The House of Commons Press Gallery--Disraeli as Orator--The
Story of the Dry Champagne--The Labour Member--Dr Kenealy's
Fiasco--Mr Newdigate's Eloquence--Lord Beaconsfield's
Success--“Stone-walling”--Robert Lowe's Classics--The Press
Gallery and Mr Gladstone.
I forget precisely how it came about that I secured my first sessional
appointment in the gallery of the House of Commons. Some member of the
reporting staff of the _Daily News_ was disabled or had gone upon the
spree. Anyway the staff was shorthanded for a night, and I was told that
I could earn a guinea by presenting myself to the chief at the House of
Commons, and that there would probably be very little indeed to do for
it. I attended accordingly and found that my whole duty for the evening
consisted in inscribing on three separate sheets of paper, “Murray
follows Murphy--Pullen follows.” I got my guinea and was instructed to
appear again on the following afternoon when I found a very different
condition of affairs prevailing. Every bench was packed, the side
galleries were full, and it would have been impossible to squeeze
another person into the Stranger's Gallery above the clock. A great
field night was toward, and from the time at which I first entered the
box at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon until two the following morning,
my pencil was kept going without cessation, note-taking or transcribing.
I have quite forgotten what the fight was about, but it was then that
I first caught sight of the parliamentary heroes of the time. Gladstone
was in his place with Hartington and Bright and the rugged Forster,
and Sir William Harcourt and all the rest of his henchmen. Disraeli
sat impassive opposite with folded arms and closed eyes, with his chin
resting on his breast. The only clear impression I brought out of the
rush and hurry of the night was that whereas Disraeli, whenever it
came to be my turn to be in the reporter's box, was apparently sound in
slumber and utterly oblivious of all that was going on, he rose an hour
after midnight and presented a masterly analysis of the whole debate,
interspersed with snatches of a fine ironic mockery. His method as an
orator was far from being impressive or agreeable, his voice was
veiled and husky, and once or twice when he dropped the ironic vein
and affected to be serious, he seemed to me to fall into burlesque. “It
would be idle,” he said, and there he brought his elbows resoundingly
to his ribs, “to suppose”--and there the elbows came down energetically
again--“that at such a crisis”--and here was another repetition of
the grotesque gesture--“Her Majesty's Ministers”--more rib and elbow
work--“would endeavour,” and so on and so on, in what seemed to one
listener at least to be the merest insincerity. His irony was perfect,
his assumption of earnestness a farce. Robert Lowe was put up to answer
him, and after coughing out a score or two of biting trenchant phrases,
with a page of notes almost touching his white albino eyebrows and the
tip of his nose, every sentence punctuated with a roar of laughter,
cheers and protests, he sat down. Among the speakers I heard that
night were Mr Beresford Hope and Sir Wilfrid Lawson, the latter of whom
offered to the House quite a sheaf of carefully prepared impromptu.
Again I got my guinea, and again I was asked to appear on the following
night, and at the end of that week, the defaulting member of the staff
not having again put in an appearance, I was formally enrolled for the
rest of the session. I do not profess to record in anything like their
chronological order the events which most impressed me, but many scenes
occur to me as being worth remembering.
Perhaps the most remarkable example of Disraeli's careless audacity was
afforded on the occasion on which, in the House of Commons, he contrived
to denounce his great rival as a liar, without infringing the etiquette
of the House. I was on what is called or used to be called the “victim”
turn that week. It was the duty of the victim to stay on in the gallery
after all other members of his staff had left the House, and to watch
proceedings until the Assembly was adjourned. On one occasion, I
remember, I was on duty for seventy-two hours. That was when Parnell
made his famous stand against the Government, and the Irish members went
off in detachments to sleep at the Westminster Hotel and came back in
detachments to keep the parliamentary ball a-rolling.
