ORATORS
From a very early time the art of oratory attracted me strongly. I
remember, as a boy, my father reading to us the full report in the
_Times_ of Edwin James’s defence of Orsini; and in later days, during my
apprenticeship in the city, I began from time to time to attend debates
in the House of Commons.
It was at about the same time that my friend Alan Skinner and I used to
find ourselves Sunday after Sunday in the little chapel in Great
Portland Street listening to the great Unitarian preacher, James
Martineau.
Though not a constant church-goer, I had the opportunity of hearing most
of the foremost pulpit orators of that day, including men as opposite in
their styles as Spurgeon, Canon Liddon, and Dean Stanley. Liddon’s voice
was a great possession, but his eloquence was not of a kind that
specially attracted me; and Dean Stanley, though his preaching was
impressive, scarcely ranked as an orator. On the other hand, Spurgeon’s
unquestioned power over his audience constantly puzzled me. I was drawn
again and again to his great tabernacle simply from the desire to
discover, if I could, the secret of his authority; to understand if it
were possible the means by which he contrived to sway the vast crowds
that gathered to hear him. But I remained to the end baffled in my
inquiries and, as regards my own personal impressions, entirely
unconvinced by the exercise of a gift that for the multitude possessed
an obvious fascination. It may be said, of course, that his appeal was
intended to be merely popular, but I found in the case of other speakers
who owned no loftier mission that it has been impossible not to realise
in some degree the source of their influence. From Spurgeon’s preaching
I derived no such satisfaction; the impression left upon me never passed
beyond cold disappointment.
With Martineau the case was wholly different. To my feeling, he easily
distanced all his contemporaries in the pulpit, and the impression left
upon me to-day is, that he and John Bright stand out as the two greatest
speakers of their generation.
Though widely divergent in manner, they both possessed an unequalled
power of impressing an audience with the sense of ethical fervour and
elevation of spirit.
There was no sentence of Martineau’s sermons that was not carefully
balanced and considered, and yet even the most complex passages of
philosophic thought were illumined and sustained by the sense of a
passionate love for the truth he was seeking to expound. In every
sentence the white light of reason was shot with fire; and although I
think his sermons were always prepared and written, they had the effect,
as he delivered them, of springing directly from the heart of the man.
He seemed less of a
[Illustration:
_Emery Walker_
JOHN BRIGHT
From the painting by WALTER WILLIAM OULESS, R.A., in the National
Portrait Gallery.
_To face page 169._
]
preacher than a seer; and although he never strove for rhetorical
display, even the most logical exposition as it fell from his lips was
charged with some thing of poetic impulse and inspiration.
And in his case eloquence was enforced by a noble presence. The
beautiful portrait by Mr. Watts recalls, without exaggeration of
dignity, the man himself as he stood there in the dimly lit chapel in
Great Portland Street; and in gazing again at those chiselled features
that seemed moulded by Nature to serve the speaker’s purpose, I can
almost hear again the tones of that deep sonorous voice which, in its
grave and impassioned utterances, stamped every separate word with
something of the high fervour that so manifestly inspired the preacher.
It was, I think, in virtue of this same quality of spiritual elevation
that the oratory of John Bright stood beyond the reach of rivalry.
Bright never attempted the complexity of thought that distinguished so
many of Martineau’s essays in the pulpit. He laid no claim to the
philosophical spirit as it was understood by Martineau, but he
possessed, even in a greater degree, the power of lifting every topic he
discussed into a higher spiritual atmosphere than any other speaker of
his time could command. And yet this unsurpassed power which he wielded
over an audience was secured by the simplest means, and often in the
simplest language.
In choice of the fitting word Bright was almost faultless. The great
English poets, as we know, he had deeply studied, and, indeed, no one
who was not sensitive to the finer moods of poetic feeling could have
forged such exquisite prose.
I remember my old schoolmaster, Dr. Hill, had been present at the public
breakfast given to William Lloyd Garrison in the year 1867, in
recognition of his efforts for the abolition of slavery. He told me
there was a point in the speech where, after gathering in Miltonic
catalogue the names of the many distinguished men who had been
associated with the movement, Bright turned to his audience with the
added sentence, “and of noble women not a few.” And Dr. Hill said that
these simple words stirred his hearers to a feeling of deepest emotion,
so magical had been the effect of Bright’s superb voice as it passed, in
brief tribute of homage, from one name to another.
