by Frank Harris
strong in Englishmen. I showed them that I dealt out even-handed justice: no one should profit more than his neighbour, and that finally was my most persuasive argument; but on the whole I had to pay twice or thrice the value of the land to the individual owner."
He told it all with such laughing good humour, showed besides such a rich human sympathy, even with the meanest and most grasping, and such unconquerable resolution to boot, that he won me completely. I had tears in my eyes when he finished and I murmured, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"
He took my words up seriously, and putting his hand on my shoulder said, "I love my house here and my ease, but if I could blot out the shameful, criminal poverty of these islands as I have in Birmingham, I'd consent to go penniless into the streets tomorrow. And yet I've no imitators even. The slums of Glasgow are worse than the worst in Birmingham, but no Scot takes the matter in hand and solves it as I have in Birmingham-and more, much more could be done. One spends half one's life before one comes to realize the problem and understands how easy it would be to solve it; and how important! But oh! the time's so short; one can do so little!" And he sighed deeply.
As he sat down again at his writing-table I noticed for the first time his extraordinary likeness to the younger Pitt: I was carried away by sympathy and had to say something. "I'm very glad I went to Birmingham," I began. "I misjudged you; I'm heart-glad to see that a Bismarck is also possible in England. At any rate, your spirit shows that the problem will be tackled sooner or later and brought to a noble issue."
"That's the hope," he said, smiling. "I'm glad we feel alike on the chief thing," he added.
"I wonder if that's true," I replied. "Your free trade views always make me shudder."
"Aren't you a free-trader?" he exclaimed, in open-mouthed astonishment.
"Indeed, no," I retorted. "Free trade creates your slums, and I admire the despot who transforms them."
He shrugged his shoulders; he was evidently too busy then to embark on a new discussion. "Won't you take a cigar?" he said, holding out the box, and I felt that I was dismissed. But ever afterwards I cherished a profound admiration for the statesman who had turned Birmingham from an ordinary English town into probably the best ordered and healthiest large town in the kingdom. Often afterwards I wished that instead of butting my head against his free trade prepossessions, I had asked him why he didn't found a municipal opera house and theatre in Birmingham and so lift its spiritual life to the level of life in Marseilles or Lyons.
Gladstone's Home Rule bill was defeated because he yielded to small personal prejudice, and yet every Englishman who knew this thought Gladstone a great man; and he commanded a personal reverence greater even than Bismarck in Germany. For my part, I never esteemed him, save as an orator, and at this time had not yet been introduced to him.
All this while the discontent of the working classes in Great Britain, as in Ireland, grew steadily and increased in bitterness. In London it found determined defenders in the Social Democratic Federation. Mr. H. W.
Hyndman had started this association a couple of years or so before as a follower more or less convinced of Karl Marx. The first time I heard Bernard Shaw speak was at a meeting of the Federation, but I had left it before he joined and he left it soon afterwards. On a Monday early in February, 1886, the Federation called a meeting in Trafalgar Square which ended in a riot.
The mob got out of hand and marched to attack the clubs in Pall Mall and soon proceeded to loot shops in Piccadilly and hold another meeting at Hyde Park Corner. The ringleaders were arrested and tried: they were Hyndman, Williams, Burns and Champion. Williams and Burns, both workingmen, were bailed out by William Morris, the poet. Hyndman seemed to me an ordinary English bourgeois with a smattering of German reading: he was above middle height, burly and bearded; Champion, the thin, well-bred officer type with good heart and scant reading; Williams, the ordinary workingman full of class prejudices; and John Burns, also a workingman, but really intelligent and thoughtful, who afterwards proved himself an excellent minister and resigned with Lord Morley rather than accept the world war. In spite of deficient education, Burns was even then a most interesting man; though hardly middle height, he was sturdy and exceedingly strong and brave. He had read from boyhood and we became great friends about the beginning of the century through the South African War. Burns was an early lover of Carlyle, and the experiences of a workingman's life had not blinded him to the value of individual merit. In many respects he stood on the forehead of the time to come, and if his education had been equal to his desire for knowledge, he would have been among the choicest spirits of the age. Even in 1886 I'm glad to say I rated him far above most of the politicians, though he never reached any originality of thought.