Disraeli's famous escapade was made on another occasion in the small
hours of the morning and so far as I know I am the only surviving eye
and ear witness of the occurrence. Shortly before the dinner hour on the
preceding evening, somebody brought up from the lobby to the gallery the
intelligence that Mr Disraeli had called for a pint of champagne, and
that was taken to indicate his intention to make a speech. When Mr
Gladstone was bent upon a great effort, he generally prepared himself
for it by taking the yolk of an egg beaten up in a glass of sherry, Mr
Bright's priming was said to be a glass of a particular old port,
and there was a malicious whisper to the effect that Mr Lowe, whilst
Chancellor of the Exchequer made ready to enter the oratorical arena by
taking a glass of iced water at the bar, being moved to his choice of a
stimulant by considerations of economy. Mr Disraeli then was reported to
the gallery as having taken his half-bottle, and very shortly afterwards
he slipped into the House from behind the Speaker's chair and
assumed his accustomed seat. Some quite inconsiderable Member of the
Conservative party was on his legs, and we all supposed that on his
chiefs arrival he would bring his speech to a close. He prosed
along, however, until the House adjourned for dinner, and Disraeli's
opportunity was for the meantime lost. He left the House at the hour of
adjournment and did not return until about one o'clock in the morning.
When at last he rose, he entered upon a long tale which at first seemed
to have no bearing whatever upon any business the House could possibly
have in contemplation. “Mr Speaker, sir,” he began, “it will be within
the memory of many right honourable and honourable gentlemen, members of
this House, that one of the most distinguished ornaments at an earlier
period of its history was the late greatly lamented Sir Robert Peel.
One of Sir Robert Peel's most intimate friends was Colonel Ellis, a less
distinguished member of this Assembly. Colonel Ellis, sir, was a noted
authority in all matters relating to gourmandising and his opinion was
especially respected with regard to the quality of wines. At the time
of which I speak, champagne was a liqueured and sugared beverage, mainly
relegated to the use and for the enjoyment of the ladies.”
The House sat in an amazed speculation as to whither the orator was
being led by this extraordinary exordium, but Mr Disraeli flowed on
unmoved.
“It happened that a friend upon the continent sent to Sir Robert Peel a
case of dry champagne, a beverage then almost unknown in this country.
Sir Robert invited Colonel Ellis to dine with him and to taste and
to pronounce upon the novel beverage, and when the repast had been
discussed, Sir Robert turned upon his guest and inquired of him, with
a solemnity befitting the occasion: 'Pray, Colonel Ellis, what is your
opinion of dry champagne?' To which Colonel Ellis, with a solemnity
equal to Sir Robert's own, responded: 'I believe that the man who is
capable of saying that he likes dry champagne, is capable of saying
anything.' Now, sir, it is not within my purpose or my province to
charge the right honourable gentleman who controls the destinies of
the party opposite with tergiversation, but this I will say that, on my
honour and my conscience, I believe that he is capable of declaring that
he is fond of dry champagne!”
This astonishing sally was greeted with roars of laughter and cries
of disapproval, neither of which moved the speaker in the least. The
incident somehow remained unreported, but one can easily fancy the
avidity with which it would have been pounced upon by the alerter
journalism of modern days.
Mr Thomas Burt was the first working man to be returned to Parliament,
where his sterling qualities of character and his unassuming and natural
demeanour made a very favourable impression. But a year or two after
his return, he was joined by a Labour representative who displayed the
characteristics of altogether a different sort. For one thing, he was a
vulgarly overdressed man, and he used to sprawl about the benches with
outstretched arms, making his cry of condescending patronage heard
in answer to any utterance of which he might approve from such
inconsiderable persons as Gladstone or Harcourt or Forster. His “Hear,
hear, hear,” was the very essence of a self-satisfied and unconscious
insolence. He was a man who would have patronised the angel Gabriel,
and he was quite unconscious of his own offensiveness until he tried
his hand upon Disraeli, when he found his level once for all and with a
ludicrous swiftness.
