58. Mayor Hopkinson in 1883: Malagasy Envoys and Sir Garnet Wolseley

The New Year opened with a grand and rather exotic occasion, at which John was supported by his sons John, Alfred, Charles and Albert.

This was the visit of the Malagasy Envoys, to which the Manchester Courier devoted a full page of detail on 3 January 1883.  The envoys were the ambassadors of the reforming and Christian Queen Ranavalona II of Madagascar.  (By the way, this is not the Queen Ranavalona of George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman's Lady).  In a vain attempt to keep their country free from European intervention, they had already paid visits to the French and British governments, and would next go on to the USA.

Ranavalona II of Madagascar (1829-1883)

The diplomatic mission consisted of His Excellency Ravoninahitriniarivo, Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and His Excellency Ramaniraka of the Privy Council "both cultivated men of high rank in the State of Madagascar, and the latter an accomplished scholar, who speaks English with considerable fluency".   

They had come to Lancashire with two native secretaries, an English secretary and interpreter, the Madagascar consul in London Samuel Procter, the US consul at Madagascar Colonel Robinson and the missionary the Revd W C Pickersgill.  (Photographs of the envoys can easily be found online by searching for the name Ravoninahitriniarivo, but unfortunately none of them are in the public domain and free to use here).  

The London Missionary Society, whose first mission in Madagascar had begun in 1818, was a largely Congregationalist body and had an East Lancashire Auxiliary in Manchester.  From the 1830s, Mancunian Congregationalists had been hearing from visiting missionaries about their work on the island and in 1840 Malagasy Christian refugees had come to the town.

On the first day of their visit, the envoys came in by train from Alderley Edge where they had stayed the night with Mr F J Jackson, a merchant in the Africa trade, and were driven round the city by John and other officials on a tour of mills and warehouses.  Their second night was spent with Mr Henry Lee, Manchester cotton manufacturer and Liberal MP for Southampton, at Sedgley New Hall (St Gabriel's, Church, Prestwich now stands more or less on the site of Mr Lee's house).  They then attended the reception for 1,500 people that John gave in their honour at the Town Hall.  Bands played, refreshments were offered and speeches were made.  John gave the welcoming address:

You have come hither, ambassadors of the Queen of Madagascar, across the seas, thousands of miles from your own shores upon a message of peace, to make friends with European peoples, and to know more of their arts, commerce, and manufactures. (Applause)  

They had visited Queen Victoria in her own home, met the Royal Princes, inspected the arsenals

You now come to these northern towns of England, the homes of peaceful and highly-organised industries.  (Applause)  We can show you how our sons of labour make calicoes and guns, locomotives, and machines, ships, and railways.  Beyond all these we can show you a people who for years have taken a deep interest in the civilisation and well-being of Madagascar.  (Applause).  

We remember that you are of the same Christian faith with ourselves; that long ago men from our midst, of our own townsfolk, went out in the fervour of a holy zeal, for the conversion of Madagascar from heathendom, and found their graves there.  We remember the terrible persecution that ensued upon the death of your King Radama, when hundreds of your and our fellow Christians sealed their testimony with their blood.  We have seen your fellow countrymen and countrywomen who had escaped with their lives in their hands stand up in our city and thank God that they had found in England, this land of freedom, an asylum from the bitterness and malice of their persecutors.  (Applause)  

Now a better day has dawned upon your land; religious liberty is the law of your country as of our own.  Instead of destitute refugees – driven from their homes by the relentless cruelty of your former rulers, you have come, the accredited and honoured representatives of your enlightened and Christian Queen.  (Applause)  In the name of the citizens of Manchester I offer to you a respectful, sincere, and hearty welcome. 

The Revd Pickersgill then spoke very frankly to the assembled guests, describing the situation in Madagascar – the reforms that the Queen and her government were carrying out, their fears of intervention by European powers and their problems with the British Treaty.  He said

If the representatives of England and France, and if other European countries had done their duty as they ought to have done it, the duty which enlightened people are bound to do to countries like Madagascar, the present difficulties would never have assumed the formidable aspect which they bore at the present moment … 

These people had been willing to make certain reforms; they had been willing to make certain concessions to foreigners.  The foreigners, on the other hand, had not been willing to make reasonable concessions to these people … 

The more the real state of the case was known the more it appeared that a great injustice would be done if any European Power were to take possession of the island at the present time.  (Applause)

He hoped the ambassadors would be able to go home "believing that England practised what she professed".  

