end by the death of his father. He succeeded to the title of Marquis of
Salisbury, and became, as a matter of course, a member of the House of
Lords. He was thus withdrawn while still a comparatively young man from
that stirring field of splendid debate where his highest qualities as a
speaker could alone have found their fitting opportunity. I need not
trace out his subsequent public career with any sequence of detail. We
all know how from that time to this he has held high office, has come to
hold the highest offices in the State whenever his political party
happened to be in power. He has been Foreign Secretary; he has been
Prime Minister in three Conservative administrations. For a time he
actually combined the functions of Prime Minister and those of Foreign
Secretary. He was envoy to the great conference at Constantinople in
1876 and 1877, and he took part in the Congress of Berlin, that
conference which Lord Beaconsfield declared brought to England peace
with honor. Everything that a man could have to gratify his ambition
Lord Salisbury has had since the day when he succeeded to his father's
title and estates. His own intellectual force and his political
capacity must undoubtedly have made a way for him to Parliamentary
influence and success even if he had always remained Lord Robert Cecil,
and his elder brother had lived to succeed to the title. But from the
moment when Lord Robert Cecil became the heir, it was certain that his
party could not venture to overlook him. He might have made eccentric
speeches, he might have indulged in sarcastic and scornful allusions to
his political leaders, he might have allowed obtrusive scruples of
conscience to interfere with the interests of his party, but none the
less it became absolutely necessary that the Conservative politicians
should accept, when opportunity came, the leadership of the Marquis of
Salisbury. "Thou hast it all"--the words which Banquo applies to
Macbeth--might have been said of Lord Salisbury when he became for the
first time Prime Minister.
Lord Salisbury certainly did not achieve his position by any of the
arts, even the less culpable arts, which for a time secured to Macbeth
the highest reach of his ambition. Lord Salisbury's leadership came to
him and was not sought by him. I cannot help thinking, however, that,
after he had once attained that supreme position in his party, the
remainder of his public career has been something in the nature of an
anticlimax. Was it that the chill and deadening influence of the House
of Lords proved too depressing for the energetic and vivacious spirit
which had won celebrity for Lord Robert Cecil in the House of Commons?
Was it that Lord Salisbury, when he had attained the height of his
ambition, became a victim to that mood of reaction which compels such a
man to ask himself whether, after all, the work of ascent was not much
better than the attained elevation? Lord Salisbury's years of high
office coming now thus suddenly to an end give to me at least the
melancholy impression of an unfulfilled career. The influence of the
Prime Minister, so far as mere outsiders can judge of it, has always
been exerted in foreign affairs for the promotion of peace. Even the
late war in South Africa is not understood to have been in any sense a
war of his seeking. The general belief is that the policy of war was
pressed upon him by influences which at the time he was not able to
control--influences which would only have become all the stronger if he
had refused to accept the responsibility of Prime Minister and had left
it to others to carry on the work of government. However this may be,
it can hardly be questioned that of late years Lord Salisbury had become
that which nobody in former days could ever suppose him likely to
become, the mere figurehead of an administration. Lord Salisbury's whole
nature seems to have been too sincere, too free from mere theatrical
arts, to allow him to play the part of leader where he had no heart in
the work of leadership. A statesman like Disraeli might have disapproved
of a certain policy and done his best to reason his colleagues out of
it, but nevertheless, when he found himself likely to be overborne,
would have immersed himself deliberately in all the new-born zeal of the
convert and would have behaved thenceforward as if his whole soul were
in the work which had been put upon him to do. Lord Salisbury is most
assuredly not a man of this order, and he never would or could put on an
enthusiasm which he did not feel in his heart. We can all remember how,
at the very zenith of British passion against China during the recent
political convulsions and the intervention of the foreign allies, Lord
Salisbury astonished and depressed some of his warmest admirers by a
speech which he made at Exeter Hall, a speech which, metaphorically at
least, threw the coldest of cold water on the popular British ardor for
forcing Western civilization on the Chinese people.