He and Mr Burt had together backed a Bill which was intended to do
something to ameliorate the condition of the coal-miners of this
country, and at the annual slaughter of the innocents, Mr Disraeli
announced that it was the intention of the Government to carry on the
measure. The statement had already fallen from his lips and he had just
entered on another sentence when the intolerable patronising voice broke
in, “Hear, hear, hear,” “Hear, hear hear,” as if a very great personage
with too great a consciousness of his own greatness were expressing his
approval of the conduct of a little boy. Disraeli stopped dead short in
his speech and one of the finest bits of comedy I can remember to have
seen ensued. He closed his eyes and began very deliberately to fumble
about the breast of his frock-coat within and without in search of
something which he was evidently not over anxious to find. Alighting at
last on the object of this perfunctory search he produced an eyeglass
and, still with closed eyes, he lifted the skirt of his coat and
polished the glass upon its silken lining. It began to occur to Mr
Disraeli's patron that all this slow pantomime was in some way directed
to his address. The House waited, with here and there a rather nervous
expectant laugh. The Labour member, who was originally thrown abroad in
his usual pompous fashion, began to shrivel. His widely-extended arms,
which had been stretched along the top of the bench on which he sat,
crept closer and closer to his sides. He shrank, he dwindled, he wilted
like a leaf on a hot stove, and when Disraeli finally screwed his glass
into his eye and, after surveying him for two or three dreadful seconds,
allowed the glass to fall and resumed his speech at the very word at
which he had broken off, the patron of the House was an altogether
abject figure. The assembly literally rocked with laughter and Mr Burt's
colleague never, never, never ventured to pat Mr Disraeli on the back
again.
It does not fall to the lot of every self-sufficient ass who finds
himself returned to Parliament and who imagines that he can at once make
a figure in that assembly to learn his place in so abrupt a fashion, but
there is no gathering in the world in which a man so inevitably finds
his proper level. Poor Dr Kenealy had gifts enough to have carried him
to a high place almost anywhere, but unfortunately for himself he came
into the House in a mood of passionate defiance against the world. He
chose to defy the rules of the Assembly at its very threshold. It has
been the custom from time immemorial for a new member to be introduced
by two gentlemen who are already officially known to Mr Speaker. I
happened to be in the box apportioned to the _Daily News_ when the
Doctor attempted to evade this rule and to present himself before the
Speaker without the customary credentials. He was of course forbidden to
enter and after some unseemly altercation outside the bar, two members
were found to volunteer to introduce him. He marched up the House with
his umbrella in one hand and the certificate of the Returning Officer
in the other, his eyes flashing a quite unnecessary defiance, poor
gentleman, behind his gold-rimmed glasses, and his whole figure placed
as if for instant combat. It was probably by an inadvertence that he
hung his umbrella upon the Speaker's mace, but it was certainly counted
as an act of intentional discourtesy against him. He was sent to
Coventry from the first, and he was so sore and angry that he was almost
fore-doomed to bring himself into trouble.
Kenealy succeeded in placing on the paper a motion in favour of
triennial Parliaments very shortly after his first unfavourable
introduction into the House. It was long after midnight when he rose to
speak. He began at the beginning and favoured us with an analysis of
the characteristics of the first gathering of a representative assembly
under Alfred the Great. Sir Wilfred Lawson almost immediately rose
to inquire whether the hour were not somewhat too advanced for a
disquisition on parliamentary history, the facts of which were
available to everybody, and Kenealy passionately retorted that he was in
possession of the ear of the House, that he would stand upon his rights,
would adopt his own methods and would speak at what length he chose.
In answer to this defiance, the House rose _en masse_ and its members
solemnly filed away, leaving Kenealy to address the Speaker, the clerks
at the table and a handful of reporters in the gallery. He struggled on
for awhile, but by and by a member returned and drew the attention of
the Speaker to the very obvious fact that there were not forty members
present. The Speaker rose under his canopy and waved his cocked hat
solemnly towards Kenealy and then towards the other occupant of the
House.
“There are not forty members present,” he said solemnly, “the House is
now adjourned.” That was the result of Dr Kenealy's first essay and in
his second he came to final and irremediable grief. In a crowded House,
he arose to impeach his enemies and traducers. He was ploughing along
and I was fighting after him in my own gouty, inefficient shorthand,
when one of the strangest premonitions of my life occurred to me. He
said “If any of these unjust aspersions are cast anew upon me”--and I
seemed to know as absolutely what he was going to say as if the whole
thing were a play which I had seen rehearsed a score of times. I
thought, “I hope to heaven he won't say that,” and he went on in the
very words my mind forebode. “If these unjust aspersions are cast upon
me, I shall shake them from me as the lion shakes the dew-drops from his
mane.” There was a second's silence as he paused, and then there was a
crash of laughter with peal on peal to follow. Three times I have
known the House of Commons surrendered to illimitable mirth and on
each occasion the victim of its derision is somewhat pitiable. But poor
Kenealy! he stood there lost, astounded, vacant, a quite tragic figure,
and when the crowded House had ceased to laugh out of pure exhaustion,
he spoke again in a tone completely changed; all the forensic manner
gone out of him. That he could find a voice at all after such a scathing
was an evidence of his courage, but with that unfortunate sentence he
had shot his bolt. He never attempted to address the House again. I
do not remember even to have seen him within its precincts after that
catastrophe.
