Part 15
On the 29th of January, I dined with Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone. The host was in a grim mood of suppressed excitement, anger, and apprehension. All day long he had been expecting a summons from the Queen, and it had not arrived. "It begins to look," he said, "as if the Government meant after all to ignore the vote of the House of Commons, and go on. All I can say is that, if they do, the Crown will be placed in a worse position than it has ever occupied in my lifetime." But after the party had broken up, Sir Henry Ponsonby arrived with the desired message from the Queen; and on the 1st of February Gladstone kissed hands, as Prime Minister for the third time.
"When Gladstone runs down a steep place, his immense majority, like the pigs in Scripture but hoping for a better issue, will go with him, roaring in grunts of exultation." This was Lord Shaftesbury's prediction in the previous year; but it was based on an assumption which proved erroneous. It took for granted the unalterable docility of the Liberal Party. I knew little at first hand of the transactions and tumults which filled the spring and early summer of 1886. At the beginning of February I was laid low by serious illness, resulting from the fatigue and exposure of the Election; and when, after a long imprisonment, I was out of bed, I went off to the seaside for convalescence. But even in the sick-room I heard rumours of the obstinate perversity with which the Liberal Government was rushing on its fate, and the admirably effective resistance to Home Rule engineered by Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain. The Liberal leaders ran down the steep place, but an important minority of the pigs refused to follow them. The Home Rule Bill was thrown out on the 8th of June. Parliament was immediately dissolved. The General Election gave a majority of more than a hundred against Home Rule; the Government retired and Lord Salisbury again became Prime Minister.
In those distant days, there was a happy arrangement by which once a year, when my father was staying with me, Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone dined with me to meet him. My father and Gladstone had both entered public life at the General Election of 1832, and my father loved to describe him as he appeared riding in Hyde Park on a grey Arabian mare, "with his hat, narrow-brimmed, high up on the centre of his head, sustained by a crop of thick, curly hair," while a passer-by said: "That's Gladstone. He is to make his maiden speech to-night. It will be worth hearing." The annual rencounter took place on the 21st of July, 1886. After dinner, Gladstone drew me into a window and said: "Well, this Election has been a great disappointment." I replied that we could certainly have wished it better, but that the result was not unexpected. To my amazement, Gladstone replied that it was completely unexpected. "The experts assured me that we should sweep the country." (I always wish that I could have had an opportunity of speaking my mind to those "experts.") Pursuing the subject, Gladstone said that the Queen had demurred to a second election in six months, and that some of his colleagues had recommended more moderate courses. "But I said that, if we didn't dissolve, we should be showing the white feather."
It is no part of my purpose to trace the dismal history of the Liberal Party between 1886 and 1892. But one incident in that time deserves to be recorded. I was dining with Lord and Lady Rosebery on the 4th of March, 1889; Gladstone was of the company, and was indulging in passionate diatribes against Pitt. One phrase has always stuck in my memory. "There is no crime recorded in history--I do not except the Massacre of St. Bartholomew--which will compare for a moment with the means by which the Union was brought about." When the party was breaking up, one of the diners said: "I hope Mr. Gladstone won't draw that parallel, between the Union and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, on a public platform, or we shall stand even less well with the thinking public than we do now."
Parliament was dissolved in June, 1892, and, when the elections were over, it was found that the Liberal Party, including the Irish, had only a majority of 40. When Gladstone knew the final figures, he saw the impossibility of forcing Home Rule through the Lords, and exclaimed: "My life's work is done." However, as we all remember, he took the Premiership for a fourth time, and during the Session of 1893 passed a Home Rule Bill through the House of Commons. The Lords threw it out by 419 to 41, the minority being mainly wage-receivers. Other troubles there were, both inside the Government and outside it; Mr. Gladstone told his friends that the Naval Estimates demanded by the Admiralty were "mad and drunk"; and people began to suspect that the great change was at hand.