CHAPTER XV
The new speaker Peel; Lord Randolph Churchill; Col. Burnaby; Wolseley; Graham; Gordon; joke on Alfred Austin
From 1883 on for thirty years I studied English life and English politics, literature and art as closely as I could. As editor first of the Evening News and then of the Fortnightly Review, I could meet almost anyone I wanted to meet, and as I made a good deal of money from time to time and soon got the name of giving excellent luncheons, I could meet even people of importance on an even footing. I may as well prove this at once for the benefit of the ordinary American journalist who declares in the New York World that all doors were shut in my face and that Balfour sneered at me. Such a journalist is totally incapable of reading between the lines of plain print.
The incident he refers to is recorded in Mrs. Asquith's Autobiography. "On one occasion," she wrote, "my husband and I went to a lunch given to meet Mr. Frank Harris." She goes on to tell that I monopolized the conversation and that her hero, Arthur Balfour, "scored" off me. I don't recall Balfour's "score"; I never heard him score off anyone; but the fact that the Prime Minister and his wife were asked to meet me shows that I had a very considerable position in London, and I can recall other occasions on which the Asquiths were invited to meet me by more important people.
I have explained such facts in the most modest way by saying that I gave good luncheons and had very interesting people at my table; but the Michael Monohans and other tenth-rate American critics persist in regarding me as one of themselves. How did "an obscure journalist," they wonder, come to talk with this and that celebrity on an equality? Perhaps because he was not "obscure," but happened to be an equal, and I emphasize this at the beginning because it redounds to the honour of England, and, indeed, is the chief factor in making English society the most interesting in the world.
London recognizes individual ability more quickly and more surely than any other city on earth. Consequently, there is here a diversity of talents not to be found elsewhere and a rich piquancy of varied interests that one seeks in vain in any other capital. Even Vienna and Paris seem dull after London, for in those cities you can always guess whom you will meet from the position of your host and hostess. In one room in London I have seen Prince Edward (afterwards King Edward) talking to Hyndman, the socialist agitator, while Lord Wolseley and Herbert Bismarck listened eagerly intent; at the same time near the fireplace Arthur Balfour, Henry Irving and Theodore Roosevelt hung on the lips of Whistler, who was telling a story.
I remember giving a lunch when I had the old Duke of Cambridge on my right and Russell Lowell, the American ambassador on my left, besides Beerbohm Tree and Willy Grenfell (now Lord Desborough), John Burns, the firebrand agitator, afterwards an M.P. and minister, the poet George Wyndham and Alfred Russel Wallace, all listening spellbound to the humour and eloquence of Oscar Wilde; and it was the uncle of the Queen who had asked me to invite him, as he had heard so much of Wilde's genius.
I want to tell of these men and of many others at least as justly renowned in order to give a picture of those crowded days of London in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth century.
As I have said, cherishing the ambition of going into the House of Commons myself,
I was at first more eager to know the politicians than the poets. I took pains to be present every evening in the House for several years, until I had learned not only to know the fifty or sixty more prominent members, but also the procedure, traditions and tone of the Assembly. It is often spoken of as unique, ideal and all the rest of it, and the House of Commons must certainly be regarded as the finest deliberative assembly in the world. In the first year or so the circumstance that made the greatest impression on me was the election of Mr. Arthur Peel early in 1884 to the Speakership, instead of Mr.
Brand, whom I knew, who was retiring as Lord Hampden. At that time few members even knew anything of Arthur Peel, who was the youngest son of the famous prime minister, and who had been almost undistinguished as a member from Warwick for many years. But the moment he got on his feet to return thanks for his election everyone was thrilled. He was fairly tall, had a good presence, a dark, bearded face set off by a high aquiline nose, an ordinary, baritone voice; yet he had an air of masterful dignity that was impressive; and what he said was noteworthy.
