I DARESAY you will have been expecting for some time to hear from me,
and it is quite true I owe you a letter. But the fact is, I'm sick of
letter-writing, which, always a bore, has of late been invested with
fresh terrors. The way I am being used up by our Conservative friends is
perhaps a little audacious. It certainly is quite embarrassing. Whenever
any of their men get into a tight place, or embark upon a difficult
enterprise, they write to me for a character, quite regardless of my
personal predilections, and even of my actual pledges. You will have
seen a good deal of this, including the latest production touching the
Aberdeen University Election, where G-SCH-N hopes to ride in on my
back.
But that was nothing to the letter they got me to write about the
Glasgow University Rectorship. That was, unhappily, not my first
production on the subject. Months ago I was asked what I thought of
R-S-B-RY as Rector, and I let them have my opinion straight. A better
fellow, take him all round, there isn't in either House. Just the man to
be Lord Rector of a Scotch University, if he cares to undertake the
office. Since then, however, L-TT-N comes along, and with that
stupendous ambition for personal distinction which I don't understand,
not satisfied with being Ambassador to Paris, wants to be Lord Rector of
Glasgow University. Of course they come to me to back him up,--a
peculiarly hot corner to put a fellow in. It happens not only that I
have published my opinion about R-S-B-RY, but all the world knows what
I think of L-TT-N. Still, as the M-rk-ss says, we must keep out
GL-DST-NE from Downing Street; and so we'll put in L-TT-N for
Glasgow University. A hard pill to swallow, but I gulped at it, and the
letter was written. But between you and me, Toby, I felt nearer being
mean than I ever did in my life, and would go a long way round rather
than look a Glasgow University lad in the face.
Still, it is no new experience for me to be persuaded to do things
I don't like. I'm swallowing hard pills in the Conservative interest
now, but many a box I've cleared out in former days to make things
pleasant for GL-DST-NE. You've seen me, I daresay, reluctantly brought
up to the box on the table of the House, patted, pushed, placed in
position, and made to support all kinds of things, which a few months
or weeks earlier I honestly believe I loathed. As I write I see
GL-DST-NE nodding encouragingly as I proceed. I hear the rapturous
cheers of the Radicals, delighted to find me won over. I am conscious
of the chilling silence on the benches immediately behind, and I am
roused to more desperate declaration by the satirical cheers of my
friends on the benches opposite. I recall, as it were but yesterday,
the effect H-RC-RT'S cheer used to have upon me--the strong temptation
to turn round, publicly chuck up the whole business, and go back to
the expression of my opinion on the particular topic before GL-DST-NE
took me in hand.
That's all over now, at least in that particular development. But it's
the same old thing over again in altered circumstances.
After I had consented to support GL-DST-NE'S last Land Bill, he sent
me a gushing letter, in which he said that, turning over the pages of
T-RT-LL-N, he had come upon a passage which might well be engraved
on my tombstone. I thought at the time it was, in chronological
circumstances, rather cool his preparing a tombstone for me. But that
by the way. Here is the epitaph:--
"Sic vita erat; facile omnes perferre ac pati;
Cum quibus erat cunque una, his sese dedere;
Eorum obsequi studiis; adversus nemini,
Nunquam praeponens se aliis.----"
But that was, of course, before I bolted on the Home-Rule question. I
fancy he has found another passage since.
I know I'm not a person of any conspicuous ability. If I had not been
born a C-V-ND-SH I would never have been even a CH-PL-N. But as things
fell out, I am like the boy in the middle of the balanced plank, at
the end of which two others sit. According as I move to the right or
to the left, one end of the plank goes up, and the other down. So the
friends on either side constantly shoulder me one way or the other;
which is all very well for them, but rather a nuisance to me.
It is part of this perpetual little game by which I am used for the
convenience of others, that you get all the talk about my being
Premier. I am not at all sure that I should not be shouldered into
_that_ by-and-by, if it were not for GR-ND-LPH. I do not pretend to
see further through a ladder than an ordinary passer-by; but it is
clear to me that you can never have a Government rival to the regular
Liberals (observe, I do not say a Conservative Government) without
GR-ND-LPH. It is no secret that I have never hankered after GR-ND-LPH,
neither liking him, nor believing in him. You know what Dr. J-HNS-N
said about C-LL-Y C-BB-R. I don't exactly, but it was something to the
effect that "as for CIBBER, if you take away from his conversation all
that he should not have said, he is a poor creature." That is a way of
putting it curiously applicable to GR-ND-LPH. If you take away from
his political speeches all that he should not have said, he is a poor
creature, a presumptuous rattle-trap, the _gamin_ of Conservative
politics. But if I undertake the titular headship of the Conservative
Party, I shall have to deal with him, and that, as they say in a
circular space of which I now see too little, is not good enough.
That is my present opinion. But, bless us all! I may be talked round on
this point, and used by a Party as I was when I made my first appearance
in the House of Commons nearly thirty years ago, and, a mere stripling,
was made the instrument of turning out a powerful Government.
Yours dejectedly,