Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885

by T. Wemyss Reid

I had a second experience of the disadvantages of impecuniosity before I reached London. During the latter part of my trip I had found a pleasant travelling companion in the person of Mr. Charles Townsend, of Bristol, a gentleman who subsequently represented that city in Parliament. As we were travelling straight through from Paris to London, and had, as we believed, ample funds for the journey, we signalised the close of our trip on the Continent by a specially good dinner on the evening of our departure, for which we had to pay a price in accordance with its merits. We were returning by the Dieppe route. The journey by rail was delayed because all the bridges near Paris were broken, and we had to creep across temporary wooden structures. Before we were allowed to board the steamer at Dieppe, all passports were carefully examined. The police were on the search for escaped Communists, and whilst it was easy enough to get into France, it was much more difficult to get out of the country. Our passports, however, were in order, and we were soon lying down to sleep in the cabin of the steamer in the full belief that we should find ourselves in England in a few hours. I slept soundly, and only awoke when the sun was well up in the heavens. The steamer was at rest, and I thought we were in the harbour of Newhaven; but, to my dismay, when I went on deck I found that we were still moored to the quay at Dieppe. A terrific northwesterly gale was blowing, and the captain had not ventured to put out. All that day we lay at Dieppe, the result being that the money which would have taken us, under ordinary circumstances, in comfort to London, was expended before we quitted France. When we reached Victoria Station our united capital consisted of a halfpenny. We could not even tip the porter who attended to us. I felt it was the meanest moment of my life. We drove straight to a bank, however, and in a few minutes had each a pocketful of gold. The double lesson I received during this first Continental trip has made me careful ever since to take sufficient funds on every journey to carry me safely through to the end.

The great public event of the autumn of 1871 was the illness of the Prince of Wales. He had been staying in November with Lord Londesborough at Scarborough, and on his return to Sandringham he was attacked by typhoid fever. For a time no anxiety was felt, because it was believed that the illness was a slight one. But suddenly the news was flashed through the country that his Royal Highness had taken a turn for the worse. This was followed a few hours later by the announcement that the Queen and the other members of his family had been suddenly summoned to his bedside; and yet a little later came the tidings that his case was hopeless, and that he was rapidly sinking. December 14th, the day which had proved fatal to his father exactly ten years before, was at hand, and everybody believed that it would see another heavy blow dealt at the Royal Family. It is impossible to describe the emotion produced by the most unexpected news of the Prince's condition. The telegrams from Sandringham were of so positive a nature that they forbade hope. On Friday, December 13th, the gloom deepened hourly. At midnight a telegram reached the office of the Leeds Mercury saying that the family were gathered round the Prince's bed awaiting his dissolution. That telegram was received in every other newspaper office in the kingdom. Everywhere Lives of the Prince were hurriedly prepared, and articles written announcing the event which appeared to be imminent.

When the time approached for the Mercury to be sent to press, though we had made every preparation in case of the Prince's death, the fatal news had not yet arrived. I consequently wrote an article upon his illness and the emotion it had caused, to be inserted if his death had not taken place when we went to press. Needless to say, it was this article, and not that in which the national calamity was bewailed, that appeared in the Leeds Mercury next morning. The only other daily newspaper that had a leading article on the Prince's illness was the Times. In every other newspaper office the conviction that he was at the very point of death was so strong that no preparation had been made for his possible survival. When the morning of the fateful 14th came it was announced that the Prince, though still in grave danger, had rallied. For several days he hung between life and death, and then began rapidly to mend, thanks to his own good constitution and to the extraordinary care and skill with which he was nursed by Sir William—then Dr.—Gull.

The revived popularity of the Throne in England may be dated, I believe, from that period. The Queen's long withdrawal from the public eye, consequent upon her widowhood, had led the multitude, ignorant of the manner in which she devoted herself to the heavy duties of her position, to regard her as being little more than a figurehead. Certain politicians, in the autumn of 1871, had taken advantage of this state of feeling to begin a crusade against the monarchy, and a section of the extreme Radicals really seemed to believe that the glorious Throne of England was about to be overthrown. But the sharp touch of personal sorrow changed all this, and revealed to the English people their true sentiments towards the Queen and her family. The grief, universally felt when it was believed that we were about to lose the heir to the Crown, and the affectionate sympathy with which his slow recovery was followed, convinced us all, as they convinced the outside world, that the bonds between the English Throne and the English people were far closer and stronger than most persons had imagined. The trumpery campaign against the monarchy died in a single night, and from that day to this the mutual love and trust of monarch and people have gone on steadily increasing.

The announcement that the Queen proposed to attend St. Paul's Cathedral in state to return thanks for the recovery of her eldest son touched the heart of the nation afresh, and evoked the first great popular demonstration of loyalty that had been witnessed since the early days of the reign. I was present in the Cathedral at that solemn and stately service on the 27th February, 1872, the precursor of the still more stately service held at Westminster on the 21st June, 1887. Except on the occasion of the Jubilee of the last-mentioned year, and of that of 1897, London has never witnessed a more remarkable outburst of loyal enthusiasm. At night the whole town was illuminated, St. Paul's Cathedral being lighted up after the fashion of St. Peter's at Rome on Easter Day. The crowds which filled the streets were enormous, and as the London police had not then acquired the art of marshalling vast multitudes, there was terrible crushing, and several lives were lost. Three persons were suffocated at Temple Bar, which was already marked for removal. I myself had the narrowest escape from death on Ludgate Hill, where the multitude was packed in one dense, immovable mass for hours. The people in the houses on the hill passed down water in buckets to the fainting crowd, and now and then some woman or child was positively hauled out of it by ropes, and thus placed in safety. It was not a sight that could ever be forgotten, and it impressed forcibly upon one's mind the strength of the hold which the monarch has upon the hearts of the people of this country.

