 But, Shade of Savarin ! How I relish my 
 morning sole, after two years banishment from that 
 delicious creature ! How I savour my saddle of 
 mutton ! 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 to 
 the Victorian it is foolishness. Mr Sala preached 
 it years ago and the connoisseurs of the Greater 
 Britain of the south have never forgiven him. 
 
 Another patriotic delusion is the glorious climate. 
 The plain fact is that there is no such thing as a 
 climate. They take their weather in laminae, set on 
 end. You walk from the tropics to the pole in five 
 minutes. A meteorological astonishment lies in wait 
 at every corner of the street. It blows hot, it blows 
 cold, it scorches, it freezes, it rains, it shines, and 
 all within the compass of an hour. Yet these 
 wonderful Australians love their weather. Other 
 people would endure it. They brag about it. 
 I think they must be the happiest people in the 
 world. 
 
 By the way, I must qualify, before I forget to do 
 
 so, the judgment expressed above with respect to 
 
 the Australian table. I tasted in Adelaide a favour- 
 
 224
 
 Recollections 
 
 able specimen of the wild turkey, and I believe it to 
 be the noblest of game birds. Its flavour is exquisite 
 and you may carve at its bounteous breast for quite 
 a little army of diners. And the remembrance of 
 one friendly feast puts me in mind of many. Is there 
 anywhere else on the surface of our planet a hospi- 
 tality so generous, so free and boundless, as that ex- 
 tended to the stranorer in Australia.'* If there be I 
 have not known it. They meet you with so complete 
 a welcome. They envelop you with kindness. 
 There is no arrure pensee in their cordiality, no 
 touch lacking in sincerity. This is a characteristic 
 of the country. The native born Australian differs 
 in many respects from the original stock, but in this 
 particular he remains unchanged. You present a 
 letter of introduction and this makes you the im- 
 mediate friend of its recipient. He spares no pains 
 to learn what you desire and then his whole aim and 
 business in life for the moment is to fulfil your wishes. 
 Your host will probably be less polished than an 
 Enolishman livino- in a like house and boastino- an 
 equal income, but his bonhomie is unsurpassed. I 
 used to think there was nothino- like an Enorlish 
 
 o o 
 
 welcome. Australia has killed that bit of EnoHsh 
 prejudice. 
 
 This very openness of welcome, the sincerity of 
 heart in which your host stands before you, is the 
 means whereby the traveller first learns to be dis- 
 satisfied. He has come out with his own judgment 
 of things raying from him in all directions — a very 
 porcupine of pre-conception. He is not merely per- 
 suaded that the colonies are loyal but he is certain 
 
 they are loyal after his own conceptions of loyalty, 
 p 225
 
 Recollections 
 
 So long as he encounters only the old folks he will 
 find his pre-conceptions flattered, but he will not go 
 long before he meets a member of the A.N, A. 
 (which letters being interpreted signify the Australian 
 Natives Association), and then he must be prepared 
 to be astonished beyond measure. In a while, if he 
 be a man of sense, he will begin to see how natural 
 the position of the Australian native is, and then he 
 will cease to be astonished, though he may still be 
 grieved. The society is large and powerful. It in- 
 cludes within its ranks a great number of the most 
 capable of the rising men and the younger of those 
 already risen. Speaking broadly, its aspiration is 
 for a separate national life. It will " cut the painter " 
 — that is the phrase — which ties it to the old ship of 
 state. In its ranks are many who love the old 
 country and reverence its history and traditions, and 
 these an Englishman only remarks with a readier 
 excuse for what he must esteem an error. But there 
 are others, and the melancholy fact, too long concealed 
 or slighted, is that they are many and growing in 
 numbers, who hate England and all things English. 
 There are many, not stigmatised as dullards or as fools, 
 who publicly oppose the teaching of English history 
 in the State schools. The feelino- ao^ainst E no-land 
 is not a fantastical crank, it is a movement orowinp: 
 yearly in strength. I have seen men keeping their 
 seats in serious protesting silence when the health of 
 the Queen has been drunk at public banquets, and 
 have found in private converse that hundreds ap- 
 prove their action but do not follow it because they 
 dislike to be thought singular. The out-and-out 
 
 journalistic supporters of the country vilify the 
 
 226
 
 Recollections 
 
 mother country as a whole. They belittle its history 
 and besmirch its rulers. Loyal Australians pooh- 
 pooh these prints and entreat the stranger within 
 their gates to believe that they are despised and with- 
 out influence. The stranger has only to travel to 
 learn better than this. The strongest current of 
 Australian feeling is setting with the tide of growing 
 power against the mother country. 
 
 That this statement will excite ang-er and derision 
 in the minds of many Australians is certain. They 
 live entrenched in the flutters of their own opinion, 
 and are blind to the fact of the power which is 
 mustering against them. They are as little instructed 
 as to what is going on around them as we are at 
 home, and our ignorance of our great dependencies 
 is shameful and criminal. Our colonial governors, 
 from some of whom we are supposed ourselves to 
 learn something, and many of whom have been men 
 of especial capacity, do not come in contact with the 
 crowd. Lord Carrington saw more of the people 
 amongst whom he lived than any governor before 
 him, and I had from him a single story of a man of 
 the country who expressed in drunken Saxon his 
 opinion of existing forms of government ; but the 
 tale was jocularly told and was not supposed to have 
 any importance. It could have had no importance 
 to one who found it a single instance, as a governor 
 would be likely to do. A governor sees smooth 
 things. All sorts of people (except the working sort) 
 frequent his receptions — the fashionable classes, who 
 are far more loyal to England for the most part than 
 the English themselves, their fringe, and then the 
 
 wealthier of the tradespeople. It is proven every 
 
 227
 
 Recollections 
 
 day that a democracy is the happiest hunting ground 
 for a man with a title. The very rarity of the dis- 
 tinction makes it more precious to those who value 
 it, and the titled governors of one of our great 
 colonies occupies a position which is vastly higher in 
 public esteem than that of his fellow-noblemen at 
 home. He is the local fount of honour. To sit at 
 his table, and to be on terms of friendship with 
 him is to gratify the highest social ambition. He is 
 the direct representative of the Crown, and the people 
 who desire to associate with him must not have views 
 which are inimical to existing forms of government, 
 or, if they hold them, they must keep them carefully 
 concealed. The governor responds to the toast of 
 his own health and talks of those ties which bind and 
 must bind the mother country to her children. His 
 hearers are at one with him, and cheer him with 
 hearty vigour. Absence from the dear old land has 
 made their hearts grow fonder. Their loyalty is 
 perfervid. Everybody goes home in a sentimental 
 olow and the native born workino--man reads his 
 Sydney Bulletin over a long-sleever and execrates 
 the name of the country which bore his father and 
 mother. 
 
 The journal just named is very capably written 
 and edited. The brightest Australian verse and 
 the best Australian stories find their way into 
 its columns. Its illustrations are sometimes brilliant, 
 though the high standard is not always maintained. 
 And having thus spoken an honest mind in its 
 favour I leave myself at liberty to say that it is 
 probably the wrongest-headed and most mischievous 
 
 journal in the world. People try to treat it as a 
 
 228
 
 Recollections 
 
 negligible quantity when they disagree with it. But 
 I have seen as much of the surface of the country 
 and as much of its people as most men, and I have 
 found the pestilent print everywhere, and everywhere 
 have found it influential. For some time past it has 
 been telling- blood-curdling stories of the iniquities 
 of prison rule in Tasmania, with the tacit con- 
 clusion that nothing but the power of the working 
 classes makes a repetition of these atrocities impos- 
 sible. It compares the Russian Government with 
 the English, and compares it favourably. It loses 
 no opportunity of degrading all things English as 
 Eno-lish. E norland and the Eno^lishman are as red 
 rags to its bull-headed rage. Of course, its readers 
 are not all sincere, though doubtless some of them 
 are. Vast numbers of people who do not agree 
 with it read it for its stage and social gossip ; 
 but there is a class of working-men who take 
 its absurdities for gospel, and it is one of the 
 factors in the growing contempt for the mother 
 country which is noticeable amongst uninstructed 
 Australians. 
 
 Another and more potent factor is supplied by 
 Englishmen themselves. I have never in my life 
 known anything more offensively insolent than the 
 patronising tolerance which I have seen the travel- 
 ling Cockney extend to men of the colonies, who 
 were worth a thousand of him. I have seen an 
 Englishman unintentionally insult a host at his own 
 table, and set everybody on tenterhooks by his 
 blundering assumption that the colonists are neces- 
 sarily inferior to home-bred people. Nobody likes 
 
 this sort of thing. Nobody finds himself feeling 
 
 229
 
 Recollections 
 
 more kindly to the race which sends out that in- 
 tolerable kind of man. 
 
 " Met a girl the other day," says the eye-glassed 
 idiot, beaming fatuously round the table, " little 
 colonial girl, don't you know. She'd read George 
 Eliot. Never was more surprised in my life." And 
 this to a company of Australian ladies and gentle- 
 men bred and born. 
 
 This kind of person has his influence, and on 
 that ground he is to be regretted. The students 
 of men and manners find him as good as meat and 
 drink ; but we cannot all be Touchstones, and 
 perhaps, on the whole, it would be well if he were 
 buried. 
 
 Yet another and a still more potent factor is found 
 
 in the habit which prevails amongst English fathers 
 
 and o-uardians of sending^ out their incurable failures 
 
 to the Colonies. " You shall have one more chance, 
 
 sir, and it shall be the last. You shall have ^loo 
 
 and your passage out to Australia. This is the last 
 
 I shall do for you. Now go and never let me see 
 
 your face again." So the whisky-bitten vmirien 
 
 goes out to Melbourne, has an attack of delirium 
 
 tremens aboard ship, finds his 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 and masterful 
 
 voice, to the great and natural contentment of the 
 
 people of the country, pawns his belongings bit by 
 
 bit, loafs in search of the eleemosynary half-crown 
 
 or sixpence, and finally goes up country to be 
 
 loathed and despised as a tenderfoot, and to swell 
 
 230
 
 Recollections 
 
 the statistics of insanity and disease. The most 
 loyal and friendly of Australians resent this importa- 
 tion. The uninstructed and untravelled native 
 accepts him as a pattern Englishman, and the 
 satirical prints help out that conclusion in his mind. 
 There is no sienboard on the Australian continent 
 that rubbish of this sort may be shot there, and the 
 English tendency to throw its waste in that direction 
 has never been regarded in a friendly spirit. We 
 gave them our convicts for a start and now we give 
 them our most dangerous incapables. They do not 
 like this and will never be got to like it. At the Bluff 
 in New Zealand people show the stranger the southern- 
 most gas-lamp in the world. It is the correct thing 
 for the stranger 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 his son, 
 and say he has touched it, but as a rule he takes 
 the trouble to go down and do it. I was escorted 
 for this festal ceremony by a resident, and leaning 
 against that southernmost lamp-post was a Scot in 
 an abject state of drunkeness, and as Stevenson says 
 of a similar personage, " radiating dirt and humbug." 
 Nigh at hand was another drunkard, sitting pipe in 
 mouth on an upturned petroleum-tin, and the two 
 were conversing. " Et's a nice lettle coal'ny," said 
 the man against the lamp-post, "a very nice 
 lettle coal'ny, but it wants inergy, and it wants 
 interprlse, and it wants (hie) sobriety." He spoke 
 with a face of immeasurable gravity, and I laughed 
 so that I forgot to touch the lamp-post 
 
 There are countless little matters which help the 
 
 growing distaste for English people in the Aus- 
 
 231
 
 Recollections 
 
 tralian mind. Our London journals for the most 
 part leave us in profound ignorance of the colonies. 
 We see now and again a telegram which is Greek 
 to most of us, but we get no consecutive information 
 about our kindred over seas. 
 
 The colonists are perhaps curiously tender to the 
 feeling of the mother country and they resent this 
 indifference. It is difficult to express the varying 
 sentiments of a community, but in many respects 
 the Australia of to-day resembles the America 
 which Charles Dickens saw on his first visit. 
 There is an eager desire to ascertain the opinion of 
 the passing English visitor, and this exists inexplic- 
 ably enough even amongst the people who despise 
 the visitor, and the land from which he comes. 
 They ask for candour, but they are angry if you do 
 not praise. A good many of them, whilst just as 
 eager for judgment as the rest, resent praise as 
 patronage. It is certain that, in a very little while, 
 this raw sensitiveness will die away, and leave a 
 feeling of national security, which will not need to 
 be shored up by every wanderer's opinion. At 
 present the curiosity for the traveller's opinion is a 
 little embarrassing, and more than once I was re- 
 minded of a drawinof of Du Maurier's in Punch 
 where a big man standing over a little one de- 
 clares : "If any man told me that was not a Titian I 
 would knock him down, and I want your candid 
 opinion." 
 