Lord Salisbury's frame of mind was one which could never allow him to
become even for a moment a thorough Jingo, and through all the later
years of his power he held the office of Prime Minister at a time when
Jingoism was the order of the day among the outside supporters of the
Conservative Government. He never had a fair chance for the full
development of his intellectual faculties while he remained at the head
of a Conservative administration. Under happier conditions he might have
been a great Prime Minister and a leading force in political movement,
but his intellect, his tastes, and his habits of life did not allow him
to pay much deference to the prejudices and passions of those on whom he
was compelled to rely for support. There was too much in him of the
thinker, the scholar, and the recluse to make him a thoroughly effective
leader of the party who had to acknowledge his command. He loved
reading, he loved literature and art, and he took no delight in
the formal social functions which are in our days an important
part of successful political administration. He could not be
"hail-fellow-well-met" with every pushing follower who made it a pride
to be on terms of companionship with the leader of the party. I have
often heard that he had a singularly bad memory for faces, and that many
a devoted Tory follower found his enthusiasm chilled every now and then
by the obvious fact that the Prime Minister did not seem to remember
anything about the identity of his obtrusive admirer. Much the same
thing has been said over and over again about Mr. Gladstone, but then
Gladstone had the inborn genius of leadership, threw his soul into every
great political movement, and did not depend in the slightest degree on
his faculty for appreciating and conciliating every individual follower.
Lord Salisbury's tastes were for the society of his close personal
friends, and I believe no man could be a more genial host in the company
of those with whom he loved to associate; but he had no interest in the
ordinary ways of society and made no effort to conciliate those with
whom he found himself in no manner of companionship. He did not even
take any strong interest in the study of the most remarkable figures in
the political world around him, if he did not feel drawn into sympathy
with their ways and their opinions. On one occasion, when a report had
got about in the newspapers that Lord Salisbury was often seen in
friendly companionship with the late Mr. Parnell in the smoking-room of
the House of Commons, Lord Salisbury publicly stated that he had never,
to his knowledge, seen Parnell, and had never been once in the House of
Commons smoking-room.
No man has been better known, so far as personal appearance was
concerned, to the general English public than Lord Salisbury. He has
been as well known as Mr. Gladstone himself, and one cannot say more
than that. He was a frequent walker in St. James's Park and other places
of common resort in the neighborhood of the Houses of Parliament. Every
one knew the tall, broad, stooping figure with the thick head of hair,
the bent brows, and the careless, shabby costume. No statesman of his
time was more indifferent than Lord Salisbury to the dictates of fashion
as regarded dress and deportment. He was undoubtedly one of the
worst-dressed men of his order in London. In this peculiarity he formed
a remarkable contrast to Lord Beaconsfield, who down to the very end of
his life took care to be always dressed according to the most recent
dictates of fashion. All this was strictly in keeping with Lord
Salisbury's character and temperament. The world had to take him as he
was--he could never bring himself to act any part for the sake of its
effect upon the public. My own impression is that when he was removed by
the decree of fate into the House of Lords and taken away from the
active, thrilling life of the House of Commons, he felt himself excluded
from his congenial field of political action and had but little interest
in the game of politics any more. He does not seem destined to a place
in the foremost rank of English Prime Ministers, even of English
Conservative Prime Ministers. But his is beyond all question a
picturesque, a deeply interesting, and even a commanding figure in
English political history, and the world will have reason to regret if
his voluntary retirement from the position of Prime Minister should mean
also his retirement from the field of political life.
[Illustration: Photograph copyright by Elliott & Fry
THE EARL OF ROSEBERY]
LORD ROSEBERY
Lord Rosebery was for a prolonged season the man in English political
life upon whom the eyes of expectation were turned. He is a younger man
than most of his political colleagues and rivals, but it is not because
of his comparative youth that the eyes of expectation were and still are
turned upon him. Not one of those who stand in the front ranks of
Parliamentary life to-day could be called old, as we reckon age in our
modern estimate. Palmerston, Gladstone, and Disraeli won their highest
political triumphs after they had passed the age which Lord Salisbury
and Sir William Harcourt have now reached; Mr. Balfour is still regarded
in politics as quite a young man, and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman has
but lately been elected leader of the Liberal party in the House of
Commons. Lord Rosebery has already held the highest political offices.
