474 



The Review of Reviews. 



/•/wti'x 



LAldlfr. 



The Church at Embleton. 



Darlington. He had long been an occasional (and 

 unpaid) contriisutor to its columns ; tlie proprietor of 

 the paper had detected in these letters and articles 

 evidence of unusual vigour and ability, and he offered 

 to the young merchant's clerk the post of editor-in- 

 chief. Stead — perhaps for the last time in his life — 

 felt great diffidence ; but the experiment proved a 

 complete success. His great chance came with the 

 Eastern Question and Mr. Gladstone's agitation over 

 the atrocities in Bulgaria. He had by this time 

 become a fast friend of Mme. de Novikoflf, and the 

 Bulgarian agitation appealed with compelling force to 

 his ardent temperament and religious instincts. He 

 came up to London in order to put himself in touch 

 with the leaders of the crusade. He saw Carlyle 

 among others, who used to speak of him as " that 

 good man. Stead." Hisfriendshi]i with C^anon Liddon 

 dated from the same events. Presently, when Stead 

 settled in London, he was the Canon's constant com- 

 panion in afternoon walks upon the Embankment. 

 Meanwhile his paper became the most powerful organ 

 of the agitation in the North of England, and an 

 "elector's catechism " which he ])rinted in 1880 — the 

 first of many electoral sheets of the kind — had a very 

 large circulation. 



THF. "I'.M.L M.M.I, GAZK.TTE." 



The excellent service which Stead had rendered in 

 the Press did not escape the notice of leading Liberals 

 in London, and wlien Mr. Morley assumeil the editor- 

 ship of the Pall Mall Gazelle in 1880 he selected 

 Stead as his assistant-editor. The combination of the 

 two men which ruled that journal for three years was 

 a strong one. It was a union of classical severity 

 with the rude vigour of a Goth. Mr. Morley was 

 political director and wrote most of the leading 

 articles. Stead looked after the rest of the paper, 

 and was fertile in suggestions. Mr. Morley used to 

 call Stead " the irrepressible," but in fact the assistant- 

 (^ditor was during these years successfully tamed. 

 When there is a potent individuality at the head of a 



newspaper his instruments catch the dominant note -, 

 and many an article in which outsiders supposed 

 themselves to detect the style and temper of Mi. 

 Morley was the work of Stead. j 



In 1883 Mr. Morley retired from the editorship, | 

 and Stead succeeded him. The six years that followed | 

 were those during which, as Stead used to say in hia 1 

 characteristic fashion, he was engaged in " running 1 

 the British Empire from Northumberland-street." j 

 He undoubtedly made his paper a great political force, j 

 and, by a succession of shocks or spasms, rendered 

 its daily doings the talk of the town. His first great 

 political amp had far-reaching eifects. To Stead, ' 

 more than any other man, was due the sending ul 

 Gordon to the Sudan. Political memoirs record that I 

 on January 10, 1884, Lord Granville telegraphed to 1 

 Sir Evelyn Baring asking whether Gordon might 

 not be of use, but they omit to mention the impelling i| 

 force under which the Foreign Secretary acted. This 

 came from Stead. He had been seized with the idea 

 of " Chinese Gordon for the Sudan," and acted upon 

 his inspiration with characteristic vigour. On Januar) 

 8 Gordon was at Southampton, on his way from 

 Palestine to take charge of King Leopold's expedition 

 to the head-waters of the Congo. Stead went down 

 to see him, " interviewed " him at great length, and 

 advocated his despatch to rescue the garrisons with 

 much force and eloquence. The suggestion was 

 warmly taken up in the Press, and the Government 

 acted upon it. 



Stead's assumption of the editorship of the Pall 

 Mall Gazette coincided with the publication of 

 Seeley's " Expansion of England," and he was in 

 those days a jjersistent " Liberal Imperialist." He 

 invented the phrases " Cut and Run ! " and " Scuttle,' 

 to express his contempt for the policy of " Little 

 Englanders." A younger generation should remember 

 that there was no man who had done more in the 



The House (to the left) at Howdon-on-Tyne, where 

 Mr. Stead speat his youth (1849-1871), 