I shall always remember one long sentence, badly constructed, but perfectly natural-the talk of a man thinking aloud and not one reciting a carefully prepared oration-yet carrying in clumsy words a curious sense of authority.
"With the support of the House," he said, "I may be permitted," and he paused-"to enforce the unwritten law, the most cherished and inestimable tradition of this House, I mean that personal courtesy, that interchange of chivalry between member and member-compatible with the most effective party debate-which is one of the oldest, and I humbly trust may always be, the most cherished of the traditions of this great Assembly." The sensation was astonishing: everyone felt that he had struck the right note, and had struck it with an almost magical dignity of personal character. From that moment the Speaker held the house in awe. Not his impartiality alone, but his greatness of character was never questioned. Ever afterwards I had a higher opinion of the House of Commons; perhaps among the ruck of silent members whom one didn't know, there might be another Arthur Peel!
I followed the debates more closely than ever and I was able to do this most comfortably through the kindness of Lord Randolph Churchill, whom I came to know well about this time. As soon as he found that I had some difficulty now and then in getting a seat in the "Distinguished Stranger's Gallery," he spoke to the Speaker and to the funny little Master of Arms, Gossett, whom I never saw but in his court dress with little sword, knickers and black silk stockings; and so got me a seat on the floor of the House itself in a sort of pew set apart for the half dozen of the Speaker's friends. There I could hear and see everything, even with my short sight, as if I had been a member.
My first meeting with Lord Randolph Churchill impressed me hugely. He was always represented by Punch and the comic papers as a very small man, or even as a boy, in spite of a ferocious upturned moustache. To my astonishment I found he was a good five feet nine or ten inches in height and carried himself bravely. The peculiarity of his face was seldom or never caricatured; it consisted of a pair of prominent round grey-blue eyes, well deserving the nickname of goggle-eyes. The face was peculiarly expressive of anger or contempt, but a second glance showed that the features were all fairly regular and the shape of the head quite excellent. Altogether a personable man, but when he spoke in the House, he often stood with one hand akimbo on his hip, which, with his thick, upturned, dark moustache, gave him a cocky or cheeky look and led the would-be humorists to treat him as an impudent boy; and he was assuredly lacking in reverence for his elders and supposed leaders in the House of Commons.
At the very beginning he invited me to come one afternoon to the Carlton Club to talk over some incident in the Bradlaugh imbroglio. I was struck almost at once by the surpassing generalship in the man and by his colossal assurance. Oddly enough, I had come to the meeting without having lunched, and as I knew it was not allowed to give food to a non-member in the Carlton, I mentioned a propos de bottes that I was sharp set. At once he declared that he would have something brought up at once, and when I reminded him of the rule, he shrugged his shoulders, rang, and when the footman came, gave his order with such deliberate curtness that the man was only anxious to get away and do what he was told. I got an excellent lunch and a good bottle of wine in a jiffy: as usual, in England I found that mean rules were made for mean men.
Soon after our first meeting I talked to Randolph of Bradlaugh, for I had formed a high opinion of Bradlaugh's character when he lectured in America. Randolph was proud of an incident that Winston has told excellently in his Life, and so I make no apology for reproducing it here.
"On February 21 there was another Bradlaugh scene. The member for Northampton, advancing suddenly to the table, produced a book, said to be a Testament, from his pocket, and duly swore himself upon it, to the consternation of the members. Lord Randolph was the first to recover from the surprise which this act of audacity created. He declared that Mr. Bradlaugh, by the outrage of taking in defiance of the House an oath of a meaningless character upon a book alleged to be a Testament-it might have been the Fruits of Philosophy-had vacated his seat and should be treated as if he were dead." In moving for a new writ, he implored the House to act promptly and vindicate its authority. Mr. Gladstone, however, persuaded both sides to put off the decision until the next day. On the 22nd therefore a debate on privilege ensued. Sir Stafford Northcote merely moved to exclude Mr. Bradlaugh from the precincts of the House, thus modifying Lord Randolph's motion for a new writ. Lord Randolph protested against such a 'milk and water' policy and urged the immediate punishment of the offender. After a long discussion, in which the temper of all parties was inflamed by Mr. Bradlaugh's repeated interruptions, Sir Stafford substituted for his simple motion of exclusion a proposal to expel Mr. Bradlaugh from the House; and this being carried, the seat for Northampton was thereby vacated.
