Mr. Turnbull
It was a Wednesday evening and there was no House;--and at seven
o’clock Phineas was at Mr. Monk’s hall door. He was the first of the
guests, and he found Mr. Monk alone in the dining-room. “I am doing
butler,” said Mr. Monk, who had a brace of decanters in his hands,
which he proceeded to put down in the neighbourhood of the fire.
“But I have finished, and now we will go up-stairs to receive the
two great men properly.”
“I beg your pardon for coming too early,” said Finn.
“Not a minute too early. Seven is seven, and it is I who am too late.
But, Lord bless you, you don’t think I’m ashamed of being found in
the act of decanting my own wine! I remember Lord Palmerston saying
before some committee about salaries, five or six years ago now, I
daresay, that it wouldn’t do for an English Minister to have his hall
door opened by a maid-servant. Now, I’m an English Minister, and
I’ve got nobody but a maid-servant to open my hall door, and I’m
obliged to look after my own wine. I wonder whether it’s improper? I
shouldn’t like to be the means of injuring the British Constitution.”
“Perhaps if you resign soon, and if nobody follows your example,
grave evil results may be avoided.”
“I sincerely hope so, for I do love the British Constitution; and I
love also the respect in which members of the English Cabinet are
held. Now Turnbull, who will be here in a moment, hates it all; but
he is a rich man, and has more powdered footmen hanging about his
house than ever Lord Palmerston had himself.”
“He is still in business.”
“Oh yes;--and makes his thirty thousand a year. Here he is. How are
you, Turnbull? We were talking about my maid-servant. I hope she
opened the door for you properly.”
“Certainly,--as far as I perceived,” said Mr. Turnbull, who was
better at a speech than a joke. “A very respectable young woman I
should say.”
“There is not one more so in all London,” said Mr. Monk; “but Finn
seems to think that I ought to have a man in livery.”
“It is a matter of perfect indifference to me,” said Mr. Turnbull.
“I am one of those who never think of such things.”
“Nor I either,” said Mr. Monk. Then the laird of Loughlinter was
announced, and they all went down to dinner.
Mr. Turnbull was a good-looking robust man about sixty, with long
grey hair and a red complexion, with hard eyes, a well-cut nose, and
full lips. He was nearly six feet high, stood quite upright, and
always wore a black swallow-tail coat, black trousers, and a black
silk waistcoat. In the House, at least, he was always so dressed, and
at dinner tables. What difference there might be in his costume when
at home at Staleybridge few of those who saw him in London had the
means of knowing. There was nothing in his face to indicate special
talent. No one looking at him would take him to be a fool; but there
was none of the fire of genius in his eye, nor was there in the lines
of his mouth any of that play of thought or fancy which is generally
to be found in the faces of men and women who have made themselves
great. Mr. Turnbull had certainly made himself great, and could
hardly have done so without force of intellect. He was one of the
most popular, if not the most popular politician in the country. Poor
men believed in him, thinking that he was their most honest public
friend; and men who were not poor believed in his power, thinking
that his counsels must surely prevail. He had obtained the ear of the
House and the favour of the reporters, and opened his voice at no
public dinner, on no public platform, without a conviction that the
words spoken by him would be read by thousands. The first necessity
for good speaking is a large audience; and of this advantage Mr.
Turnbull had made himself sure. And yet it could hardly be said that
he was a great orator. He was gifted with a powerful voice, with
strong, and I may, perhaps, call them broad convictions, with perfect
self-reliance, with almost unlimited powers of endurance, with hot
ambition, with no keen scruples, and with a moral skin of great
thickness. Nothing said against him pained him, no attacks wounded
him, no raillery touched him in the least. There was not a sore spot
about him, and probably his first thoughts on waking every morning
told him that he, at least, was totus teres atque rotundus. He was,
of course, a thorough Radical,--and so was Mr. Monk. But Mr. Monk’s
first waking thoughts were probably exactly the reverse of those
of his friend. Mr. Monk was a much hotter man in debate than Mr.