On the 1st of March, 1894, Gladstone made his last speech in the House of Commons. In that speech he bequeathed to his party the legacy of a nobly-worded protest against the irresponsible power of the "Nominated Chamber"; and then, having accomplished sixty-one years of Parliamentary service, he simply disappeared, without ceremony or farewell. In my mind's eye I see him now, upright as ever, and walking fast, with his despatch-box dangling from his right hand, as he passed the Speaker's Chair, and quitted the scene of his life's work for ever.
In spite of warnings and anticipations, the end had, after all, come suddenly; and, with a sharp pang of regretful surprise, we woke to the fact that "our master was taken away from our head to-day." Strong men were shaken with emotion and hard men were moved to unaccustomed tears, as we passed out of the emptied House in the dusk of that gloomy afternoon.
On the 6th of March, 1894, Gladstone wrote to me as follows, in reply to my letter of farewell:
"My speculative view into the future shows me a very mixed spectacle, and a doubtful atmosphere. I am thankful to have borne a part in the emancipating labours of the last sixty years; but entirely uncertain how, had I now to begin my life, I could face the very different problems of the next sixty years. Of one thing I am, and always have been, convinced--it is not by the State that man can be regenerated, and the terrible woes of this darkened world effectually dealt with. In some, and some very important, respects, I yearn for the impossible revival of the men and the ideas of my first twenty years, which immediately followed the first Reform Act. But I am stepping out upon a boundless plain.
"May God give you strength of all kinds to perform your appointed work in the world."
FOOTNOTES:
[37] The British troops entered Cairo on the 14th of September, 1882.
[38] Better known as "Billy Johnson," the famous Eton Tutor.
[39] The Right Hon. J. W. Lowther.
[40] Afterwards the Right Hon. John Burns, M.P., President of the Local Government Board.
[41] Afterwards Lord St. Aldwyn.
XII
ORATORY
[Greek: esti d' ouch ho logos tou rhetoros, Aischine, timion, oud' ho tonos tes phones, alla to tauta proaireisthai tois pollois, kai to tous autous misein kai philein, housper an he patris.] DEMOSTHENES. _De Corona_.
The important thing in public speaking is neither the diction nor the voice. What is important is that the speaker should have the same predilections as the majority, and that his country's friends and foes should be also his own.
I hope that I shall not be reproached with either Pedantry or Vanity (though I deserve both) if, having begun so classically, I here introduce some verses which, when I was a boy at Harrow, my kind Head Master addressed to my Father. The occasion of these verses was that the recipient of them, who was then Sergeant-at-Arms in the House of Commons and was much exhausted by the long Session which passed the first Irish Land Act, had said in his haste that he wished all mankind were dumb. This petulant ejaculation drew from Dr. Butler the following remonstrance:
Semper ego auditor? Requies data nulla loquelae Quae miseras aures his et ubique premit? Tot mala non tulit ipse Jobas, cui constat amicos Septenos saltem conticuisse dies. "Si mihi non dabitur talem sperare quietem, Sit, precor, humanum sit sine voce genus!" Mucius[42] haec secum, sortem indignatus iniquam, (Tum primum proavis creditus esse minor) Seque malis negat esse parem: cui Musa querenti, "Tu genus humanum voce carere cupis? Tene adeo fatis diffidere! Non tibi Natus Quem jam signavit Diva Loquela suum? En! ego quae vindex 'mutis quoque piscibus' adsum, Donatura cycni, si ferat hora, sonos, Ipsa loquor vates: Patriae decus addere linguae Hic sciet, ut titulis laus eat aucta tuis. Hunc sua fata vocant; hunc, nostro numine fretum, Apta jubent aptis ponere verba locis. Hunc olim domus ipsa canet, silvaeque paternae, Curiaque, et felix vatibus Herga parens. Nec lingua caruisse voles, quo vindice vestrae Gentis in aeternum fama superstes erit." H. M. B., Aug., 1870.