 There is a stage of national hobbledehoyhood 
 and Australia has not yet grown out of it. 
 Vanity, shyness, an intermingling of tenderness 
 
 and contempt for outside opinion, a determination 
 
 232
 
 Recollections 
 
 to exact consideration before yielding it — all these 
 are characteristics. The working man is surly to 
 the man who is better dressed than himself, not 
 because he is naturally a surly fellow, but because 
 he has not yet found a less repellent fashion of 
 asserting independence. I shall come to the con- 
 sideration of the great colonial labour question by- 
 and-by, but the attitude of the working man is 
 curiously consonant with the monetary character- 
 istics of the land he lives in. Labour is orrowingr 
 towards such a manhood of freedom as has never 
 been achieved elsewhere. It, too, has reached the 
 hobbledehoy height and has all the signs which 
 mark that elevation, the brief aspirations, the 
 splendid unformed hopes, and the touchy irasci- 
 bility. 
 
 I have said what I can to justify the dislike of 
 England, but have by no means exhausted the 
 explanations of the fact. There are explanations 
 which do not justify and the most important of all 
 seems to me to come under that head. The 
 greatest danger to the contented union of the 
 Empire is the protecting of a selfishness so 
 abnormal as to excite anger and impatience. But 
 since anger and impatience are the worst weapons 
 with which it is possible to fight, it will be wise 
 to lay them by, and to discuss the question un- 
 emotionally. Australia is governed by the working 
 man. The workino^ man has g^ot hold of a orood 
 thing in Australia, and he has resolved to keep it 
 and, if he can, to make it better. He has got it 
 into his head that the one thing to be afraid of is 
 the influx of population. He takes no count of the 
 
 233
 
 Recollections 
 
 fact that all the wisest men of the country admit 
 the crying need of people — that labour everywhere 
 is needed for the development of giant resources. 
 His loaf is his, and he is quite righteously deter- 
 mined that no man shall take it from him. He is 
 not in the least degree determined that he shall 
 not take away another man's loaf; but that is a 
 different question. England is the one country in 
 the world which can, under existing circumstances, 
 or under circumstances easily conceivable, seek to 
 send any appreciable number of new people into 
 the colony. Therefore England is to be feared 
 and hated, and any scheme which may be pro- 
 mulgated in favour of further emigration is to be 
 resisted to the uttermost. Men talk of war as the 
 answer to an attempt to deplete by emigration the 
 overcrowded labour markets of the home country. 
 No public man who sets the least value upon his 
 position dares discuss this question. The feeling is 
 too deep-rooted and its manifestations are too 
 passionate. The scheme propounded by General 
 Booth afforded an opportunity for a striking mani- 
 festation of this fact. Long before the nature of 
 the scheme was known or guessed at, before any 
 of the safeguards surrounding it were hinted, it 
 was denounced from one end of the country to the 
 other. It is not my present business to express 
 any opinion as to the feasibility of the plan. The 
 point is that the mere mention of it was enough 
 to excite an intense and spontaneous opposition. 
 Australia will never, except under compulsion, 
 allow any large body of Englishmen to enter into 
 possession of any portion of her territories. The 
 
 234
 
 Recollections 
 
 ports for emigration on a large scale are finally and 
 definitely closed. 
 
 The population of Australia is 3,326,000. These 
 people have an area of 3,050,000 square miles 
 from which to draw the necessaries and luxuries 
 of life. Suppose it be allowed that one half the 
 entire country is not and will not be habitable 
 by man. Australians themselves would resent 
 this estimate as being shamelessly exaggerated, 
 but the supposition is, so far as the argument 
 goes, in their favour. Take away that imagined 
 useless half and every man, woman and child in 
 the community would still have very nearly half 
 a square mile of land if the country were equally 
 divided. It is evident that the populace is un- 
 equal to the proper exploitation of the continent. 
 Let them multiply as the human race never multi- 
 plied before and they must still remain unequal to 
 the task before them for many centuries. The cry 
 raised is that of " Australia for the Australians." 
 Well, who are the Australians ? Are they the men 
 of the old British stock who made the country what 
 it is, or the men who had the luck to be born to the 
 inheritance of a splendid position, for which they 
 have not toiled ? It is the honest simple truth, and 
 no man ought to be angry at the statement of it — 
 though many will be — that Australia was built up 
 by British enterprise and British money. It is a 
 British possession still, and without British pro- 
 tection, British gold, and the trade which exists 
 between it and Britain, would be in a bad way. 
 Looked at dispassionately, the cryof*' Australia for the 
 Australians " seems hardly reasonable. The mother 
 
 235
 
 Recollections 
 
 country has a right to something of a share in the 
 bargain. 
 
 The argument would be infinitely less strong if 
 the Australians were using Australia. But they are 
 not. The vast Melbourne, of which Victoria is so 
 proud, holds half the population of the colony, and 
 produces little or nothing. Melbourne is the city of 
 brass plates. There are more brass-plates to the 
 acre in the thorouoh fares which diverge from Collins 
 Street than could be found in any other city of the 
 world. The brass-plate, as all the world knows, is 
 the badge of the non-producer — the parasite, the 
 middleman, agent, call him what you will — the man 
 who wears a tall hat and black coat, and who lives 
 in a villa, and lives on and by the products of the 
 labour of others. As society is constituted he is an 
 essential when he exists in reasonable numbers. 
 In Melbourne his numbers are out of reason. For 
 almost every producer in Victoria there is a non- 
 producer in the capital. In the early days men 
 went into the country and set themselves to clear 
 and till the soil. That impulse of energy has died 
 out and a new one has succeeded it which is in- 
 finitely less profitable and wholesome. The tendency 
 is now towards the city. The one source of per- 
 manent wealth is neglected, and commerce and 
 speculation occupy the minds of men who fifty years 
 ago would have raised mutton and wool, corn and 
 wine. With every increase of growth in the great 
 city there is a cry for rural labour to preserve the 
 necessary balance of things. The call is not listened 
 to or answered, and Melbourne is a hundred times 
 
 more abnormal than London. London deals with 
 
 236
 
 Recollections 
 
 the trade of the world, and a good half of its 
 population could not be dispensed with. Within 
 its limits five and a half millions do the business 
 of a hundred millions. In Melbourne half a 
 million do the business of another half a million, 
 and the country necessarily suffers. No student 
 of social economy can deny the position, but the 
 workino- man will have it otherwise. He is 
 the ruler of Australia and the destinies of a 
 people, pointed out by nature for greatness, are 
 stationary in his hands. He is worth studying, 
 however, and to convince him may mean the salva- 
 tion of a continent. There, as here, the work- 
 ing man is the victim of a prodigious blunder — a 
 mistake so obvious that the on-looker wonders at 
 his blindness. A month or two ago he was in the 
 thick of a struggle which was everywhere called a 
 fight with capital. The real battle, however, was 
 never with capital for a moment. The one engage- 
 ment — and it ranged hotly all along the line for 
 months — was between organised and unorganised 
 labour, between the unionists and non-unionists. 
 Wherever a working man of the union declared 
 against the conditions imposed by the employer, a 
 working man outside the union accepted those con- 
 ditions. The capitalist changed his staff — that was 
 all. The unionists were thrown permanently out 
 of employment in large numbers, and when at last 
 the strike fizzled out, their leaders made a melan- 
 choly proclamation of victory, which deceived 
 nobody, not even themselves. The unionist clock 
 in Australia has been put back a year or two. It 
 is probable that the men will know with whom they 
 
 237
 
 Recollections 
 
 have to fight before they are again lured into con- 
 flict. It is an old adage that much will have more. 
 The Australian working man is the best fed, the 
 best paid, the best housed, and the least worked of 
 all the workers of the world. In the great towns 
 house rent is dear, much dearer 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 
 the ensuine nesflect of the resources of the land. 
 Clothing is dear as the consequence of protective 
 imposts. The Australian working man is a staunch 
 protectionist, being somehow persuaded that it is 
 essential to his interests that he should suffer for the 
 benefit of his only enemy, the middleman. There 
 are hundreds of restaurants in the second-rate streets 
 of colonial towns where you may see painted up a 
 legend, "All Meals — 6d." For that small sum a 
 man may have a sufficiency of hot or cold beef or 
 mutton, bread, tea and a choice of vegetables. I 
 can testify from personal knowledge that the meals 
 are well cooked, well served and plentiful. I have 
 eaten a worse luncheon in a London club or res- 
 taurant than I found at one of these eating-houses 
 in Sydney and have paid five times the price, 
 althoueh it has to be confessed that for five 
 times the price one can get a finer meal. More 
 wholesome or more plentiful fare no man need 
 ask for. 
 
 Well, as I have said, much will have more. 
 The working man has got his whole programme 
 filled up. There is one vote for one man, and 
 about that fact almost the whole land is jubilant — 
 
 though the practical good of it may as yet be a 
 
 238
 
 Recollections 
 
 problem. The aspiration expressed in the old 
 quatrain is fulfilled. 
 
 " 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 a magnificent annual 
 procession to commemorate it. It is announced 
 that a movement is to be set on foot for the further 
 reduction of the hours of labour. Six hours a day 
 has to be the limit of the future. The comic 
 journals, 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 these celestial visions 
 are out of the working man's eyeshot. 
 
 Here and there an individual may be found 
 who, being entrusted with an irresponsible power, 
 would not desire to use it tyrannically. But since 
 corporations are never so moral, so high-thinking 
 so forbearing as individuals, corporate bodies tend 
 always and everywhere to the misuse of their 
 powers, and demand constantly to be held in check 
 by some influence outside their own. The working 
 man of the Antipodes is told so 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 strikes which have lately shaken 
 Australian society may be of service. 
 
 In New Zealand, where, under conditions similar 
 
 239
 
 Recollections 
 
 to those of Victoria, New South Wales and 
 Queensland, the labourer has grown to think him- 
 self more worthy of his hire than anybody else 
 could possibly be, the fight between unionists and 
 non-unionists, with capital as an interested spec- 
 tator, began on a curiously trivial question. A 
 firm of printers and stationers in Christchurch 
 were ordered to reinstate or discharge an employee. 
 The firm declined to obey the mandate of the 
 union, and an order went forth from the repre- 
 sentatives of the latter body to the effect that no 
 one belonging to any of its branches should handle 
 the goods 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 the 
 government. The union appealed to the railway 
 commissioners to remain " neutral " and not to 
 carry the goods of the offending firm. The com- 
 missioners responded that they were the servants 
 of the public ; that it was not part of their business 
 to recognise the quarrel, but that it was their 
 business to carry for any and every citizen who 
 did not infringe their rules. The representatives 
 of the union renewed their appeal for "neutrality." 
 Why should these domineering commissioners take 
 the side of capital and fight in its interests ? The 
 commissioners again wrote that they were the 
 public carriers, that they had no right to refuse 
 to work for any law-abiding citizen, that they had 
 no place or part in the quarrel, and intended simply 
 and merely to do the duty for which they were 
 appointed. The din which arose on this final 
 
 declaration was at once melancholy and comic. 
 
 240
 
 Recollections 
 
 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 the 
 old country ! This was what we were coming to 
 after having emancipated ourselves from the tram- 
 mels of a dead or effete superstition ! Here was 
 a government so crassly wicked and purposely 
 blind as to profess neutrality and yet refuse to 
 fio-ht our batdes ! What had we — the workinof men 
 of New Zealand — asked for ? We asked that the 
 government should hold our enemy while we 
 punched him ; and while they traitorously pro- 
 claimed their 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 of office, and we will elect 
 men like Fish, who know what neutrality really 
 means ! 
 
 The Hon. Mr Fish was one of the labourers' 
 faithful. The palpable interference of the Com- 
 missioners wounded him profoundly. 
 