This is an illustration, of which many more can be quoted, of how
impossible it is in the case of an orator so great as Bright to realise
that astounding influence from any mere printed record of his speeches.
I myself was present and heard the great oration he delivered at St.
James’s Hall, in 1866, on the subject of Reform. There had been some
turbulent episodes during the Reform agitation in London, and on one
occasion, when the right of meeting in the Park had been refused by the
Government, the railings had been thrown down by the crowd, who had
overborne the forces at the disposal of the authorities.
In certain quarters John Bright had been accused of encouraging the
populace to such acts of violence, and in the speech to which I refer
there was a passage in which he indignantly hurled back upon his enemies
this unworthy suggestion.
“These opponents of ours,” he said, “many of them in Parliament openly,
and many of them secretly in the Press, have charged us with being the
promoters of a dangerous excitement. They say we are the source of the
danger which threatens; they have absolutely the effrontery to charge me
with being the friend of public disorder. I am one of the people. Surely
if there be one thing in a free country more dear than another, it is
that any one of the people may speak openly to the people. If I speak to
the people of their rights, and indicate to them the way to secure them,
if I speak of their danger and the monopolies of power, am I not a wise
counsellor, both to the people and to their rulers? Suppose I stood at
the foot of Vesuvius or Etna, and, seeing a hamlet or a homestead
planted on its slope, I said to the dwellers in that hamlet or in that
homestead, ‘You see that vapour which ascends from the summit of the
mountain? That vapour may become a dense black smoke that will obscure
the sky. You see that trickling of lava from the crevices or fissures in
the side of the mountain? That trickling lava may become a river of
fire. You hear that muttering in the bowels of the mountain? That
muttering may become a bellowing thunder, the voice of a violent
convulsion that may shake half a continent. You know that at your feet
is the grave of great cities for which there is no resurrection, as
history tells us; that dynasties and aristocracies have passed away and
their name has been known no more for ever.’ If I say this to the
dwellers upon the slope of the mountain, and if there comes hereafter a
catastrophe which makes the world to shudder, am I responsible for that
catastrophe? I did not build the mountain, or fill it with explosive
materials. I merely warned the men who were in danger.”
As these words stand on the printed page it is not possible to gather
from them their extraordinary influence upon the packed masses of the
crowded hall. Throughout the whole passage his hearers were held as
though by magnetic influence; and as he passed from image to image of
the long metaphor he had adopted, there was a hushed stillness that was
almost oppressive.
Never prodigal of gesture, his slightest movement became for that reason
the more significant and dramatic. The greater part of his speech had
been delivered with the tips of his fingers just touching the table
before him, content, for all accompaniment to the words he uttered, to
rely upon the swiftly changing expression of his leonine face, which
seemed to mirror in its noble dignity the very soul and spirit of the
man.
But when he came to the words, “You hear that muttering in the bowels of
the mountain?” he raised his hand to his ear, and at the call of that
simple gesture it seemed to us who listened to him as though he had
summoned into the very hall itself the sound he had only suggested in
words. The effect was as though the building in which we sat was
actually threatened, and it was with a sense almost of relief that the
deafening cheers broke forth as he brought this noble vindication of his
own character to an end.
It is said that Bright’s speeches were always very carefully prepared,
and that in particular his perorations were verbally committed to
memory. If this be so, it forms the very highest tribute to his
intuitive sense of the true functions of an orator, for there is not one
of all the many splendid conclusions of his speeches which might not, as
it was uttered, have been forged in the white heat of the moment.
No preparation, whatever labour it may have involved, ever tempted him
to depart from that strict simplicity of language which formed his
crowning gift as a speaker. What, for instance, could be more instinct
with the mood of the moment, more directly inspired by the passionate
enthusiasm of the men he addressed, than that wonderful ending to his
speech in Glasgow delivered only two months before the address in St.
James’s Hall at which I was present.
