coupled with abundant humour, a store of anecdote, and a geniality
which came straight from the heart. No man was a more agreeable
companion. In 1884, when the University of Edinburgh celebrated its
tercentenary, he happened to be Lord Rector, and in that capacity had
to preside over the festivities. Although a stranger to Scotland, and
as far removed (for he was a decided High Churchman) from sympathy
with Scottish Presbyterianism as he was removed in politics from the
Liberalism then dominant in Edinburgh, he won golden opinions from the
Scotch, as well as from the crowd of foreign visitors, by the tact and
grace he showed in the discharge of his duties, and the skill with
which, putting off the politician, he entered into the spirit of the
occasion as a lover of letters and learning. Though political eminence
had secured his election to the office, every one felt that it would
have been hard to find in the ranks of literature and science any one
fitter to preside over such a gathering.
He left behind few in whom the capacities of the administrator were so
happily blended with a philosophic judgment and a wide culture. It is
a combination which was inadequately appreciated in his own person.
Vehemence in controversy, domineering audacity of purpose, the power
of moving crowds by incisive harangues, were the qualities which the
younger generation seemed disposed to cultivate. They are qualities
apt to be valued in times of strife and change, times when men are
less concerned to study and apply principles than to rouse the
passions and consolidate the organisation of their party, while
dazzling the nation by large promises or bold strokes of policy. For
such courses Northcote was not the man. Were it to be observed of him
that he was too good for the work he had to do, it might be answered
that political leadership is work for which no man can be too good,
and that it was rather because his force of will and his combativeness
were not commensurate with his other gifts, that those other gifts did
not have their full effect and win their due success. Yet this at
least may be said, that if he had been less amiable, less fair-minded,
and less open-minded, he would have retained his leadership to the
end.
-----
[34] A _Life of Lord Iddesleigh_, written by Mr. Andrew Lang,
presents Northcote's character and career with fairness and
discrimination.
CHARLES STEWART PARNELL
Though I do not propose to write even the briefest narrative of
Parnell's life, but only to note certain salient features of his
intellect and character, it may be well to state a few facts and
dates; for in these days of rapid change and hasty reading, facts soon
pass out of most men's memories, leaving only vague impressions
behind.[35]
He belonged to a family which, established at Congleton in Cheshire,
had at the time of the Restoration migrated to Ireland, had settled on
an estate in Wicklow, and had produced in every subsequent generation
a person of distinction. Thomas Parnell, the friend of Pope and Swift,
is still remembered by his poem of _The Hermit_. Another Parnell (Sir
John) was Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer in the days of Henry
Grattan, whose opinions he shared. Another (Sir Henry) was a leading
Irish Liberal member of the House of Commons, and died by his own hand
in 1842. Charles's father and grandfather figured less in the public
eye. But his mother was a remarkable woman, and the daughter of a
remarkable man, Commodore Charles Stewart, one of the most brilliant
naval commanders on the American side in the war of 1812. Stewart was
the son of a Scoto-Irishman from Ulster, who had emigrated to America
in the middle of the eighteenth century; so there was a strain of
Scottish as well as a fuller strain of English blood in the most
powerful Irish leader of recent times.
Parnell was born at Avondale, the family estate in Wicklow, in 1846,
and was educated mostly at private schools in England. He spent some
months at Magdalene College, Cambridge, but, having been rusticated
for an affray in the street, refused to return to the College, and
finished his education for himself at home. It was a very imperfect
education. He cared nothing for study, and indeed showed interest only
in mathematics and cricket. In 1874 he stood as a candidate for
Parliament, but without success. When he had to make a speech he broke
down utterly. In 1875 he was returned as member for the county of
Meath, and within two years had made his mark in the House of Commons.
In 1880 he was elected leader of the Irish Parliamentary party, and
ruled it and his followers in Ireland with a rod of iron until he was
deposed, in 1890, at the instance of the leaders of the English
Liberal party, who thought that the verdict against him in a divorce
suit in which he was co-respondent had fatally discredited him in the
eyes of the bulk of the English Liberal party, and made co-operation
with him impossible. Refusing to resign his leadership, he conducted a
campaign in Ireland against the majority of his former followers with
extraordinary energy till November 1891, when he died of rheumatic
fever after a short illness. A constitution which had never been
strong was worn out by the ceaseless exertions and mental tension of
the last twelve months.
