And when I look back on those nights and days of anxious work, the crowded meetings, the weary conferences, the dull round of deputations, and then the final shoutings, booings, or applause of the result, followed by speeches of triumph or manly resignation, I wonder there are men always forthcoming to face the cost and trouble of it. What reward did Weston get from it other than vanity and vexation of spirit? But when we were in the thick of the thing on Wednesday, November 25, 1885, no thoughts of the triviality of the affair ever entered our minds. The eyes of Bristol were upon us and the eyes of the Empire were on Bristol, and we were all intoxicated by the unwonted limelight. Men, women and children, horses, donkeys and dogs wore red or blue favours, and one gallant Tory paraded the streets in a sky-blue suit, and to the delight of all parties had dyed his dog the same colour. It was after half-past twelve at night before the result was announced. We were waiting on the first floor of a little greengrocer’s shop opposite the local police station. There had been many false alarms. A huge crowd surged beneath us, cheering and groaning other results. At length our figures flashed out in a transparency across the street:
| Weston | 4217 |
| Hill | 4121 |
| 96 |
One half of Bedminster went mad with joy, the other half booed and groaned as though hope had departed from their lives. Mr. Weston was whirled away in his brougham to make a round of his constituency and I went forth to see the fun, for Bristol on an election night had in those days something of the Eatanswill spirit left. There was window-breaking going forward in one of the main streets and a few police sallies, and later on, well after one o’clock, when I reached an open square, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach or one of his friends was addressing a large and enthusiastic mob from the windows of the Royal Hotel. “Who’s in for the South?” shouted someone. “Weston,” came the answer from hundreds of voices, and prolonged groans followed the announcement. There were but few police in the streets, and the mob was orderly enough and well content to shout over its solitary Conservative success, when a sound of counter-cheers approached from the south, and as it came nearer the cry went up “Weston! Weston!” He was boxed up in his neat single brougham. I could not see him from where I stood, but I could see the stalwarts of his party, a lot of sturdy fellows who had tied ropes to it, and were pushing and pulling it along or sitting on the roof and cheering as they rocked their way into the square. It was the brougham’s last night out, but it was a glorious one. As it neared the Royal Hotel this delirious procession became a cause of offence to the rival crowd. As if with one movement, they turned on the advancing carriage, and it
looked as if there would be a faction fight worthy of the Emerald Isle, in which Weston was bound to be injured. But a wonderful manœuvre prevented it. From some ambush sprang to light about a hundred police. They made their way to their beloved Mayor, surrounding his carriage and sufficient men to pull it. This solid wedge of police drove itself through the crowd to the bottom of Clifton Hill, and there the carriage was sent on its way with a few police, and the main body suddenly turned across the street and blocked the crowd back. It was a smart piece of work, and the mob gave the police a most complimentary groan when they saw how they were outwitted. In this way, in November, 1885, Weston, M.P., came to his house in Clifton, full of the joy and glory of victory. But in the summer of 1886 it was entirely the other way, the cheers were for our opponents and the tears were ours. Then Mr. Weston received a knighthood from Mr. Gladstone for his services to his country, and his political career was at an end.
But the alarum came to me from another part of the world altogether at the next general election. I was at Lancaster Sessions when a telegram called me to Aylesbury to act as agent for Mr. C. D. Hodgson, who had pluckily gone down to fight a Rothschild for Gladstone and Home Rule. We had only a fortnight to do it in—but what a fortnight! I travelled right up from Lancaster to Willesden, and across from there to Westbourne Park, catching the last train to Aylesbury, and found myself late at
night in command of a big empty house with tables and chairs and pens and ink, and a fine band of voluntary workers. It was many nights before I got a sleep in bed. It was real campaigning. Everything had to be done in no time. It was a big straggling division without any railway, but we planned to have a meeting in every village and carried out our plans, pushing our forces over the Chilterns to the little village of Totternhoe, the rural silence of whose common was for the first time disturbed by political speech. Indeed, we were a thought too active. For our only hope of any success—and that a slender one—lay in the fact that at the last election feeling had run so high between the supporters of Liberal and Conservative that open fights had taken place, and the Conservatives had declared they would never vote for a Rothschild. If the Conservatives had held aloof it would have been an interesting fight. However, the Union had to be saved, our rebellion was taken seriously, a four-lined whip went out to all the blues, and they flocked to the ballot against us and we were routed.
It was during this election that I first learned something of the iniquity of imprisonment for debt. I was told that in a certain village a tradesman could command some two hundred votes, and that it would be well to appoint him a chairman of a local committee. I went over to interview him. He was very shy, and seemed diffident about Home Rule and afraid of the Catholics, but after a lot of talk he said he would vote for Hodgson and use his influence in
the village in our favour if he took the chair at our meeting. All this was arranged, but I could not imagine why such a miserable, mean, uneducated, narrow-minded little person should be a leader of enlightened thought, even in a Buckinghamshire village. I was asking one of our supporters in Aylesbury, a shrewd, keen man of business, about my little friend, and he opened my eyes as to the nature of his influence.
“Oh, he’s all right,” he said. “He’s got the votes right enough. He’s two hundred of them on his books.”
“On his books,” I said in surprise, not understanding what he meant.