Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885

by T. Wemyss Reid

I had access, years afterwards, to the records of the meetings of the leading members of the Liberal party during the period between 1874 and 1880. It was easy to gather from these secret and confidential memoirs that Mr. Gladstone was found to be an uneasy bedfellow by his old colleagues. When he was moved by any strong impulse he was very apt to forget that Lord Hartington was the nominal leader of the Opposition, and to take some line of action without waiting to consult his ostensible chief. He did, I believe, consult Lord Granville with frequency, if not with regularity. Lord Granville was, in his opinion, the leader of the whole party, whilst the only post held by Lord Hartington was that of leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. The result of his frequent interventions in public affairs was undoubtedly to throw the Opposition into some confusion. The Times, and the other chief organs of the London Press, constantly poured ridicule upon his speeches, and did their best to accentuate the differences between himself and his former colleagues. It followed—not unnaturally, perhaps—that there were those among the leaders of the Liberal party who desired to prevent Mr. Gladstone's return to power. But whilst the great chief was thus assailed and intrigued against in London, his position in the country was every day becoming stronger.

It was known that he meant to retire from the representation of Greenwich when the Parliament elected in 1874 came to an end. A score of different towns contended for the honour of securing him as the Liberal representative. Leeds, amongst other great constituencies, sent a deputation to Harley Street, where Mr. Gladstone was living. To all these offers he turned a deaf ear, and to the amazement of everybody it was announced that he had decided to contest Midlothian, at that time represented by Lord Dalkeith, whose father, the Duke of Buccleuch, was the recognised leader of Conservatism in Scotland. Many years afterwards I learned from Mr. Gladstone himself that before accepting the candidature for Midlothian he consulted Lord Granville and Lord Hartington, pointing out to them that if he were to enter into a colossal struggle like that involved in the fight for the great Tory stronghold of Midlothian, instead of accepting one of the safe seats offered to him elsewhere, his position in the party would of necessity be altered. In short, he could only fight Midlothian as a leader. Lord Granville and Lord Hartington, undeterred by this consideration, still pressed him to stand for Midlothian. From the moment he consented to do so Mr. Gladstone undoubtedly regarded himself as the leader in the great campaign upon which the country was about to embark.

In Leeds great efforts were made by the Liberals in preparation for the conflict. My own position in the party was now very different from what it had been in 1874. I had been taken into the innermost circle of the caucus, and now exercised a considerable amount of direct influence over its proceedings. Having formed an intimate friendship with the honorary secretary of the Liberal Association, Mr. Mathers, I was consulted upon every step that was taken. It was at my suggestion that Mr.—now Sir James—Kitson was invited to become our president, and I believe I am correct in saying that it was by my arguments that he was induced to accept the office. From the moment when he did so, the organisation of the party in Leeds—where in 1874 we had met with so cruel a disaster—began to advance by leaps and bounds. Kitson was a man of great sagacity and shrewdness, and of much strength of character. Mathers was simply the best organiser and wire-puller I ever met in the course of my life. He was a master of detail, one of those rare men who can retain within their grasp the full knowledge of every fact in the most complicated of problems. He was also, like myself, an enthusiastic Gladstonian. Unkind people in Leeds said in those days that the Liberal party consisted of three persons, Kitson, Mathers, and Reid. This may not have been absolutely correct, but it was certainly not very far from the truth.

On every side we witnessed, during this year 1879, the revival of Liberal feeling, and the rapid growth of a strong hostility to Lord Beaconsfield's adventures in the domain of foreign affairs. The current had turned with a vengeance, and the flowing tide was indeed with us. We three organisers of Leeds Liberalism were determined that at the coming General Election we would win a victory that should fully redeem the character of our town and give it a leading place in the political world. We were, however, somewhat hampered for want of a good candidate to stand along with Mr. Barran, the sitting member. I had found a thoroughly suitable man who would have been a credit to the constituency, but there were other candidates in the field, and it seemed as though one of these would be chosen by the Liberal Four Hundred. For the adoption of a candidate was a matter which rested solely with the Four Hundred, and they clung to this prerogative of theirs with great tenacity.