The prophecy has scarcely been fulfilled; but it is true that from my earliest days I have had an inborn love of oratory. The witchery of words, powerful enough on the printed page, is to me ten times more powerful when it is reinforced by voice and glance and gesture. Fine rhetoric and lofty declamation have always stirred my blood; and yet I suppose that Demosthenes was right, and that, though rhetoric and declamation are good, still the most valuable asset for a public speaker is a complete identification with the majority of his countrymen, in their prejudices, their likings, and their hatreds.
If Oratory signifies the power of speaking without premeditation, Gladstone stands in a class by himself, far above all the public speakers whom I have ever heard. The records of his speaking at Eton and Oxford, and the reports of his earliest performances in Parliament, alike give proof that he had, as Coleridge said of Pitt, "a premature and unnatural dexterity in the combination of words"; and this developed into "a power of pouring forth, with endless facility, perfectly modulated sentences of perfectly chosen language, which as far surpassed the reach of a normal intellect as the feats of an acrobat exceed the capacities of a normal body."
His voice was flexible and melodious (in singing it was a baritone); though his utterance was perceptibly marked by a Lancastrian "burr"; his gestures were free and graceful, though never violent; every muscle of his face seemed to play its part in his nervous declamation; and the flash of his deep-set eyes revealed the fiery spirit that was at work within. It may be remarked in passing that he considered a moustache incompatible with effective speaking--"Why should a man hide one of the most expressive features of his face?" With regard to the still more expressive eyes, Lecky ruefully remarked that Gladstone's glance was that of a bird of prey swooping on its victim.
Lord Chief Justice Coleridge told me that he had once asked Gladstone if he ever felt nervous in public speaking. "In opening a subject," said Gladstone, "often; in reply never," and certainly his most triumphant speeches were those in which, when winding up a debate, he recapitulated and demolished the hostile arguments that had gone before. One writes glibly of his "most triumphant" speeches; and yet, when he was among us, he always delivered each Session at least one speech, of which we all used to say, with breathless enthusiasm, "That's the finest speech he ever made." On the platform he was incomparable. His fame as an orator was made within the walls of Parliament; but, when he ceased to represent the University of Oxford, and was forced by the conditions of modern electioneering to face huge masses of electors in halls and theatres and in the open air, he adapted himself with the utmost ease to his new environment, and captivated the constituencies as he had captivated the House. His activities increased as his life advanced. He diffused himself over England and Wales and Scotland. In every considerable centre, men had the opportunity of seeing and hearing this supreme actor of the political stage; but Midlothian was the scene of his most astonishing efforts. When, on the 2nd of September, 1884, he spoke on the Franchise Bill in the Waverley Market at Edinburgh, it was estimated that he addressed thirty thousand people.
"Beneath his feet the human ocean lay, And wave on wave flowed into space away, Methought no clarion could have sent its sound Even to the centre of the hosts around; And, as I thought, rose the sonorous swell, As from some church-tower swings the silvery bell. Aloft and clear, from airy tide to tide, It glided, easy as a bird may glide; To the last verge of that vast audience sent, It played with each wild passion as it went; Now stirred the uproar, now the murmur stilled: And sobs or laughter answered as it willed:"[43]
It is painful to descend too abruptly from such a height as that: but one would be giving a false notion of Gladstone's speaking if one suggested that it was always equally effective. Masterly in his appeal to a popular audience, supernaturally dexterous in explaining a complicated subject to the House of Commons, supremely solemn and pathetic in a Memorial Oration, he was heard to least advantage on a social or festive occasion. He would use a Club-dinner or a wedding-breakfast, a flower-show or an Exhibition, for the utterance of grave thoughts which had perhaps been long fermenting in his mind; and then his intensity, his absorption in his theme, and his terrible gravity, disconcerted hearers who had expected a lighter touch. An illustration of this piquant maladroitness recurs to my memory as I write. In 1882 I was concerned with a few Radical friends in founding the National Liberal Club.