 The more recent strike of the Queensland 
 shearers has afforded opportunity for a display of 
 an equal faculty of logic and reasonableness. The 
 shearers, at loggerheads with the squatters, proposed 
 to arrange their differences by arson. They 
 threatened openly to fire the grass upon those 
 vast northern plains where fire is the thing most 
 to be dreaded amongst many and terrible enemies. 
 They not only threatened but they carried their 
 threats into effect in many places ; and but for 
 the exceptional rains, which mercifully interfered 
 
 Q 241
 
 Recollections 
 
 between them and their purpose, they would have 
 created scenes of boundless desolation. Here 
 again a government has no sense of fair-play. 
 Troops were sent to watch the shearers' camps 
 and to prevent active hostilities. A natural thrill 
 of horror ran through the country at this auto- 
 cratic and unwarrantable act. Here at the Anti- 
 podes we have founded a democracy, and in a 
 democracy the government motto should be non- 
 intervention. The unionist workmen roared with 
 indignation at countless meetings. Why were not 
 the shearers allowed to settle the dispute their 
 own way ? Why were the poor men to be 
 threatened, intimidated, bullied by armed force ? 
 A continent cried shame. When, in that eight 
 hours' procession to which I have already twice 
 referred the shearers' deputation rode by, they 
 were received with rolling applause all along 
 the line, and a free people cheered the victims 
 of oppression. 
 
 In the middle of all this madness it was o-ood 
 to see that the greatest of the democratic journals 
 had the courage of honesty and spoke its mind 
 plainly. The Melbourne Age is a very wealthy 
 and powerful journal, but it risked much, for 
 the moment at least, in opposing the mingled 
 voices of the populace. Excited leaders of the 
 people denounced it in unmeasured epithets, and 
 the crowd boo-hooed outside its offices in Collins 
 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 
 
 242
 
 Recollections 
 
 favourable word I can anywhere speak for the Aus- 
 traHan Colonies. The Press is amongst the best and 
 most notable in the world. The great journals of 
 Melbourne and Sydney are models of newspaper 
 conduct, and are nowhere to be surpassed for 
 extent and variety of information, for enterprise, 
 liberality, and sound adhesion to principle, or for 
 excellence of sub-editorial arrangement, or for 
 force, justice, and exactness in expression. It is 
 not only in the greater centres that the Press owns 
 and displays these admirable characteristics. 
 Adelaide, Brisbane, Dunedin, Christchurch, Auck- 
 land, Wellington have each journals of which no 
 city in the world need be ashamed ; and when the 
 limitations which surround them are taken into 
 consideration their excellence appears all the more 
 remarkable and praiseworthy. 
 
 It is not unnatural perhaps that a man trained 
 in English journalism and having worked in every 
 grade of it should esteem it highly. But allowing 
 all I can for personal prejudice and striving to 
 look impartially upon it and its rivals, I am com- 
 pelled to think it far and away the best in the 
 world. In Australia the high traditions of the 
 parent Press are preserved, and among many 
 strange and novel and perplexing signs one can 
 but gratefully and hopefully recognise the splendid 
 enterprise and the lofty sense of public obligation 
 which guide the youngest school of journalism in 
 the world. 
 
 In one respect Australian journalism surpasses 
 English. We have nothino^ to show which will 
 at all compare with the Australasian or the Leader ; 
 
 243
 
 Recollections 
 
 but it is easy to see that they and similar journals 
 of other cities (which are all worthy of the same 
 high praise) are established excellences to local 
 conditions. These great weekly issues give all 
 the week's news and all the striking articles which 
 have appeared in the daily 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 of general literature, 
 the chess-player, the squatter can most desire to 
 know. They provide for all sorts of tastes and 
 needs, and between their first sheet and their last, 
 they render to their readers what we in England 
 buy half a score of special journals to secure. The 
 reason for their existence is simple. There is not 
 population enough to support the specialist as we 
 know him at home, and an eager and enquiring 
 people will be served. 
 
 The first unescapable belief of the English 
 traveller is that the Australian is a transplanted 
 Englishman pure and simple. A residence of only 
 a few months kills that notion outright. Many new 
 characteristics present themselves. To arrest one 
 of the most noticeable — there is perhaps no such 
 pleasure-loving and pleasure-seeking people in the 
 world. I wish now I had thought of securing 
 trustworthy statistics with respect to the number of 
 people who present themselves on the colonial race- 
 courses within the limit of a year. It would be 
 interesting to know what proportion of the popula- 
 tion is oriven over to the breedinor and training- of 
 
 horseflesh and the riding of races. The Melbourne 
 
 244
 
 Recollections 
 
 people exult — and not unjustifiably — in the 
 Melbourne Cup and on the spectacle presented at 
 its running. That spectacle is quite unique as far 
 as I know. Neither the Derby nor the Grand Prix 
 can rival it for its view of packed humanity, and 
 neither can approach it for the decorous order of 
 the 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 church to 
 begin with. For a church you want a parson and a 
 parson must have a clerk. From this established 
 nucleus grows everything. In Australia they begin 
 with the race-course. This statement is not to be 
 accepted as a satiric fable, but as a literal fact. 
 Nearly two years ago, travelling in the Blue 
 Mountains — miles upon miles away from every- 
 where — I came upon a huge board erected in the 
 bush. The board bore this inscription, " Projected 
 road to site of intended race-course." There was 
 not a house visible, or the sio-n of the beofinnine of 
 a house, but half-an-hour later, in apparent virgin 
 forest, I found another board nailed to a bio- 
 eucalypt. It had a painted legend on it, setting 
 forth that these eligible building sites were to be let 
 or sold. The solemn forest stood everywhere, and 
 the advertisement of the eligible building sites was 
 the only evidence of man's presence. It was for 
 the benefit of future dwellers here that the road to 
 the site of the " intended race-course " had been 
 "projected." 
 
 Again there are more theatres and more theatre- 
 goers to the population than can probably be found 
 elsewhere. The houses and the performances are 
 
 245
 
 Recollections 
 
 alike admirable. Like the Americans, the 
 Australians endure many performances which would 
 not be thought tolerable in England, but they mount 
 their productions with great pomp and luxury. 
 Whatever is best in England finds an early render- 
 ing in the great cities, and for serious work the 
 g-eneral standard is as hip"h as in Paris or in London. 
 The Princess Theatre in Melbourne has given 
 renditions of comic opera which are not unfairly to 
 be compared, for dressing, mise-en-scdne and artistic 
 finish to those of the Savoy. The general taste is 
 for jollity, bright colour, cheerful music. Comedy 
 runs broader than it does at home and some of the 
 most excellent artists have learned a touch of 
 buffoonery. The public taste condones it, may even 
 be said to relish it to 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 things pleasant. 
 
 Outside the southernmost parts of Victoria 
 Australia has a climate, and the people can rejoice 
 in midnight picnics. In the glorious southern 
 moonlight one can read the small print of a news- 
 paper. The air is cool after the overwhelming 
 furnace of the day. The moonlight jaunts and 
 junketings are characteristic and pleasant, and 
 they offer an opportunity for the British matron 
 who flourishes there as here — heaven bless her 
 — to air her sense of morals in letters to the news- 
 papers. 
 
 The creed of athleticism speaks its latest word 
 
 here. The burial of poor young Searle, the champion 
 
 246
 
 Recollections 
 
 sculler of the world, was a remarkable and character- 
 istic sio^ht. That he was a orreat athlete and a sjood 
 fellow seems indisputable, but to the outsider the 
 feeling excited by his early and mournful death 
 looked disproportionate. Every newspaper, from 
 the stately Argus down to the smallest weekly organ 
 of the village sang his dying song. He was praised 
 and lamented out of reason, even for a champion 
 sculler. The regret seemed exaggerated. At his 
 funeral obsequies the streets were thronged, and 
 thousands followed in his train. It was mournful 
 that a young man should be struck down in the 
 pride and vigour of his strength. It is always 
 mournful that this should be so, but it is common, 
 and the passion of the lament provoked weariness. 
 The feeling was doubtless genuine, but it might 
 possibly have had 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. My 
 sympathies are with the old exploded prize-ring. 
 Rightly or wrongly, I trace the growth of crimes of 
 violence to the abolition of that glorious institution. 
 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 and forbearance. I am an 
 enthusiast, and being almost alone, am therefore 
 the more enthusiastic. But I grew tired of the 
 wild exultation in Slavin's prowess, the mad re- 
 joicing over a victory which meant less than it 
 would have done in the days which I am old 
 
 enoupfh to remember. In Australia better be an 
 
 24.7
 
 Recollections 
 
 athlete than almost anything, except perhaps a 
 millionaire. 
 
 Take the averao-e native and ask him what he 
 knows of Marcus Clarke, of James 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 you the names of the best bowler, 
 the best bat, the champion forward, the cunningest 
 of half-backs. The portraits of football players are 
 published by the dozen and the score, and the 
 native knows the names and achievements of every 
 man thus signalled out for honour. In England the 
 schoolboys would know all about these people, but 
 in Australia the world at large is interested. The 
 bank clerk who has a recognised position in a 
 football team enjoys professional privileges which 
 another may not claim. His athletic prowess 
 reflects upon him in his business. His manager 
 allows him holidays for his matches, and is 
 considerate with him with regard to hours for 
 training. 
 
 From all this one would naturally argue the 
 existence of a specially athletic people, but the con- 
 clusion is largely illusory. The worship of athleti- 
 cism breeds a professional or semi-professional class, 
 but it is surprising to know how little an effect it 
 has upon the crowd of city people who join in all 
 the rites of adoration. The popularity of the game 
 is answerable for the existence of the barracker 
 whose outward manifestations of the inward man 
 are as disagreeable as they well can be. The 
 barracker is the man who shouts for his own party, 
 
 and by yells of scorn and expletives of execration 
 
 248
 
 Recollections 
 
 seeks to daunt the side against which he has put 
 his money or his partisan aspirations. When he 
 gathers in his thousands, as he does at all matches 
 of importance, he is surprisingly objectionable. He 
 is fluent in oath and objurgation, cursing like an 
 inmate of the pit. This same man is orderly enough 
 at a race meeting and takes his pleasure mildly 
 there. 
 
 The barracker and the larrikin are akin. The 
 gamin of Paris, grown up to early manhood, fed on 
 three meat meals a day, supplied with plenteous 
 pocket money, and allowed to rule a tribe of tailors, 
 would be a larrikin. The New York hoodlum is a 
 larrikin with a difference. The British rough is a 
 larrikin also with a difference. The Australian 
 representative of the great blackguard tribe is better 
 dressed, better fed and more liberally provided in 
 all respects than his confrere of other nations. He 
 is the street bully, par excellence, inspired to this 
 tyranny by unfailing beef and beer. When Mr 
 Bumble heard of Oliver Twist's resistance to the 
 combined authority of Mrs Sowerberry and Char- 
 lotte and Noah Claypole, he repudiated the idea of 
 madness which was 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 is thereby inspired with ferocity. 
 Darwin, if I remember rightly, tells of a sheep 
 which was gradually accustomed to a flesh diet. 
 Its wool began to take the coarseness of hair and 
 the mild beast grew savage. The fore-runners of 
 
 the larrikin were never very sheep-like in all proba- 
 
 249
 
 Recollections 
 
 bility, for if one could trace his pedigree, it would in 
 most cases be found that he is the descendant of the 
 true British cad. But he has improved upon the 
 ancestral pattern and become a pest of formidable 
 characteristics and dimensions. The problem he 
 presents has never been faced, but it will have to be 
 met in one way or another before long. The 
 stranger is forced to the conclusion that magistrates 
 are absurdly lenient. I recall a case of some few 
 months agfo where a ^ancr of well-fed ruffians 
 assaulted an old man in Flinders Street, Melbourne. 
 The attack was shown to have been utterly unpro- 
 voked, and the victim's injuries were serious. Three 
 of the most active participators in the sport were 
 seized by the police and were each sent to prison 
 for six weeks, A sentence of six months, with a 
 brace of sound floggings thrown in, would have gone 
 nearer to meet the exigencies of the case ; but there 
 is a widespread objection to the use of the cat, the 
 aro-ument beino- that it is wrono^ to brutalise these 
 refined young men by its application. The same 
 spirit of false sentiment exists in England, but in a 
 less marked degree. 
 
 Crimes of violence are of exceptionally frequent 
 occurrence and it is still felt necessary to punish 
 rape by the imposition of the final penalty. 
 
 The democracy is determined to test itself 
 
 completely and female suffrage seems to be within 
 
 measurable distance. It is conceivable that it may 
 
 have a refining effect, and that it may act as a 
 
 curative, though the experiment is full of risk. 
 