The whole of his political activity was comprised within a period of
sixteen years, during ten of which he led the Irish Nationalist party,
exercising an authority more absolute than any Irish leader had
exercised before.
It has often been observed that he was not Irish, and that he led the
Irish people with success just because he did not share their
characteristic weaknesses. But it is equally true that he was not
English. One always felt the difference between his temperament and
that of the normal Englishman. The same remark applies to some other
famous Irish leaders. Wolfe Tone, for instance, and Fitzgibbon
(afterwards Lord Clare) were unlike the usual type of Irishman--that
is, the Irishman in whom the Celtic element predominates; but they
were also unlike Englishmen. The Anglo-Irish Protestants, a strong
race who have produced a number of remarkable men in excess of the
proportion they bear to the whole population of the United Kingdom,
fall into two classes--the men of North-Eastern Ulster, in whom there
is so large an infusion of Scottish blood that they may almost be
called "Scotchmen with a difference," and the men of Leinster and
Munster, who are true Anglo-Celts. It was to this latter class that
Parnell belonged. They are a group by themselves, in whom some of the
fire and impulsiveness of the Celt has been blended with some of the
firmness, the tenacity, and the close hold upon facts which belong to
the Englishman. Mr. Parnell, however, though he might be reckoned to
the Anglo-Irish type, was not a normal specimen of it. He was a man
whom you could not refer to any category, peculiar both in his
intellect and in his character generally.
His intellect was eminently practical. He did not love speculation or
the pursuit of abstract truth, nor had he a taste for literature,
still less a delight in learning for its own sake. Even of the annals
of Ireland his knowledge was most slender. He had no grasp of
constitutional questions, and was not able to give any help in the
construction of a Home Rule scheme in 1886. His general reading had
been scanty, and his speeches show no acquaintance either with
history, beyond the commonest facts, or with any other subject
connected with politics. Very rarely did they contain a maxim or
reflection of general applicability, apart from the particular topic
he was discussing. Nor did he ever attempt to give to them the charm
of literary ornament. All was dry, direct, and practical, without so
much as a graceful phrase or a choice epithet. Sometimes, when
addressing a great public meeting, he would seek to rouse the audience
by vehement language; but though there might be a glow of suppressed
passion, there were no flashes of imaginative light. Yet he never gave
the impression of an uneducated man. His language, though it lacked
distinction, was clear and grammatical. His taste was correct. It was
merely that he did not care for any of those things which men of
ability comparable to his usually do care for. His only interests,
outside politics, lay in mechanics and engineering and in the
development of the material resources of his country. He took pains to
manage his estate well, and was specially anxious to make something
out of his stone quarries, and to learn what could be done in the way
of finding and working minerals.
Those who observed that he was almost always occupied in examining and
attacking the measures or the conduct of those who governed Ireland
were apt to think his talent a purely critical one. They were
mistaken. Critical, indeed, it was, in a remarkable degree; keen,
penetrating, stringently dissective of the arguments of an opponent,
ingenious in taking advantage of a false step in administration or of
an admission imprudently made in debate. But it had also a positive
and constructive quality. From time to time he would drop his negative
attitude and sketch out plans of legislation which were always
consistent and weighty, though not made attractive by any touch of
imagination. They were the schemes not so much of a statesman as of an
able man of business, who saw the facts, especially the financial
facts, in a sharp, cold light, and they seldom went beyond what the
facts could be made to prove. And his ideas struck one as being not
only forcible but independent, the fruit of his own musings. Although
he freely used the help of others in collecting facts or opinions, he
did not seem to be borrowing the ideas, but rather to have looked at
things for himself, and seen them as they actually were, in their true
perspective, not (like many Irishmen) through the mists of sentiment
or party feeling. The impression made by one of his more elaborate
speeches might be compared to that which one receives from a grey
sunless day with an east wind, a day in which everything shows clear,
but also hard and cold.
To call his mind a narrow one, as people sometimes did, was to wrong
it. If the range of his interests was limited, his intelligence was
not. Equal to any task it undertook, it judged soundly, appreciating
the whole phenomena of the case, men and things that had no sort of
attraction for it. There was less pleasure in watching its activities
than the observation of a superior mind generally affords, for it was
always directed to immediate aims, and it wanted the originality which
is fertile in ideas and analogies. It was not discursive, not
versatile, not apt to generalise. It did not rejoice in the exercise
of thought for thought's sake, but felt itself to be merely a useful
instrument for performing the definite practical work which the will
required of it.