He has been Foreign Secretary and he has been Prime Minister. He has
been leader of the Liberal party. No other public man in England has so
many and so varied mental gifts, and no other public man has won success
in so many distinct fields. We live in days when, for the time at least,
the great political orator seems to have passed out of existence. The
last great English orator died at Hawarden a few short years ago. We
have, however, several brilliant and powerful Parliamentary debaters,
and among these Lord Rosebery stands with the foremost, if he is not,
indeed, absolutely the foremost. As an orator on what I may call great
ceremonial occasions he is, according to my judgment, the very foremost
we now have. As an after-dinner speaker--and after-dinner speaking
counts for a great deal in the success of an English public man--he has
never had an equal in England during my time. Then Lord Rosebery has
delivered lectures or addresses in commemoration of great poets and
philosophers and statesmen which may even already be regarded as certain
of an abiding place in literature. Lord Rosebery is a literary man, an
author as well as a statesman and an orator; he has written a life of
Pitt which is already becoming a sort of classic in our libraries. There
are profounder students, men more deeply read, than he, but I doubt if
there are many men living who have so wide an acquaintance with general
literature. He is a lover as well as a student and a connoisseur of art,
he is an accomplished yachtsman, has a thorough knowledge of horses, is
famous on the turf, and the owner of two horses which won the Derby. The
legendary fairy godmother seems to have showered upon him at his birth
all her richest and most various gifts, and no malign and jealous sprite
appears to have come in, as in the nursery stories, to spoil any of the
gifts by a counteracting spell. He was born of great family and born to
high estate; he married a daughter of the house of Rothschild; he has a
lordly home near Edinburgh in Scotland, a noble house in the finest West
End square of London, and a delightful residence in one of our most
beautiful English counties.
Lord Rosebery is one of the most charming talkers whom it has ever been
my good fortune to meet. He has a keen sense of humor, a happy art of
light and delicate satire, and, in private conversation as well as in
Parliamentary debate, he has a singular facility for the invention of
expressive and successful phrases which tell their whole story in a
flash. One might well be inclined to ask what the kindly fates could
have done for Lord Rosebery that they have left undone. Nevertheless,
the truth has to be told, that up to this time Lord Rosebery has not
accomplished as much of greatness as most of us confidently expected
that he would achieve.
I have been, perhaps, somewhat too hasty in saying that no counteracting
spell had in any way marred the influence of the gifts which the fairies
had so lavishly bestowed on Lord Rosebery. One stroke of ill
fortune--ill fortune, that is, for an English political leader--was
certainly directed against him. Nature must have meant him to be a
successful Prime Minister, and yet fortune denied him a seat in the
House of Commons. He succeeded to his grandfather's peerage at an early
period of his life, and he had to begin his political career as a member
of the House of Lords. He therefore missed all that splendid training
for political warfare which is given in the House of Commons. It would
not, perhaps, be quite easy for an American reader to understand how
little the House of Lords counts for in the education of fighting
statesmen.
When Charles James Fox was told in his declining years that the King, as
a mark of royal favor, intended to make him a peer and thus remove him
from the House of Commons into the House of Lords, he struck his
forehead and exclaimed: "Good Heaven! he does not think it has come to
that with me, does he?" Fox had had all the training that his genius
needed in the House of Commons, and he was not condemned to pass into
the House of Lords. Nothing but the inborn consciousness of a genius for
political debate can stimulate a man to great effort in the House of
Lords. Nothing turns upon a debate in that House. If a majority in the
House of Lords were to pass a vote of censure three times a week on the
existing Government, that Government would continue to exist just as if
nothing had happened, and the public in general would hardly know that
the Lords had been expressing any opinion on the subject. An ordinary
sitting of the House of Lords is not expected to last for more than an
hour or so, and the whole assembly often consists of some half a dozen
peers. Now and again, during the course of a session, there is got up
what may be called a full-dress debate when some great question is
disturbing the country, and the peers think that they ought to put on
the appearance of being deeply concerned about it, and some noble lord
who has a repute for wisdom or for eloquence gives notice of a formal
motion, and then there is a lengthened discussion, and perhaps, on some
extraordinary occasion, the peers may sit to a late hour and even take a
division. But on such remarkable occasions the peer who induces the
House to come together and listen to his oration is almost sure to be
one who has had his training in the House of Commons and has made his
fame as an orator there.