“If a class has failed,” he said, “let us try the nation. That is our
faith, that is our purpose, that is our cry: let us try the nation. This
it is which has called together this countless number of people who
demand a change, and as I think of it, and of these gatherings sublime
in their vastness and in their resolution, I think I see, as it were,
above the hill-tops of time, the glimmerings of the dawn of a better and
a nobler day for the country and for the people that I love so well.”
However careful in his custom of preparation, there were certainly
occasions when Mr. Bright could speak with equal effect on the spur of
the moment. A splendid example of his power in this respect was afforded
at that same meeting at St. James’s Hall when, on the conclusion of Mr.
Bright’s address, some indiscreet remarks were offered by Mr. Ayrton,
which seemed to imply a reproach against the Queen for her indifference
towards the movement that was then in progress.
Without a moment’s pause Mr. Bright rose in sudden indignation, and in a
few passionate sentences vindicated the character of his sovereign.
“But Mr. Ayrton referred further,” he said, “to a supposed absorption of
the sympathies of the Queen with her late husband, to the exclusion of
sympathy for and with the people. I am not accustomed to stand up in
defence of those who are possessors of crowns, but I could not sit here
and hear that observation without a sense of wonder and of pain. I think
there has been, by many persons, a great injustice done to the Queen in
reference to her desolate and widowed position. And I venture to say
this: that a woman--be she the Queen of a great Realm, or be she the
wife of one of your labouring men--who can keep alive in her heart a
great sorrow for the lost object of her life and affection, is not at
all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy with _you_.”
Although the dominant quality of Mr. Bright’s oratory lay in the almost
biblical simplicity and gravity of the spirit which inspired it, there
were times when he could show a quick command of a lighter mood.
I happened to be present in the House of Commons when he attacked with
admirable raillery Mr. Horsman and Mr. Lowe, who had retired into what
Mr. Bright described as their political Cave of Adullam. He kept the
House in a mood of continual amusement, which culminated at last in his
well-known reference to the Scotch terrier.
Seizing upon the fact that Mr. Horsman’s party seemed at present to
consist of only two members, he added: “When a party is formed of two
men so amiable, so discreet, as the two right honourable gentlemen, we
may hope to see for the first time in Parliament a party perfectly
harmonious and distinguished by mutual and unbroken trust. But there is
one difficulty which it is impossible to remove. This party of two
reminds me of the Scotch terrier which was so covered with hair that you
could not tell which was the head and which was the tail of it.”
Millais’s portrait of John Bright does less than justice to the dignity
of his face. It may be that the artist was confronted by his task at too
late a period in Bright’s life; certain it is that as I recall him in
the years 1866 and 1867 there were elements of beauty in the face, both
as regards colouring and expression, that are not to be found in the
later portrait.
In this respect it compares unfavourably, I think, with the great
painter’s superb representation of Mr. Gladstone’s features. I heard Mr.
Gladstone many times in the House of Commons, but I must frankly own
that even in its highest moments his oratory never to my thinking came
to within even measurable distance with that of John Bright.
In readiness of debate I suppose he had no superior on either side of
the House, but the complexity of his mind, with its ever-watchful care
to temper each direct and simple statement with what the speaker
conceived to be its necessary qualifications, was mirrored in the often
overburdened structure of his lengthened periods; and yet even in this
defect the unflagging energy and sustained intellectual agility of the
speaker were constantly exhibited.
I fancy no orator of his own or any other time could so safely conduct
himself through the sinuous ways of a prolonged sentence with a sense of
such security to the hearers that there would be no lapse or failure in
the ordered arrangement of its many modifying clauses. On constant
provocation he often spoke with a fire that enabled him to liberate
himself from the entangled meshes of parenthesis which haunted him in
his more considered utterances, and I remember being present in the
House during the dramatic little scene between him and Disraeli which
showed these two parliamentary gladiators at their best.
Somewhat rashly, perhaps, Disraeli had indulged in a sarcastic reference
to Mr. Gladstone’s earlier adherence to Tory principles, and at the
conclusion of his speech Mr. Gladstone, springing to his feet, retorted
upon his opponent with telling effect by reminding the Conservative
statesman that he himself had once sought to win the Liberal vote.