Among those who watched the passage of the Queen and the Prince of Wales from Buckingham Palace to St. Paul's there was one notable and historic personage. This was Napoleon the Third, at that time living in exile at Chislehurst. Within twelve months the ex-Emperor was dead. His death was the cause of a singularly picturesque demonstration on the part of the ruined Imperialist party. I went to Chislehurst to see the lying-in-state which preceded the funeral. The train which took me down from Charing Cross was crowded with Frenchmen wearing the rosette of the Legion of Honour, and on every side I heard men called by names that for twenty years had been part of the history of Europe. The poor Emperor lying in his coffin, guarded by men who but recently had been the great officers of an Imperial household, was a pathetic object. I noticed that his hair had turned grey; and the shortness of stature that he had been so anxious to conceal when living was now plainly apparent. His funeral, which took place on the following day, fittingly symbolised the fall of the Second Empire. Preceding the hearse walked a body of French workmen in blue blouses, the foremost of whom bore the tricolour, rudely fastened to a branch which had been hastily torn from one of the fine trees at Camden Place. Behind the hearse the young Prince Imperial walked alone, a pale, thoughtful, delicate youth, who seemed little fitted to bear the burden of the Pretendership. Behind him, in a single line, were four of his father's cousins, of whom the most conspicuous was Prince Napoleon. His likeness to the great Emperor was startling, and, as he walked bareheaded, one could see that it was emphasised by the way in which he had trained a solitary lock of hair upon his massive brow.

The Emperor was buried in a temporary vault in the Catholic chapel of Chislehurst. The building was too small to admit a tithe of the crowd of French people who were present, but those who could not enter the chapel knelt throughout the service on the damp grass of the churchyard. When the funeral party returned to Camden House, I witnessed an unexpected and dramatic scene. The mourners had come back, as they went, in absolute silence. From highest to lowest, all seemed to be suffering from the deepest depression. The young Prince was the first to step within the door of the house. As he did so, he turned and bowed to the great company of Frenchmen—the wreckage of his father's empire. Instantly every hat was raised, and a tremendous cry went up, "Vive Napoléon le Quatre!" The suddenness and unexpectedness of this acclamation of the youth as the inheritor of the Napoleonic legend startled and impressed all those of us who were present as spectators.

Alas! in how brief a space of time I attended another funeral at Camden Place, and saw the body of the boy, who had thus been hailed as Emperor, carried across the breezy common to rest by his father's side. But now it was with the sad music of military bands and the pomp and glitter of an army in motion that the body was carried to the tomb. The Prince Imperial was buried with the honours due not merely to a royal prince, but to an English soldier. The Union Jack lay side by side with the tricolour upon his coffin, and four English princes acted as pall-bearers. The Queen herself watched from a pavilion erected above the wall of Camden Place the passage of the funeral party from the house to the place of burial. It was strange to think that this display of heartfelt sorrow, which was shared alike by the highest and the lowest, had been drawn forth by the death of the last representative of the Napoleonic Empire. But one could not forget the opening words of the young Prince's will, in which he declared that he died with a heart full of gratitude to the Queen of England and her family. If that could have been the end of the Napoleonic legend it would have been a fitting one; but even on the day of the funeral of the Prince the truth that peace is seldom to be found in the houses of the great was painfully illustrated. The chief mourner was Prince Napoleon, to whom had fallen the second place only at the burial of the Emperor. When the party came out of church the Prince took a ceremonious farewell of the members of our Royal Family, and then, disregarding the entreaties of the officials that he would return to Camden Place and meet the greatly bereaved mother, leapt into his carriage and in a harsh voice cried imperiously to the driver, "A Londres!"

After the curtain had fallen on the great drama of the Franco-German War there was an interval during which this country was chiefly occupied with questions of domestic interest. The Gladstone Ministry had completed its great achievements. It had disestablished the Irish Church, abolished purchase in the Army, established vote by ballot, reformed the Irish land system, and, above all, had created a national system of education. To Mr. Forster had fallen the high honour of carrying this last-named measure, and it is an honour which seems even greater now than it did at the moment when the Royal assent was given in 1870 to the Education Bill. At that time, indeed, Forster met with criticism and abuse, rather than admiration and gratitude, for his great achievement. As older persons will remember, he excited the bitter hostility of the Dissenters and a section of the Radicals because of his refusal to make a hopeless crusade against the Church schools the basis of his educational policy. Even if he had believed such a step to be just, he would have committed the gravest of errors if he had yielded to Nonconformist clamour. It would have been impossible, even in the Parliament of 1868, to have carried such a Bill as the Birmingham Education League demanded, and there has been no Parliament since then that would even have looked at such a task. Remembering this fact, the injustice of the bitter attacks made upon Mr. Forster by a certain section of the Radicals, among whom a young Birmingham manufacturer named Joseph Chamberlain was now beginning to make himself conspicuous, is manifest.

One can only account for the acerbity with which Mr. Forster was attacked on the ground that, both as a Radical and the son of Nonconformist parents, he had excited the hope among the extreme party that he himself would be as extreme as any of them. The wisdom with which he turned existing institutions to account, and succeeded in masking the batteries that the Church was ready to open upon any State system of education, was denounced as cowardice and lukewarmness; and as a consequence of the greatest triumph of his career—a triumph hardly excelled by any other Minister of our time—he became the object of the undying suspicion and hatred of a large number of the members of his own party. To the end of my days it will be a cause of pride to me that, although myself an ardent Liberal, and the son of a Nonconformist minister, I gave all the support I could in the columns of the Leeds Mercury to Mr. Forster. That this support was of real importance to him was due to the fact that the Leeds Mercury circulated largely in Bradford, the town for which Mr. Forster sat.