 The one-man one-vote principle, together with the 
 
 payment of members of the legislative chambers, 
 
 250
 
 Recollections 
 
 has not, so far, achieved the happiest conceivable 
 results. The parliament of New South Wales is 
 occasionally notorious as a bear-garden. The late 
 Mr MacEhlone (who once informed the Speaker 
 that, when he encountered outside an honourable 
 gentleman, to whom the ruling of the chair com- 
 pelled him to apologise, he would "spit in his eye ") 
 has a worthy successor in the presence of a Mr 
 Crick. Sometime ago Mr Crick was expelled by 
 an indignant house, wearied of his prolonged in- 
 decencies of demeanour, but his constituency sent 
 him back untamed and rejoicing — his mission being 
 to prove that the Ministry was composed of thieves 
 and liars. The miserable charges dwindled into 
 nothing ; but one at least of his constituents is 
 persuaded that the debates, as printed in the news- 
 papers, would lose so much of sparkle if Mr Crick 
 were banished permanently from the house that the 
 breakfast enjoyment of the public more than atoned 
 for his presence there. The women are notoriously 
 deficient 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 federation of her several colonies. 
 Her determination to keep her population Euro- 
 pean can hardly fail of approval, but the immediate 
 work to her hand is to consolidate her own posses- 
 sions. The attempt to find material for six separate 
 parliaments in a population of three and a half 
 millions has, it must be confessed in all candour, 
 succeeded beyond reasonable expectations, but con- 
 centration will be of service. There will be a 
 
 251
 
 Recollections 
 
 laudable rivalry between the colonies which will 
 result in the choice of the fittest men, and a com- 
 bination parliament will be a more useful and 
 dignified body than has yet been assembled within 
 colonial limits. But this is one of the smallest of 
 the results to be anticipated. The ridiculous tariff 
 restrictions which now harass individuals and re- 
 strict commerce will pass away and with them the 
 foolish hatreds which exist between the rival 
 colonies. At present if one desire to anger a 
 Victorian he has only to praise New South Wales. 
 Would he wound a Sydneyite in the fifth rib, let 
 him laud Melbourne. There is a dispute pending 
 about the proprietorship of the Murray River. It 
 lies between the two colonies and New South 
 Wales claims it to the Victorian bank. When it 
 overflowed disastrously a couple of years ago, an 
 irate farmer on the Victorian side is said to have 
 written to Sir Henry Parkes, bidding him come 
 and pump the confounded river off his land, and 
 threatening to agitate for a duty (by the gallon) on 
 imported New South Wales water. The dispute is 
 nothing less than childish, but I have the personal 
 assurance of the leading statesman of New South 
 Wales that he is perfectly satisfied with the position. 
 It is probable that he sees in the existing riparian 
 rights a chance for a concession which may win 
 concessions in its turn. The Victorians are im- 
 minently dissatisfied and would seem to have a 
 right to be so. Federation is on all accounts to be 
 desired, but it has yet to be fought for, and will 
 only be gained with difficulty. Wise men long for 
 
 it, but the petty jealousies of rival states will hold 
 
 252
 
 Recollections 
 
 it back from its birth-time as long as delay is 
 possible. How infinitesimally small these jealousies 
 are nothing- short of a residence in the land can 
 teach anybody. Wisdom will have its way in the 
 lone run, but the belief of the veteran leader of 
 New South Wales, that he will live to see the 
 union of the Australian colonies, is a 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 downs which men experience, 
 breed a merciless courage which in some of its 
 manifestations is very fine. During my first stay 
 in Melbourne the waiter who attended to my wants 
 at Menzies' Hotel brought up, with something 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 a minute later beheld the 
 face of an old companion, a litde more grizzled and 
 wrinkled than I had last seen it, but otherwise un- 
 chanoed. When we had shaken hands and he was 
 seated, I found that he was dressed like a common 
 labourer ; and in answer to my inquiry he told me, 
 bravely and brightly, that he had fallen upon evil 
 times. " I should like a glass of champagne, old 
 man," said he when I asked him to refresh himself, 
 "and a square foot will run to enjoy it." We talked 
 away, and he told me of a history of success and 
 failure, and at last he explained the purpose of his 
 visit. He wished to hear the three lectures I was 
 advertised to deliver, and he had come to ask me 
 for a pass. " I shall not disgrace you, old boy," he 
 
 added, " I have been down on my luck for a couple 
 
 253
 
 Recollections 
 
 of years past but I am not going to stay where 
 I am, and / have kept 7ny dress clothes T 
 I do not know that I ever saw a finer bit of 
 unconscious courage, and the incident gave me 
 a certain faith in the spirit of the colonies 
 which has never left me. There is a gambling 
 element in it no doubt but the ever present sense 
 of hope is a great and valuable thing. It finds 
 such a place in a new country as it can never have 
 in an old one. The English gentleman who in 
 England had fallen to be a mere hewer of wood 
 and drawer of water would never have '* kept his 
 dress clothes." He would have known that he was 
 permanently under, but here the British pluck had 
 rational hope of recovery, and on that rational hope 
 survived and even flourished. 
 
 And this leads me back to that question of 
 the self-confidence of the Australian-born colonial 
 with which I started. Hope looks so sure, that 
 what Australia wants and has not it seems self- 
 evident in a little while she 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 in towns, would take the work that lies 
 before her nose and subdue the land and replenish 
 it ; and instead of shutting the gates deliberately 
 on rival labour, would draw the stranger to her 
 coasts and pour population on vast tracts of land 
 which now lie barren and unproductive, but only 
 wait for the hand of man to break into beauty 
 and yield riches. 
 
 In a hundred ways timidity would have been 
 criminal, but when one sees in what direction 
 
 254
 
 Recollections 
 
 courage and hope have led the way, and to what 
 effort they have prompted, a Httle over-confidence 
 looks pardonable. Everywhere the colonists have 
 worked for the future. They have made railways 
 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 nobler than present 
 needs can ask for. Generations to come will laud 
 the wisdom and the generosity of the men of the 
 last fifty years. In certain places there is an 
 admirable spirit of emulation amongst private 
 citizens who have set themselves to beautify the 
 towns in which they live. This is very notable 
 in Ballarat, where it has grown to be an excellent 
 fashion to present the town with statues. Should 
 that fashion continue and should the same spirit 
 of local patriotism prevail, Ballarat may grow to 
 be the Athens of the Southern Hemisphere. The 
 plan is a little large perhaps, but it is in the 
 colonial fashion, and one would willingly believe 
 in the chances of its ultimate justification. 
 
 The unborn generations will have to thank their 
 predecessors for some of the loveliest blessings of 
 the world. Every town has its gardens, the pro- 
 perty of the citizens. Those of Brisbane, Sydney, 
 and Adelaide are extensively beautiful. But more 
 beautiful than the orrounds themselves is the in- 
 scription which I found at the gates of the loveliest 
 of them all. I wish I had the ipsissima verba of it, 
 for it seemed to be characterised by an admirable 
 simplicity and directness. The sense of it is this, — 
 
 These gardens belong to the public and the owners are 
 requested to protect their property. 
 
 255
 
 Recollections 
 
 There to my mind speaks the true voice 
 of democracy, and that inscription afforded 
 me the pleasantest spectacle I saw in the 
 course of my two years pilgrimage through the 
 Australias. 
 
 256
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Mr Rudyard Kipling and Bruggksmith — New Zealand — Its 
 Climate — People — Fortune — Ned's CMim — 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 had 
 originally appeared in one of the great Anglo- Indian 
 journals. They were alike anonymous, but it was 
 quite evident that they came from the same hand. 
 A few months later they were known to be the work 
 of Rudyard Kipling ; and when I returned to 
 London the new writer was at the zenith of the 
 literary firmament and was shining there like a 
 comet. For the first few years of his career he 
 looked inexhaustible, and whilst he was still at his 
 most dazzling best, he produced a little master- 
 piece of roaring farce which, for sheer broad fun 
 and high animal spirits, surpasses anything else I 
 know in English fiction. The story is called 
 Bruggle smith. I myself read it and still read it 
 with intense enjoyment, dashed with a very singular 
 surprise, for the principal episode in that story had 
 actually happened to me some years before Mr 
 Kipling told it, and I had related it scores and scores 
 of times in public and in private. I have a theory 
 
 about this matter which I shall here make it my 
 R 257
 
 Recollections 
 
 business to unfold. But I must first relate my own 
 adventure. It was between Christmas Day and 
 New Year's Day, and I was dining quite alone 
 in the Grand Hotel at Dunedin, when a stranger 
 entered and took his seat beside me. I paid no 
 heed to him at first, but by and by he laid a hand 
 upon my sleeve and said : "I believe that you 
 are Mr David Christie Murray?" I pleaded guilty 
 and turning round to my companion found him to 
 be a person of a sea-faring aspect with a stubbly 
 beard of two or three days' growth. He was smartly 
 attired in a suit of blue pilot cloth with brass anchor 
 buttons, and there was a band of tarnished gold lace 
 around the peaked cap which he nursed upon his 
 knees. His accent was of the broadest Scotch and 
 his nationality was unmistakably to be read in his 
 sun-tanned, weather-beaten face. It was pretty 
 evident that he had been drinking, though he was 
 by no means drunk. "I'm proud and delighted be- 
 yond measure to meet ye," he began. " I hope ye'll 
 do me the honour to shake hands with me." He 
 went through the ceremony with great apparent 
 enthusiasm, and I had, indeed, some difficulty 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 my treasured companion ; 
 through mony and mony a lonely nicht on the rolling 
 ocean yer books hev been my treasured friends, and 
 mony and mony's the time I've laffed and cried over 
 ye. Mon, but I'm pleased and proud to meet ye — 
 pleased and proud." I expressed my gratification 
 at this statement as well as I could and he said, 
 
 suiting the action to the word : " Ye'll not mind my 
 
 258
 
 Recollections 
 
 ringing- for a glass of whisky ? I shall esteem it an 
 honour to take a glass with ye and to be able to 
 boast hereafter that ye once stood a drink to me." 
 He got his drink and absorbed it gravely, with a 
 wish that I might enjoy long life, health and pros- 
 perity. Now there was never a man who was 
 better pleased than I am to learn that he has given 
 pleasure to another by his work. I dare imitate 
 the candour of Oliver Wendell Holmes and confess 
 that I am fond of sweetmeats, but one can have too 
 much even of sugar-plums, and I was getting a little 
 weary of my friend's ecstatics when he began to 
 change his tone. "Perhaps," he said, "ye won't 
 think me impertinent if I say that your work is 
 sometimes curiously unequal. Ye've written a lot 
 in yer time that's very far from being worthy of ye. 
 D'ye know that, now I begin to think of it, I'm in- 
 clined to fancy that ye're aboot the most unequal 
 workman I've ever made myself familiarly acquainted 
 with." He maundered along on this theme for two- 
 or three minutes and at last he clinched the naiL 
 "A lot of what ye've done," he told me, "is the 
 merest piffle, and if ye were to ask me for a candid 
 judgment, I should say that ye've never written but 
 one work which has really expressed your genius. 
 I can't mind the name of it just at the moment, but 
 there's nae 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've got it — it's the only thing ye ever wrote that 
 maks ye worth your salt as a literairy mon and the 
 
 title of it is Lady Atcdleys Secret ! " 
 
 259
 
 Recollections 
 
 Now no man, neither Mr Kipling nor any other, 
 could possibly have evolved from his imagination 
 a story like that which had already, years ago, 
 translated itself into fact. Mr Kipling is a man of 
 such prodigious resource and experience that he 
 is the last man in the world to accuse of a plagiar- 
 ism. It is just within the bounds of possibility, 
 of course, that he may have heard some version 
 of my story, but the theory to which I cling is 
 that there was, somewhere about that time, a 
 Scottish ship's engineer who played off that particular 
 form of humour on two writing men whom chance 
 threw in his way, and that his victims were 
 Mr Kipling and myself. 
 
 I was confidently assured in Australia that I 
 
 might see New Zealand thoroughly in the course 
 
 of a two months' trip, and when I set out to visit 
 
 it, it was my purpose not to extend my stay greatly 
 
 beyond that limit. In effect, I found a year all 
 
 too little for my purpose. The physical aspects 
 
 of the country alone are so extraordinary and 
 
 delightful that a lover of nature finds it hard to 
 
 withdraw himself from the influence of their charm. 
 
