This was my first knowledge of one of the most remarkable and brilliant journalists of my time. We parted with, I think, mutual feelings of regard and goodwill, feelings which I, at least, have never lost. I recognised my visitor from the first as a man of remarkable gifts, of something that came near to genius. I recognised, too, his honesty and sincerity, though I had, even then, forebodings as to what might be the consequences of his impetuous ardour and reckless defiance of old customs and conventions.
After this, I heard a good deal from Stead during his remarkable editorship of the Northern Echo, nor was I long in discovering that he was really determined to put what I regarded as his wild theories of journalism into practice. Of course, it took time to enable him to make his personality felt in the little paper he edited, but he took care to keep me acquainted with all that he was doing. Whenever an article of special interest appeared in the Echo I received a copy of it, marked with a blue pencil by Stead. At the end of twelve months from his first engagement as editor, he wrote to me asking if I would give him my opinion in writing of his work during the year, and the capacity he had shown as a journalist. With great willingness I wrote to express my high opinion, not only of his ability, but of his growing aptitude as an editor. Back in a few days came a reply from this extraordinary man. It was to tell me that he had shown my letter to the proprietor of the Northern Echo, Mr. Bell, and on the strength of it had succeeded in obtaining an increase of salary, an increase which I am sure was fully deserved. For two years, if I remember aright, he went through this formality. I am confident that Mr. Stead himself, if he should read these lines, will not make any objection to my revelation of these little episodes in his early career. I have told them because, whilst they are so thoroughly characteristic of the man, they are not in any way derogatory to his reputation.
By-and-by, however, a change took place in our relationship. Stead was rapidly working his way to the front, and some of the means which he employed did not commend themselves to my judgment. For example, he was in the habit of sending marked copies of any article he wrote on political questions to the statesmen or other public men to whom he had chanced to refer. I had always been very sensitive myself as to this practice, regarding it as an attempt to force oneself upon the notice of public men in a way that was not consistent with an editor's independence, to say nothing of his dignity.
I may have been wrong in my view. Certainly I have known other journalists besides Stead who adopted his practice, and I have no right to sit in judgment upon any of them. But my personal view was that an editor ought to say honestly what he thought for the benefit of the readers of his journal, and that he ought neither to obtrude his own individuality upon those readers, nor to seek to come into close contact with the men whose actions it was his duty to criticise. Long before this period in my life I had laid down a rule for myself which I have consistently observed ever since. This was that I would never seek an introduction to any public man, or bring under his personal notice anything that I had written. Stead took another course, and though I could no longer regard him as a protégé of my own, I did not like it, and I daresay I did not conceal my feelings from him. But he could well afford to treat my disapproval with contempt, for his policy answered even beyond his own expectation. The fact that his paper was a very small one, published in a small town, gave, I have no doubt, additional zest to his very acute and intelligent criticisms of public affairs. Mr. Bright, if I remember rightly, was the first public man of eminence who drew attention to the articles in the Northern Echo, and he very soon afterwards received a visit from the enterprising editor. Then Stead, carrying still further his theory of a journalist's duties, sought interviews with others among the foremost men of the time. Carlyle was one of those who succumbed to his fascinations, and when Carlyle one day referred to him in conversation as "that good man Stead," the fact quickly became known to the public. Mr. Forster was another of Stead's earlier heroes and friends, and by-and-by the young editor at Darlington became known to a considerable circle of prominent persons. Thus was the New Journalism born. To me, as an Old Journalist, it is not a thing with which I can pretend to have much sympathy, but I must acknowledge its brightness, its alertness, its close grip of actualities, and its rapid and remarkable success. I need hardly say that it was no longer necessary for the editor of the Northern Echo, the friend of many of the distinguished personages of the day, to seek my testimony as to his value to his employer. He quickly became recognised for what he was—a journalist of exceptional capacity and of great originality and daring.
Differences upon political questions drove us further apart, however, than any question of the ethics of editorial conduct. The Eastern Question, of which I have already spoken, excited Stead greatly, and he distinguished himself not so much by the vehemence of his attacks upon the unspeakable Turk, as by his uncompromising championship of Russia and her policy in South-Eastern Europe. It was not a popular line to take, but Stead followed it with something like enthusiasm. It was at this time that he fell under the influence of Madame Novikoff, who, whether accredited or unaccredited, was generally regarded as the unofficial representative of Russia in this country. She was, and is, a lady of great talent and plausibility, and she undoubtedly exercised at one time an extraordinary amount of influence over many distinguished British politicians. I am not prepared to say that Stead took his inspiration upon Russian politics solely from Madame Novikoff; but at any rate he never wrote anything in the Northern Echo in those days of which that lady could not heartily approve, and thus he made another powerful and enthusiastic friend in the political society of our time.