[44] We certainly never foresaw the palatial pile of terra-cotta and glazed tiles which now bears that name.[45] Our modest object was to provide a central meeting-place for Metropolitan and provincial Liberals, where all the comforts of life should be attainable at what are called "popular prices." Two years later, Gladstone laid the foundation-stone of the present Club-house, and, in one of his most austere orations, drew a sharp contrast between our poor handiwork and those "Temples of Luxury and Ease" which gaze in haughty grandeur on Pall Mall. We had hoped to provide what might seem like "luxury" to the unsophisticated citizen of Little Pedlington; and, at the least, we meant our Club to be a place of "ease" to the Radical toiler. But Gladstone insisted that it was to be a workshop dedicated to strenuous labour; and all the fair promises of our Prospectus were trodden under foot.[46]
I have often heard Gladstone say that, in the nature of things, a speech cannot be adequately reported. You may get the words with literal precision, but the loss of gesture, voice, and intonation, will inevitably obscure the meaning and impede the effect. Of no one's speaking is this more true than of his own. Here and there, in the enormous mass of his reported eloquence, you will come upon a fine peroration, a poetic image, a verse aptly cited, or a phrase which can be remembered. But they are few and far between--_oases_ in a wilderness of what reads like verbiage. Quite certainly, his speeches, in the mass, are not literature, as those found to their cost who endeavoured to publish them in ten volumes.
For speeches which are literature we must go to John Bright; but then Bright's speaking was not spontaneous, and therefore, according to the definition suggested above, could not be reckoned as Oratory. Yet, when delivered in that penetrating voice, with its varied emphasis of scorn and sympathy and passion; enforced by the dignity of that noble head, and punctuated by the aptest gesture, they sounded uncommonly like oratory. The fact is that Bright's consummate art concealed the elaborate preparation which went to make the performance. When he was going to make a speech, he was encompassed by safeguards against disturbance and distraction, which suggested the rites of Lucina. He was invisible and inaccessible. No bell might ring, no door might bang, no foot tread too heavily. There was a crisis, and everyone in the house knew it; and when at length the speech had been safely uttered, there was the joy of a great reaction.
My Father, unlike most of the Whigs, had a warm admiration for Bright; and Bright showed his appreciation of this feeling by being extremely kind to me. Early in my Parliamentary career, he gave me some hints on the art of speech-making, which are interesting because they describe his own practice. "You cannot," he said, "over-prepare the substance of a speech. The more completely you have mastered it, the better your speech will be. But it is very easy to over-prepare your words. Arrange your subject, according to its natural divisions, under three or four heads--not more. Supply each division with an 'island'; by which I mean a carefully-prepared sentence to clinch and enforce it. You must trust yourself to swim from one 'island' to another, without artificial aids. Keep your best 'island'--your most effective passage--for your peroration; and, when once you have uttered it, sit down at once. Let no power induce you to go on."
Anyone who studies Bright's speeches will see that he exactly followed his own rule. The order and symmetry are perfect. The English is simple and unadorned. Each department of the speech has its notable phrase; and the peroration is a masterpiece of solemn rhetoric. And yet after all what Demosthenes said is true of these two great men--the Twin Stars of Victorian Oratory. Each had all the graces of voice and language, and yet each failed conspicuously in practical effect whenever he ran counter to the predilections and passions of his countrymen. Gladstone succeeded when he attacked the Irish Church, and denounced the abominations of Turkish misrule: he failed when he tried to palliate his blunders in Egypt, and to force Home Rule down the throat of the "Predominant Partner." Bright succeeded when he pleaded for the Repeal of the Corn Laws and the extension of the Suffrage: he failed when he opposed the Crimean War, and lost his seat when he protested against our aggression on China. It must often fall to the lot of the patriotic orator thus to set himself against the drift of national sentiment, and to pay the penalty. No such perils beset the Demagogue.