 New Zealanders delight to speak of their country 
 
 as the Wonderland of the South, They are 
 
 justified, and more than justified. The northern 
 
 island is an amazement, but its gruesome volcanic 
 
 grotesqueries please less than the scenic splendours 
 
 of its southern neighbour. The sounds of the west 
 
 coast more than rival the Norwegian fjords. Te 
 
 Anau and Manipouri and Wakatipu are as fine as 
 
 the lakes of Switzerland. The forests, irreverently 
 
 called "bush," are beyond words for beauty. A 
 
 260
 
 Recollections 
 
 little energy, a little courage, might make New 
 Zealand the pet recreation ground of half the world. 
 The authorities are already filling its lakes with 
 trout, and will by-and-by people its forests with 
 game. There is a very large portion of country 
 which, except for purposes of sport and travel, 
 is not likely to be utilized by man. The lake trout 
 grow to enormous size, and as they multiply, and 
 food grows comparatively scarcer, they are learning 
 to take the fly. It was an understood thing for 
 years that there was no sport for the fly-fisher 
 with the trout at Wakatipu, but that theory has 
 died out, for the very simple reason that the facts 
 have altered. There is no reason in nature why 
 an acclimatisation society should not succeed in a 
 very few years in making the south-west portion 
 of the middle island an actual paradise to the 
 sportsman. It is the plain duty of New Zealand 
 to invite 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 remember any- 
 thing, the three avalanches I saw and heard 
 thundering down the side of Mount Pembroke 
 as I sat on a boat in the glassy waters of Milford 
 Sound. In many and many an hour I shall see 
 Wet- Jacket Arm and Dusky Sound again with 
 their vast precipices, luxuriant forests, and rejoicing 
 cataracts. I shall dream, thank heaven, of the awe 
 and worship I felt as the steamer crept round the 
 edge of Rat's Point, and little by little, one by one, 
 the white wonders of the Earnslaw ranee slid 
 into view, until at last the whole marvellous, 
 
 unspeakable panorama stood revealed, a spectacle 
 
 261
 
 Recollections 
 
 the world may perhaps rival elsewhere, but cannot 
 surpass. So long as I remember anything I 
 shall remember a summer day on the banks of the 
 Poseidon. I sat on a fallen log on the track which 
 leads to Lake Ada ; and the robins, in their beautiful 
 fearless unfamiliarity with man, perched on my feet, 
 and one feathered inquirer ventured even to my 
 knee. The sunlight steeped the thick foliage 
 overhead until the leaves shone transparent with 
 colours of topaz and of emerald. The moss on 
 the trees was silver-grey and vivid green, and there 
 were fungoids of vermilion and cadmium, and 
 scaly growths of pure cobalt blue ; the most amaz- 
 ing and prodigious riot of colour the mind can con- 
 ceive. The river ran below with many a caverned 
 undertone. 
 
 In Sir John Everett Millais' latest days, I met 
 him at a cricket match at Lord's, and made some 
 attempt to describe to him the truly indescribable 
 riot and glory of the colour of the New Zealand 
 forests. He turned to me with an odd mixture 
 of petulance and humour and asked me: "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 those splendours truly. 
 
 It is the desire of all good New Zealanders 
 that the beauties of their country should be adver- 
 tised. I offer this humble contribution to that 
 end with a willing heart. I shall be thankful to 
 my latest day to have seen those beauties which 
 I have been able only to hint at. The traveller 
 who misses New Zealand leaves unseen the country 
 
 which, take it all in all, is probably the loveliest 
 
 262
 
 Recollections 
 
 in the world. The climate varies from stern to 
 mild. That of Auckland is warm and sluggish ; 
 that of Dunedin keen, inspiring. Situate midway 
 between the two you find perfection. Napier will 
 be the sanatorium of that side of the world one 
 of these days. i\ll over New Zealand one meets 
 people who went out there to die, twenty, thirty, 
 forty years ago, and who are living yet, robust 
 and 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 favoured lands. Take 
 it in the main, the climate of New Zealand is 
 fairly represented by that of Great Britain. The 
 southern parts remind one of Scotland, the northern 
 of Devon and Cornwall. The variety of which 
 Lesser Britain has so much reason to complain is 
 absent. The British climate is idealised in New 
 Zealand. 
 
 This fact alone is one of the utmost importance 
 in the estimation of the future of the race. In 
 similar environment the British people have already 
 pretty clearly shown what they can do, and in 
 New Zealand I found myself absolutely unable 
 to trace the beginninof of a variation from the 
 British breed. Dunedin, allowing for an influx 
 of Southern Britons, might be Aberdeen ; Christ- 
 church, population and all, might be planted in 
 Warwickshire, and no tourist would know that it 
 was not indigenous there. They call their local 
 stream the Avon, and boating there some idle 
 summer days, I easily dreamed myself at home 
 again, and within bow-shot of the skyward-pointing 
 
 spire which covers the bones of Shakespeare. It 
 
 263
 
 Recollections 
 
 is, I believe, a fact that the stream is christened 
 after another river than that which owes its glamour 
 to the poet's name, but in a case of this kind mere 
 fact matters litde, and the inhabitants themselves 
 are, for the most part, quite willing to ignore it. 
 
 It was in New Zealand that I made my first 
 practical acquaintance with the stage. I have 
 already spoken of that remarkable child actor 
 whom I brought over to England and introduced 
 to the London public in my own comedy 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 was offered a 
 commission to write a play in which he should 
 be the principal figure. 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 threw myself into my task with so 
 much vigour that in a fortnight the comedy was 
 completed, and within a month from its inception 
 was produced at Auckland. Sir George Grey 
 who was then, though he had long retired from 
 office, the tutelary genius of the place, supplied 
 me with the means for the production of such a 
 stage illusion as can hardly have been seen else- 
 where. The second act of the comedy was sup- 
 posed to take place in the heart of the New Zea- 
 land bush. " That's a thing," said Sir George, 
 "which no scene-painter's brush can imitate; you 
 must have the real thing upon the boards." And 
 straightway he gave me an order for the cutting 
 down of any number of forest trees I might require 
 in his own orounds at Cawai, How these were 
 
 o 
 
 264
 
 Recollections 
 
 got into the theatre I do not remember, but the 
 scene produced by their aid was the most perfect 
 and beautiful I can remember to have seen. They 
 were braced by invisible wires, and the severed 
 trunks were concealed behind mounds of real forest 
 moss and cart-loads of last year's withered leaves. 
 There was an artificial waterfall on a level with 
 the upper entrance and the back cloth conveyed 
 the impression of an illimitable vista. As anybody 
 may guess who has the slightest knowledge of 
 work behind the scenes, the preparation of this 
 spectacle and its removal necessitated two tediously 
 protracted waits, but the audience appeared to think 
 that the show atoned for tedium, and our only 
 three performances in Auckland were an over- 
 whelming popular success. The author — good, easy 
 man — naturally attributed that success at the time 
 to the charm of the comedy, but though that went 
 well enough in other places later on, it never 
 afterwards secured the same enthusiastic acceptance. 
 It was the realism and originality of the forest 
 scene which did the trick. Its glories were 
 evanescent, and on the third night the characters, 
 who had moved amidst all the splendours of full 
 summer, were straying under brown and withered 
 autumn leaves. 
 
 There are few of us who have not discovered 
 that the affability of a distinguished man may be 
 amongst the most disagreeable of all human 
 characteristics, though when one encounters the real 
 thing which has its root in nature and not in policy 
 it is certainly amongst the most delightful. In Sir 
 
 George Grey one knew it instinctively to be 
 
 265
 
 Recollections 
 
 spontaneous ; the man seemed to have been born 
 out of his time ; he was a survival from another age, 
 In South Africa, South AustraHa and in New 
 Zealand he proved himself almost an ideal manipu- 
 lator of men, and wherever he went he reaped a 
 harvest of personal affection. Nobody meeting him 
 without a knowledge of his record would have 
 guessed that he was in the presence of a man dis- 
 tinguished alike as a diplomatist, a soldier and a 
 scholar ; he would have been conscious only of a 
 singularly unassuming urbanity and charm. His 
 manner with children was patriarchal. I was stroll- 
 ing one day during my stay in Auckland with that 
 child actor for whom I had written my comedy of 
 Ned's Chum, when we met the ex-governor of 
 the colony at the foot of Mount Eden, now a green 
 turfed slope and at one time a volcano. " Look 
 here," said the boy to the venerable welder of 
 Empire, "you take my ball and see how far you 
 can throw it uphill." "Certainly," said Sir George. 
 He threw the ball to a considerable distance and it 
 settled in a hollow on the hillside. The child raced 
 after it, and before he returned the veteran states- 
 man and myself had each forgotten all about him and 
 were deep in the history of Auckland. By-and-by the 
 young gentleman came back again and tugged at the 
 skirt of the diplomatist's frock coat. "I've been 
 standing up there," he complained, "for three or 
 four minutes calling coo-ee, and you never answered 
 once!" "Did I not?" the statesman answered, 
 "now that was very wrong of me. You try me 
 again and you will see that I shall not misbehave 
 
 myself next time." The child sped away in pursuit 
 
 266
 
 Recollections 
 
 of the ball which Sir George once more threw for 
 him, and in a little while we heard his call. The 
 old gentleman responded to it and the boy came 
 racing back to have the game repeated, and 
 throughout the whole of our ramble which lasted for 
 an hour or two, the game was carried on with a 
 tireless persistence on the child's side and an un- 
 flagging patience on Sir George's. He was talking 
 to me with s;-reat animation about the Maori leg-ends 
 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, I am sure, under the 
 impression that he was the one person of interest in 
 the party. 
 
 267
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 The Dreyfus Case— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Opinion— Meeting 
 at the Egyptian- Hall — Interview with Zola — Maitre Labori — 
 M. Henri Rochefort — Major Ester hazy. 
 
 One of my hobbies for the last forty years has 
 been the study of character in handwriting. It is 
 pretty much with the various forms of caligraphy 
 as it is with the human face or with the human 
 voice. The vast majority of faces that one sees are 
 essentially commonplace, but each has somehow 
 an individuality of its own. Handwriting has its 
 physiognomy, and everybody who has been accus- 
 tomed to a large correspondence knows how 
 instinctively and unfailingly he recognises a cali- 
 graphy which has been presented to him only 
 twice or thrice. It was as a result of my pursuit of 
 this hobby that I first began to take a real interest 
 in the Dreyfus case. When the first rough and 
 ready facsimiles of the famous Bordereau and of 
 the authentic letters of Captain Dreyfus were 
 published side by side, it struck me with an 
 immediate amazement to conceive that any person 
 who had given even the most casual attention to 
 this study of handwriting could possibly have 
 supposed that the various documents had emanated 
 
 from the same hand. The forgery of a signature 
 
 268
 
 Recollections 
 
 is one of the simplest businesses in the world, but 
 the truly deceptive forgery of a document of any 
 length is an absolute impossibility — an impossibility 
 as complete as would attend the continued personifi- 
 cation of a dual character by the most skilful mimic 
 under the observation of one who was able to 
 maintain a sustained and microscopic examination 
 of the two. 
 
 It was an article in the Strand Magazine com- 
 municated by that eminent statistician, Mr Holt 
 Schooling, which first enabled me to form a judgment 
 in this matter, and until it and its accompanying 
 photographs of original documents were brought 
 to my notice, I had taken no more than an ordinary 
 passing interest in the case. But since it had 
 been decided, on the strength of an imagined 
 resemblance between the handwriting of the 
 prisoner and that of the author of the Bordereau, 
 I had not a moment's hesitation in arriving at 
 the conclusion that the charge against him was 
 unfounded and absurd, and it seemed to me to 
 be no less than a duty to bring other people to 
 the conclusion which I so strongly 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 
 
 269
 
 Recollections 
 
 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 letters and the incriminating 
 Bordereau with a powerful magnifier, and in the 
 end I succeeded in establishing no fewer than 
 twenty-two distinct and characteristic differentia- 
 tions between them. I had already entered upon 
 the preparation of an alphabetical synopsis when 
 I learned of the existence of that work of monu- 
 mental patience and research which had been pre- 
 pared by Monsieur Bernard Lazare of Paris, 
 and a consultation of its pages showed me 
 that part of the work I had undertaken had 
 already been performed by Monsieur Gustave 
 Bridier, an acknowledged expert in handwriting 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 Mr J. N. 
 Maskelyne of the Egyptian Hall. He lent me 
 the use of the most powerful oxyhydrogen magnify- 
 ing lantern in London and prepared for me a great 
 screen on to which the photographs could be most 
 delicately and accurately thrown in an enormously 
 magnified form. Until the fact of my intended 
 demonstration was announced by the Press, I had 
 not the remotest idea as to the intense interest with 
 
 which the case was regarded by the British public. 
 
