The Autobiography of a Journalist Volume II Part 9

Baring was convinced that Tricoupi, as well as the late premier, was bent on war, and would not at first believe that his request was sincere, but finally, overpersuaded, did telegraph to London. I then flew to all the other legations, except the French and Russian, which had been supporting Deliyanni, and repeated the request to the secretaries in charge, winding up with the Turkish minister, whose s.h.i.+p had not yet arrived, and who was therefore still in Athens, pending its arrival, and gave him the fullest explanation of Tricoupi's position and the difficulties of it, and begged him to telegraph Constantinople to order Eyoub Pasha to withdraw from the frontier far enough to leave the bands no outlying detachment to attack. I succeeded in convincing him that Tricoupi was sincere in his efforts to keep peace, and the good fellow said at once, "If Tricoupi is sincere, I will not stand on diplomatic etiquette, but will go to see him at once." He did so, and found the Greek minister at the war office, as he had taken that portfolio with the premiers.h.i.+p, and they arranged between them that the Porte should be telegraphed to, requesting Eyoub Pasha to put a sufficient distance between him and the attacking bands of Greeks to make a conflict out of the question; and before nightfall the white flag was flying along the frontier, and communication established between Eyoub and Sapunzaki via Salonica, and peace was secured.

Eyoub's orders to cross the frontier with his solid column of thirty to forty thousand men, and march straight to Athens if the attacks persisted another day, were peremptory, and there was no force or dispositions of defense to prevent his triumphal movement. There were no defensive works, for the jingo Greeks ridiculed the idea of needing a defensive preparation against an invasion of the Turkish army, which they were confident of annihilating ten to one. There was no lack of personal courage on the part of the Greek population, but there was no efficient organization even of the so-called regular army, and there was really nothing to prevent a Turkish walk-over as far as the old frontiers of Greece, and even there there were no earthworks.

The sequence was disgraceful and humiliating. I wrote at the time that "The wounded are not yet all in the hospitals when the attacks on Tricoupi for having ordered the demobilization already begin in the Chamber and the press. His happy arrival at the moment of danger has saved Greece from, a disaster which, now that it is averted, the Greeks in general will never believe to have been so near, and will not accept as a lesson." And for the trifling part I had taken in the final negotiations I was afterwards insulted in the streets of Athens as having "prevented the Greeks from marching to Constantinople." They got their lesson years after, when they were far better prepared for war than on this occasion. But Tricoupi was right when he said that the blockade was a mistake, and that the powers should have allowed the Greeks to take their own course and learn their lesson.

Undiscriminating Philh.e.l.lenism has been the worst enemy of Greece.

The flurry over and quiet restored, the heat, the excitement, and the hard and unremitting work and anxiety of that month of May told on me, and I broke down with an attack of nervous prostration and acute dyspepsia, by which I was quite incapacitated from movement. Taking the first steamer to Naples, I pa.s.sed the rest of the summer at Rome, disabled, until the heats had pa.s.sed, for any considerable exertion.

But, contrary to the general superst.i.tion regarding Rome, it is a city where one may pa.s.s the summer months most agreeably if not very actively. The English amba.s.sador of that time, Sir John Saville Lumley, afterwards Lord Saville of Burford, to whom I owe many delightful hours in that and subsequent years, used to say that he knew no city where one could pa.s.s the year so delightfully as in Rome.

By strict diet and an activity limited to the hours of the early morning and afternoon I weathered the summer, but each return of the heats during the succeeding six years brought me a relapse, so that on the whole I paid a long penalty for my partic.i.p.ation in Greek politics.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

CRISPI--A SECRET-SERVICE MISSION--MONTENEGRO REVISITED

The following year was marked by the accession of Crispi to the direction of the government of Italy. So many fables have acc.u.mulated regarding Crispi, and such bitterness of prejudice against him even in England, that as one of the very few disinterested witnesses of his conduct from that day until his second fall after Adowah, and supposed to be in his confidence, I am disposed to put briefly on record my impressions of him. His popularity at that date (1887) was incontestably greater than that of any other Italian statesman, but the animosity entertained for him by the Radicals was intense, owing to his most vigorous repression of all anti-dynastic tendencies, and the bitterer for his having once been himself a Radical leader; but, what was at first sight inexplicable, the hostility to him of the Conservatives was scarcely less bitter than that of the Republicans,--the former because he had once been a Republican, and the latter because he had ceased to be one. The leading chiefs of groups among the politicians were afraid of him on account of his strength, and the court had the most cordial hatred of him, partly because he had never tried to conciliate it or to conceal his distrust of it, and partly because Signora Crispi was an object of aversion to all the society of Rome. This aversion was intensified by the fact that, as the wife of a member of the order of the Annunciata, she was ent.i.tled to precedence over all the Italian n.o.bility not so honored.