"Lord Randolph seems to have gained much credit in Tory circles for the promptness and energy with which he had acted," his son writes.
Then came the Kilmainham negotiations and Mr. Parnell's release, and on top of all the murder in Phoenix Park of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr.
Burke. But alas! Randolph had fallen seriously ill and was out of the fight for half a year. Everyone said that had Randolph been able to head the attack on the Kilmainham Treaty, Gladstone's government would have fallen.
He returned to a triumph. The Liberals had been asked by their Whips not to take part in the discussion on Egypt and Randolph at once jeered at them "for assisting in the capacity of mutes at the funeral obsequies of free speech."
I give this as a proof of his power of speech, though it was his captaincy I always admired, and not his eloquence. Years later, talking with Lord Hartington of Randolph's career, I found that he whom I always regarded as "the conscience of the House of Commons" agreed with me in my estimate of Randolph.
He told me how annoyed Gladstone was with Randolph over the Bradlaugh business. "He doesn't believe in Christianity," said Gladstone, "yet is not ashamed to use the religious prejudices of others to gain some paltry political advantage."
"But at length," said Lord Hartington, "the chiefs of both parties found themselves in one lobby and the majority of the House with Randolph in the other, which convinced me that Randolph was a strategist without an equal.
And later no one ever led the House of Commons as he did: he knew the House better than it knew itself. As a Parliamentarian he had no equal, no second, even, in my experience."
In our first talk I recognized the qualities in Randolph of a great captain, not as clearly as I saw them later, but clearly enough to see in him a reincarnation of the peculiar power of his ancestor, the first Duke. He had, too, at this time an extraordinary geniality and a passionate belief in the efficacy of a series of reforms which I thought merely lenitive, but which he lauded as distinctively English. I shall have much more to say of him later, but here, because it has become the fashion to sneer at him, I wish to put
it on record that no one could meet him, as no one could meet Parnell, without recognizing greatness in him. Both of them made a far deeper impression on me than Gladstone, though he was infinitely the most articulate of the two.
In these first years of my editorship I got to know A. M. Broadley, who wrote for the World and made himself prominent as a defender of Arabi Pasha and Egyptian independence. It was Broadley who introduced me to Colonel Burnaby, who, too, was a whole-hearted partisan of Lord Randolph Churchill. Fred Burnaby was another extraordinary personality, physically, I think, the finest specimen of manhood I've ever seen: over six feet four inches in height and some forty-seven inches around the chest. Stories innumerable were told of his bodily strength and most of them, I believe, were true. When he joined the Horse Guards, some young subalterns got two donkeys through the window into his bedroom. Coming home late one night, Burnaby found them, and taking one under each arm, carried them quietly downstairs. I saw him once take a poker in his hands and bend it. He was good-looking withal: large forehead and chin, straight, heavy nose and really fine, kindly, laughing eyes set well apart, while a heavy dark moustache partially concealed assuasive lips. Had I met him fifteen years earlier I might have made a hero of him, for he was intelligent as well as strong; he spoke, too, half a dozen languages and was completely devoid of snobbism or "side." I always felt grateful to him for taking me up as he did. It pleased him that I had read his Ride to Khiva, and he told me a story about it that amused me.
On his return to England after his famous "Ride," he was invited to dinner at Windsor to tell the Queen about his adventures. Of course he obeyed the order, got into the train at Waterloo and fell fast asleep, did not change at Weybridge, but went on to Basingstoke, where he woke up. He had then to persuade the station master to make up a special train and send him back to Windsor. "The dearest dinner I ever had in my life," was his humorous comment on the incident.