It is not impossible there may have been a little touch of gratified
malice in that Homeric laugh which killed Kenealy's parliamentary
career, but there was certainly not a trace of it in that heroic peal of
mirth which dismissed Mr Newdigate from the scene of his parliamentary
activities. Mr Newdigate was undoubtedly a dull man, he was undoubtedly
an eccentric, but he was just as certainly a gentleman and he enjoyed
everybody's esteem. He was a long-backed Tory squire who for many years
represented the Northern Division of the County of Warwick. His chief
virtues were that he rode straight to hounds, that he dispensed an
open-handed old-fashioned hospitality to his hunt and that he voted
regularly and faithfully with his party. There was no man who could more
quickly empty a full House than he. The very sight of him on his feet
created a stampede, and throughout his parliamentary life it had been
his lot to empty benches. But at last his chance came. Our present
King, then Prince of Wales, was about to visit India, and the Government
proposed a vote of 60,000L. to enable him to do the thing in proper
fashion. Mr Peter Taylor, a distinguished Radical of that time, rose to
move the previous question, and then Mr Newdigate, in recognition, as
one supposes, of the faithful party service of many years, was allowed
to support the Government resolution. Just for once in his life the
House did not empty at his rising; his chance was here, the coveted
opportunity of a lifetime, and in his own way he proceeded to take
advantage of it. In sepulchral tones he assured Mr Speaker that if this
vote were refused the loyal feelings of this country would receive a
blow, and the popular confidence in that House would receive a blow, and
the loyal sentiment of the Empire would receive a blow; and as he piled
up the agony of his speech, he stooped lower and lower, driving his
right hand down at the end of each period with a sledge-hammer force
until the blow landed, not on the public conscience or the loyalty of
the Empire, but on the white hat of one, Mr Charley, who sat directly
below him and who in a second was bonneted to the very shoulders. Now Mr
Charley wore a very tall white hat and it was his habit to wear his hair
rather long, and as he struggled to release himself from the obscurity
into which he had been plunged, the lining of the tall white hat turned
inside out and his long hair rose with it until he appeared to be
expanding himself like some elastic snake. One gentleman on the front
bench below the gangway actually fell from his seat and rolled upon the
floor, and the House laughed itself almost into hysteria, whilst the
hapless orator stood waving in apologetic dumb show. Now here was a
tragedy indeed: to have the dream of a whole lifetime at last actually
realised and concrete and then to see it go to ruin in that way. So
swift a transition from the very height of triumph to the very gulf!
When our laugh was over I am sure there was not one of us who did
not profoundly sympathise with the sufferer, and Mr Newdigate never
attempted to speak again at least in my time. He and Mr Whalley were the
two members of the House who were the stern and unfaltering enemies of
the Jesuits. They saw the emissaries of Jesuitry everywhere and were
unceasing in denouncing all their wicked wiles, but it was notorious
that each cast an eye askance upon the other and each was rather
inclined to be persuaded to believe that his pretended fellow-crusader
was a Jesuit in disguise.
On the night on which Disraeli's government fell he gave the House of
Commons a last proof of his unconquerable “cheek and pluck.” The Marquis
of Hartington had delivered a speech which everybody knew to have sealed
the fate of the party in power, but the great Jew statesman rose up
imperturbable and audacious to the last “There is, sir,” he said in that
veiled voice of his which sounded as if it were struggling through dense
fog and could indeed only have been made audible throughout the chamber
by a trained master in elocution--“there is in war a manoeuvre which is
well known. First the cavalry advance creating dust and waving sabres,
then a rattle of musketry is heard along the line, and next the big guns
are brought into play, and when the dust and smoke have cleared away the
force which has created it is found to have removed to a considerable
distance. This manouvre, sir, is known as the covering of a retreat and
this manoeuvre has been executed with an admirable adroitness by Her
Majesty's Opposition this evening.” He knew, of course, that he was
beaten, he knew that in an hour's time the reins of Government would
have passed from his own hands to those of his rival, but he took defeat
with his own sardonic gaiety and made a claim for victory with his
expiring breath.