On the eve of the meeting at which they were to make their final selection of a colleague for Mr. Barran, I learned that my fears were well founded, and that the choice was likely to fall upon a gentleman whom I did not regard as suitable. In order to prevent this, I proposed in the Leeds Mercury of the next morning that, in spite of Mr. Gladstone's acceptance of the candidature for Midlothian, we should make him our candidate at Leeds also. It was true that he had already refused the invitation of the Leeds Liberals, but I pointed out that the fight for Midlothian would notoriously be a severe one, and that it was quite possible that Mr. Gladstone might be defeated. In such a case, if the Liberal Association adopted my suggestion, Leeds would secure the high honour of being represented by Mr. Gladstone, whilst, in any event, our adoption of him as a candidate would enable him to conduct the contest in Midlothian without feeling any anxiety as to a possible interruption in his Parliamentary career. To my great delight, the Liberal Association not only adopted my suggestion, but did so with enthusiasm. I had consulted nobody before making it, but I had the satisfaction of finding that everybody approved of it—everybody, that is to say, except the gentleman who had won over to his own candidature a considerable proportion of the Four Hundred.

When the Association met that evening the whole of the candidates whose claims had been so eagerly discussed beforehand were swept ruthlessly aside, and nothing was talked of but the proposal of the Leeds Mercury. After some discussion—in the course of which one gentleman shrewdly pointed out that the anonymous letter suggesting the candidature of Mr. Gladstone was probably written by the editor of the Mercury himself—the Association resolved by an overwhelming majority that Mr. Gladstone should be one of the two Liberal candidates for Leeds at the next election. And yet, at the very time when this proof of his extraordinary hold upon the affections of a great community was made public, the London newspapers were speaking of Mr. Gladstone as a politician who no longer possessed either reputation or influence. We, who had to live at a distance from Fleet Street, were at least able to form a sounder judgment upon this point.

I may interpolate here an account of one of the institutions of Leeds that helped to reconcile me to my sojourn in that city. I do so because it has always seemed to me to be a model institution of the kind. This was the Conversation Club. It consisted of twelve members who were supposed to be more or less representative of the intellectual life of the town. The meetings were held monthly, each member entertaining his fellow-members once a year in his own house. After dinner the host acted as president, and the members present talked upon some selected subject. By an ingenious arrangement it was impossible that anyone should know beforehand what the subject of conversation on any particular evening would be. In this way the preparation of set arguments was prevented, and the club had nothing about it of the debating society. Speeches, of course, were strictly prohibited. We limited ourselves to real conversation, and many a delightful talk we had after dinner in those Leeds drawing-rooms in which we met. Any facility I may have gained in conversation I feel that I owe to the club, as I owe to it also many happy and instructive hours. Considering our limited numbers, and the fact that we met in a provincial town, we counted in our membership an usually large number of men who have made some mark in the world. Amongst the members were William Edward Forster, Sir Edward Baines, the Bishops of Ely (Woodford), Truro (Gott), Chester (Jayne), and Rochester (Talbot); Clifford Allbutt, Regius Professor of Medicine at Cambridge; Professor—now Sir Arthur—Rücker, who has been secretary of the Royal Society and President of the British Association, and is now Principal of the University of London; Professor Thorpe, the chemist and Government analyst, and Dr. Edison. This is not a bad list for so small a club, and one might easily give many other names, in addition, of men who would have been welcomed anywhere for their knowledge and attainments. In the year 1900 the club celebrated its jubilee, and its members can look back with satisfaction upon the influence which it has had on the social and intellectual life of Leeds. Politics and religion were forbidden themes; but many public movements of great importance for the development and improvement of Leeds have had their origin in our conversations, whilst the intellectual stimulus which those conversations afforded cannot be forgotten by at least one grateful member of the club.