Now, I cannot but regard it as a striking evidence of Lord Rosebery's
inborn fitness to be an English political leader that he should have got
over the dreary discouragement of such a training-school, and should
have practiced the art of political oratory under conditions that might
have filled Demosthenes himself with a sense of the futility of trying
to make a great speech where nothing whatever was likely to come of it.
Lord Rosebery, however, did succeed in proving to the House of Lords
that they had among them a brilliant and powerful debater who had
qualified himself for success without any help from the school in which
Lord Brougham and the brilliant Lord Derby, Lord Cairns, and Lord
Salisbury had studied and mastered the art of Parliamentary eloquence.
But, indeed, Lord Rosebery appears to have had a natural inclination to
seek and find a training-school for his abilities in places and pursuits
that might have seemed very much out of the ordinary British
aristocrat's way. Until a comparatively recent period, we had nothing
that could be called a really decent system of municipal government in
the greater part of London. We had, of course, the Lord Mayor and the
municipality of the City of London, but then the City of London is only
a very small patch in the great metropolis that holds more than five
millions of people. London, outside the City, was governed by the
old-fashioned parish vestries, and to some extent by a more recent
institution which was called the Metropolitan Board of Works. Now, the
Metropolitan Board of Works did not manage its affairs very well. There
were disagreeable rumors and stories about contracts and jobbing and
that sort of thing, and although matters were never supposed to have
been quite so bad as they were in New York during days which I can
remember well, the days of Boss Tweed, there was enough of public
complaint to induce Parliament, at the instigation of Lord Randolph
Churchill, to abolish the Board of Works altogether and set up the
London County Council, a thoroughly representative body elected by
popular suffrage and responsible to its constituents and the public.
Lord Rosebery threw himself heart and soul into the promotion of this
better system of London municipal government. He became a member of the
London County Council, was elected its first Chairman, and later on was
re-elected to the same office. Now, I think it would be hardly possible
for a man of Lord Rosebery's rank and culture and tastes to give a more
genuine proof of patriotic public spirit than he did when he threw
himself heart and soul into the work of a municipal council.
Up to that time the business of a London municipality had been regarded
as something belonging entirely to the middle class or the lower middle
class, something with which peers and nobles could not possibly be
expected to have anything to do. A London Alderman had been from time
out of mind a sort of figure of fun, a vulgar, fussy kind of person,
who bedizened himself in gaudy robes on festive occasions, and was
noted for his love of the turtle in quite a different sense from that
which Byron gives to the words. Lord Rosebery set himself steadily to
the work of London municipal government at a most critical period in its
history; his example was followed by men of rank and culture, and some
of the most intellectual men of our day have been elected Aldermen of
the London County Council. Only think of Frederic Harrison, the
celebrated Positivist philosopher, the man of exquisite culture and
refinement, the man of almost fastidious ways, the scholar and the
writer, becoming an Alderman of the London County Council, and devoting
himself to the duties of his position! Lord Rosebery undoubtedly has the
honor of having done more than any other Englishman to raise the
municipal government of London to that position which it ought to have
in the public life of the State.