I had a curious little instance of this indomitable vein in him one
summer morning when the House had risen after sunrise and I overtook him
on his way to his official residence. The street was empty and he was
crawling along leaning heavily on his walking stick and clasping his
left hand on the small of his back with a gesture which bespoke him as
being in severe pain. He heard my footstep behind him and turned; his
careless and apparently unseeing glance had crossed my face a score of
times and he could not fail to have known at least that he was known to
me. At the second at which he became aware of me, he drew himself to
his full height and stepped out with the assured gait of a man in full
possession of health and strength. He twirled his walking stick quite
gaily and he maintained that attitude until I had passed him by. I had
not the heart to look back afterwards. I saw him once again and once
only. One afternoon whilst I was sitting writing in my lodgings I
received a telegram from Mr Robinson, afterwards Sir John--then the
inspiring genius of the _Daily News_, instructing me to repair to the
office. On arriving there, I received instructions to repair at once
to the House of Lords and there, no other journalist being present, I
witnessed the formal installation of Lord Beaconsfield. There were four
peers present in their robes of scarlet and ermine and their beaver
bonnets and the Lord Chancellor was seated on the woolsack. An attendant
brought a scarlet cloak, and a very shabby and faded garment it was
indeed, and adjusted it about the shoulders of the neophyte. The second
attendant handed to him a black beaver which he assumed, then he was led
in a sort of solemn dance to the four quarters of the House, at each
of which he made an obeisance. Finally he was conducted to the Lord
Chancellor and the ceremony came to an end. Everybody supposed that
Disraeli's career had come to an end also, and I myself was one of the
mistaken prophets. I was writing at the time a weekly set of verses for
_Mayfair_, a sixpenny Society journal long since defunct, and in the
next issue of that journal I took Mr Disraeli's formal installation for
my theme. I remember two verses which may perhaps be allowed to serve
as an expression of the almost universal opinion of the time, an opinion
which everybody now _knows_ to have been contradicted in the most
extraordinary fashion by the happenings of the next four years. I
wrote:--
“Sitting last Thursday in the House of Peers,
A little ere the hour of five I saw
The Muse of History weeping stony tears
Above the picture I'm about to draw.
The saddest spectacle the place has known
Since Barry planned its first foundation stone.
“Tired with the weight of triumphs worn too long,
A man of genius sought a grave for fame;
And far apart from Life's impetuous throng
To this dim place of sepulture he came.
And in the presence of a grieving few
He read his own brief burial service through.”
The House of Lords had proved a grave for so many brilliant reputations
which had been built up in the Lower Chamber that the general prophecy,
mistaken as it was, was not at all a thing to be surprised at; Mr
Punch's cartoon of Lord John Russell's entry into the House of Peers is
not forgotten. The meagre little figure in robes and coronet is shown
slinking by Lord Brougham similarly attired, and the latter addresses
the arrival, saying, “You'll find it very cold up here, Johnnie.”
I was in the House also when Mr Biggar introduced the great
parliamentary art of “stone-walling.” Mr Biggar would take the first
half-dozen blue books he came across, and would begin to read aloud
whenever any new measure of which he disapproved was about to be
introduced. At half-past two he would begin to read, and continue,
oblivious of the passing of the hours, until the time after which no new
measure could be introduced. Sir Wilfrid Lawson, in his characteristic
way, “wanted to know if the hon. member were in order in reading to
himself for sixty minutes at a stretch?” Mr Speaker, who at that time
was Mr Brand, rolled out the instruction that “the honourable member
must make himself audible to the chair.” Mr Biggar forthwith put three
blue books under each arm, and taking up his glass of water said, “I
will come a little nearer, Mr Speaker,” and came. Mr Speaker told him
on one of these occasions, “So far as I can understand the line you are
taking, I do not see how these matters are related.” “I will establish
the connection by and by, sir,” replied Mr Biggar. This art of
“stonewalling” was practised in the House for a number of years until
at last the rules were so altered as to make it impossible. It was
remarkable how quickly a member found his level in the House. If he
started with the idea that he would “boss” the House he would quickly
find that the House “bossed” him.
