CHAPTER XV.
THE FIRST LIBERAL IMPERIALIST.
Forster a Pioneer of Liberal Imperialism—His Political Courage—His
Unfortunate Manner—His Home Life—Intrigues in the Cabinet—The Plots
against Forster's Life—Reaction in his Favour—Forster and Lord
Hartington—The Former's Grief for Gordon—Forster and Lord Rosebery—Mr.
Stead and the Pall Mall Gazette—His Responsibility for the Gordon
Imbroglio.
I should like to dwell upon my visits to Forster at his own home at Wharfeside, and to describe the frank, wholesome talk which I had there on many different occasions with the master of the house; but the talk was private, I made no notes of it at the time, and it is better that I should make no attempt to recall it now. This, however, I will say, in justice to Forster himself. During all my intercourse with him I never heard him utter a harsh word or give expression to an unworthy sentiment. No public man of his day was more cruelly misunderstood by his contemporaries. It had become a sort of tradition among the followers of Mr. Chamberlain, and among others who ought to have known better, that Forster was not even a genuine Liberal. He was supposed to be a trimmer and a time-server, and all manner of ignoble jealousies were attributed to him. I know, not only from many repeated conversations with him, but from acts of his which never reached the public, how deep and genuine was his faith in Liberal principles, how exalted and far-extended his belief in the application and development of those principles. He was the first man of eminence to attempt to bring home to the mind of the nation the greatness of its Imperial duties and responsibilities. It was he who, in the days when he was a discarded Minister, sowed the seed which is now bringing forth fruit in the shape of that unity of the Empire for which others, who came but yesterday into the field, are, with a great flourish of trumpets, claiming the credit.
The man who was scornfully described as "the great trimmer" was the most absolutely fearless man in political life I have ever known. I remember his coming to me when the question of extending Household Suffrage to the residents in the counties was first being broached in Parliament. He told me that he meant to move a resolution extending the measure to Ireland. No other statesman of importance had at that time suggested such a step, whilst Lord Hartington had openly denounced it. I implored him to leave such a measure, which was certain to be unpopular with that section of the party which had been most favourable to him, to somebody else. "You have suffered enough already for Ireland," I said. "Let somebody else knock his head against this stone wall." "Who else will do it?" he replied. "The thing is right, and it must be done. As for your stone wall, I have never been afraid of being the first man over a fence." Trimmer, indeed! As for his alleged jealousy of the men who were treading on his heels, I can only say that I never heard a syllable from his lips which gave countenance to this charge against him. Always frank and outspoken, he was at the same time invariably generous in his judgments upon his colleagues and his rivals. Rancour he never cherished, and he could forgive those who had injured him far more freely than most men I have known.
I have spoken of his manner. This was, I think, his great misfortune. Again and again he offended men who were brought into contact with him by his bluntness of speech, and by his disregard of the mere niceties of deportment. I have heard him denounced as "a heartless ruffian" by someone who had suffered from an apparent lack of courtesy on his part. All the time Forster was absolutely unconscious of having given offence, and when his attention was called to the fact that he had wounded someone by his manner, he was filled with distress. One day an eminent publicist who had cruelly misjudged and misrepresented Forster came to me in the Reform Club and asked if I had ever stayed at Wharfeside. I replied in the affirmative. "Then," said my friend, "you can perhaps tell me if what I hear is true. I am told that, rude and bearish as he is to people who meet him casually, it is nothing in comparison with his brutality in his own house, and especially to his wife." Angry as I was at this charge against my friend, I could not refrain from bursting into a roar of laughter at its absurdity. No woman that ever lived was treated with a more tender and chivalrous affection and reverence than that which Mrs. Forster received from her husband. That she was eminently worthy of being worshipped by the man whose name she bore, all who knew her must admit. She had inherited great intellectual qualities from her father, Dr. Arnold, of Rugby. She shared the delicate critical spirit of her brother Matthew; and, above all, she was a delightful woman, gentle, refined, full of love for those of her own household, but full also of interest in, and sympathy with, all other men and women. Upon her Forster lavished the love of his whole heart, and to her judgment he deferred more constantly than to that of any other person. It always seemed to me that their marriage was an ideal union, both of brain and heart. When I was writing his biography, I felt it necessary to say something about the peculiarities of his manner. Mrs. Forster objected to what I said, not on the ground that it hurt her feelings to remember those peculiarities, but because, in her opinion, they had never existed. "I do not understand what you mean by the peculiarities of his manner," she said to me one day. "His manner was always delightful, especially to women." This was the one point on which she was blind with regard to her husband. She did not see how great was the tribute paid to his sterling qualities by the fact that so many men loved him and honoured him in spite of his rough exterior. Often when I was with him I thought of Browning's line, "Do roses stick like burrs?" It was his very angularities that seemed to make Forster's friends cling to him so closely.
In the years which followed his retirement from office he remained a thorough-going Liberal, but he claimed for himself the right of independent judgment as a member of his own party. The Ministry never got over the blow it received when he resigned. On the day of his resignation, when he left the Cabinet, Lord Selborne, who sympathised altogether with him, rose directly after he did, and said, "If Forster goes, I must go too." He was actually on his way to the door when someone—I believe Sir William Harcourt—following him threw his arms round him, and forcibly detained him till he was brought to a more docile state of mind.