A Knight of the Annunciata is technically the cousin of the King, and at the receptions of the Queen, Signora Crispi, who was really an antipathetic person, had her seat in the royal circle, where she sat as completely ignored by all present as if she were a statue of Aversion. I am convinced that the larger part of the animosity shown for Crispi by the better cla.s.ses in Rome was due to her. One of Crispi's oldest and most constant friends told me of a visit he once made to his house with General----, one of the Mille of Marsala, when, as they left the house, the general said mournfully, "Poor Crispi, he has not a friend in the world." "Nonsense, he has thousands," replied the other. "No," returned the general, "if he had _one_ he would kill that woman." In the latter part of Crispi's first ministry we were on friendly terms, though our first intercourse was anything but kindly; but I avoided going needlessly to his house to the end of my term of residence in Rome, except when the service demanded it, because I did not like to meet his wife.

Crispi and I were never intimate, and the supposed confidence between us never extended beyond the communication of political matter which he thought should be made public, and which could be made public without violation of official secrecy. He had far too high an estimate of his position as the head of the government of one of the powers of Europe to enter into intimacy with a correspondent of even the "Times," a journal of which, nevertheless, he always spoke with the respect due another power. "It is not merely a journal, but a great public inst.i.tution," he said, and he treated me as the agent of that power; but intimacy in any other sense there never was. Crispi had, to a degree I never knew in any other Italian minister, the sense of the dignity of his position, which, to those who did not read the man thoroughly, seemed arrogance, and made him many enemies. He had an invincible antipathy to newspaper correspondents, but at the outset of our acquaintance I made him understand that even if he did not see fit to treat me with cordiality, he should not treat the "Times" with disrespect. He had two secretaries, Alberto Pisani Dossi, one of the most n.o.ble Italian natures I ever knew, and Edmond Mayor, a Swiss, naturalized in Italy, and an admirable diplomat, now in its service, an honest, faithful child of the mountain republic; and both these became and remain my excellent friends, and, as they were permitted, they kept me informed of the matters which it was for the advantage of the "Times" to know; but until near the end of the first term of Crispi's premiers.h.i.+p we never came nearer than that to being friends.

I found his manner intolerable, as, no doubt, other journalists did, and, as the relations of the journalists to the man in office are in Italy generally corrupt, Crispi's aversion to them and their ways accounted easily for the very general and violent hostility between him and the press.

The tone of the journals in Italy has very little to do with public opinion. All the world knows that, with the exception of two or three dailies, the Italian papers are the organs of purely personal interests, ambitions, and opinions,--not even of parties, which do not exist except in the form of fossil fragments; and when a journal emits an opinion or formulates a policy, everybody knows that it is the opinion or policy of the man who has a dominant or entire control of its columns. Crispi had his own journal, "La Riforma," which frankly and entirely expressed his views, and he paid no attention to the others. I happened to be on the way to the Foreign Office the day after Crispi a.s.sumed the reins of government, and by the way fell in with the foreign editor of one of the journals of the Left, exulting in the accession of a minister of his old party. He said to me, "I will wager you, Stillman, that in six weeks we are recognized as official,"--which meant subsidized. He had his audience first, and it was short, but within the fortnight his paper was one of the most violent opponents of the ministry. I had my audience, and in five minutes I turned my back on the premier and walked out of the office, and never put my foot in it again until, many weeks after, some trouble on the African frontier between English and Italian officers brought me a request from Crispi to come and receive a communication.

I finally conquered his respect by showing him that I was the sincere friend of Italy, and our relations became confidential as far as his very rigorous sense of his official limitations permitted, but not a line beyond. I have seen in his hands the copy of the treaty of Triple Alliance, but I never drew from him the faintest hint of its provisions except that it was purely defensive and contained no stipulation for any aggressive movement under any circ.u.mstances. I learned them from other sources, and, with the changes of ministries and the diversities of their policies, foreign as well as domestic, there is no doubt that all the powers are fully informed of the details of the treaty. But personal intimacy, in the sense of that friends.h.i.+p which obtains amongst equals, could never have existed between us. Crispi is extremely reticent and reserved in his personal relations and has very few intimate friends, and those, so far as I know, entirely amongst the faithful few who were his intimates in the days of insurrection and conspiracy; but I know him as well as any one out of that circle, and I know him to be an absolutely honest and patriotic statesman, the first of Italy since Cavour. It is my opinion, too, that he is the ablest man not only in Italy but in Europe, since the death of Bismarck. In 1893 he was urged to a.s.sume the dictators.h.i.+p, and the King in the general panic was willing to accord it, but Crispi refused, saying, "I am an old man with few years to live, but I will not give my countrymen an example of unconst.i.tutional government."