I only heard Bright make one speech in the House. It was an impromptu
one, and the orator was not at his best But Bright in a passion was
a. person to be listened to. I heard him at Birmingham just after his
appointment to the Presidency of the Board of Trade. A Conservative
banker opposed his re-election, and Bright was very much annoyed, in
fact he was profoundly indignant at being opposed. When he came on the
Town Hall platform, that horse-shoe in the forehead, of which Sir Walter
Scott speaks as becoming visible in moments of excitement, was flashing
out scarlet. He plunged into his speech at once. He did not say “Ladies
and gentlemen,” or “Electorate of Birmingham,” or anything of the kind.
“I call it a piece of impertinence,” he began, “and unsurpassed in my
knowledge of political history that here in this home of freedom, and
now at this hour when the fetters you have worn for a lifetime are
but newly smitten from you, while your limbs are yet sore with their
chafing, and the sound of their clanking is yet in your ears, that a
Tory should come forward and ask your permission--to do what?--to rivet
those fetters anew upon you. Will you give him that leave?” And in one
voice eight thousand people answered “No,” which sealed the doom of the
banker.
Robert Lowe afforded one of the most noteworthy instances of a man who,
having made a fine reputation in the House of Commons, failed to sustain
it in the House of Lords. I did not myself witness the scene of his
discomfiture, but I had the story of it at first hand within ten minutes
of its happening. The unfortunate gentleman was so short-sighted that he
could read only when his eyes were within one or two inches of the page.
He had prepared himself with a sheaf of notes for his first address
to the Upper House; he had contrived in the nervousness natural to the
occasion to mix his memoranda, and finding himself unable to rearrange
them, he sat down discomfited, and he appears to have accepted that one
disaster as final.
In the Commons he had been a brilliant figure. I have good personal
reason to remember his most striking effort. His speech had relation to
an Army Reform Bill, and it was a mosaic of the aptest and most wittily
applied literary quotations. It was of so fine a literary quality that
I very much doubt if there were a score of people among his hearers who
were able fully to appreciate its excellence.
Those who could follow his allusions were delighted beyond measure, and
the House took its cue from them and laughed and cheered uproariously
at many things it did not understand. Mr Gladstone acted as a sort of
fugleman, and his rejoicing chuckle at some happy ironic application of
a Virgilian or Homeric phrase was a cue which was instantly seized upon.
Lowe was always a terror to the reporters, for he spoke at a pace which
no stenographer's or phonographer's pen could follow, but it was not
merely the speed of his utterance which made him so impossible. He would
boggle at the beginning of a sentence, and would stammer over it until
the reporter was half wild with expectancy, and then he would be away
at racing pace, gabbling at the rate of three or four hundred words a
minute. I was in the reporter's box when Mr Lowe caught the Speaker's
eye on this particular evening, and the chief of the staff, who sat next
to me, gave me an urgent whisper, “We want the fullest possible note of
this.” I suffered a twenty minutes' agony. I believe that for many years
after I had left the national talking-shop, I was credited with having
been one of the lamest shorthand writers who ever sat there, and in my
anxiety and with the certainty of failure before my eyes, I fell into
such a state of agitation that my hand perspired so that my pencil would
not mark a line upon the paper. I threw it down in despair and stared
upward at the painted ceiling, listening for all I was worth, and
determined to rely upon what was then a really phenomenal memory.
“What are you doing?” my chief whispered to me. “For God's sake leave
me alone!” I answered. He gave a moan and went to work feverishly at a
supplementary note. The orator sat down amidst a great burst of cheers,
just as my relief tapped me on the shoulder, and I walked away to
committee room No. 18, which was then used by the gallery reporters as
a transcribing room, feeling assured as I walked along the corridor that
my career as a parliamentary reporter had reached an ignominious close.