The right honourable gentleman, secure I suppose in the knowledge
of his own consistency, has taunted me with the political errors of
my boyhood. The right honourable gentleman, when he addressed the
honourable member for Westminster [J. Stuart Mill], took occasion
to show his magnanimity, for he declared that he would not take the
philosopher to task for what he wrote twenty-five years ago. But
when he caught one who thirty-five years ago, just emerged from
boyhood and still an undergraduate at Oxford, had expressed an
opinion adverse to the Reform Bill of 1832, of which he had so long
and bitterly repented, then the right honourable gentleman could
not resist the temptation that offered itself to his appetite for
effect. He, a parliamentary champion of twenty years’ standing, and
the leader, as he informs us to-night, of the Tory party, is so
ignorant of the House of Commons, or so simple in the structure of
his mind, that he positively thought he would obtain a
parliamentary advantage by exhibiting me to the public view for
reprobation as an opponent of the Reform Bill of 1832. Sir, as the
right honourable gentleman has done me the honour thus to exhibit
me, let me for a moment trespass on the patience of the House to
exhibit myself. What he has stated is true. I deeply regret it. But
I was bred under the shadow of the great name of Canning; every
influence connected with that name governed the first political
impressions of my childhood and my youth; with Mr. Canning I
rejoiced in the removal of religious disabilities from the Roman
Catholic body, and in the free and truly British tone which he gave
to our policy abroad; with Mr. Canning I rejoiced in the opening he
made towards the establishment of free commercial interchanges
between nations; with Mr. Canning, and under the shadow of that
great name, and under the shadow of the yet more venerable name of
Burke, I grant my youthful mind and imagination were impressed with
the same idle and futile fears which still bewilder and distract
the mature mind of the right honourable gentleman. I had conceived
that very same fear, that ungovernable alarm, at the first Reform
Bill in the days of my undergraduate career at Oxford which the
right honourable gentleman now feels; and the only difference
between us is this--I thank him for bringing it into view by his
quotation--that, having those views, I, as it would appear, moved
the Oxford Union Debating Society to express them clearly,
plainly, forcibly, in downright English, while the right honourable
gentleman does not dare to tell the nation what it is that he
really thinks, and is content to skulk under the meaningless
amendment which is proposed by the noble Lord. And now, sir, I quit
the right honourable gentleman; I leave him to his reflections, and
I envy him not one particle of the polemical advantage which he has
gained by his discreet reference to the proceedings of the Oxford
Union Debating Society in the year of grace 1831....
I came among you [the Liberal party] an outcast from those with
whom I associated, driven from them, I admit, by no arbitrary act,
but by the slow and resistless forces of conviction. I came among
you, to make use of the legal phraseology, _in pauperis forma_. I
had nothing to offer you but faithful and honourable service. You
received me as Dido received the shipwrecked Aeneas--
Ejectum littore egentem
Accepi--
and I only trust you may not hereafter at any time have to complete
the sentence in regard to me--
Et regni demens in parte locavi.
You received me with kindness, indulgence, generosity, and I may
even say with some measure of confidence. And the relation between
us has assumed such a form that you can never be my debtors, but
that I must for ever be in your debt.”
It was only in later years that I met Mr. Gladstone personally, on the
occasion of his annual visits to the Grosvenor or the New Gallery, and
it was always then interesting to watch the extraordinary diligence of
observation with which he studied every picture upon the walls, all the
while with pencil in hand carefully noting in the margin of his
catalogue the impression which each separate work had made upon him.
It was in connection with the opening of the New Gallery in the year
1888 that a little incident recurs to my memory that bears witness to
the constant alertness of his powers of observation.
After completing a survey of one of the larger rooms, he was about to
take leave of me with the remark that he had seen as much as he could
reasonably enjoy upon a single visit, and that he would return another
day to complete his study of the remaining galleries. It happened that
year that we had rather a remarkable piece of sculpture by a young
artist who had suddenly died after the work had been sent in for
exhibition, and I was anxious before he went to ascertain Mr.
Gladstone’s opinion of the statue.