But Italian politics are only the wrangle of personal ambitions and of faction intrigues. The Chamber is a legislative anarchy from which a few honest and patriotic men occasionally emerge as ministers through a chance combination, to disappear again with the first tumult, and the influence of the chief of the state was never such as to guide it out of the chaos. King Humbert, one of the truest gentlemen and most courteous sovereigns that ever sat on the throne of any country, never made an effort to defend the prerogatives of the crown, and accepted with the same _bonhomie_ every ministerial combination proposed to him, whether it comprised dangerous elements or not. At no time did he attempt to exert the enormous influence which the crown possesses in Italy for the maintenance of a consistent policy, internal or foreign.

Lord Saville told me that, when Crispi came to power in 1887, he asked the King if he was a safe head of the government, and the King replied that it was better to have him with them than against them, for at that time Crispi was regarded by all Conservatives as the devil of Italian politics. But in the following years Crispi's profound--even exaggerated--reverence for the King, and his masterly administration of the government, had laid all the apprehensions of the sovereign at rest, and gained for him the widest popularity ever possessed, in my knowledge of Italian affairs, by any minister. The King said to me that he had the most absolute confidence in his devotion, integrity, and abilities. Yet, when in 1891 an artificial crisis in the Chamber gave Crispi his first defeat on a question of so little const.i.tutional import that his successors adopted his measure and pa.s.sed it, the King accepted with the same equanimity a ministry composed of the most discordant elements, ignoring all the const.i.tutional proprieties. At a later epoch, that of 1893, when Crispi saved Italy from menacing chaos, the King repeated to me his expression of confidence in Crispi and his very low opinion of his only possible alternative, Rudini, but in the succeeding crisis accepted Rudini with the same cheerfulness he had shown when Crispi saved the position in 1893.

Nothing could exceed the devotion of the King to his subjects and their personal welfare, but he allowed the s.h.i.+p of state to drift into the breakers because he would not maintain the highest prerogative of the crown, that of insisting on a ministry which possessed and deserved his confidence. Knowing, as he did, that parliamentary government in Italy had become a mere farce and the derision of the country, he never attempted to insist on exercising any influence on the composition of the ministry, which represented his authority as well as the popular will, and in 1896 he yielded the dissolution of the Chamber to the pressure of a court favorite against the advice of all his const.i.tutional advisers. Personally I was a warm admirer of the man, but I regard his reign as a long disaster to the kingdom of Italy, the greater because his personal qualities gave him such a hold on the population that he might safely have a.s.sumed any initiative beneficial to the state. He might have abolished the Chamber--he allowed it to abolish him.

The return of the summer heats bringing on a recurrence of the malady acquired at Athens, I was obliged to leave Italy for the summer and I returned to England. On my arrival the "Times" manager proposed to me a trip to America in quest of evidence connected with the Parnell case. A professional detective sent out some time before had failed to get hold of the threads of the question, and MacDonald, thinking that as an American I might succeed where the professional had failed, desired me to try my luck. Of the general history of that case the public has long ago learned all that it cares to know. I had nothing to do with that and am not here concerned with it; but I had a curious and interesting experience in my visit, the object of which was the obtaining of doc.u.ments that would confirm the connection of Mr.

Parnell with secret and illegal acts in Ireland, with which the Irish conspirators in America were probably connected, it being hoped that some of the latter might be induced to give up doc.u.ments in confirmation.

I had warned MacDonald that the published facsimile of a letter purporting to have been written by Parnell in connection with the Phoenix Park murders was not what he supposed it to be, and that the theory that it had been written by Parnell's secretary and signed by Parnell was erroneous. It was clear to me that it had been written and signed by the same hand and by the same pen. I had once gone through a complicated case of forgery with Chabot, the great expert in handwriting, in the course of which I became greatly interested in the man. We had become friends and he had taught me all that could be taught of his profession, so that I had some capacity to form a judgment on the matter. MacDonald replied that they were certain of their facts, and that they should maintain that position. There was ample personal evidence that a letter of the import of that produced in facsimile in the "Times" had been sent by Parnell to Sheridan, who was implicated in the Phoenix Park murders, and that this letter had been seen by many persons supposed to be in the councils of the Irish party! and it is probable that Pigott had seen it and bargained for its delivery to some party on behalf of the "Times." He was probably deluded in this expectation, and, not to fail in his promise, reproduced it from memory and with the aid of the handwriting of Parnell's secretary and an old signature of Parnell, and delivered it as the original. Confirmation of this hypothesis is given by the fact that Parnell dared not bring his suit against the "Times" until the forged letter had been shown in court in the course of the connected case of O'Donnell, and was seen by him not to be the original. That was safe in the custody of Sheridan, who had taken it to America and kept it in hiding from both parties. It was the special object of my mission.

The English detective who had preceded me had the navete to apply to the chief of the New York detective police, an Irishman, for a.s.sistance, and was handed over to pretended colleagues who were really agents of the Irish organization, and so completely duped by them as to be induced to send a supposed detective (who was one of themselves) to Mexico, where he was a.s.sured that Sheridan had gone, and led to undertake various operations which were simply contrivances to make him lose his time and his money.

