Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 | Page 2

rare then than
now, a liberal education, and, besides modern languages, had at least a
moderate acquaintance with the classics. She held herself gallantly in
the dim, half-educated society of her husband's chapel, but reserved her
friendships--sometimes with a touch of wilfulness--for those who
represented whatever there was of sweetness and light in the wider
society of the town. In one respect she was absolutely in harmony with
my father, and that was in her sympathy with the poor and in quiet,

unparaded determination to hold out a helping hand to all that sought it.
She had imagination, and she sent it on errands of good-will. I think my
brother inherited from her his alertness of mind and not a little of his
quickness of apprehension.
I can remember him coming back from Bruce's school all aglow with
his prizes, and I can recall, as if it were but yesterday, his audacious
speeches, and the new books with which, as soon as he earned a
shilling, he began to leaven the dull old library, much to the delectation
of the other children. I can recall a rough cartoon in one of the local
journals which was greeted with huge merriment in the family circle,
because it represented Tom as "Ye Press of Newcastle"--a mere boy in
a short jacket perched on a stool, scribbling for dear life at the foot of a
platform on which some local orator was denouncing the tyranny of the
existing Government. He must then have been about seventeen,
certainly not more, and he was even at that time somewhat of a
youthful prodigy. Then he developed a passion for the collection of
autographs, and used to write the most alluring letters to celebrities,
and astound my modest father by the replies--they were invariably
written as to a man of mature life and public importance--which he had
elicited from eminent people in politics and the world of letters. He, a
mere youth, invited a well-known Arctic explorer to Newcastle to
lecture on his perils in the frozen North, and my father bought him his
first hat to go to the railway station to meet the gallant sailor, who
brought his pathetic relics of Franklin to our house, where he stayed as
guest. The great man's chagrin when he found that a lad scarcely out of
short jackets had invited him to Newcastle vanished in the genial
firelight, and in the subsequent reception of the good townsfolk. Then
my brother conceived the ambitious scheme of the West End Literary
Institute, and by dint of energetic and persistent begging carried the
project out, and with a high hand.
Suddenly, when he was still a young reporter, a great calamity befell
the locality. The Hartley Colliery catastrophe plunged all Tyneside in
gloom. He was the youngest reporter on the local Press, but his account
of the long-drawn agony of that terrible time, when two hundred brave
fellows lost their lives, was the most graphic. It brought him local
renown. It was published as a shilling pamphlet, after it had done duty
in the _Newcastle Journal_, and to his credit he gave, though as poor as

a church mouse, the whole of the proceeds--a sum of £40, I think--to
the Relief Fund. It was a characteristic act which was not belied by the
subsequent generosity of his life. All too soon--for he brought as a
young reporter a breezy, new atmosphere into the family circle--he
went to Preston, on the principle of promotion by merit. Then Leeds
claimed him, and next he settled in London, in the short-lived
happiness of his early married life, returning to Yorkshire--this time as
chief of the paper he had served so well. During his career as editor of
the Leeds Mercury I saw comparatively little of him. We were both
busy, though in different ways; but we kept up, then and always, a brisk
correspondence, and his letters, all of them brimful of public interest
and family affection, are before me now. The world is a different place
to me now, but "memory is a fountain of perpetual youth" and nothing
can rob me of its sweetness.
There is scarcely an incident recorded in these pages which he did not
tell me at the time in familiar talk. There is much, also, that he has not
set down here, all of it honourable to himself, which I could recount
about those early days in Newcastle, and to a certain extent also in
Leeds, where I was again and again his guest; but, as he has chosen to
be silent, it is not for me to speak. Oddly enough, I never in my life
heard him deliver a political speech, nor do I think he excelled in that
direction. But he was admirable as a lecturer on