“Before you go, Mr. Gladstone,” I said, “I should like to show you one
of the sculptured works in the central hall which seems to me more than
remarkable.”
“Stay!” he cried. “Let me first show it to you,” and then without a
moment’s hesitation he set himself in front of the work I had in my
mind.
“Is it this?” he said; and on my replying in the affirmative, “I was
surprised,” he added, “when we passed through the hall that you did not
direct my attention to so remarkable a work.”
It happened at the Grosvenor Gallery that it also fell to my lot to
conduct Lord Beaconsfield round the exhibition of drawings by the old
masters then arranged upon the walls. The contrast between the two men
showed itself characteristically enough on the occasion to which I
refer.
With sphinx-like face, and with hardly a spoken word, Lord Beaconsfield
passed from the work of one great master to another, raising his
eye-glass as he went, but displaying by no change of expression either
criticism or appreciation, and at the finish he gracefully took his
leave with a sentence that seemed to me, as he uttered it, to have been
made ready for ultimate use even before he had entered the Gallery.
The drawings of Titian and Giorgione, of Michael Angelo, Raphael and
Leonardo da Vinci, had apparently left him cold.
“I thank you,” he said, “for having been so good as to point out to me
the examples of the great masters you admire, but I think for my part I
prefer the eclectic school of the Caracci.”
In that one sentence he seemed to bring back the atmosphere of his
earlier novels, and to image the taste of England at a time when
connoisseurs made the grand tour.
His preference for the fashion of an earlier date in all matters
appertaining to taste was, I suppose, deeply implanted in Disraeli’s
nature, and I remember a story told me by Sir William Harcourt, which
illustrates with what quiet and restrained sarcasm he could sometimes
receive the announcement of a more modern development of thought.
It was during one of Sir William Harcourt’s visits to Hughenden that
Disraeli turned to him after dinner and said, “Harcourt, I have had two
young gentlemen from Oxford staying with me lately, and it seems from
what I have learned from them that our judgments in all literary matters
are sadly old-fashioned. These young gentlemen assured me that,
according to the accepted canons of the present day, the late Lord Byron
is to be admired, not so much for his qualities as a poet, as for the
beauty of his moral character.”
Lord Beaconsfield’s appearance, as expressed in his dress, even at that
later date when I first came in contact with him, still retained
something of the florid taste that had characterised him as a youth. The
bright colours he chose to affect stood in striking contrast with the
impassive pallor of a countenance that seemed, as it gazed out upon the
world, like some insoluble riddle of the East. The racial
characteristics of his face were sufficiently marked, but the sense of
death-like stillness that pervaded it gave it something of historic
remoteness and antique calm. He looked out upon the present as though
from the recesses of a buried past, and of all the representatives of
his nation whom I have known, he appeared to me the only one who
possessed in any pre-eminent degree the quality of self-possession in
manner and bearing.
These external attributes served as the index of that extraordinary
power of intellectual detachment which enabled him to sway the passions
of others and to control his own. Such unquestioned authority as he
ultimately acquired over the Tory party could, perhaps, only have been
achieved by one who used their prejudices without sharing them, and who
could appeal to their deeply rooted convictions rather as an artist than
as a partisan.
As a speaker, he affected more of florid grace than was quite congenial
to the taste of the time or the sympathies of his hearers, and his
choice of language, whether in his novels or in his speeches, was
sometimes insecurely poised between a leaning towards ornament that was
sometimes tawdry, and a genuine and convincing eloquence.
Here again the racial characteristics were apt to assert themselves, and
such a phrase as he employed at the conclusion of the Abyssinian
War--that we had set the standard of St. George upon the mountains of
Rasselas--may be taken as an instance of an essay in the sublime that
verges nearly upon the ridiculous.
I heard him for the first time when he introduced his great Reform Bill
in 1867, and his gestures also struck me then as often bordering upon
the grotesque.
I can recall his attitude now as he drew towards the close of his speech
with his arms folded and his head sunk upon his breast, rolling out in a
voice, that I confess had for me neither intrinsic beauty of tone nor
perfect accent of sincerity, the carefully forged phrases which formed
the close of his peroration.