On carefully surveying the ground at New York before attempting to make any direct application to any person whom I supposed capable of furnis.h.i.+ng me with what I sought, I discovered that the detective service of New York was in the hands of the Fenian organization, that the chief of police (now deceased) was their confederate, and, above all persons, not to be taken into my confidence, and that the princ.i.p.al line of transatlantic telegraph was under the supervision of a confederate of the a.s.sociation. The latter betrayed himself at once by the absurd difficulties he made about my registering a London telegraphic address, which I at the instant saw to be a.s.sumed for the purpose of delay and imposing on me a prearranged address, which, however, I accepted with apparent simplicity and good faith. My telegrams were of course to be in cipher, and this was so secure from all attempts at deciphering that I had no anxiety about the Irish chiefs solving it. I have heard in later times that they boasted of having copies of all my messages (which is probable) and having read them, but this was impossible, as not only was the cipher extremely difficult to any one even who had the key, but the key was changed every day by a scheme arranged before I left London and known only by the office and myself. My cipher, if used according to the directions, is absolutely insoluble by any patience or experience, and the Fenian boast that they read it was pure "blague." I knew that they had the telegraph in their hands and made my arrangements accordingly. But the secret power of the organization surprised me, though I knew very well the political influence at election time which the rottenness of our politics gave them.

I obtained from a leading New York merchant a letter of introduction to a well-known private detective whom, as a fellow-countryman, I succeeded in so far interesting in my work that I had no difficulty in getting from him all the useful information that he possessed; but to my request for practical a.s.sistance he replied that half of the detectives in his own employment were Irish, and that the knowledge that he had taken part in any such undertaking as mine would lead to their desertion and the paralysis of his own service. But he put me in the way of getting the services of a most competent detective who worked on his own hook, and from whom I obtained all that I needed. He succeeded in tracing Sheridan to a ranch in Nevada, and ascertained that he had the Parnell letter which we wanted, but that he did not carry it with him, for fear of being robbed of it, and that he was watched so closely by the agents of the Fenian organization that, as my mission was suspected, my connection with the "Times" being known to all the world, any attempt on my part to enter into personal relations with him would be dangerous to me personally, and if I did succeed in purchasing the desired doc.u.ment from him, I should be killed, if necessary, to get it from me. Sheridan was willing to sell it, but he considered his life to be in such danger if it were known that he had done so, that he demanded a price which would, in the event of his being a.s.sa.s.sinated, put his wife at ease for the rest of her life. Later he would have accepted a much smaller price, and it is said that a prominent English Radical, to put the matter out of the possibility of renewal of the accusation, subsequently purchased it.

Pending these researches and the arrival of a reply by post to my request at length for more detailed instruction as to certain negotiations which I had entered into, I went into the Adirondack woods for ten days, a movement which proved how closely I was watched by the Irish agents. Since my early knowledge of that wilderness, a railroad had been built through it, and to see the portion through which it pa.s.sed--a section far from my old haunts--I followed it as far as "Paul Smith's Hotel," on the northern edge of the woods, and then took a boat across the lake country, reaching "Martin's," on the south, near my former camping-grounds. Two days later an Irishman arrived at "Martin's" from "Paul Smith's," in a buggy. As I had made no secret of my destination in leaving Smith's, having no suspicion of being shadowed, and quite indifferent to it if attempted, I suspected at once that our Hibernian guest was on my track. He brought with him an old army carbine, but as it was the close season for the deer, and the arm was rusty and unfit for sporting uses, I was confirmed in my suspicions that his business was with any person who might come to hold a conference with me. Finding that no one came to meet me, he grew friendly and, under the influence of the good whiskey plentiful there, confidential. He pretended to have served in the Federal cavalry during the War of Secession, and that the carbine was his accustomed weapon; but one day when well soaked with whiskey he was induced to come out and join in a shooting match, when we found that he actually did not know how to fire at a mark, and it was evident that his employers considered that a revolver would be a greater danger to him than to the man he was expected to punish, and so had provided him with a safer weapon. I kept him pretty drunk for two or three days, and he told us frankly that he was employed usually in carrying messages between New York and Ireland. There remained no question that his business was to take care of any traitor to the cause who might have been so incautious as to meet me in secret, and the caution of my detective that my life was in danger if I entered personally into negotiation with Sheridan was shown to be justified.

As the negotiations had showed me that the members of the party were not all incorruptible, and as I had learned that Tynan, who was then in New York, and who was supposed to be the famous No. 1, was conversant with all the facts relating to the murder in Phoenix Park, I suggested to my friend the princ.i.p.al detective that I should make Tynan a direct bid for the information we wanted, offering an ample compensation. He replied that Tynan was incorruptible, and that my proposition would most probably be regarded as an insult which he would resent by a revolver bullet, "and," he added, "in the present state of politics here, no jury could be found which would convict him of murder."