Turnbull;--but Mr. Monk was ever doubting of himself, and never
doubted of himself so much as when he had been most violent, and
also most effective, in debate. When Mr. Monk jeered at himself for
being a Cabinet Minister and keeping no attendant grander than a
parlour-maid, there was a substratum of self-doubt under the joke.
Mr. Turnbull was certainly a great Radical, and as such enjoyed a
great reputation. I do not think that high office in the State had
ever been offered to him; but things had been said which justified
him, or seemed to himself to justify him, in declaring that in
no possible circumstances would he serve the Crown. “I serve the
people,” he had said, “and much as I respect the servants of the
Crown, I think that my own office is the higher.” He had been greatly
called to task for this speech; and Mr. Mildmay, the present Premier,
had asked him whether he did not recognise the so-called servants of
the Crown as the most hard-worked and truest servants of the people.
The House and the press had supported Mr. Mildmay, but to all that
Mr. Turnbull was quite indifferent; and when an assertion made by him
before three or four thousand persons at Manchester, to the effect
that he,--he specially,--was the friend and servant of the people,
was received with acclamation, he felt quite satisfied that he had
gained his point. Progressive reform in the franchise, of which
manhood suffrage should be the acknowledged and not far distant end,
equal electoral districts, ballot, tenant right for England as well
as Ireland, reduction of the standing army till there should be no
standing army to reduce, utter disregard of all political movements
in Europe, an almost idolatrous admiration for all political
movements in America, free trade in everything except malt, and
an absolute extinction of a State Church,--these were among the
principal articles in Mr. Turnbull’s political catalogue. And I
think that when once he had learned the art of arranging his words
as he stood upon his legs, and had so mastered his voice as to
have obtained the ear of the House, the work of his life was not
difficult. Having nothing to construct, he could always deal with
generalities. Being free from responsibility, he was not called upon
either to study details or to master even great facts. It was his
business to inveigh against existing evils, and perhaps there is
no easier business when once the privilege of an audience has been
attained. It was his work to cut down forest-trees, and he had
nothing to do with the subsequent cultivation of the land. Mr.
Monk had once told Phineas Finn how great were the charms of that
inaccuracy which was permitted to the Opposition. Mr. Turnbull no
doubt enjoyed these charms to the full, though he would sooner have
put a padlock on his mouth for a month than have owned as much. Upon
the whole, Mr. Turnbull was no doubt right in resolving that he would
not take office, though some reticence on that subject might have
been more becoming to him.
The conversation at dinner, though it was altogether on political
subjects, had in it nothing of special interest as long as the girl
was there to change the plates; but when she was gone, and the door
was closed, it gradually opened out, and there came on to be a
pleasant sparring match between the two great Radicals,--the Radical
who had joined himself to the governing powers, and the Radical who
stood aloof. Mr. Kennedy barely said a word now and then, and Phineas
was almost as silent as Mr. Kennedy. He had come there to hear some
such discussion, and was quite willing to listen while guns of such
great calibre were being fired off for his amusement.
“I think Mr. Mildmay is making a great step forward,” said Mr.
Turnbull.
“I think he is,” said Mr. Monk.
“I did not believe that he would ever live to go so far. It will
hardly suffice even for this year; but still coming from him, it is
a great deal. It only shows how far a man may be made to go, if only
the proper force be applied. After all, it matters very little who
are the Ministers.”
“That is what I have always declared,” said Mr. Monk.
“Very little indeed. We don’t mind whether it be Lord de Terrier, or
Mr. Mildmay, or Mr. Gresham, or you yourself, if you choose to get
yourself made First Lord of the Treasury.”
“I have no such ambition, Turnbull.”
“I should have thought you had. If I went in for that kind of thing
myself, I should like to go to the top of the ladder. I should feel
that if I could do any good at all by becoming a Minister, I could
only do it by becoming first Minister.”
“You wouldn’t doubt your own fitness for such a position?”
“I doubt my fitness for the position of any Minister,” said Mr.
Turnbull.
“You mean that on other grounds,” said Mr. Kennedy.
“I mean it on every ground,” said Mr. Turnbull, rising on his legs
and standing with his back to the fire. “Of course I am not fit to
have diplomatic intercourse with men who would come to me simply with
the desire of deceiving me. Of course I am unfit to deal with members
of Parliament who would flock around me because they wanted places.