“Those who take a larger and a nobler view of human affairs,” he said,
“will, I think, recognise that, alone in the countries of Europe,
England now, for almost countless generations, has--by her
Parliament--established the fair exemplar of free government, and that,
throughout the awful vicissitudes of her heroic history, she
has--chiefly by this House of Commons--maintained and cherished that
public spirit which is the soul of Commonwealth, without which Empire
has no glory, and the wealth of nations is but the means of corruption
and decay.”
Earlier passages of that same speech had been marked by brilliant
flashes of humour and sarcasm, showing, here as always, his incomparable
power of registering in a single sentence the characteristics of a cause
he desired to condemn.
I remember in particular a reference to Professor Goldwin Smith which
was very happily expressed.
“Why, the other day,” he said, “a rampant orator who goes about the
country maligning men and things, went out of his way to assail me,
saying, ‘Where now are the 4000 freeholders of Buckinghamshire?’ Why,
sir, they are where you would naturally expect to find them--they are in
the county of Buckingham. I can pardon this wild man, who has probably
lived in the cloisters of some abbey, making this mistake ...” etc.
There are orators who are not orators, and who yet, by some undefinable
power of personality, exercise an extraordinary authority upon their
hearers. In this class, and I should be disposed to think foremost in
this class, must be set Mr. Parnell, whose acquaintance I made at the
house of Sir George Lewis about the date of the publication of the
famous letter in the _Times_.
To me that letter had seemed from the first a manifest forgery, and I
had made several small bets in the Garrick Club that it would be so
proved whenever it was made the subject of a judicial investigation.
Mr. Parnell’s comment when I told him of my confidence as to the result
was tinged with a certain sadness that was, I think, a constant quality
of his nature.
“You may make your mind quite easy upon that point,” he said. “I only
wish I felt as sure that every incident, in what has been practically a
revolution, would redound as surely to the credit of the Irish people.
But it is inevitable,” he added, “that such a movement must of necessity
call into being forces which it is beyond the power of any single
individual to control.”
Through his chief whip Mr. Richard Power, a dear friend and companion of
the Garrick Club, Mr. Parnell had offered me a seat as one of the Irish
party, but although I had then, and still retain, complete sympathy with
the principles of Home Rule, I felt it would be impossible for me as an
Englishman to yield such complete surrender of my independent judgment
as was demanded by the parliamentary tactics of the party.
A little later I heard Mr. Parnell in the House of Commons on one of the
few occasions when his rigid self-control yielded to a moment of almost
uncontrollable passion.
The subject under debate was this same forged letter which had imposed
upon the credulity of the _Times_, and it was Mr. Parnell’s natural
desire that this imputation which so deeply affected his character
should be made the subject of a separate and independent inquiry.
His opponents, not unwisely from their point of view, desired to merge
the single issue in a general examination of the Home Rule movement, and
this view had been, at an earlier period of the debate, strongly
enforced by Mr. Chamberlain in a speech of icy coldness that seemed to
withhold the last particle of sympathy from a man who had been so
grossly attacked.
The tone of Mr. Chamberlain’s speech, for it was a matter rather of tone
than of substance, must have deeply incensed Mr. Parnell, for as he
rose, with the usual pallor of his face deepened to an ashen whiteness,
the trembling tones of his voice were, it was obvious, scarcely under
control.
I have not, sir, had an opportunity before this of thanking the
right honourable gentleman the member for West Birmingham for his
kind references to me, and for the unsolicited character he was
kind enough to give me when he last addressed the House a few
nights since. He spoke of me not long ago, when he said he
entertained a better opinion of me than he does to-day. I care very
little for the opinion of the right honourable gentleman. I have
never put forward men to do dangerous things which I shrank from
doing myself, nor have I betrayed the secrets of my colleagues in
Council. My principal recollection of the right honourable
gentleman before he became a minister is that he was always most
anxious to put me forward and my friends forward to do work which
he was afraid to do himself. And after he became a minister my
principal recollection of him is that he was always most anxious to
betray to us the secrets and counsels of his colleagues in the
Cabinet, and to endeavour, while sitting beside these colleagues
and while in consultation with them, to undermine their counsels
and their plans in our favour. If this inquiry is extended into
these matters--and I see no reason why it should not--I shall be
able to make good my words by documentary evidence that is not
forged.