As the result of my expedition, we obtained some unimportant doc.u.ments, though nothing that related to Parnell; but the picture of the state of politics in New York, dominated by a clique of conspirators and murderers, in possession of the police of the city, and the telegraph service, sitting as a Vehmgericht in the princ.i.p.al city of the Union, and paralyzing the criminal law whenever its security was threatened, was worth some trouble and expense. Of its truthfulness there remained no question. I did not depend on one source of information in my researches, but, having had a confidential letter to the English consul in New York, I applied to him for help simultaneously with my dispatch of the detective, and he ultimately confirmed the report of the detective in every respect, but cautioned me on my first visit against coming to the consulate again, as the surveillance of the Fenians was constant, and if my business with him were suspected it might lead to needless complications, so that I was obliged, in order to consult him, to meet him at some prearranged place, a restaurant by choice, where we could exchange information without attracting the attention of the Fenian spies.

Though the chief object of my mission was not attained, the information I did gather was considered of such importance that on my return to Rome the "Times," "for the good service rendered," added to my salary the rent of my quarters, the only advance in my pay ever made from the beginning of my service. I remained in charge of the two peninsulas, Greece and Italy, as long as Mr. MacDonald lived. He died in 1889, and though I have never had any ground for discontent at the relation I was in with the office, under either his successor or the change of proprietors.h.i.+p which took place not long after, I felt when MacDonald died that the strongest personal tie which bound me to the paper was severed. When I joined the staff Delane was the editor, and though, on account of his health, he rarely interfered in the details of the management, and my relations were entirely with the sub-editor, Mr. Stebbing, whose real and hearty friends.h.i.+p was matter of great personal satisfaction to me then and since, we always felt that Delane was over us. When Chenery succeeded, the relation became one of cordial friends.h.i.+p with the chief, who was a scholar as well as a journalist, of whose sympathy for a good piece of work one was sure.

His death and the accession of Mr. Buckle in no manner changed my situation at the office, but it was another editorial change, while with MacDonald not only had I the relation of a subordinate with a friendly chief, in constant correspondence on every point of duty from the beginning of my service, but there were many and strong ties between us in outside sympathies, and he was as kind to me as an elder brother. He was most unjustly credited with the Pigott fiasco, but, as I have shown, the evidence of the genuineness of the letter which Pigott had forged was so strong that the experienced counsel were all deceived by it, and the conduct of Parnell himself showed that he was not sure that it was not the genuine doc.u.ment until he saw it. _Au fond_ the "Times" was right, and its accusation against Parnell was fully justified, but by one of those chances which occur to even the most prudent, there was a defect in the chain of evidence at the most important point.

The animosities developed by the affair found expression in terms of the most unjustifiable imputations of collusion with the forgery, on the part of MacDonald and Mr. Walter, which I have seen repeated in later years; but no one who knew either of the men would for a moment admit that there could be a shadow of justice in the imputation.

Mr. Walter, though of an uncompromising hostility to any political measures or persons that he considered dangerous to the country, was of an inflexible sincerity and honesty, and absolutely incapable of the remotest complicity with a fraud. No other man of his race have I known in whom the patriotic fire burned more intensely, or who better merited the description of the Latin poet, "Justum et tenacem propositi virum," or had more of the English bulldog tenacity in a cause which he considered just and of vital importance to the country.

Slow to form antipathies, he was immovable in them once formed, and as constant in his confidences once he found them merited. To his intense conservatism and antagonism to s.h.i.+fty politics was probably due the unvarying opposition of the "Times" to Home Rule and all other attempts at infringement of the British Const.i.tution, but so far as my own experience goes he never attempted to influence the views of the correspondence. There were points in which, in regard to Italian and Greek affairs, he differed from me seriously, but he never imposed a hair's weight on what I had to say, nor do I believe that he intentionally influenced the tone of the paper beyond the exercise of the inevitable control over its national policy. The antagonism to the United States at the outbreak of the War of Secession was Delane's, and not in accordance with Mr. Walter's feeling, but, like most of Delane's views, borrowed from London society or the government. The "Times" has its traditions like those of a monarchy, interests to defend which are not in all cases those of an ideal state policy, but are those which have made England what she is, and which are probably those which will keep her what she is the longest and most safely. And of these interests, and of this inflexible maintenance of them, John Walter was the most strenuous of supporters. He was a consistent liberal as far as he felt liberalism to be perfectly safe, but he had the most vivid dislike of Gladstone and his ways; a dislike dating from their earliest contact in the House of Commons, long before Gladstone adopted Home Rule. And to this nature the character of MacDonald responded as the natural executive. The following letter which I received from Mr. Walter in reply to mine of grief at the death of MacDonald, tells the story of their relation better than I can.

Bearwood, December 19, 1889.