That, however, was, as everybody knows, a Cabinet of many resignations. It was said, when it at last came to an end, that there was no man in it who had not resigned once at least, and that one or two had resigned many times. The fact is that the disruption of the old Liberal party had already begun. The new wine provided by Chamberlain and Company fermented in the old bottles. Nobody felt very happy in the presence of the member for Birmingham. He was the reverse of conciliatory, and seemed anxious to let everybody know that he recognised no superior. This would not have mattered so much if his conduct had been more consistent with the traditions of Cabinets. Sir William Harcourt was not unversed in intrigue, and one wonders now how a Cabinet which contained those two men held together as long as it did. It was the leakiest Cabinet, so far as its secrets were concerned, that I have known. It is amusing now to recall the fact that at that time an innocent public, which still regarded Mr. Chamberlain as a man with more self-assertion than intellect or force of character, pictured him to itself as the tool of Mr. Morley. It was Mr. Morley, we were told, who found the policy and the brains, and Mr. Chamberlain was but the instrument of his will. This is not the only point upon which the public fell into error, but it is one that deserves to be noted.
The ugly wrench which was given to the Ministry by Forster's retirement and the Phoenix Park tragedy that immediately followed it, was aggravated by the revelations at the trial of the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke. Whilst Mr. Forster was still Chief Secretary it was vaguely known that he had been the object of murderous conspiracies. The Pall Mall Gazette had sneered at the rumours of plots against his life, and had pleasantly hinted that they were all a myth, concocted by Forster's friends in his interests. When James Carey, the infamous ringleader of the assassins, told his dreadful story in the witness-box in order to save his neck, the truth was made known, and the world learned that for months Forster, whilst meeting slander and hostile criticism in England, had been in constant danger of murder in Ireland. I have told elsewhere the story of his last week in Dublin, and of the daily attempts that were made by Carey and his confederates to compass his death. Some of my readers may remember how at the last he only escaped the knives of the assassins by something like a miracle. He was leaving Dublin for the last time, though he himself was not aware of the fact, and he had arranged to go from Westland Row Station by a certain train in order to catch the night boat for Holyhead. In the afternoon his work at the Castle was got through rather sooner than had been expected, and his private secretary, Mr. Jephson, suggested to him that instead of waiting for the train they should drive together to Kingstown, and dine at the club there. The inducement held out to Forster was that in this way he would have time for a game of whist before going on board the steamer. He fell in with Jephson's suggestion, and thus escaped from Ireland safely. That very night the whole gang of Invincibles, as the murderers had called themselves, had assembled at Westland Row for the purpose of killing him. Thrice they searched the train, vainly looking for the man whose death-sentence they had pronounced. Mrs. Forster was in one of the carriages, but her husband was not there. "If he had been," said Carey, in telling the story, "he would not have been alive now."
When the truth became known, and it was seen that there was nothing of the mythical in the conspiracy against Forster's life, public indignation flamed up afresh at the treatment he had received. When he next came to Leeds, after the trial of the Invincibles, a crowd followed him through the streets from the railway station to the Mercury office, cheering loudly. No wonder that a Government which had to confront the feeling caused by the treatment meted out to Forster was neither very happy nor very strong. It was soon after the exposure of the Invincibles that Forster addressed his constituents in St. George's Hall, Bradford. A number of Irishmen had got into the gallery, and persistently interrupted him, so that at last his speech was brought to a standstill. Gathering himself together, he waited for a moment's silence, and then, with outstretched arm menacing his antagonists, cried, in a voice which rang through the hall, "Since you didn't kill me in Ireland, you've got to listen to me here!" The shout that went up from the meeting as a whole acclaimed this sentiment with such emphasis that the Irishmen were reduced to silence, and there was no more trouble. Some persons were, however, very much shocked by Forster's characteristic bluntness. Among these was Mr. Gladstone, who thought that his former colleague had shown very bad taste.
Egypt and Gordon were the topics which I chiefly discussed with Forster during our years of intimacy after 1882. The fate of Gordon, in particular, excited in him a degree of emotion of which few would have thought him capable. More than once I have seen the tears in his eyes when he was speaking of Gordon, surrounded by his savage foes in his desert capital. The Ministry, as everybody knows, was floundering in those days. Even those of us who were the warm friends and admirers of Mr. Gladstone were troubled and perplexed. Some of us knew, indeed, that Mr. Gladstone was not the only, nor the chief, sinner in the matter of Gordon; but he was the scapegoat behind whom those who had a greater responsibility for the mismanagement of the Soudan business were only too glad to hide themselves. Forster was filled with indignation and contempt by the confused utterances of the Ministry, and by Mr. Gladstone's elaborate attempts to prove that though General Gordon was "hemmed in" he was not surrounded. Poor Mr. Gladstone! It was sad indeed that he should have to undertake this thankless task, and should be compelled to make out a case for a Cabinet which had practically got out of hand. It was in connection with one of his apologies for the Ministry that Mr. Forster charged him with being able to persuade most people of almost anything, and himself of everything. This chance phrase, used in the heat of debate, was treated by Lord Hartington as being a direct imputation upon Mr. Gladstone's sincerity, and Forster was lectured and denounced in terms which made the breach between himself and his old colleagues wider than ever. There was no truth in the charge made against him. He always had, and always expressed, a profound admiration for Gladstone's character, and he had never for a moment doubted his honesty. He felt the violent invective of Lord Hartington keenly. When he met the latter in the lobby on the same evening, he said to him, "You were very unfair to me to-night, and you knew it, but you had such a d——d bad case that I forgive you."