The withering scorn with which these final sentences were delivered, the
tall slim figure visibly shaken by emotion, recall an unforgettable
image of the man as he stood erect in his place below the gangway.
But a still more dramatic scene of that time occurred during the trial
itself on the day when the forger Mr. Pigott was to be put into the box.
I shall not easily forget the breathless interest of the Court when the
Attorney-General called Mr. Inglis, the expert in hand-writing.
The witness was arranging his papers on the desk before him when Sir
Charles Russell rose in his place and in strong but measured tones said,
“My lords, I shall decline to cross-examine this witness until Mr.
Pigott has been put into the box.”
This produced a quick protest from the Attorney-General, who, as he
declared, was not to be dictated to by his learned friend as to the
manner in which he should conduct his case.
But again Sir Charles Russell rose, and again in the same vibrating
voice announced his determination as before.
There was a pause for a moment’s whispered interchange of opinion among
the judges on the Bench, and then Mr. Justice Hannen, in a voice that
was never loud but which even in its lowest tones could always command
authority, conveyed to the Attorney-General the intimation that, without
any intention of dictating to him the course he should take, they were
all clearly of opinion that Mr. Pigott ought to be put into the box
without delay.
Sir Richard Webster yielded, and Mr. Pigott was called; and then, when
the examination-in-chief was complete, began that cross-examination by
Sir Charles Russell which stands out as the main dramatic episode in
that great historic trial.
The advocate was at his best, and when Sir Charles Russell was at his
best his time knew no equal. As question followed question in quick
pursuit, the unhappy witness seemed to crumble away beneath his hand.
But the hour of adjournment came before the wretched man, driven from
point to point, had finally succumbed, and, as subsequent events proved,
the brilliant cross-examination of Sir Charles Russell was destined to
have no close.
On the next morning, when Pigott was again called, there was no answer;
and after a sufficient pause to give time for his arrival, Sir Charles
rose and applied for a warrant for his arrest.
I went with Mr. Parnell and Sir George Lewis to Bow Street to obtain
from the magistrate the issue of the warrant, and I remember, as a comic
incident in our brief passage along the Strand, that a little street
urchin vending newspapers, who, with the sharpness of the London boy,
was already well informed of what had taken place, danced in front of
the Irish statesman and bowing with mock gravity said, “Charlie, you’ve
done it nice.”
At that time one of my brothers was staying in Madrid, and on the
following night I was awakened about two o’clock by the arrival of a
telegram which said: “A man whom I am sure is Pigott has committed
suicide here in the hotel.”
And so ended this extraordinary episode which at one time had threatened
to drive from public life one of the most remarkable men of his time.
That he was finally hounded from the leadership of his party speaks, I
think, but little for the reputation of those of his comrades who joined
in the attack; and less still--as I have always felt--for Mr. Gladstone,
whose part in that unworthy transaction was not altogether consistent
with the high courage that he usually exhibited in public affairs.
Parnell’s was undoubtedly a strange inscrutable character. He was
imperfectly understood even by the party he so imperiously controlled:
he had, I think, but little desire to be understood. Power used to tell
me that on the occasion of an important debate his closest associates
never knew with any certainty whether he would be present; and yet once
present they knew beyond all question that his will would dominate them
all.
It was indeed impossible to be in his company without being sensible of
the strength of his personality. His reserve was impenetrable, and yet
he could yield to sudden gusts of emotion which revealed as by a
lightning flash the strong nervous tension by means of which his
self-possession was held and preserved. I think he himself was always
conscious of the degree of secrecy, almost, one might say, of mystery,
that cloaked his life even in matters where secrecy could have no
purpose or significance. He told me once that if he had occasion to
consult a doctor, even for the most trifling ailment, he always withheld
his name, and such was the habit of reserve that had grafted itself upon
his life, that he seemed almost surprised the custom was not common to
all the world.
Some of the American ambassadors sent to this country have been notable
speakers, amongst them Mr. James Russell Lowell and Mr. Choate. Mr.