I may here mention a visit I received from John Morley about this period. He was one of the many men whose acquaintanceship I owed to the good offices of Lord Houghton. It is an acquaintanceship that has lasted over a considerable stretch of years, and that has from time to time been of a close and almost confidential character. The charm of John Morley's manner, and the brightness of his talk, have been felt and acknowledged by all who have been brought into contact with him, and it would be superfluous on my part to say anything about his literary reputation. But I have always felt that neither his fine gifts nor his peculiar temperament were suited for the rough and tumble of political warfare. I have felt this whether I have been, as has often happened, marching behind him in thorough unison with his opinions, or, as has also occurred at times, directly opposed to him and to his policy. He came to see me at Leeds because, having undertaken to deliver an address to the Trades Union Congress, he was wishful to learn something on the spot of the relations of master and men in a great industrial community. I made him acquainted with my friends James Kitson and David Greig. He discussed with them the problems concerning the relations of labour and capital, and in their company visited the great industrial establishments over which they presided. At that time he was not in Parliament, nor had he begun his editorship of the Pall Mall Gazette. I remember that, after a fatiguing day, spent in the works of the Kitsons, Morley expressed his conviction that the great captains of industry, like Kitson and Greig, were not only of greater importance to the world than a mere Secretary of State, but were engaged upon much more laborious and responsible tasks. I do not know if he still adheres to that opinion.

I must now turn back to the course of public events, or at least of those with which I had some personal connection. The dissolution of 1880 came very unexpectedly, almost as unexpectedly as that of 1874. One evening, as I was preparing to go down to the office, a messenger arrived in hot haste with a telegram that had come over the Mercury private wire stating that the intention to dissolve Parliament had been announced in the House of Commons that evening. Kitson, Mathers, and I had made all our preparations, so the plan of campaign was already settled. On getting the telegram I crossed over to the house of Mathers, who was a neighbour of mine, and told him the news, and together we drove off to Kitson's to take the first steps in the battle. The next morning the people of Leeds awoke to discover every dead wall in the town placarded with an address, signed by the president of the Liberal Association, announcing the dissolution, and appealing to the electors to support the Liberal candidates, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Barran. By ten o'clock in the forenoon our committee rooms were open, and in full working order, and bands of willing workers, whom we had summoned the night before, were already being despatched to all quarters of the town to begin the indispensable canvass. Our opponents were taken completely by surprise, and we had gained that great advantage in all contests, the first start. As it began, so it continued. All through the great struggle the Conservatives were hopelessly behind us. As the enthusiastic Mathers afterwards remarked, "We were right on the top of them the whole time." It was a stirring and Homeric contest. To a staunch Liberal it was one that gave unalloyed satisfaction, for all through the great fight there was the amplest evidence that the flowing tide was on the side of Liberalism.

In Leeds we had, of course, to face the disadvantage of fighting without our chief candidate. Not by a word nor a sign did Mr. Gladstone, who was deep in his own struggle in Midlothian, show that he was conscious that an election in which he was personally concerned was going on in Yorkshire. Naturally, our opponents made the most of this, and we had constantly to meet the taunt that we were asking the electors to vote for a man who had refused to countenance our proceedings, and who would never, as a matter of fact, sit as the representative of Leeds in the House of Commons. In ordinary times we should undoubtedly have suffered from this taunt, especially since it had the merit of being true. But in 1880 the times were the reverse of ordinary. The overwhelming majority of the people of Great Britain seemed to be possessed by an almost passionate admiration for Mr. Gladstone. Future generations will find it difficult to understand the extent of the fascination that he seemed, at that period in his career, to exercise over the minds and hearts of a majority of his fellow countrymen. Whilst London, and the London press, still refused to admit that he could ever return to power, there was not a public gathering in the provinces at which the mention of his name was not received with enthusiastic cheering, so that, at last, men were almost afraid to name him in their speeches, lest they should be accused of bidding for the inevitable applause. If there was one town in the country where this enthusiasm ran higher than in any other, it was Leeds. We had no reason, therefore, to fear the taunts of our opponents. We knew that we were being swept on an irresistible current to an assured victory.