 270
 
 Recollections 
 
 I had caused it to be announced that anybody 
 desiring to be present might secure a ticket of 
 admission by forwarding to me a stamped directed 
 envelope. The Egyptian Hall seated about 360 
 people, and I received applications which would 
 certainly have enabled me to fill the vast auditorium 
 of the Albert Hall twice over. The result was that 
 I was enabled to make a choice, and when the night 
 arrived the litde hall was packed with the pick of 
 the brains of London, drawn from both Houses of 
 Parliament, from the Bench, the Bar, the diplomatic 
 services of Europe, the Royal Academy, the learned 
 professions generally and the Press of London. 
 When a page of the Bordereau was first thrown 
 upon the screen side by side with the authentic 
 handwriting of the prisoner at Devil's Island, I 
 knew that I had my work cut out for me, for 
 there were murmurs everywhere of " Identical ! " 
 " Damnatory ! " " That settles the whole question," 
 and so on. The mood of the audience was not to 
 be doubted for an instant, but I knew my case 
 and I was confident. Litde by litde, as demonstra- 
 tion succeeded demonstration, the temper changed, 
 and at the conclusion I achieved a triumph such as 
 I have never before or since enjoyed. I hope 
 sincerely that I do not take more credit to myself 
 for that night's work than I deserve, but so far as I 
 could judge there was not one of my hearers who 
 went away unconvinced. The Metropolitan Press 
 woke up and in its turn awakened the yet more in- 
 fluential journals of the provinces, who exert an 
 intenser as well as a narrower influence, and in a 
 
 very litde time there came a reverberating boom 
 
 271
 
 Recollections 
 
 in answer from the other side of the Atlantic. 
 Before the lecture was delivered I received many 
 threatening letters from truculent Frenchmen, who 
 regarded any foreign criticism of the evidence on 
 which Dreyfus had been found guilty as an insolent 
 assault upon the honour of the French army. Two 
 of my correspondents threatened me with assassina- 
 tion if I should dare to carry out my project, and 
 scores of them expressed themselves in terms of 
 indignation and contempt. The most popular idea 
 appeared to be that I was a hireling in the employ 
 of the Jews, and that I was being very handsomely 
 subsidized to take up the cudgels in a base and 
 disgraceful cause. I confess that I rather wished 
 that this idea of a subsidy were true, for in time 
 and money I had spent considerably more than I 
 could legitimately afford, but the truth remains that 
 Mr Maskelyne and I stood the whole racket and 
 that, so far as we were concerned, there might as 
 well have been no Israel in Great Britain or 
 outside it. 
 
 It was this incident in my career which brought 
 me acquainted with Emile Zola, for whose work I 
 had until that time felt a profound aversion. I do 
 not profess to be in sympathy with that work even 
 now, but I got to know the man and to recognise 
 his purpose. When he published in the pages of 
 L'Aurore, his famous article entitled "J'accuse," 
 and was brought to trial on account of it, I went 
 over to Paris, eager to meet him and to assure him 
 that the intelligence of the world outside the 
 boundaries of France was entirely with him. I 
 
 reached Paris a day before the trial was appointed 
 
 272
 
 Recollections 
 
 to begin, and I made my way at once to the office 
 of the Siec/e, where I appHed to my old friend, 
 Monsieur Yves Guyot, for an introduction. He 
 refused it flatly: "The man," he said, "is up to 
 his eyes in responsibilities and labour. Every 
 moment he can spare is given to consultation with 
 Maitre Labori, who is engaged to defend him, and 
 I must refuse in his own interest to trouble him 
 further." It was impossible not to recognise the 
 justice of Monsieur Guyot's plea, but when all was 
 said and done I felt that I was there as one of the 
 rank and file in a losing cause, and that I had 
 something of a right to be near my leader. " I 
 assure you," said M. Guyot, in parting from me, 
 "that nothing will persuade Zola to receive a 
 stranger at this time. He is one of those publicists 
 who hate publicity, and he knows you already as 
 one of the bitterest critics of his literary methods ; 
 it is quite hopeless to dream of bringing you 
 together now." In my perplexity I bethought me 
 of Monsieur Bernard Lazare who, as Zola's 
 acknowledged champion in the Press, was in 
 constant communication with him, and who had 
 sent to me an enthusiastic appreciation of the effect 
 of my London lecture. I went to see him and in 
 one minute over the telephone an interview was 
 arranged for six o'clock that evening. I was there 
 to the minute, but at the entrance to the Rue de 
 Bruxelles I was stopped by a posse of gendarmes 
 and subjected to a vigorous examination. Zola's 
 house was like a castle in a state of sieee. It 
 became evident later on that he was under police 
 protection and that it was felt necessary to guard 
 s 273
 
 Recollections 
 
 him against the violence of the mob, but it appeared 
 at first sight as if he were a pre-judged criminal 
 whose escape it was necessary to make impossible. 
 When the gates of the courtyard were at last 
 opened reluctantly to me, I was ushered into a 
 chamber which might have been one of the ex- 
 hibition rooms of a dealer in bric-a-brac. There 
 was a sedan chair in one corner, and it was 
 hardly possible to move without disturbing some 
 Japanese or Chinese grotesquerie in brass or 
 porcelain. 
 
 I waited here alone for half an hour and then in 
 came Zola with both hands hospitably outstretched. 
 " Vous parlez Fran9ais?" he began, " Bien ! " and 
 with that he thrust me to a sofa and talked as I 
 never heard man talk before. "We know all," he 
 said, by way of exordium, "all, all, all! and here is 
 the history of this lamentable case." That half- 
 forgotten American chronicler of English manners 
 — Mr N. P. W^illis — somewhere described Disraeli 
 as " talkinof as a racehorse runs." That was Zola's 
 way that evening ; he threw himself headlong into 
 his narrative and he talked with head and feet and 
 arms and shoulders. His speech was almost 
 incredibly brilliant and painted, but I have very 
 often thought since then that in the constant pre- 
 occupation of his mind with this one theme and the 
 constant repetition of the strongest points he had to 
 make, he had acquired, as it were, the faculty of 
 threading all his conversational pearls upon a single 
 string, and that he was, in fact, presenting himself 
 to his latest audience with a discourse which was 
 
 already finished and polished at Adunguen. He 
 
 274
 
 Recollections 
 
 gave me a description of the scene of Dreyfus's 
 public degradation on the Champ de Mars which 
 was Hke a chapter of Carlyle's Fj'ench Revolution 
 at first hand. It was crammed with detail and so 
 intensely dramatic that it made the scene live over 
 again. I asked him at last in surprise : " But 
 surely you were not there?" " No," he explained 
 eagerly, " I was not there, but you know my 
 method ; I have had the scene described by a 
 thousand eye-witnesses, and at last I have recon- 
 structed it for myself." He told me of the prospect 
 for the defence and described the man upon whom 
 the burden would mainly rest — "un veritable 
 geant," he told me with a voice to rally an army 
 in retreat. 
 
 I met Maitre Labori in Court next morning and 
 admired the cool intrepidity of his defence, though 
 it was only when he came to address the jury that 
 he gave us a real touch of his quality. I know 
 little of the French method of judicial procedure, 
 but anything more transparently hollow than the 
 pretence of justice which was offered to Emile Zola 
 it would not be easily possible to conceive. When- 
 ever the defending counsel put a question to any 
 one of the witnesses for the prosecution which bade 
 fair to touch the marrow of the case. Monsieur 
 Delesrorofue consulted with his colleaorues and 
 invariably closed the consultation by saying : " La 
 question ne sera pas passee." In that case it was 
 Labori's habit to answer : "I shall have to enter 
 an interpolation," which he did, to the effect that 
 the progress of the case was arrested for a space of 
 
 anything from five minutes to a quarter of an hour, 
 
 275
 
 Recollections 
 
 until he had drawn up his formal protest. Mean- 
 while the courtyard of the Palais de Justice was 
 rigorously closed against all who could not establish 
 a right to entry, but outside the railings a great 
 mob continually surged, and at such times as they 
 could escape from their scholastic labours an 
 army of students marched up and down singing : 
 " Conspuez Zola!" to a tune roughly based on the 
 air of " La Donna 6 mobile." Evening after even- 
 ing Zola and his defenders had to escape from the 
 court under the shelter of a cavalry escort, and on 
 occasion the crowd made an ugly rush in its effort 
 to get at them. 
 
 I was standing near the locked gate in the great 
 courtyard awaiting the outcoming party, when I 
 witnessed an episode which was very prettily 
 illustrative 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 know whether I was 
 in at the beginning of the altercation, or if it had 
 been led 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 but sufficing explana- 
 tion, the big man hit the little man on the obnoxious 
 feature and felled him to the pavement. There 
 was a bit of a student rush at that moment, and the 
 crowd went over the prostrate figure, but a detach- 
 ment 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 tattered and bleeding. 
 
 276
 
 Recollections 
 
 The sport of Jew-baiting went on quite merrily all 
 over Paris at this time, and on the Place Bouge, on 
 the Sunday afternoon on which M, Henri Rochefoit 
 elected to surrender himself to the prison authorities, 
 there was at least a score of merry little chases in 
 which a hundred or so of whooping and roaring 
 citizens would pursue some member of the un- 
 popular race until he found refuge amongst the 
 soldiery or the police, when he was 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 which serious mischief was inflicted 
 were rare. But the mob was in a highly explosive 
 state for all that, and any sturdy attempt at resist- 
 ance or self-defence might at any moment have led 
 to bloodshed. 
 
 The surrender of M. Rochefort was really, when 
 all things are considered, one of the drollest spec- 
 tacles I have ever seen. That venerable political 
 firebrand had been adjudged guilty of contempt 
 of court and had been sentenced to seven days* 
 imprisonment as a first-class misdemeanant. He 
 was mulct in some inconsiderable fine as well, and 
 he was allowed to suit his own convenience and 
 fancy as to the time and manner of surrender. He 
 chose to present himself to his gaolers on a Sunday, 
 and to arrive in an open carriage at the head of 
 a small procession. All Paris turned out to see 
 him. There were fifteen thousand troops along the 
 line of route, and fifty thousand more of all arms 
 quartered near at hand. Why there should have 
 been any necessity for the collection of such a force, 
 
 or for the provocation of a possible riot under the 
 
 277
 
 Recollections 
 
 conditions, it was difficult to see. The crowd groaned 
 and cheered with tremendous enthusiasm, and when 
 at last somebody waved a tri-colour flag from an 
 upper window, it went roaring mad with cries of 
 Vive Rochefort ! Vive la F7''a7ice ! Vive rarmee ! 
 In the end it dribbled away quite peacefully, over- 
 flowing into all the neighbouring cabarets, or trail- 
 ing off homeward through the dusk and mud. Here 
 and there a street orator found his chance and 
 gathered a crowd about him, but these were quietly 
 moved on by the police, and before seven o'clock, 
 that part of Paris had resumed its normal aspect. 
 I tried hard to discover some intelligible reason 
 for this curious outburst of popular feeling, but 
 I could find none except that the condition of 
 the popular mind was such that almost any excuse 
 for gathering in crowds, and indulging in noisy 
 cheers and groans, was welcome as a sort of safety 
 valve. 
 
 Whilst that travesty of a trial was going on, and 
 every suggestion in favour of the accused was being 
 trampled on, and every one of the chartered liars 
 who had sworn falsely for the honour of the army 
 was being bolstered by the authority of the court, 
 I had many opportunities for conversation with 
 Zola, and in the course of one of them, he offered 
 me an almost passionate justification of his literary 
 methods. He did not complain, he said, that he 
 had been misunderstood ; he had been charged with 
 being a pornographist and with revelling in filth 
 and horror for their own sake. " It is not so," he 
 declared, " but look you ! I love and revere this 
 
 beautiful and noble France, and I believe that she 
 
 278
 
 Recollections 
 
 has yet a splendid destiny before her. At this 
 moment she seems to he dead and drowned beneath 
 a river of Hes, but she will yet revive and justify 
 herself. I picture her," he went on, marching up 
 and down the room, "as a great suffering angel 
 stricken down by a disease which only a cruel 
 cautery can cure. It has been the aim and effort 
 of my life to apply 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 an approval of the methods he defended, 
 but it was absolutely impossible to doubt his 
 sincerity. 
 