Bayard also, though not perhaps possessed of an equal natural gift,
could on occasion be deeply impressive.
I remember at a dinner of the Actors’ Benevolent Fund, in 1895, he
extricated himself with considerable grace and tact from a somewhat
awkward predicament. The dinner was held on the 18th of December, and it
had been arranged that I should propose the toast of “Friends across the
Sea,” to which Mr. Bayard was to respond. But it so happened on that
very day had come President Cleveland’s unhappy message to Congress
about Venezuela, a message so entirely unexpected: and at the same time
so warlike and menacing in its tone, that the tenor of it created
something like consternation in the mind of the English public.
When I arrived Mr. Bayard was pacing alone, among the assembled guests
in the anteroom, and I ventured to suggest to Sir Francis Jeune, who was
to take the chair, that it might be wiser, in view of the circumstances,
to omit this particular toast. Sir Francis Jeune, however, was firm in
the opinion that the situation must be faced. As he observed to me, “I
hear that as a speaker you can skate over thin ice, and to-night you
have your opportunity.”
All the correspondents of the chief American newspapers were present,
and all were in eager expectation to see how a difficult and delicate
situation would be handled by the ambassador. I confess, for my own
part, that I felt a little nervous in regard to the task assigned me,
and I remember my dear friend, Sir Frank Lockwood, coming to me just
before we sat down to dinner and imploring me to say something that
might tend to soothe the irritated feeling which the unfortunate
despatch had aroused.
I think I must have steered my course successfully, for at the end of my
speech Mr. Bayard, rising to respond, was received with genuine
enthusiasm by the assembled company. He was evidently deeply moved, for
his words came slowly; but he contrived also to move and impress his
audience. His opening sentences, earnestly delivered, seemed to still
the menace of war and to relieve the feeling of tension that President
Cleveland’s actions had created.
“To-night,” he said, “we stand upon common ground. Mr. Comyns Carr’s
remarks have affected me deeply. There is no sea between us now.” And at
the close he added, “There is a headline used by Mr. Gladstone in the
article, ‘Our Kith and Kin beyond the Seas,’ which I would gladly recall
at this moment. In that article he used this couplet--
When love unites, wide space divides in vain,
And hands may clasp across the spreading main.
I think it is time to repeat those words. No profession can speak them
so well as yours, and none can speak them so well, in the name of your
country or my country, as the profession that is domiciled in both
countries, and I therefore ask you to join with me in wishing that
‘hands may clasp across the spreading main.’”
As Mr. Bayard took his leave on that evening at the conclusion of the
dinner he turned to me and said, “I think things will go our way”; and
the event happily proved that he was right.
With some after-dinner speakers their task sits heavily upon them, and
sets them in a state of trepidation from the commencement of the feast.
I was sitting at a dinner, given to Edmund Yates after his liberation
from prison on a charge of libel, by the side of a worthy alderman of
the City of London who was also a member of Parliament. His name was
entered upon the card in connection with the usual military toast, and
before we were half way through the dinner he begged to be excused from
further conversation in order that he might concentrate his thoughts
upon the duty he had to discharge. It was only while he was covering the
menu card with liberal pencil-notes that he realised the fact that I
also was among the speakers of the evening. He turned to me suddenly
with an expression of blank amazement on his face, and pointing to my
name inquired with an air of incredulity if it was true I was going to
speak, and when I answered in the affirmative he said, “Well, you
surprise me. I notice that you have been drinking champagne. Now,” he
said, “when I want to sway an audience I sway them on water.” And as he
drank nothing but water that evening I was prepared to be swayed. But
something must have gone wrong with the water on that occasion, and I
tremble to think to what further depths of ineptitude he might have
fallen if he had followed my pernicious habit of drinking champagne, for
after a few halting sentences, fashioned in the usual mould, he sat
down, evidently quite unconscious that he had delivered one of the
feeblest addresses ever uttered by the lips of man.
[Illustration:
_Hollyer_
LORD TENNYSON
From the painting by G. F. WATTS, R.A., in the National Portrait
Gallery.
_To face page 193._
]