Of course I am unfit to answer every man’s question so as to give no
information to any one.”
“Could you not answer them so as to give information?” said Mr.
Kennedy.
But Mr. Turnbull was so intent on his speech that it may be doubted
whether he heard this interruption. He took no notice of it as he
went on. “Of course I am unfit to maintain the proprieties of a
seeming confidence between a Crown all-powerless and a people
all-powerful. No man recognises his own unfitness for such work more
clearly than I do, Mr. Monk. But if I took in hand such work at all,
I should like to be the leader, and not the led. Tell us fairly, now,
what are your convictions worth in Mr. Mildmay’s Cabinet?”
“That is a question which a man may hardly answer himself,” said Mr.
Monk.
“It is a question which a man should at least answer for himself
before he consents to sit there,” said Mr. Turnbull, in a tone of
voice which was almost angry.
“And what reason have you for supposing that I have omitted that
duty?” said Mr. Monk.
“Simply this,--that I cannot reconcile your known opinions with the
practices of your colleagues.”
“I will not tell you what my convictions may be worth in Mr.
Mildmay’s Cabinet. I will not take upon myself to say that they are
worth the chair on which I sit when I am there. But I will tell you
what my aspirations were when I consented to fill that chair, and you
shall judge of their worth. I thought that they might possibly leaven
the batch of bread which we have to bake,--giving to the whole batch
more of the flavour of reform than it would have possessed had I
absented myself. I thought that when I was asked to join Mr. Mildmay
and Mr. Gresham, the very fact of that request indicated liberal
progress, and that if I refused the request I should be declining to
assist in good work.”
“You could have supported them, if anything were proposed worthy of
support,” said Mr. Turnbull.
“Yes; but I could not have been so effective in taking care that
some measure be proposed worthy of support as I may possibly be now.
I thought a good deal about it, and I believe that my decision was
right.”
“I am sure you were right,” said Mr. Kennedy.
“There can be no juster object of ambition than a seat in the
Cabinet,” said Phineas.
“Sir, I must dispute that,” said Mr. Turnbull, turning round upon our
hero. “I regard the position of our high Ministers as most
respectable.”
“Thank you for so much,” said Mr. Monk. But the orator went on again,
regardless of the interruption:--
“The position of gentlemen in inferior offices,--of gentlemen who
attend rather to the nods and winks of their superiors in Downing
Street than to the interest of their constituents,--I do not regard
as being highly respectable.”
“A man cannot begin at the top,” said Phineas.
“Our friend Mr. Monk has begun at what you are pleased to call the
top,” said Mr. Turnbull. “But I will not profess to think that even
he has raised himself by going into office. To be an independent
representative of a really popular commercial constituency is, in my
estimation, the highest object of an Englishman’s ambition.”
“But why commercial, Mr. Turnbull?” said Mr. Kennedy.
“Because the commercial constituencies really do elect their own
members in accordance with their own judgments, whereas the counties
and the small towns are coerced either by individuals or by a
combination of aristocratic influences.”
“And yet,” said Mr. Kennedy, “there are not half a dozen
Conservatives returned by all the counties in Scotland.”
“Scotland is very much to be honoured,” said Mr. Turnbull.
Mr. Kennedy was the first to take his departure, and Mr. Turnbull
followed him very quickly. Phineas got up to go at the same time, but
stayed at his host’s request, and sat for awhile smoking a cigar.
“Turnbull is a wonderful man,” said Mr. Monk.
“Does he not domineer too much?”
“His fault is not arrogance, so much as ignorance that there is,
or should be, a difference between public and private life. In the
House of Commons a man in Mr. Turnbull’s position must speak with
dictatorial assurance. He is always addressing, not the House only,
but the country at large, and the country will not believe in him
unless he believe in himself. But he forgets that he is not always
addressing the country at large. I wonder what sort of a time Mrs.
Turnbull and the little Turnbulls have of it?”
Phineas, as he went home, made up his mind that Mrs. Turnbull and
the little Turnbulls must probably have a bad time of it.