In the event, the French and British governments came to an agreement that France could establish a protectorate in Madagascar in exchange for France recognising British claims to Zanzibar.  The Queen and her niece and successor Queen Ravanalona III objected in vain, and in 1897 Ravanalona III, the last monarch of Madagascar, was sent by the French into exile.  

But at the beginning of July, John must have been pleased to get a letter from the envoys who were in London and preparing to go home.  They had reported to their Queen the "hospitable reception we received at your hands" and were sending him, as well as her best thanks, a Malagasy lamba – the traditional scarf, heavy with cultural significance and worn by both men and women – as a souvenir.  I wonder what became of it; the lamba presented by Queen Ranavalona III to President Grover Cleveland are in the Smithsonian.

The next excitement was the visit in March of the celebrated soldier Garnet Wolseley (1833-1913).  Most famous at the time for his service in the Crimea and the Siege of Lucknow, he was a favourite with public and press and was now a General and a viscount.  He had been invited to Manchester to open a new Temperance Lodge of Freemasons which was to be named in his honour, but people felt that an appearance by such a distinguished servant of the Empire to a city as important to the Empire as Manchester should not go unnoticed.  It was made a civic occasion and he was to be the guest of the mayor.

Garnet Wolseley

It was a flying visit packed with incident.  He took the 7.30am express from London on Wednesday 28 March, was greeted by a cheering crowd, driven to the consecration ceremony at the new Wolseley Lodge and attended a masons' banquet afterwards at the Free Trade Hall.  (This was built in the 1850s on the site of the Peterloo Massacre; its facade remains, fronting the Edwardian Manchester Hotel).  He stayed in the state apartments of the Town Hall and at 10 o'clock the following morning two carriages arrived to take him for a tour of Sir Joseph Whitworth's engineering, ordnance and ammunition works at Openshaw.  John travelled with the General in the first carriage and his sons Charles and Edward were with the gentlemen in the second carriage.

Whitworths' directors showed them round the works, where the General was able to examine gun barrels, crank shafts for ships and breechloader guns and see the forging of a 100-ton gun being turned out for an Italian ship.  John Hopkinson will have taken pleasure in the precision engineering on display but we know his views on weaponry – that part of the visit will have been a dismal experience for him.  When he visited Sir William Armstrong's armaments works on Tyneside in September 1878, he had written to Alice, "It cuts me to the heart to see so much ingenuity applied to destroying human life."  [1]

As the party left the Whitworth works, the loud cheering of the crowd spooked the horses, which plunged and kicked, damaging the leading carriage so badly that John, the General and the other gentlemen sitting inside – luckily unhurt and apparently not too shaken – had to abandon it for another.  On to the Royal Exchange so that the men of commerce could pay their respects to the General, and then to an evening reception or conversazione hosted by the Mayor and Mayoress.  

This was a full-scale event for people involved in education in Manchester – a subject dear to John's heart and about which he had spoken in his inaugural speech.  He and Alice had sent out a thousand invitations to governors and professors from Owens College, from Manchester Grammar School, the Manchester School Board and, the Manchester Courier said, "all classes of educationists", to meet the Vice-Chancellor and members of the Victoria University Court.  A "spacious awning" was put up over the pavement at the front entrance to the Town Hall, the staircases and lobbies were decorated with plants and flowers, the Police Band was playing for the guests in the Sculpture Hall, and there was tea and coffee in the council chamber and refreshments in the Banqueting Hall.  

John and Alice received their guests for an hour and then the band of the Queen's Bays played for them in the Great Hall, with an interval for short addresses about education, beginning with a speech by John and ending with Lord Wolseley.  There is no report of the speeches themselves.  Wolseley had been forced to leave school at 14 because of family finances.  When he spoke in public on education he used to call for more emphasis on the importance of physical education and fitness, less emphasis on mastering specific subjects and more on encouraging common sense, endurance, courage and manliness.  He may not have felt entirely at home among the professors.

Among the many guests listed in the press reports were Professor Alfred and Mrs Hopkinson, Dr John and Mrs Hopkinson, Dr Edward Hopkinson, and Mr Charles Hopkinson and lady.  John and Evelyn's presence makes me wonder whether this event had been planned long before Lord Wolseley's visit became official and he was an addition to the programme.

The conversazione ended at 10.30pm and Lord Wolseley took the 11pm train back to London.

The next year he would be sent – following public and press outcry and the intervention of Queen Victoria – out to the Sudan in the hope of rescuing the doomed General Gordon, besieged in Khartoum, from the forces of the Mahdi.

On 1 May 1883 John was in London, giving his evidence on the proposed Ship Canal to a Committee of the House of Commons.

Notes

[1] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 73