jesting remark personally, though I had not so meant it.
Lord Wolverton told me, afterwards, that I had spoiled my chances with Gladstone. I said I thought I should survive, though I did not excuse myself for my foolish repartee.
A little while ago (I am writing in 1926), a Captain Peter Wright got into great trouble for stating that Gladstone was always running after women in the loosest way. The story of course was contradicted by his son, Herbert Gladstone, who is now Lord Gladstone; but Herbert Gladstone's denial should not be taken seriously.
It was common talk in the House of Commons that Gladstone was perpetually after women. It was said, too, that girls used to write him love letters, and that all such letters were brought to Mrs. Gladstone who, after reading them, tore them up, taking care that they shouldn't reach the Grand Old Man.
I distinctly remember Sir Charles Dilke telling me that Gladstone couldn't oppose him because he was known to be still looser himself. But my belief in Gladstone's libertinism was better founded.
But why should I prove it now? An English jury has declared its belief in Mr.
Gladstone's goodness: what more is wanted? An Irish M. P., too, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, has asserted that in his judgment Mr. Gladstone knew nothing about Parnell's intrigue with Mrs. O'Shea till the libel suit revealed it, though Mrs. O'Shea, in her book, has stated positively that Gladstone knew all about it years before the scandal. For good reasons I agree with Mrs. O'Shea, and can only regret that Mr. T. P. O'Connor's memory was so strangely subservient to English prejudice.
But, after all, what do the O'Connors matter when the Avorys sit as judges?
The height of the joke was reached when Mr. Justice Avory asserted, from his knowledge of English and Italian, that Lord Milner's allusion to 'Gladstone, as governed by his Seraglio,' was quite innocent and conveyed 'no hint that such a man was a gross sensualist.' Pity that Mr. Justice Avory didn't strengthen his knowledge by a glance at Dr. Johnson's dictionary! Thanks to this judicial freak, Gladstone has received, in correct English fashion, plenary absolution, and thus hypocrisy is justified of its professors, and the sepulchre of English life has enjoyed a new coat of cheap whitewash.
I don't pretend that my opinion has any objective validity; yet, I give it in corroboration of Captain Wright's boldness. But I should never have quarreled with Gladstone without mentioning his judgments, which reveal the essential mediocrity of the man. His heroes were Washington and Burke; the most interesting modern statesmen to him were Lord Randolph Churchill and Parnell. His favorite country after Britain was naturally the United States. Even in his chosen field of words and literary art, all his judgings were mediocre. The modern author he placed highest was Sir Walter Scott; the greatest modern masters of English prose in his opinion were Ruskin and Cardinal Newman; the best biography was Lockhart's Life of Scott, He thought Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe the four greatest writers, but he omitted Cervantes altogether, and never seems to have heard of Turgenev. Fancy putting Newman as a writer of prose above Swift or Pater, and fancy a Prime Minister who could write a review article on the genius of Marie Bashkirtseff.
My quarrel with Gladstone was not so bad as another blunder which I must now relate. In due time I found that my knowledge of Pigott had had a great effect upon Arthur Walter. His father and Mr. MacDonald, the manager of The Times had been utterly misled by Pigott, whereas I had got to know him and had soon judged him rightly. The first consequence of The Times fiasco was that John Walter practically withdrew from the management of the paper and asked his son Arthur to take his place. Arthur, it seems, after my talk, had told his father that he thought Pigott absolutely untrustworthy. As soon as Arthur Walter got power on The Times he sent for me. He had gone down, I remember, to stay with Mrs. Walter at the Hotel Metropole in Brighton. I went down, took a room, put my belongings straight and then went up to him. I found him washing his hands before lunch.
'I sent for you,' he said, 'because I think now I can offer you the editorship of The Times. I believe you would do it greatly, but I wanted to know first of all what you think of Buckle, the present editor, and what you would do with him!'