I should not ascribe the title of orator to Mr. Chamberlain. He has nothing of the inspiration, the poetry, the "vision splendid," the "faculty divine," which make the genuine orator. But as a speaker of the second, and perhaps most useful, class, he has never been surpassed. His speaking was the perfection of clearness. Each argument seemed irresistible, each illustration told. His invective was powerful, his passion seemed genuine, his satire cut like steel and froze like ice. His perception of his hearers' likes and dislikes was intuitive, and was heightened by constant observation. His friends and his enemies were those whom he esteemed the friends and the enemies of England; and he never committed the heroic but perilous error of setting himself against the passing mood of national feeling. He combined in rare harmony the debating instinct which conquers the House of Commons, with the power of appeal to popular passion which is the glory of the Demagogue.
The word with which my last sentence closed recalls inevitably the tragic figure of Lord Randolph Churchill. The adroitness, the courage, and the persistency with which between 1880 and 1885 he sapped Gladstone's authority, deposed Northcote, and made himself the most conspicuous man in the Tory Party, have been described in his Biography, and need not be recapitulated here. Mr. Chamberlain, who was exactly qualified to resist and abate him, had not yet acquired a commanding position in the House of Commons; and on the platform Churchill could not be beaten. In these two men each party possessed a Demagogue of the highest gifts, and it would have puzzled an expert to say which was the better exponent of his peculiar art. In January, 1884, Churchill made a speech at Blackpool, and thus attacked his eminent rival--"Mr. Chamberlain a short time ago attempted to hold Lord Salisbury up to the execration of the people as one who enjoyed great riches for which he had neither toiled nor spun, and he savagely denounced Lord Salisbury and his class. As a matter of fact, Lord Salisbury from his earliest days has toiled and spun in the service of the State, and for the advancement of his countrymen in learning, in wealth, and in prosperity; but no Radical ever yet allowed himself to be embarrassed by a question of fact. Just look, however, at what Mr. Chamberlain himself does; he goes to Newcastle, and is entertained at a banquet there, and procures for the president of the feast a live Earl--no less a person than the Earl of Durham. Now, Lord Durham is a young person who has just come of age, who is in the possession of immense hereditary estates, who is well known on Newmarket Heath, and prominent among the gilded youth who throng the doors of the Gaiety Theatre; but he has studied politics about as much as Barnum's new white elephant, and the idea of rendering service to the State has not yet commenced to dawn on his ingenuous mind. If by any means it could be legitimate, and I hold it is illegitimate, to stigmatize any individual as enjoying great riches for which he has neither toiled nor spun, such a case would be the case of the Earl of Durham; and yet it is under the patronage of the Earl of Durham, and basking in the smiles of the Earl of Durham, and bandying vulgar compliments with the Earl of Durham, that this stern patriot, this rigid moralist, this unbending censor, the Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain, flaunts his Radical and levelling doctrines before the astonished democrats of Newcastle. 'Vanity of Vanities,' saith the preacher, 'all is vanity.' 'Humbug of Humbugs,' says the Radical, 'all is humbug.'"
And with that most characteristic specimen of popular eloquence, we may leave the two great demagogues of the Victorian Age.
At the period of which I am speaking the House of Commons contained two or three orators surviving from a class which had almost died away. These were men who, having no gift for extempore speaking, used to study the earlier stages of a debate, prepare a tremendous oration, and then deliver it by heart. Such, in days gone by, had been the practice of Bulwer-Lytton, and, as far as one can see, of Macaulay. In my day it was followed by Patrick Smyth, Member for Tipperary, and by Joseph Cowen, Member for Newcastle. Both were real rhetoricians. Both could compose long discourses, couched in the most flowery English, interlarded with anecdotes and decorated with quotations; and both could declaim these compositions with grace and vigour. But the effect was very droll. They would work, say, all Tuesday and Wednesday at a point which had been exhausted by discussion on Monday, and then on Thursday they would burst into the debate just whenever they could catch the Speaker's eye, and would discharge these cascades of prepared eloquence without the slightest reference to time, fitness, or occasion.