Near the door of the committee room I encountered old Jack O'Hanlon,
one of the veterans of the gallery and reputed the best classic in all
Westminster. His note-book was tucked in his armpit and he was rubbing
his hands delightedly. “That's parliamentary eloquence, if you like,”
he said as I came up with him; “there's nothing loike that been heard in
the House of Commons these thirty years. There's hardly a scholar in the
classics left in the House.” We sat down side by side, and when we had
been at work in silence for a minute or two, the old scholar turned to
me and asked, “Did you happen to catch that phrase of Sam Weller's?” I
gave it to him without difficulty and then an inspiration occurred to
me. The stammering tongue had plundered Father Prout and the prophet
Malachi, Dickens and Ingoldsby, Pope and Smollett and Defoe, and as it
chanced he had made no literary allusion in English which did not recall
some long familiar text to my mind, I offered a bargain. If O'Hanlon
would give me the classical stuff in respect to which I was in
Pagan darkness, I would give him the English with which he was less
well-acquainted. We exchanged notes and between us we turned out an
excellent if a somewhat compressed and truncated report. I felt that I
was saved, and on the following morning, I made an anxious survey of the
work of my rivals. O'Hanlon represented _The Advertiser_, and I
found that the report of a big meeting of the Licensed Victuallers'
Association which had been held somewhere in the provinces had
swamped him. He was cut down to a mere paragraph and as for the other
journals--_The Times, The Telegraph_ and _The Standard_--they were all
hopelessly at sea. There was but one report of that amazing discourse
which was even distantly worthy of it, and that was in _The Daily News_.
I received a special letter of congratulation from Mr J. R. Robinson
who, to the day of his death, persisted in regarding me as a classical
scholar of exceptional acquirements. I never had an opportunity of
undeceiving him or I would certainly have taken it, but I have since
been content to regard this as an example of the haphazard way in which
reputations are sometimes made. I learned, many years after, that I was
still remembered in the gallery as the man who took a note of the most
difficult speech of its year by staring at the painted ceiling.
It was surprising to notice to what heights party feeling ran amongst
the reporters in the gallery. When Mr Gladstone came into power,
hundreds of malicious and impossible stories were current about him
amongst the supporters of the Opposition, and in the little Tabagie at
the foot of the gallery stairs in which most of our spare hours were
spent, there were heated discussions in which his eloquence, his
financial capacity and his scholarship were all decried. I remember one
occasion when the veteran of _The Daily Telegraph_ staff walked into the
room with the announcement that “that eternal old woman was on her legs
again,” and a general groan went round. I was, and have never ceased to
be, an ardent admirer of Mr Gladstone's character and genius, and I used
constantly to chafe at his belittling by little men, but I never found a
real opportunity for the expression of my own opinion until one day
when I was sent down to report the annual outing of the Commissioners
of Epping Forest. We had a jolly day, winding up with a very substantial
dinner and a drive back to London in a string of open brakes. There was
a basket of champagne aboard the brake in which I found a seat, and
it turned out that nobody in the whole assembly was in possession of
anything which could be utilised as a champagne opener. One gentleman,
however, was very skilful in knocking off the necks of the bottles, and
before we were half-way home we were all in a state of great contentment
and joviality. There was a rather noisy discussion about politics
and, with one exception, my companions were all fierce opponents of
Gladstone. I fired at last--I daresay the champagne had something to do
with it--and I ventured to tell those gentlemen that they seemed to me
to be crawling about beneath the instep of a great man's boot, under
the impression that they were taking an architectural survey of the man.
“You will have,” I said, “to travel to a telescopic distance before
you will be able to realise his proportions,” and there I burst into
quotation:
“Every age,
Through being beheld too close, is ill-discerned
By those who have not lived past it; we'll suppose
Mount Athos carved, as Persian Xerxes schemed,
To some colossal statue of a man:
The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear,
Had guessed as little of any human form
Up there, as would a flock of browsing goats.
They'd have, in fact, to travel ten miles off
Or ere the giant broke on them,
Full human profile, nose and chin distinct,
Mouth, muttering rhythms of silence up the sky,
And fed at evening with the blood of suns;
Grand torso,--hand, that flung perpetually
The largesse of a silver river down
To all the country pastures. 'Tis even thus
With times we live in,--evermore too great
To be apprehended near.”
I supposed that even if the quotation were not recognised, everybody
would at least know that it was a quotation, and that it could not
conceivably have been an impromptu, but one man turned on another and
said: “By Jove! that's eloquence,” and a gentleman at the rear of
the brake asked me out of the darkness why I didn't make a try for
Parliament, and assured me that I had a future there before me.