On the following day the adjournment of the House of Commons was moved by Mr. Gladstone in a speech which betrayed his grief and emotion. That evening a certain Irish Tory member was dining out, and he told the following story to a party in which there were women as well as men. "I was crossing St. James's Park after the rising of the House this afternoon, when I saw Mr. Gladstone walking in front of me. For the first time in my life I felt sorry for the fellow, for I knew what a terrible blow this affair must have been to him. I said to myself, 'Well, there was no playacting in his speech this afternoon, at all events. The fellow really felt what he said.' Can you conceive, then, my indignation when on getting to the top of the steps at the Duke of York's column I saw him lurking behind the column talking to an abandoned woman?"
A lady who was present at the dinner-party, and who was a great admirer of Mr. Gladstone, thought it her duty to write to him, and tell him the charge that had been made against him. She did not mention the name of her informant, but merely stated the facts that had been reported to her. She received an immediate reply, on a postcard. It was as follows:—"The presence of —— was not unperceived on the occasion to which you refer; but the conversation he has reported to you was not of the nature he imagined, and possibly desired." The voice of slander often pursued Mr. Gladstone, but the reply which he gave to this particular accusation was recognised, even by his enemies, as complete and conclusive. All through his life Mr. Gladstone was filled with pity for the outcasts of the streets, and whenever he could hold out a helping hand to them he did so with a fearlessness that was characteristic of his courage—the courage of the pure in heart.
I must turn aside from the Irish tragedy to speak of a small agitation, in which I and other persons were concerned at the time, that had a certain connection, not with the Phoenix Park murders, but with the events that led up to them. Two of Mr. Chamberlain's brothers had been nominated as candidates for the Reform Club. It was, perhaps, unfortunate for them that they came up for election in this spring of 1882, when there was much hostility towards Mr. Chamberlain himself on the part of many Liberals, who believed that he was intriguing in order to drive Mr. Forster out of the Cabinet. At all events, the two candidates were black-balled, and great was the ferment that arose in consequence. In Birmingham the action of the Reform Club was regarded as an outrageous insult not only to Mr. Chamberlain himself, but to that section of the Liberal party to which he then belonged. "The good people of Birmingham are simply furious," wrote Mr. Chamberlain to his friend, Mr. Peter Rylands, M.P., "and they even talk of marching upon London," It was an astounding assertion, but really Mr. Chamberlain's organs in the Birmingham Press dealt with the black-balling of his brothers in such a fashion as almost to warrant the expectation that Pall Mall would be invaded, and the Reform Club sacked, if it did not repent in dust and ashes of the affront it had offered to the leader of Birmingham Radicalism. Nothing less would suit Mr. Chamberlain and his friends, as an atonement for the misdeeds of the club, than such an alteration in the rules as would deprive the members of the power of black-balling candidates by transferring elections from the club at large to a special election committee.
I was present at the meeting of the club at which a resolution to this effect was proposed by Lord Hartington. The meeting was held only a couple of days before the Phoenix Park tragedy. It was largely attended, and many distinguished persons were present. "I saw the whole Cabinet crowded into the glass and bottle room," said George Augustus Sala, in speaking of the scene afterwards. Sala himself took a prominent part in the proceedings, for, provoked by a speech from Mr. Bright, in which he had denounced black-balling as an odious and ungentlemanly practice, Sala delivered himself of an impassioned oration in which he asserted that there was no right more sacred in the eyes of every true-born Englishman than the right to black-ball anyone he pleased at a club election. I remember Lord Granville's attempt to reply to Sala's sweeping assertion, but judging by the cheers, it was the essayist, rather than the earl, who had the sympathy of the members. Lord Hartington's resolution was carried by a small majority, and a ballot of the whole club was demanded, to settle the question finally. When this ballot took place, it was seen that the feeling of the club as a whole was distinctly adverse to the proposed change of rules, and Lord Hartington's resolution was rejected by a large majority. The rejection was due in part, at least, to the feeling which Mr. Chamberlain had inspired among the moderate Liberals. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Chamberlain resigned his membership of the club, and the question of an alteration of the rules fell to the ground.