 Two English journalists, who were at that time 
 resident in Paris and who felt strongly at the time 
 that the notorious Major Esterhazy was a much 
 maligned and injured man, engineered an interview 
 between him and myself. The major, it appeared, 
 was extremely anxious to be rightly understood by 
 the British public. He complained that on several 
 occasions he had consented to be interviewed by 
 the London Press and that in each case his state- 
 ments had been maliciously distorted. He asked 
 me if I would represent him truly and would allow 
 him to tell his story without comment. I made the 
 promise and, of course, I kept it, but as a matter of 
 fact he had no case to offer. He described the 
 general staff of the French army as un tas de 
 sc^Urats, and he alleged that he had been hounded 
 down by his enemies and betrayed by those who 
 had pretended to be his friends. As he talked he 
 leant forward in his chair, tapping the parquet 
 
 nervously with his walking-stick, and every now 
 
 279
 
 Recollections 
 
 and then sending a curiously furtive glance in my 
 
 direction, for all the world 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 the head of my regiment and to 
 
 march my men through Paris, and to shoot down 
 
 every Jew who lives in it. I would shoot them 
 
 down like rabbits, ' sans rancune et sans remords.' " 
 
 He flashed that stranore furtive olance at me and 
 
 took his walkinor-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 white and the 
 
 ceiling is white and the floor is white, and all my 
 
 enemies are there before me. I rush amonost 
 
 them with this stick only and I strike, and I strike, 
 
 and I strike until the walls are red and the ceiling 
 
 is red and the floor is red. Ah ! I shall have 
 
 my turn one day." I wired all this meaningless 
 
 farrago to the Daily News that night, but with 
 
 much more nonsense to the same effect, and on 
 
 the following day it was all duly printed. I mention 
 
 this little fact for a reason. In M. Anatole France's 
 
 novel, L' Anneau d Amethyste, which appeared 
 
 much later than the account of my interview with 
 
 Esterhazy, a character is introduced who talks 
 
 precisely in that gentleman's manner and who, 
 
 amongst other things, relates that identical dream ; 
 
 from which one sfathers that he must 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 like an actor recitinof 
 
 a familiar part than as if he spoke on the spur of 
 
 the moment. Later on, as everybody knows, he 
 
 280
 
 Recollections 
 
 sold a confession in which he proclaimed himself 
 the author of the Bordereau. Later still he re- 
 pudiated the confession, though by that time there 
 was no doubt in any sane man's mind that it was 
 true. So long as the affaire Dreyfus is remembered, 
 Esterhazy will in all likelihood be regarded as a 
 villain of the very deepest dye ; but so far as I can 
 make him out, he suffered merely from a total 
 absence of moral and mental responsibility. He 
 seems really to have persuaded himself that he 
 was an ill-used man, and until circumstances became 
 too strong for him, to have acted in accordance 
 with his own queer code of honour. 
 
 I have listened to many 'great speakers in my 
 time, but never to one who displayed such fire 
 and force and fluency and so wide an emotional 
 range as Maitre Labori. When he arose to address 
 the jury for the defence, he seemed to hurl himself 
 into his subject with every fibre of soul and body. 
 He gesticulated with all the vehemence of a man 
 engaged in a deadly bout with the rapier, and the 
 impetuous torrent of his speech dashed on as if 
 nothing- could arrest it. I remember thinkino- to 
 myself that 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 one point 
 of his speech he used the words : " Un heros comme 
 Zola." There were some two hundred privileged 
 spectators of the scene, all squeezed into a sort 
 of pen at the extreme end of the court, and nearly 
 everyone of them held a latchkey in readiness, so 
 that he mio-ht whistle down it if the orator afforded 
 
 any opportunity for derision. A shrill scream of 
 
 281
 
 Recollections 
 
 sound rose as Labori uttered the words. He 
 paused and faced squarely round upon his in- 
 terrupters, turning his back on the tribunal. The 
 clamour lasted for a minute and then died away, 
 and then with a cold incisiveness, in strano-e con- 
 trast with his previous manner, he addressed the 
 crowd. " I repeat the phrase — a hero like Zola. 
 I tell you that his courage, his honesty and his 
 devotion will be held in reverence by his country- 
 men long after you have sunk into your unre- 
 membered and unhonoured graves." He towered 
 there in silence for a full half minute and there was 
 not so much as a murmur of reply. " Eh bien ! " he 
 said, "je resume," and turning round to the tribunal 
 he took up his speech at the point at which it had 
 been arrested. The rebuke was enouofh ; he was 
 interrupted no more. 
 
 Zola read a statement in his own defence and 
 was in a condition of pitiable nervous agitation from 
 the beginning of it to the end. The foolscap pages 
 he held in his hand quivered as if they were stirred 
 by the hot air rising from a stove, and in his 
 anxiety to be heard throughout the court he pitched 
 his voice too high. In the middle of his address it 
 cracked harshly and the packed crowd at the end 
 of the court broke into derisive laughter. He too 
 turned upon the scoffers, but not as Labori had done 
 before him. He was not on his own ground as the 
 great advocate had been, and he seemed to search 
 for words that would not come. The incident, 
 however, seemed to brace him for a while and for 
 a minute or two he read in a firmer tone, though 
 
 that pathetic tremor of the papers he held still went 
 
 282
 
 Recollections 
 
 on and sometimes seemed to make it difficult for 
 him to read. 
 
 When at last the tragic farce was over, the 
 foreofone conclusion arrived at and the sentence of 
 fine and imprisonment pronounced, I found Zola 
 alone 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, "that one had only to light 
 the torch of Truth and to throw it into that pit of 
 darkness to make everything clear, but they have 
 stifled the flame with lies. It is finished, it is all 
 finished." I ventured to tell him that I could not 
 and would not believe it, that the verdict of the 
 Court of Cassation was the merest nothing in 
 comparison with the verdict of the world which 
 he had beyond doubt secured. France would come 
 to reason yet. He refused to be cheered, and 
 saying that he was in need of rest, bade me good- 
 night dispiritedly and went to bed. Now that the 
 trial was over I had no further business to detain 
 me in Paris, but I saw him by appointment next 
 day before I left for London. He was in full 
 fighting trim again. "We shall do something yet," 
 he said; "despair wins no battles and there are 
 still honest men in France." I made a farewell 
 call on Maitre Labori and found him so husky 
 that he could barely speak, but he poured scorn 
 on the idea that he had worn his voice by the 
 prodigious effort of that sustained relation. He 
 had been so imprudent as to drive home in the 
 
 humid air of a January evening and he had caught 
 
 283
 
 Recollections 
 
 a cold. For his own part he was quite sanguine of 
 ultimate success — not sanguine only, but assured. 
 "We shall win yet," he prophesied confidently. 
 " No cause ever failed in the long run which had 
 such an array of truth behind it." He might well 
 have added that no cause ever succeeded which 
 had behind it such a battalion of lies and liars as 
 was ranked upon the other side. 
 
 284
 
 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. 
 
 Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, 
 \^th 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 here- 
 by undertake to talk to you at tremendous length 
 the first time we meet ao-ain 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 
 
 285
 
 Recollections 
 
 find deliofht in the staofe, 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. 
 
 286
 
 Recollections 
 
 '^'^Htu'' 1} 
 
 SOX HILL. 
 
 DORKING. 
 
 
 vnts **nt>^ 
 
 %^h- -*'•'! K 
 
 QiM'i \\ <lA^j- L(^^^ 
 
 I o^ 
 
 / 
 
 /^ ^ r/^i6 ^ /A^ i^^^-c^ 
 
 ^ "^v / ''^'^-^^ r '^^t^^ '^
 
 Recollections 
 
 
 \^w^ ^ 
 
 ^^ 

 
 Recollections 
 
 '^c\A^ ^ W^ C^n^ ^^^ u^ !■ 
 
 I '/ 9
 
 Recollections 

 
 Recollections 
 
 Letter of Advice sent by a Distinguished American 
 to David Christie Murray prior to a visit to 
 America on a Lectu^Hnz 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 role marked 
 out for you by God. Stick to it, wear reasonably 
 conventional clothes, cultivate an intelligently con- 
 ventional aspect, and do not for your life say any- 
 thing 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 in- 
 heritor 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 
 
 291
 
 Recollections 
 
 is the suggestion of personal eccentricity, Bohem- 
 ianism, etc. The other is a disposition for criti- 
 cism 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 sub- 
 ject, mind — with any living being, from the bar- 
 tender 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 miser- 
 able 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., con- 
 gregate, and less scholarly but not less likeable 
 
 ordinary newspaper men. Live your life as much 
 
 292
 
 Recollections 
 
 as possible among these two classes. You will 
 catch swiftly enough the shades of difference be- 
 tween 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 un- 
 varying 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 un- 
 doubtedly God-damned uncivil brutes. That is 
 one of the unhappy conditions of our life there. 
 Dont 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 
 
 ^93
 
 Recollections 
 
 amiable about the Irish occurs to you. Because 
 here is a mysterious paradox. The American 
 always damns the Irishman. It is his foible. But 
 if an Eng^lishman 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 with 
 
 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 and 
 theatrical people. 
 
 4. Rebuff no interviewer. Be invariably 
 
 affable and reserved with him ; 
 talk literature to him, and reminis- 
 cences 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 it 
 
 immensely in others. 
 294
 
 Recollections 
 
 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 im- 
 press 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 pro- 
 fessional 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 oret back aofain 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. 
 
 295
 
 Recollections 
 
 Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, 
 Zth 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 pate 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. 
 
 296
 
 Recollections 
 
 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 Ano-lo-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 magnani- 
 mous 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 o-uineas towards its realisation. — 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 (Sgd.) A. CoNAN Doyle. 
 
 297
 
 Recollections 
 
 Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, 
 A,th May 1897. 
 
 40 Princes Gardens, S.W. 
 
 Dear Sir, — I have to acknowledge with thanks 
 the receipt of your letter of May ist. 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 distin- 
 guished 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. 
 
 298
 
 Recollections 
 
 li^CILn. V^t c^ f^^^JU^y yxX^ o S— ^ ^
 
 Recollections 
 
 ^'^^^^^"^ ^r^' ^'^^""^"^ 2'^A/^T^^ 
 
 UCli( ^L_. C^Ul. ^ '^'^ 
 
 u
 
 Recollections
 
 Recollections 
 
 
 I 
 
 !• ? J
 
 Recollections 
 
 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 gready 
 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 dim- 
 inutive) 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. 
 
 303
 
 Recollections 
 
 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. 
 
 304
 
 Recollections 
 
 Cot)y of Letter to David Christie JMurray [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 sufTerino- from critical kindness so much 
 
 o 
 
 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 JViudozu in Thriinis, 
 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 i6th to the 
 26th it is pre-empted. — With all kind remembrances, 
 yours very truly, 
 
 (Sgd.) A. CoNAN Doyle 
 
 u 30s
 
 Recollections 
 
 Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, 
 gtk 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. Thou- 
 sands 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 
 
 306
 
 Recollections 
 
 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 A be lard, 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 pre- 
 sumptuous, 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 deter- 
 mination. 
 
 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. 
 
 307
 
 Recollections 
 
 Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray, 
 I'jthjune 1897. 
 
 Dear Murray, — I am getting so weary of con- 
 troversy 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. 
 
 308
 
 Recollections 
 
 Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray^ Sept. i st. 
 
 " 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 too^ether 
 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 o-ood writinor that the Star news- 
 paper 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 cdlebres 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. 
 309
 
 Recollections 
 
 Copy of Letter to David Christie Murray^ 
 I'jtk 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 to- 
 night 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. 
 