'I would keep him on as political editor,' I replied; 'he seems to suit the conservative opinion that is the backbone of The Times, and I have so many new things to do that I don't want to make any break with the past that isn't absolutely necessary.'
'That's fine of you!' said Arthur Walter, 'I suppose you know that Buckle wouldn't give you any place?'
'No one, Walter,' I replied, 'can see above his own head, and so we must forgive Buckle, but I see little Mr. Buckle perfectly plainly, though he is about six feet high. My idea is to make a general headquarters staff to run The Times; to get picked editors on every great subject, a dozen at least, and then fifty contributing editors, the ablest men from every country in Europe.'
'Good God,' said Walter. 'You frighten me; what would it cost?'
'I should give the foreign contributing editors,' I said, 'about two hundred pounds a year each on their promise immediately to answer by return any questions addressed to them; of course, we would pay for their contributions as well, and I would give the dozen editors in England one thousand pounds a year, plus the honor.'
'Even that,' he said, 'would be an added expense of twenty or thirty thousand pounds a year: how would you cover the loss?'
'I would undertake for that single editorial page,' I said, laughing, 'to get three columns of advertisements in America and South Africa which would pay the twenty-five thousand pounds a year of new expenses three times over. I would make the leader page in The Times the greatest page that has ever been seen in journalism. Every line in it should be on the topmost level of thought! And I would add a financial column which would bring in more cash.'
We went in to lunch and I told him more of my ideas, and he was greatly impressed, till I came to the declaration that I would make it a penny paper so as to get over a million circulation. 'My father and MacDonald have gone into that,' he said, 'and they both declare it is absolutely impossible.'
'That word shouldn't be in the vocabulary of The Times,' I said.
But he went on seriously, 'You have no idea how carefully they have gone into the whole matter, and it would turn all my father's grey hairs white if he thought that anybody was going to do such a thing.'
'You can't afford,' I said, 'to leave the Daily Telegraph with a tenfold greater circulation than that of The Times. I assure you the penny paper is necessary, but I won't press it till the success of the other innovations has shown you that I am justified.'
He shook his head and begged me to put the idea out of my head. Strange to say, I found that Mrs. Walter was with me in opinion. 'If Mr. Harris could get a million circulation for The Times,' she said, 'surely all the advertisements would be immensely more valuable; and by making your own paper, as he says, you might get, if not such good paper as you have now, yet nearly as good at a cheaper rate.'
Then for the first time I learned that the paper supply of The Times was in the hands of another branch of the family, and they wouldn't consent easily to any great change.
But I committed my great mistake when Walter began to talk of Oscar Wilde. 'I hope,' he said, 'that you wouldn't employ him in any way on The Times.' I replied that I didn't think he needed any journalistic employment: everything he did was eagerly bought up by the reviews and large publishers.
'I wonder that you go about with him,' said Walter. 'You are getting a bad name through it.'
'Really,' I said, 'I never heard that his disease was catching. Genius is not infectious.'
'In the last six months,' Walter went on, 'I have received hundreds of letters, signed and anonymous, talking about your connection with him and your perpetual defense of him.'
This struck me as extraordinary. I had, then, no idea of the number of anonymous correspondents in London; I learned the vile effects of envy very slowly, for I never felt envious of any one in my life.
'I defend every able man I meet,' I said carelessly; 'they all have a hard time of it in life and it is a sort of duty to stick up for them.'
'As long as you don't employ him,' said Walter, 'I don't mind, but I thought I ought to tell you that you could do nothing more unpopular than to defend him.'
'I always defend my friends,' I said.
Walter seemed a little shocked, a little pettish, too, I thought, not to say petty.
About a fortnight later, Walter told me that he had asked Moberly Bell, their correspondent in Egypt, to come to London to help him. 'I couldn't face your innovations, Harris, especially in regard to the price of the paper.'
I suppose I was too cocksure, and so frightened him.
I record my failures here as openly as my successes. If I had been a little more of a diplomatist I could have