Again and again, in those days, Forster would come over to Leeds to see me, to talk about Gordon, or he would ask me to his own house in order to discuss the same topic. The fascination which it had for him was extraordinary. If Gordon had been his own brother he could not have been more deeply interested in his fate. When at last the end of the long tragedy came, and the news reached England of the failure of the expedition to Khartoum, and Gordon's death, Forster was affected by it in the keenest manner. He could hardly speak when he came to me to discuss the fatal tidings, and he was full of theories as to the possibility of Gordon having escaped, after all, from his enemies. Apparently he could not bring himself to accept the truth. It was strange to see this great, powerful man, who had passed through so many years of fierce conflict on his own account, broken down by sorrow for one of whom he had comparatively little personal knowledge, but whose character and fate appealed to all that was best and truest in his nature. Looking back upon my years of friendship with Forster, there are no incidents that touch my sympathies more keenly than those which relate to his heartfelt grief for Gordon, the great victim of ministerial muddling and administrative incapacity.
Everybody knows that Forster was the reverse of a Little Englander. In the days when Mr. Chamberlain was still the parochial politician, and the Manchester School a power in the land, Forster never lost an opportunity of trying to inspire his fellow-countrymen with the sense of the greatness of their Imperial position, and of the duties which it imposed upon them. As founder of the Imperial Federation League, he put himself at the head of those English statesmen whose names will be identified with the union of Great Britain and her Colonies in the Empire which we know to-day. He got very little help from the leading politicians on either side. Mr. Chamberlain, who now talks as though the foundation-stone of the Empire was laid in the suburbs of Birmingham, gave him no aid at all, nor did the active spirits of the Opposition. It seemed as though most of his old colleagues and opponents regarded Forster's strenuous advocacy of Imperial Federation as an attempt on his part to keep his name before the public eye. There was one rising young politician, however, who took a different view of Forster's action, and who not only sympathised with his motives, but threw himself into the cause of which he was the leader. This was Lord Rosebery, and to him and to Forster belongs the lion's share of the credit for the creation and development of that sense of Imperial unity which is to-day so great a factor in the life of the Empire.
At that time Forster's friends had no suspicion that his public career was drawing to a close. He was many years younger than Mr. Gladstone, was full of vigour and of an enthusiasm that was almost youthful in its exuberance, and he seemed to have a long life of work before him. But a trivial incident revealed to me the fact that things were not as they seemed, and that this great sturdy Englishman was by no means in the state of health that men supposed. When walking in Switzerland, he had accidentally injured the nail of his great toe, and it was necessary to remove it. Forster regarded the operation as a slight one, and was anxious that cocaine should be used as an anaesthetic, so that he might, as he said to me, "have the fun" of witnessing the actual operation. When the time came, however, it was found to be a much more serious matter than Forster had supposed. The operation was performed under chloroform by an eminent surgeon, and this gentleman told me after the operation that he had discovered that Forster's health was in a very unsatisfactory condition. Indeed, this little accident was the beginning of the end, though few at the time suspected the fact.
Before closing this chapter, I may make some further reference to my friend Mr. Stead. The retirement of John Morley from the P_all Mall Gazette_ had led to Mr. Stead's promotion, and he had become the virtual, if not the nominal editor of the paper. He was not long in impressing the public with the fact that a new and original force had entered English public life. "I am riding on the crest of the wave," he wrote to me one day, and such was indeed the fact. The influence of the paper which he controlled became for a time almost paramount, and Mr. Stead revelled in his power with all the zest of a schoolboy who has suddenly been called to sit on the throne of an autocrat. He calmly undertook the direction of the foreign policy of Great Britain, and ordered Ministers to do his bidding with an audacity which would have been absurd but for the fact that Ministers seemed ready to take him at his word. He it was who first advised them to the evil course of sending Gordon to Khartoum. "Sarawak the Soudan" was the cry he raised, his proposal being that Gordon should be sent to found an empire of his own on the upper Nile. Ministers yielded to his vehemence, and Gordon was sent to Khartoum, with what results everybody knows. Mr. Stead had the courage of his opinions, and he was not in the least disconcerted when he found that his advice had involved the country in the tragical and disastrous expedition for Gordon's relief. Talking to me one day at that time, he said, "John Morley told me yesterday that I ought not to be able to sleep in my bed at nights for thinking of all the men who have lost their lives over this business." If at any time in my life I had been inclined to believe in government by newspapers, I should certainly have been cured of that delusion after seeing what a mess even so brilliant a journalist as Stead made of the attempt to control the policy of a nation from an editor's desk.