If, however, the intellect of the man could not be called interesting,
his character had at least this interest, that it gave one many
problems to solve, and could not easily be covered by any formulae. An
observer who followed the old method of explaining every man by
ascribing to him a single ruling passion, would have said that his
ruling passion was pride. The pride was so strong that it almost
extinguished vanity. Parnell did not appear to seek occasions for
display, frequently neglecting those which other men would have
chosen, seldom seeming to be elated by the applause of crowds, and
treating the House of Commons with equal coolness whether it cheered
him or howled at him. He cared nothing for any social compliments or
attentions, rarely accepted an invitation to dinner, dressed with
little care and often in clothes whose style and colour seemed
unworthy of his position. He was believed to be haughty and distant to
his followers; and although he could occasionally be kindly and even
genial, scarcely any were admitted to intimacy, and few of the
ordinary signs of familiarity could be observed between him and them.
Towards other persons he was sufficiently polite but warily reserved,
showing no desire for the cultivation of friendship, or, indeed, for
any relations but those of business. Of some ordinary social duties,
such as opening and answering letters, he was, especially in later
years, more neglectful than good breeding permits; and men doubted
whether to ascribe this fault to indolence or to a superb disregard of
everybody but himself. Such disregard he often showed in greater
matters, taking no notice of attacks made upon him which he might have
refuted, and intimating to the English his indifference to their
praise or blame. On one remarkable occasion, at the beginning of the
session of 1883, he was denounced by Mr. W. E. Forster in a long and
bitter speech, which told powerfully upon the House. Many instances
were given in which Irish members had palliated or failed to condemn
criminal acts, and Parnell was arraigned as the head and front of this
line of conduct, and thus virtually responsible for the outrages that
had occurred. The Irish leader, who had listened in impassive silence,
broken only by one interjected contradiction, to this fierce
invective, did not rise to reply, and was with difficulty induced by
his followers to deliver his defence on the following day. To the
astonishment of every one, that defence consisted in a declaration,
delivered in a cold, careless, almost scornful way, that for all he
said or did in Ireland he held himself responsible to his countrymen
only, and did not in the least regard what Englishmen thought of him.
It was an answer not of defence but of defiance.
Even to his countrymen he could on occasion be disdainful, expecting
them to defer to his own judgment of his own course. He would
sometimes remain away from Parliament for weeks together, although
important business might be under consideration, perhaps would vanish
altogether from public ken. Yet this lordly attitude and the air of
mystery which surrounded him did not seem to be studied with a view to
effect. They were due to his habit of thinking first and chiefly of
himself. If he desired to indulge his inclinations, he indulged them.
Some extremely strong motive of passion or interest might interpose
to restrain this desire and stimulate him to an unwelcome exertion;
but no respect for the opinion of others, nor fear of censure from his
allies or friends, would be allowed to do so.
This boundless self-confidence and independence greatly contributed to
his success as a leader. His faith in his star inspired a conviction
that obstacles whose reality his judgment recognised would ultimately
yield to his will, and gave him in moments of crisis an undismayed
fortitude which only once forsook him--in the panic which was suddenly
created by the Phoenix Park murders of May 1882. The confidence which
he felt, or appeared to feel, reacted upon his party, and became a
chief ground of their obedience to him and their belief in his
superior wisdom. His calmness, his tenacity, his patience, his habit
of listening quietly to every one, but deciding for himself, were all
evidences of that resolute will which imposed itself upon the Irish
masses no less than upon his Parliamentary following, and secured for
him a loyalty in which there was little or nothing of personal
affection.