Dear Mr. Stillman,--One appreciates true sympathy at such a time as this, and none that I have received has touched me more than yours. It is sad indeed to go down to the office and be no more greeted with MacDonald's cheery voice and kindly look. His illness was unexpected and its progress rapid. Within a few days after his return from his holiday in Mull, he was attacked by the complaint which proved fatal--"an enlargement of the prostate gland"--brought on, I have no doubt, by exposure day after day to continual rain, and accompanied by recurrent attacks of fever.

To myself personally his loss is irreparable, for I had been intimately a.s.sociated with him for thirty years, while his connection with the paper, formed in my father's time, was very much longer. He was confident, to the last, of the successful issue of the great cause to which he had devoted so much time during the last three years, and I would that he had been spared to witness it.

Yours very truly,

J. WALTER.

Of the fourteen years of increasing and finally cordial intimacy that followed Mr. MacDonald's acceptance of my services as casual correspondent of the "Times," I have the unbroken record in the file of letters received from him at every post where my duty carried me.

These contain the evidence of a n.o.ble, honest, and sympathetic nature, whose loss to me was, as Mr. Walter found it, "irreparable," for such friends.h.i.+ps sever themselves from all relation of interest and business.

During the tenure of the joint jurisdiction over Greece and Italy, I had an amusing experience through a report of my a.s.sa.s.sination by the Albanians. I profited by one of the visits to Athens and Crete to pa.s.s through Trieste and take Montenegro and northern Albania in the itinerary. Disembarking at Cattaro I drove by the new road to Cettinje, a magnificent drive with unsurpa.s.sed views seaward and inland, but the abolition of the natural defense of Montenegro against the Austrian artillery. No doubt the astute Prince understood that after the recognition of Montenegrin nationality by all Europe and the emphasis put on its importance by the Dulcigno demonstration and its results, he could afford to ignore the hostility of Austria and take his chances as the head of a civilized nation which had rights Austria must respect. But even in this breaking down of a barrier provided by nature he showed his shrewdness and tenacity, for the Austrians, in pa.s.sing the frontier, had made the trace of the road pa.s.s over an elevation from which their artillery would command the difficult gorge that was the gate to the princ.i.p.ality, and the Prince refused to bring his portion of the road to meet it but brought it up to the frontier by a safe route, and left the terminus there until the Austrians brought their road to meet it where the junction was in favor of the Montenegrin defense.

My reception in Cettinje was one of the pleasant incidents of my career as correspondent, for it was marked by a grateful cordiality unique in my experience, and I saw that a people and a Prince could retain grat.i.tude for past services where nothing was needed or to be expected in the future. The Prince received me as a brother. There was no time to revisit under happier circ.u.mstances the familiar places as I should have been glad to do, but I determined at least to see the new possessions on the coast, and pa.s.sing from Cattaro I followed the coast road by Spizza, the impregnable (if defended) fortress which had surrendered to Montenegro towards the close of the war, and was, without the shadow of a right, taken possession of by Austria in the settlement, and made a halt at Antivari. Here all was decay and ruin; the damages by the bombardment years before had not been repaired, the former Albanian inhabitants, mainly Mussulmans, had not returned, and the Montenegrins had not come. I could not even pa.s.s the night there, but took a boat from the port (there is no harbor) to Dulcigno. The owner of the boat put a mattress in it where I could lie at length, and so, sleeping, or listening to the songs of the rowers, or watching the stars overhead, I found myself in the course of the night at Dulcigno, where I was warmly received and hospitably entertained by the governor, a comrade of the war-days. With a little expenditure and energy Dulcigno might be made a delightful winter resort, the climate being that of Naples and the surroundings picturesque, but Montenegro has neither the capital nor the appliances to profit by its position.

A company had proposed to the Prince to build a port and construct a hotel and all necessary appurtenances if he would give, in compensation, the right of establis.h.i.+ng gaming-tables, after the fas.h.i.+on of Monte Carlo, but the Prince, awake to the importance of maintaining the respect of Europe so fairly won, refused the offer.

From Dulcigno the road I had to take to Scutari was a plunge into the unknown. I hired two horses, one a pack-horse for the baggage and the other a poor hack for riding. The roads were fetlock deep in mud, and the whole region so inundated that we often had to take across country, profiting by the ridges to avoid fording the unconjecturable depths of water in the ancient roads. At one point we had to pa.s.s a deep ditch, over which I forced my horse to jump, but the baggage horse refused it until pushed to it by main force, when he plumped in over head, ears, and baggage, and we had very great difficulty to extricate him, as the water was at least four feet below the bank.

But I reached Scutari fortunately before night, wet, bedraggled, and muddied from head to foot, my clothes in tatters from the tenacious wait-a-bit thorn hedges we had had to force our way through, and all my baggage soaked, more or less as the water had had time to penetrate to it. Not an inhabited house did we pa.s.s on the way, such had been the terror of the border warfare still not dissipated. But from Scutari south there were other dangers. The Albanians were in a state of incipient revolt, and the country was unsafe for a Turkish escort, if even such protection were not to me a greater danger, and I found, not I confess without a little trepidation, that the only protection I could count on was the consular postman who rode with the mail-bag to San Giovanni di Budua, the first point at which the Austrian Lloyd steamers called. We met with no annoyance, however, and though we had at some points curious looks we encountered nothing more offensive, but I decided to give up the remainder of the land journey till more propitious times. San Giovanni seems to have been an important Roman port and there are interesting remains of the Imperial epoch.