All that time Lord Rosebery was not neglecting any of the other
functions and occupations which had been imposed upon him, or which he
had voluntarily taken upon himself. He held the office of First
Commissioner of Works in one of Mr. Gladstone's administrations, an
office involving the care of all the State buildings and monuments and
parks of the metropolis. He was always to be seen at the private views
of the Royal Academy and the other great picture galleries of the London
season. He was always starting some new movement for the improvement of
the breed of horses, and, indeed, there is a certain section of our
community among whom Lord Rosebery is regarded, not as a statesman, or a
London County Councilor, or a lover of literature, but simply and
altogether as a patron of the turf. Meanwhile we were hearing of him
every now and then as an adventurous yachtsman, and as the orator of
some great commemoration day when a statue was unveiled to a Burke or a
Burns.
A more delightful host than Lord Rosebery it would not be possible to
meet or even to imagine. I have had the honor of enjoying his
hospitality at Dalmeny and in his London home, and I shall only say that
those were occasions which I may describe, in the words Carlyle employed
with a less gladsome significance, as not easily to be forgotten in this
world. No man can command a greater variety of topics of conversation.
Politics, travel, art, letters, the life of great cities, the growth of
commerce, the tendencies of civilizations, the art of living, the
philosophy of life, the way to enjoy life, the various characteristics
of foreign capitals--on all such topics Lord Rosebery can speak with the
clearness of one who knows his subject and the vivacity of one who can
put his thoughts into the most expressive words. I suppose there must be
some eminent authors with whose works Lord Rosebery is not familiar, but
I can only say that if there be any such, I have not yet discovered who
they are--and I have spent a good deal of my time in reading. I have
seen Lord Rosebery in companies where painters and sculptors and the
writers of books and the writers of plays formed the majority, where
political subjects were not touched upon, and I have observed that Lord
Rosebery could hold his own with each practitioner of art on the
artist's special subject. Lord Rosebery does not profess to be a
bookworm or a great scholar, but I do not know any man better acquainted
with general literature. Such a man must surely have got out of life all
the best that it has to give.
Yet it is certain that the eyes of expectation are still turned upon
Lord Rosebery. There is a general conviction that he has something yet
to do--that, in fact, he has not yet given his measure. He has been
Prime Minister, and he has been leader of the English Liberal party, but
in neither case had he a chance of proving his strength. When Mr.
Gladstone made up his mind to retire finally from political life, the
Queen sent for Lord Rosebery and invited him to form an administration.
Now, it is no secret that at that time there were men in the Liberal
party whose friends and admirers believed that their length of service
gave them a precedence of claims over the claims of Lord Rosebery. There
were those who thought Sir William Harcourt had won for himself a right
to be chosen as the successor to Mr. Gladstone. On the other side--for
there was grumbling on both sides--there were members of the Liberal
administration who positively declined to continue in office if Sir
William Harcourt were made Prime Minister. These men did not object to
serve under Sir William Harcourt as leader of the House of Commons, but
they objected to his elevation to the supreme place of Prime Minister.
Also, there were Liberals of great influence, who, while they had the
fullest confidence in Lord Rosebery and were not fanatically devoted to
Sir William Harcourt, objected to the idea of having a Prime Minister
in the House of Lords, and a Prime Minister, too, who had never sat in
the House of Commons. Now, it would be idle to deny that there was some
practical reason for this objection. The House of Commons is the field
on which political battles are fought and won. The Commander-in-Chief
ought always to be within reach. A whole plan of campaign may have to be
changed at a quarter of an hour's notice. It must obviously often be
highly inconvenient to have a Prime Minister who cannot cross the
threshold of the House of Commons in order to get into instant
communication with the leading men of his own party who are fighting the
battle.
At all events, I am now only concerned to say that these doubts and
difficulties and private disputations did arise, and that, although Lord
Rosebery did accept the position of Prime Minister, he must have done so
with some knowledge of the fact that certain of his colleagues were not
quite satisfied with the new conditions. Lord Rosebery had been most
successful as Foreign Secretary during each term when he held the
office, but it was well known, before Mr. Gladstone's retirement, that
there were some questions of foreign policy on which the old leader and
the new were not quite of one opinion. In English political life, and I
suppose in the political life of every self-governing country, there are
seasons of inevitable action and reaction which must be observed and
felt, although they cannot always be explained.