 310
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Sixtieth Birthday 
 
 Yesterday I attained my sixtieth birthday. It is 
 not yet old age, but the posting-stations between 
 old age and myself grow fewer with what looks like 
 a bewildering rapidity. The years are shorter than 
 they used to be. What a length lay between the 
 anniversaries of childhood and even those of young 
 manhood ! How little tedious was the road ! And 
 now how brief and tiresome has the journey from 
 one point to another grown to seem ! One turns 
 and glances back on the traversed road, "looking 
 over Time's crupper and over his tail," as the elder 
 Hood put it, and it looks like a ribboned path 
 through a cemetery. The little child-wife and the 
 baby lie yonder far away. Nearer, and yet afar off, 
 the grey old father is asleep. There, between them, 
 is the lad with whom I shared all my early joy in 
 books. Oh ! the raptured miles we walked, seeing 
 each other home by turns, till long after midnight, 
 each exposing to the other's view the jewels 
 gathered in the past few days. The memorial 
 stones are everywhere, and they grow thicker as 
 the road winds on. And saddest of all are the 
 places where one sees the tokens, not of lost friends 
 but of dead ideals. Here a faith laid itself down, 
 tired out, and went to sleep for good and all. A 
 
 311
 
 Recollections 
 
 cypress marks the place, to my fancy, Here a 
 hope made up its mind that it was not worth while 
 to hope any 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 a starry night ; and one asks, in a mood 
 of some despondency, what one has got to show for 
 it all ? — the loss, the pain, the disappointment, the 
 disillusion. But, come now, let us look the thing 
 fairly and squarely in the face. Is not Despondency 
 disposed to state her case somewhat too emphatic- 
 ally ? Am I, or am I not, flatly exaggerating in 
 this summary of losses ? 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 left 
 anything, at most, but a humanising tenderness in 
 my memory ? She is a pretty and engaging recol- 
 lection, and has been no more at any time for whole 
 decades, and to pretend that she is a grief is frankly 
 to import humbug into sentiment. And what had I 
 but a sense of pious thanksgiving when my grey old 
 father laid down the weary burden of many years 
 and the crushing pains of hernia, and the breathless 
 agonies of a dreadful asthma? If I pretend that I 
 would willingly have stretched him out longer on 
 the rack of this tough world, I am no better than a 
 sentimental liar to myself. I know in my heart of 
 hearts that I was glad to let him go. And the lost 
 faith ? I believe with all my soul that I have found 
 a better. And the lost ambitions ? What were 
 
 they but a baby's crying for the moon ? There was 
 
 312
 
 Recollections 
 
 a time when I could say with Will Waterproof, 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 at the present time of life 
 to sit down and grizzle because one proved in the 
 long run not to be a poet. I will not deny a certain 
 inevitable melancholy in the retrospect, taking it all 
 round. Yet even whilst I feel this, there is an 
 inward protest. The loss is not all loss. The game 
 of life is one in which we gain by losing, and lose 
 by gaining. In The Ghost's Bargain with the 
 Haimted Man it was a part of the agreement that 
 the man should forget all the sorrows he had ever 
 known. In that atrophy of the heart which followed 
 in that frozen seal which bound down every rill of 
 human sympathy and pity, I know that there is the 
 presentment of a great and lasting truth. No man's 
 nature is ripened until he has known many griefs 
 and losses, nor will it ripen until they have bitten 
 into him as frost bites into the fallow earth to 
 fertilise it, and opens it to the uses of sun and air 
 and rain. 
 
 There are, of course, things quite apart from loss 
 and the destruction of old ideals which encumber 
 the path of coming of age with troubles of one sort 
 or another. The air is thick with the shadows of 
 regret. It is seventeen years since I shot my first 
 wild boar, and more than fifteen since the last deer ;
 
 Recollections 
 
 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 pah of the King's Country in New 
 Zealand, and I have never crossed a horse since 
 then. It is a quarter of a century since I saw the 
 heights of Tashkesen, and heard the Turkish and 
 Russian guns roaring defiance at each other ; and 
 the sporting days, and the exploring days, and the 
 fighting days are all over. I shall never again 
 stand knee-deep in snow through the patient 
 hours waiting for the forest quarry to break cover. 
 Think of the ensuing lumbago ! I shall hear the 
 thrilling boom of the big guns no more. I shall 
 never again penetrate into the freshness of a virgin 
 land. I shall see no more the hammer of the mid- 
 day sun beat its great splashes of light from the 
 snow-clad summits of the Rockies and the Selkirks. 
 The long and the short of it is that I am transformed 
 from my old estate of globe-trotter and observer of 
 events and nature into the land of suburban old 
 fogeydom, and the point to touch, so far as I am 
 personally engaged, is whether really and truly I do 
 very much and deeply regret the change. Not very 
 deeply, after all, I am disposed to think. His work- 
 shop bounds all to the old fogey who has lived out 
 a great many of his friendships, but within its limits 
 what sights may he not see ? Calais, first seen of 
 Continental towns, is still a possession of my own. 
 The Paris of 1872 is mine, the Rhine and the Rhine 
 fall, Vienna, Berlin, the Alps — the Austrian Alps, 
 the Australian and New Zealand Alps — they are all 
 mine. Kicking Horse River is mine, and the steely 
 whirl of the lower rapids of Niagara before they 
 
 314
 
 Recollections 
 
 reach the fall. And, in clear view of the ideals 
 which would shake me from my seat, I have but 
 one answer to offer them. My shabby study arm- 
 chair is the seat from which I look compassion on a 
 struggling world, as a man fairly drowned and 
 accepting his fate might look on fellow mariners yet 
 only in process of drowning. Fill the mind with 
 memories of things whole-heartedly attempted ! 
 You have failed or half-failed. Everybody has 
 failed or half-failed who ever tried to do anything 
 worth doing. You are not more unblest than the 
 average of your kind. 
 
 315
 
 Index 
 
 A Bad Lot, 1 89 
 A Lifers Atonement, 190 
 America, Advice on Visiting, 291 
 An Old Meerschautn, 107 
 Aunt Rachel, 7 7 
 
 B 
 
 Baker, Valentine, 155 
 Barrie, J. M., 285 
 Beaconsfield, Lord, see Disraeli 
 Benecia Boy, The, 29 
 Bertram, Charles, 186 
 Birmingha77i Alorning Neivs, 75, 
 
 97. 189 
 "Bobbies," 22 
 Booth, General, 234 
 Bridier, M. Gustave, 270 
 Bright, M.P., Rt. Hon. John, 87, 
 
 134 
 Buchanan, Robert, 308, 309 
 Burdett Coutts, Baroness, 174 
 Burke, Sir Bernard, 15 
 Burleigh, Mr Bennett, 153 
 Burnand, Sir Francis, 187 
 Burt, M.P., Rt. Hon. Thomas, 
 
 123 
 Byrne, Leo, 187 
 
 Campbell, Col. Archibald 
 (Schipka), 144, 157, 162 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 34, 109 
 Carrington, Lord, 227 
 Chamberlain, M.P., Rt. Hon. 
 
 Joseph, 298 
 Chambers' s Journal, 3 1 
 Christie, David, 48 
 Collins, Wilkie, 202 
 Copperfield, David, 191 
 
 D 
 
 Daily News, 98, 118 
 
 Dale, Dr R. W., 87 
 
 Dawson, George, 70, 75, 84 etscq., 
 
 no, 114 
 Devil, The Dudley, 1 7 
 Dickens, Charles, 45 et seq. 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, 84, iK^et seq., 
 
 130, 131, 185 
 Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 200, 
 
 269, 296, 297, 304, 305 
 Dreyfus, Captain (now Major), 
 
 268 ^/ seq. 
 
 E 
 
 Esterhazy, Major, 279 
 
 Fawcett, Sir John, 165 
 
 Forbes, Archibald, 92, 96, loi, 
 
 146 
 France, M. Anatole, 280 
 
 Z^7
 
 Ind 
 
 ex 
 
 Gentleinarh Magazifie, loi 
 Gilfillan, George, 86 
 Gladstone, M.P., Rt. Hon. W. E., 
 
 138 eiseq., 183 et seq. 
 Gosse, Mr Edmund, 303 
 Gourko, General, 161, 181 
 Gowing, Richard, loi 
 Grace, Forbeach, 202 
 Grey, Sir George, 264 et seq. 
 Gueschoffs, The, 167 et seq. 
 Guyot, M. Yves, 273 
 
 H 
 
 Hall, K. C., Mr E. Marshall, 310 
 Hatton, Mr Joseph, 72 
 Henty, Major, 96 
 Hocking, Mr Joseph, 306 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 259 
 Hopetoun, Lord, 222 
 Hood, Tom, 96 
 Hughes, Edmund, 70 
 
 Ibrahim, Pasha, 168 
 Illustrated Midland Netvs, 10 1 
 Irving, Sir Henry, 187 
 
 J 
 
 Jerrold, Evelyn, 96 
 Joseph's Coat, 202, 207 
 
 K 
 
 Keenan, Col., 141 
 Kenealy, Dr, 67, 125 et seq. 
 Kerr, Mr Commissioner, 67 
 
 Kipling, Mr Rudyard, 257 
 Knowles, Sheridan, 49 
 
 Labori, Maitre, 275 
 Laird, Sir Arthur, 168 
 Lawson, M.P., Sir Wilfrid, 126 
 Lazare, M. Bernard, 270, 273 
 Liddon, Canon, 181 et seq. 
 Lind, Jenny, 55 
 Lovell, John, 100 
 Lowe, Robert (Viscount Sher- 
 
 brooke), 119, 135 
 Lyttelton, Lord, 193 
 
 M 
 
 Marmion, 49 
 Maskelyne, Mr J. N., 270 
 Maynard, Hon. Horace, 169 
 Melbourne Age, 242, 257 
 Meredith, George, 287 
 Millais, Sir John Everett, 262 
 Methodist, The Reformed, 21 
 Moonstofie, The, 202 
 Moore, Dr Bond, 148, 180 
 Morisot, Captain Tiburse, 143 
 Mornifig Advertiser, 97 
 Murrays, The, 14 
 
 N 
 
 Neas, Walter, 94 
 Ned's Chum, 187, 266 
 Nevvdigate, M.P., Mr, 115, 128 
 
 O 
 
 O'Hanlon, Jack, 137 
 
 Our Mutual Friend, 48, 49 
 
 318
 
 Ind 
 
 ex 
 
 Payn, Mr James, 2 1 1 
 Pearce, Mr Robert, 24, 25 
 Perry, Mr William, 28 
 
 R 
 
 Rainbow Gold, 211 
 Randall, Alfred, 80 
 Reade, Charles, 197 et seq. 
 Richards, Col., 97 
 Robinson, Sir John, 137, 138 
 Rochefort, M. Henri, 277 
 Ruskin, John, 11 
 
 Sala, George Augustus, 107 
 
 Sampson, Henry, 96 
 
 Sartor Resartus, 34 
 
 Savage Club, The, 145 
 
 Sayers, Tom, 29 
 
 School Board Chronicle, The, 10 1 
 
 Schooling, Mr Holt, 269 
 
 Shakespeare, 33 
 
 Shute, Sir Charles Cameron, 65 
 
 Skeleton Keys, 197 
 
 Slasher, Tipton, 28, 30 
 
 Slavin, Frank, 247 
 
 Smith, James, 102 
 
 Smith, J. F., 32 
 
 Spencer, Sir Ernest, 24 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 299 
 
 St John, Percy B., 31, 34 
 
 Stoker, Mr Bram, 188 
 
 Sulieman, Pasha, t6i 
 Swinburne, A. C, 20 
 Sydney Bulletin, The, 228 
 
 Thomson, Capt. William, 175 
 
 U 
 
 Unwin Bros., 53 
 
 W 
 
 Waddy, Q.C, Mr Samuel, 67 
 Wednesbury Advertiser, 69 
 Wesley, John, 39 
 Williams, Charles, 97 
 Woodhall, M.P., Mr William, 186 
 WooUey, Tom, 25 
 World, The, 97, 103 
 Wrench, Vice-Consul, 166 
 Wright, John Skirrow, 87 
 
 Yates, Edmund, 74, 97, loi, 
 104, 107, 189 
 
 Zola, M. Emile, 272 et seq. 
 
 319
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 COLSTON AND CO. LTD., 
 
 PRINTERS
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 WMterubrary 
 
 LOANS 
 
 SEP 2.P 197 
 
 DUE TWO WEEKS FROiVl DATE 
 
 -u i.«u vvLtao tnum UAIt UF RECEIP 
 
 OF RECEIPT 
 
 f-.f 
 
 APR 4 
 
 A. 
 
 
 J 
 
 1977 
 
 «J 
 
 M^,^\^^^ 
 
 Form L9-30m-ll,'58(,8268s4)444
 
 Mcitir,' 
 
 AA 000 381 179 
 
 PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE 
 THIS BOOK CARD ^ 
 
 ^1 ir:% - 
 
 %0JIIV0JO^ 
 
 University Research Library 
 
 a 
 
 s 
 
 _J