The Phoenix Park tragedy confirmed many persons in the belief that Forster had been right, and the rest of the Government wrong, with regard to Irish policy. In Yorkshire we felt keenly on the subject, and in the Leeds Mercury I lost no opportunity of vindicating my friend from the attacks which a section of the advanced Radicals, who claimed Mr. Chamberlain as their leader, made upon him. The result was to bring about a strained state of the relations between myself and the official leaders of the Liberal party. Leeds had given the Government its most signal victory in the General Election of 1880. It was felt in the Cabinet to be a serious thing that the Leeds Mercury, and with it no inconsiderable section of the Liberal electors, regarded Mr. Forster's supersession with indignation, and by some influential member of the Government a proposal was made to crush the Mercury, and prove that it did not really represent Liberal opinion in Leeds, by convening a meeting of the Liberal Association for the purpose of expressing confidence in the Irish policy of the Ministry. It was an absurd device, and it failed, as it deserved to do. Although we were very angry at the treatment which Mr. Forster had received, we were perfectly loyal to Liberal principles and to the leadership of Mr. Gladstone. There was no need, therefore, to ask us to testify to our confidence in Ministers. But the men who had succeeded in driving Mr. Forster from office desired to complete their work by bringing his defenders into open contempt, and they thought that they would accomplish this by means of a meeting of Liberal electors in Leeds which should prove to the world that the editor of the Leeds Mercury represented nobody but himself in his championship of Forster's cause.
They put pressure upon the Association to summon a meeting, which was duly held. It turned out to be a demonstration in favour of Forster rather than the Government, and the attempt to crush independence of opinion in the Liberal ranks was thus signally foiled. I do not know who the member of the Cabinet was who was responsible for this manoeuvre, but whoever he may have been—and I have my suspicions upon that point—he had little reason to congratulate himself upon the result of his strategy. For a time the incident caused a certain degree of coldness between myself and my Liberal friends on the executive of the Liberal Association. Sir James Kitson and I had worked together so harmoniously in raising up a united party in Leeds that this partial breach between us was rather painful. Happily it did not last long. I stood to my own opinions, and for the future our local Liberal leaders were content that, whilst supporting them in every matter upon which I was in agreement with them, I should not be attacked for maintaining my absolute independence on those questions on which I took a line of my own. No further attempts were made, I need scarcely add, to intimidate the Mercury by means of public meetings in Leeds, nor do I think I suffered in the long run in the estimation of friends from whom I then differed, by the steps I took to vindicate my character, both as a responsible journalist and as an independent critic of public affairs.
Naturally I was drawn closer to Forster by the fact that I was thus constituted his representative and champion in the Press, and I became a somewhat frequent visitor at his delightful but unpretentious residence on the banks of the Wharfe at Burley. It was on my first visit to him after his resignation that an incident took place which touched me deeply. I was sitting with his and my old friend, Canon Jackson, of Leeds, in the library after breakfast. Forster, of whose blunt manner I have already spoken, came into the room. For some time he walked up and down without speaking, and was apparently somewhat troubled. Suddenly he turned to Jackson and asked him if he would go out of the room. When the Canon had gone Forster closed the door behind him, took another turn up and down the apartment, and then, speaking with evident difficulty, said to me, "I cannot let you leave this house without letting you know what I feel with regard to all that you have done for me. When nobody else dared to say a word in my favour in public during that terrible time in Ireland, you were always ready to defend me from attack. I needed defending, Heaven knows! My colleagues left me absolutely alone; they left me to take my own way, just as if I had been the Czar of Russia. I was attacked, as you know, both in England and Ireland, by the papers and public men of all parties. I knew I had very powerful enemies who were determined to make the worst of everything I did, and none of my own colleagues defended me. You can never know what a comfort it was to me at that time to know that I had one staunch friend in the Press, and that the dear old Leeds Mercury would always judge me fairly and try to make the public see the truth. God bless you!"
I do not know whether he or I was the more deeply moved by this sudden and most unexpected outburst of feeling from a man who, as a rule, stubbornly concealed the sensitiveness of his nature and the warmth of his heart under a rugged and at times almost forbidding exterior. I do not pretend to have deserved what he said, but the words he uttered sank into my heart, never to be forgotten. Henceforth the censures of a caucus and the sneers of those superior critics who derided me as the victim of an absurd prejudice in favour of a statesman who had fallen, were as less than nothing to me.