In these several respects his overweening pride was a source of
strength. In another direction, however, it proved a source of
weakness. There are men in whom the want of moral principle, of noble
emotions, or of a scrupulous conscience and nice sense of honour, is
partly replaced by deference to the opinion of their class or of the
world. Such men may hold through life a tolerably upright course,
neither from the love of virtue nor because they are ambitious and
anxious to stand well with those whom they aspire to influence or
rule, but because, having a sense of personal dignity, combined with a
perception of what pleases or offends mankind, they are resolved to do
nothing whereby their good name can be tarnished or an opening given
to malicious tongues. But when pride towers to such a height as to
become a law to itself, disregarding the judgment of others, it may
not only lead its possessor into an attitude of defiance which the
world resents, but may make him stoop to acts of turpitude which
discredit his character. Mr. Parnell was certainly not a scrupulous
man. Without dwelling upon the circumstances attending the divorce
case already referred to, or upon his betrayal of Mr. Gladstone's
confidences, and his reckless appeals during the last year of his life
to the most inflammable elements in Ireland, there are facts enough in
his earlier career to show that he had little regard for truth and
little horror for crime. A revolution may extenuate some sins, but
even in a revolution there are men (and sometimes the strongest men)
whose moral excellence shines through the smoke of conflict and the
mists of detraction. In Mr. Parnell's nature the moral element was
imperfectly developed. He seemed cynical and callous; and it was
probably his haughty self-reliance which prevented him from
sufficiently deferring to the ordinary moralities of mankind. His
pride, which ought to have kept him free from the suspicion of
dishonour, made him feel himself dispensed from the usual restraints.
Whatever he did was right in his own eyes, and no other eyes need be
regarded. Phenomena somewhat similar were observable in Napoleon. But
Napoleon, though he came of a good family, was obviously not a
gentleman in the common sense of the term. Mr. Parnell was a gentleman
in that sense. He had the bearing, the manners, the natural easy
dignity of a man of birth who has always moved in good society. He
rarely permitted any one to take liberties with him, even the innocent
liberties of familiar intercourse. This made his departures from what
may be called the inner and higher standard of gentlemanly conduct all
the more remarkable.
He has been accused of a want of physical courage. He did no doubt
after the Phoenix Park murders ask the authorities in England for
police protection, being, not unnaturally, in fear for his life; and
he habitually carried firearms. He was at times in danger, and there
was every reason why he should be prepared to defend himself. An
anecdote was told of another member of the House of Commons whose
initials were the same as his own, and who, taking what he supposed to
be his own overcoat from the peg on which it hung in the cloakroom of
the House, was startled when he put his hand into the pocket to feel
in it the cold iron of a pistol. Moral courage he showed in a high
degree during his whole public career, facing his antagonists with an
unshaken front, even when they were most numerous and bitter. Though
he intensely disliked imprisonment, the terms on which he came out of
Kilmainham Gaol left no discredit upon him. He behaved with perfect
dignity under the attacks of the press in 1887, and in the face of the
use made of letters attributed to him which turned out to have been
forged by Richard Pigott--letters which the bulk of the English upper
classes had greedily swallowed. With this courage and dignity there
was, however, little trace of magnanimity. He seldom said a generous
word, or showed himself responsive to such a word spoken by another.
Accustomed to conceal his feelings, except in his most excited
moments, he rarely revealed, but he certainly cherished, vindictive
sentiments. He never forgave either Mr. W. E. Forster or Mr. Gladstone
for having imprisoned him in 1881;[36] and though he stood in some
awe of the latter, whom he considered the only really formidable
antagonist he had ever had to confront, he bore a grudge which
smouldered under the reconciliation of 1886 and leapt into flame in
the manifesto of November 1890.
The union in Mr. Parnell of intense passion with strenuous self-control
struck all who watched him closely, though it was seldom that passion
so far escaped as to make the contrast visibly dramatic. Usually he was
cold, grave, deliberate, repelling advances with a sort of icy
courtesy. He hardly ever lost his temper in the House of Commons,
even in his last session under the sarcasms of his former friends,
though the low, almost hissing tones of his voice sometimes betrayed an
internal struggle. But during the electoral campaign in Kilkenny, in
December 1890, when he was fighting for his life, he was more than
once so swept away by anger that those beside him had to hold him
back from jumping off the platform into the crowd to strike down some
one who had interrupted him. Suspended for a moment, his mastery of
himself quickly returned. Men were astonished to observe how, after
some of the stormy passages at the meetings of Irish members held in
one of the House of Commons committee-rooms in December 1890, he
would address quietly, perhaps lay his hand upon the shoulder of, some
one of the colleagues who had just been denouncing him, and on whom
he had poured all the vitriol of his fierce tongue. As this could
not have been good-nature, it must have been either calculated
policy or a pride that would not accept an injury from those whom he
had been wont to deem his subjects. Spontaneous kindliness was never
ascribed to him; nor had he, so far as could be known, a single intimate
friend.