Years afterwards, somewhere in the 'nineties, I happened to sit beside Madame Novikoff at a luncheon party in Mayfair. "I believe you know my great friend, Stead?" she said, by way of opening our conversation at the table. I told her I had known him for many years. "And what do you think of him?" she asked, with an air of innocent curiosity that sat well upon her guileless countenance. "Is he not wonderful? I think him, for my part, one of the greatest men alive. What do you think?" I replied, in a more restrained spirit, that I thought him extremely able, and that he had certainly accomplished some wonderful achievements as a journalist. "Ah!" said Madame Novikoff, with an air of quickened curiosity, "you think that? Now tell me what, in your opinion, is his most wonderful achievement." I told her that I thought it was his success in championing the cause of a certain lady. (The story has nothing to do with this narrative, but it was a cause célèbre in which Stead employed the methods of the New Journalism in order to secure justice for a woman who had been gravely wronged.) No sooner had I explained myself to Madame Novikoff than that lady's face fell. "Ah, I am sorry to hear you say that. That was not his greatest achievement. But Stead has always been ready to go crusading at a woman's bidding." Madame Novikoff must have known what she was talking about.
Among the leading politicians of the North in those days was my old friend and fellow-townsman, Joseph Cowen, of Newcastle. He had been to some extent alienated from Mr. Gladstone and from the Liberal party by disappointment, but he still called himself a Liberal, and there was no reason to doubt that his political instincts were sound, and that he might again become one of the Liberal leaders of the North. He took, as he had always taken, a strong line with regard to Russia, which he looked upon as the parent of Continental despotism and the traditional enemy of human freedom. Mr. Stead, full of zeal for the cause represented by Madame Novikoff, made a series of vehement and persistent attacks upon Cowen because of his views regarding Russia and the Eastern Question generally. One day he sent me one of his marked papers containing a particularly impassioned onslaught upon the member for Newcastle. I considered that he had invited comment by sending me this article, and I wrote to him to expostulate with him on the line he was taking, pointing out that Cowen, who was a very sensitive man, was not unlikely to be driven out of the party if these attacks were persisted in, and that his loss would be a serious one to the Liberalism of the North of England. I don't think I said anything particularly harsh in this letter, which was in my opinion justified by my relations both with Cowen and with Stead.
The rejoinder was not what I had expected. It came in the shape of an immensely long article in the Northern Echo entitled, if I remember aright, "The Editor of the Leeds Mercury and Mr. Cowen." In this article something I had written about Cowen in the Mercury—I forget what—was held up to ridicule, and was compared with my private sentiments regarding the member for Newcastle as they had been gleaned by Mr. Stead in that night-long conversation under my roof, of which I have spoken in this chapter. Needless to say, my talk was not faithfully remembered or accurately represented. That, in itself, was a small matter, but the illustration thus afforded me of the practical working of the New Journalism was not altogether a pleasant one, and for some years after this episode there was a distinct coolness between Mr. Stead and myself. The incident arouses no bitterness now. Mr. Stead honestly believed that he was entitled to use my frank obiter dicta for the purpose of correcting what he regarded as my public errors. I was not the last and by no means the greatest sufferer from this theory on the part of the founder of the New Journalism; but, as having been in some small degree a sufferer at his hands, I am, perhaps, the better able to bear testimony to his absolute honesty of intention, and to his unfailing conviction that in even his greatest indiscretions he was acting under the justification of a high moral purpose.
In the spring or summer of 1880 I received a note from John Morley, who had by this time become editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. It was to inform me that he had secured a notable man from my part of the world to assist him in his editorial duties. He was Mr. Stead of Darlington, and Morley wished to know my opinion of him. My reply did not please Mr. Morley; for while I told him how highly I admired Mr. Stead's abilities, I warned him that he would need to be watched closely, as he was a man of such extreme views and of such daring originality in his manner of conducting a journal that, if he were not kept under strict control, he might at any moment seriously commit the newspaper with which he was connected. At the time Morley took this warning with a very bad grace, plainly implying that he thought that my feeling with regard to Mr. Stead was founded on the fact that he was a more real Liberal than myself. But there came a time when the distinguished politician and man of letters acknowledged that my hint had been only too fully justified.
One day in 1879 William Edward Forster came into my room at the Mercury office. For some time he had been in the habit of calling at intervals to have a chat with me. I believe that each of us was secretly rather afraid of the other. I had for years regarded him with a strong feeling of admiration, and I looked confidently to him as the man who, when Mr. Gladstone in the fulness of time retired from public life, would take his place and become the recognised leader of the great forces of English Liberalism. I had supported him with unfaltering loyalty both in his educational policy and at the time when his name was put forward in the candidature for the leadership of the party in 1875, and I found myself in strong sympathy with his views on those foreign and colonial questions on which I could take sides neither with the Little England nor with the Jingo school. Forster's visit was chiefly for the purpose of chatting over the prospects of the Liberal party, but incidentally our conversation turned upon Mr. Stead. "He has one great fault," said Forster, "and that is that he does not mix with other people." Certainly Forster had every reason to think well of Mr. Stead, for he was his loyal friend and admirer in those dark days when few were found to speak well of the member for Bradford.