On my arrival at Athens I received a telegram from my brother-in-law in London mysteriously praying me, "If you are alive, wire us." On the heels of that came another from my father-in-law, "If you are safe, telegraph to Marie," one to Tricoupi, then prime minister, to ask news of me, one to the English legation from the Foreign Office demanding information of my whereabouts, and another to the same from the "Times"--to all which I could get no explanation nor could anybody in Athens conjecture the why of the querying. We soon learned that a telegram from Cettinje, based on a report from Albania, had reported my being beheaded in the interior of Albania. I was honored by a question in the House of Commons, and obituary notices were general in the American papers. The official Montenegrin journal went into mourning. Several kind-hearted ladies waited on my wife in Florence to condole with her, but as I had telegraphed her on receipt of the telegram from her father that I was well, and the Italian papers with the news of my death had not frightened her, for she never read them, the condolence was discounted and the condoling friends went away, their object unexplained and their equanimity upset by the information that she had received a telegram from me that morning. There was a small compensation in the reading of my obituary notices, a satisfaction that can rarely be given a man.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

ITALIAN POLITICS

In the reorganization of the office consequent on the entry of a new manager, I was offered the choice between the posts of Athens and Rome. Personally I should have preferred Athens, but I had recently established my family at Rome, and the serious objection to a family residence at Athens in the want of any refuge from the heats of the intense summer of that city at a practicable distance from it, was an insuperable obstacle to my accepting it. The succession of Lord Dufferin to the Emba.s.sy at Rome, and the friendly personal relations which his large-hearted nature established between the Emba.s.sy and the correspondents.h.i.+p, made the position highly agreeable. He was of all the diplomats I have ever known the one who best understood how to treat a correspondent. He took my measure as correspondent and accepted me _pro tanto_ into his confidence. He used to say, "I tell you whatever information there is, because I know that then you will not telegraph what ought not to be telegraphed, while if you find it out for yourself I have no right to restrain you."

In 1890 the negotiations between England and Italy in reference to the occupation of Ka.s.sala by the latter, culminated in the congress of Naples, where Crispi met Sir Evelyn Baring (now Lord Cromer), for the discussion of the conditions. Until that time my relations with Crispi had been such as he generally maintained with journalists, viz., a distant civility, but in my case attended by confidential relations with his two secretaries. I attended the congress, and was admitted by both Dufferin and Baring to such confidential knowledge of the negotiations as was possible. From Crispi's private secretary I learned his views, and, knowing the opinions on both sides, I was able to remove certain prejudices on the part of Crispi and so smooth the difficulties which his suspicious nature raised. Unfortunately there was one misapprehension on his part of which I became aware too late, namely, that Sir Evelyn Baring was hostile to Italians in Egypt and predisposed to combat Crispi's conditions. This was due to sheer misrepresentation on the part of the Italian delegates, who were both Anglophobes; and the conviction on the part of Crispi that he must fight Baring as an enemy led to protracted and obstinate contest of each point in the conditions, till finally, just as agreement had been arrived at, a dispatch from Lord Salisbury ordered the withdrawal from the negotiations, and the convention fell through, to Crispi's great annoyance. His total miscomprehension of the large-hearted and generous ruler of Egypt was a misfortune to Italy and to Crispi, but the defect was in his temperament--a morbid tendency to suspicion of strangers characteristic of the man and in the roots of his Albanian nature. Crispi was not a judge of men--had he been he would have avoided the friends who ruined his political career, and made friends who would have strengthened his position. The efforts I had made to remove misunderstandings satisfied Crispi that I was really friendly to Italy and established more cordial relations between us thenceforward. In acknowledgment of his mistaken treatment of me he conferred on me the cross of commander of the Crown of Italy.

A little later the combination was formed in the Chamber to overthrow the ministry. I had some time before befriended Monsignor X., the victim of an outrageous act of injustice on the part of the French government, and of accessory indifference on the part of the Vatican, and he had repaid me by valuable information from the Vatican from time to time. When this ministerial crisis was in progress, Monsignor X. came to me one evening to tell me that the chiefs of the factions in opposition were in conference with agents of the Vatican to support them in the overthrow of Crispi. The Vatican promised to release Catholics from the _non expedit_ in case of the fall of the ministry and the necessity of going to the country in a general election. The ministerial combination which accepted this pact with the immitigable enemy of the unity of Italy, whose sole motive for hostility to Crispi was the latter's invincible antagonism to the temporal power and the immixtion of the Church in civil affairs, comprised a leading Republican and Radical, Nicotera, and Rudini, the chief of the ultra-Conservative group, beside members of various groups of intervening shades of politics. Knowing little of the rottenness of the politics of Italy at that time I was amazed by the information of Monsignor X., and went at once to the Palazzo Braschi to inform Crispi and ascertain if there was positive confirmation of the information. I asked him to use his means of intelligence at the Vatican, which was always sure, and so well informed that Cardinal Hohenlohe told me one day that Crispi knew better what was pa.s.sing at the Vatican than the cardinals did. On inquiry he discovered that my news was true, and for the first time he understood the full meaning of the combination against him.

That the King should have accepted Crispi's resignation under the circ.u.mstances (the adverse vote in the Chamber, being a surprise vote involving no question of policy, and, as all knew, the result of a secret combination--a conspiracy, in fact) was a grave mistake on the part of His Majesty, and opened the way to all the confusion and parliamentary anarchy which has followed, and which to-day is increasing and menaces the stability of the throne and the unity of Italy. The government of Crispi had been most successful, his att.i.tude in the Bulgarian affair had rendered an important service to the cause of European peace, as was acknowledged by Lord Salisbury in a published dispatch, and he had strengthened the ties between England and Italy; he had maintained perfect order, and had effected economies in the national expenditure to the amount of 140,500,000 lire a year, besides suppressing some annoying taxes and without imposing any new one, and when he fell gold was practically at par and the financial position solid as it had not been since 1860. He had decided on the reform of the banking system, which would have prevented the catastrophe that fell on the succeeding ministry, and the rotten banks and the corrupt element in the Chamber which was in their pay were the leading element in the combination against him. Under these circ.u.mstances the King's duty was to support a minister who had at the grave crisis of the death of Victor Emmanuel saved the dynasty from a serious danger, who was universally known to be the only Italian statesman whose nerve was equal to any sudden emergency, and of whose devotion, as the King personally a.s.sured me later, he was absolutely certain. That no reason for the crisis existed was shown by the fact that the succeeding ministry adopted the identical measure on which Crispi was defeated. But the King (whose death has occurred while I am revising these chapters) showed on many occasions that, though loyal to his const.i.tutional obligation so far as deference to parliamentary forms is concerned, he never had the nerve to a.s.sume a responsible att.i.tude or maintain the authority of the throne; and, while he was ready to abdicate if popular opinion demanded it, he was unable to withstand a factious and revolutionary movement as his father had done, by calling to his support the statesmen who could maintain order when menaced. His form of const.i.tutionality was perfectly adapted to a country where the Conservative forces were supreme and the inst.i.tutions solid; but in a half-consolidated monarchy, attacked from within and without by dissolvent influences as is Italy at present, he was a cause of weakness to good government. And Rudini a.s.sured me when I went to pay the formal visit of congratulation on his accession to power, that the King had said that he was in the position of the young Emperor of Germany when he threw off the yoke of Bismarck--he was tired of Crispi's strong hand. The King later denied the statement in an audience he gave me, but I am afraid that Rudini was, for a novelty, nearer the truth.

Rudini as minister of foreign affairs began with a blunder which might well have been fatal. When the murder of the Italian prisoners at New Orleans took place, he determined to show his energy and patriotic spirit, and he telegraphed to the Italian minister at Was.h.i.+ngton to demand of the federal government the immediate bringing to justice of the murderers under the alternative of sending the Italian fleet to New Orleans. This amazing display of ignorance of the situation and of geography appeared in the Roman journals of the next morning. As I knew enough of the temper of my countrymen to foresee that this demand was certain to end in war or a humiliating result to Italy, I jumped into a cab and drove over to the ministry of public instruction, the t.i.tular of which, Professor Villari, was an old friend of our life in Florence, and begged him to go at once to Rudini and urge the countermanding of the telegram of the previous night, for, as the federal government had no jurisdiction in the case, it could not comply, and the imperious demand of the Italian government, intended for home consumption and as demonstration of the high spirit of the ministry, was certain to be peremptorily responded to, while the menace of sending the ironclad fleet to New Orleans was absurd and impossible of execution as the Mississippi did not admit s.h.i.+ps of their draft, to say nothing of the defenses of the river and the certainty of war if the ultimatum were pushed. Vlllari at once took a cab and drove to the house of the minister, and we never heard anything more of the matter.

The presence (which nothing but the amorphous state of Italian politics could explain), in that scratch ministry, of Villari, one of the most devoted, honest and patriotic of living Italians and for years one of my best friends in Italy, secured my support of the ministry until their financial measures came on, and I was obliged to expose their specious character in the "Times," when our friendly relations ceased temporarily. Political opponents in Italy are more likely to meet with seconds than at a friendly dinner party, as used to be the case in the days of Minghetti and Sella, and this pa.s.sionate personal antagonism for purely political motives which influences all political and social intercourse in Italy is one of the gravest causes of political decline.