TRAVELS AND DIPLOMACY
(1853-1864)
Whether the Mentor resigned his job in despair about the time his
pupil was making prudent resolutions in the seclusion of the little
inn at Quotla di Amalpas, or whether it was decided by the parental
authority that Labouchere might as well continue his search for
wisdom in Mexico by himself, is not certain; but it would seem that,
just about three months after his landing at Vera Cruz, he parted
company with all his English friends, and, with a surprisingly small
sum for such an adventure in his pocket, rode off, and wandered for
eighteen months all over the country. Then he returned to the
capital, and fell in love with a lady of the circus. The published
legends belonging to this period of his career are legion. The
authority for them appears to be almost always Mr. Joseph Hatton, who
was the first writer to produce a biographical sketch of the editor
of _Truth_. He wrote it for _Harper's Magazine_, where it formed
part of a series which, in 1882, was published in England under the
title of _Journalistic London_. According to Hatton, Labouchere gave
him certain details of his past in an interview which took place at
his house in Queen Anne's Gate, so that Hatton's evidence, in so far
as _viva voce_ reminiscences are reliable, is unimpeachable.[1]
{39}
Labouchere told him that he travelled with the troupe to which the
lady he admired belonged, and got the job of doorkeeper. The circus
was a popular one, but the crowds who flocked to it were not all in a
position to pay their entrance with hard cash, so that he was
authorised by the proprietors to accept payment in kind--usually
consisting of oranges or small measures of maize. A very similar
story is related about him as occurring a year or two later when he
was attaché at Washington, and is corroborated for me by Sir Audley
Gosling, to whom Labouchere related it one day in his house in Old
Palace Yard. Sir Audley noticed hanging on the wall a large
playbill, and asked what it was.
"It's a funny story," replied Labouchere; "I will tell you about it.
When attaché at Washington I was in the habit of attending almost
nightly a circus, standing often at the artistes' entrance to the
ring. The proprietor had often scowled at me, and one night asked me
what I meant by trespassing on sacred ground. I told him I had
formed an honourable attachment for one of his ladies, and simply
stood in the passage to kiss the hem of her robe as she passed by.
'Get out of this, you d--d loafer,' he said. And I got out. A few
months later I pointed out to my chief notices in the New York press
of a certain American sparkling wine called, after the district where
it was grown, 'Kitawber.' I told him I thought a report should be
made on this new vintage, and volunteered to draw up a report for the
Foreign Office. He seemed surprised by my assiduity and very unusual
zeal (for I never did a stroke of work), and said: 'By all means
go--that is a capital idea of yours.' The truth was my circus had
removed to Kitawber and with it my fair lady of the _haute école_, so
thither I proceeded. I presented myself to the proprietor, my rude
friend, and told him I wished for an engagement with his troupe
without salary. He asked me what my line was, and I told him
standing jumps. Some obstacles were placed in the ring, over which I
jumped with great success, and my name {40} figures on the playbill
you see hanging there as the 'Bounding Buck of Babylon.' I wore pink
tights, with a fillet round my head. My adorable one said I looked a
dear."
It is more probable that these two stories are different versions of
one and the same adventure than that he twice followed a travelling
circus. No doubt, in recounting the tale, he confused the chronology.
It would appear that the well-known story of his six months'
residence among the Chippeway Indians, usually related as an incident
occurring in the off moments of his diplomatic career, really took
place towards the end of 1853. Joseph Hatton, without mentioning any
dates, relates it as follows: "By and by he tired of this occupation
(_i.e._ travelling with the circus), and went to the United States.
He found himself at St. Paul, which was then only a cluster of
houses. Here he met a party of Chippeway Indians going back to their
homes. He went with them and lived with them for six months, hunting
buffalo, joining in their work and sports, playing cards for wampum
necklaces, and living what to Joaquin Miller would have been a poem
in so many stanzas, but which, to the more prosaic Englishman, was
just seeing life and passing away the time." More than half a
century later, when Mr. Labouchere was living at Pope's villa, he
invited all the Indian chiefs and their families, who were at that
time taking part in Buffalo Bill's Show called "The Wild West," to
spend a Sunday with him at Twickenham. They accepted the invitation,
and arrived betimes in the morning. Mrs. T. P. O'Connor, who was a
visitor at the villa on the occasion, gives a graphic account of Mr.
Labouchere's recognition, in the person of one of the Chippeways, of
the son of one of the nomadic friends of his early youth. She goes
on to tell the story of Mr. Labouchere's adventures with the Indians,
as she had often heard him tell it.
Nearly sixty years ago, [she says], Henry Labouchere, then an
adventurous lad, made a journey in the west of America. {41}
Minneapolis was at that time called St. Anthony's Palls, and while he
was there a far-seeing young chemist begged him to buy the land on
which Minneapolis stands--it was to be sold for a very small sum, now
it is worth many millions. He travelled still farther west with the
Chippeways, who were going to their hunting fields. The great chief,
Hole in Heaven, was very friendly with him, and he camped in one of
their wigwams for six weeks, the sister of the chief being assigned
to wait upon him. She cooked game to perfection, roasting wild birds
in clay and larger game before a fire. The game in those days was
very plentiful and tame, not having found out man to be their natural
enemy. Sometimes prairie chickens came near enough to be knocked on
the head, and great herds of buffalos still ranged the plains. The
Indians often killed a buffalo, but Mr. Labouchere was not lucky
enough to get one for himself. He saw an Indian war-dance, but
discreetly, from a slit in the door of his wigwam, as Hole in Heaven
said that, friendly as they were, at this sacred rite a white face
might infuriate them even to the use of the tomahawk. Mr. Labouchere
lingered among these American gentlemen until the last steamer had
departed from Fond du Lac, so he was obliged to travel in a canoe
until he reached the eastern end of the lake.[2]
After his experiences in the Wild West, Labouchere made New York his
quarters for some time, and occupied himself with a careful study of
the institutions, political and otherwise, of the American nation,
for which he acquired at this period of his life a profound and
lasting admiration. In 1883 he was writing to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain
on the subject of Radical policy, and he said in the course of his
letter: "I was caught young and sent to America; there I imbibed the
political views of the country, so that my Radicalism is not a joke,
but perfectly earnest. My opinions of most of the institutions of
this country is that of Americans--that they are utterly absurd and
ridiculous."[3] He constantly throughout his career drew upon his
youthful reminiscences of {42} America to point a moral or draw a
comparison, almost invariably favourable to the transatlantic people.
In a famous article which he wrote in 1884, to demonstrate to the
public the wide divergency existing at that time between Whig and
Radical principles, while discussing the financial relations of the
Crown with the country, he said:
The President of the United States regards himself as generously
treated with a salary of £10,000 per annum. We give half this sum to
a nobleman who condescends to walk before the Chief of the State on
ceremonial occasions with a coloured stick in his hand; and we spend
more than five times this sum in keeping a yacht in commission and
repair on which our sovereign steps two or three times in twenty
years!
In the same article he compared the English system of education with
the American:
If M * * * * wishes to learn what our schools ought to be, let him go
to the State of Illinois. A child there enters school at the age of
six. Each school is divided into ten grades; at the end of each year
there is an examination, and a child goes up one or more grades
according to his proficiency. A lad going through all the grades
acquires an excellent liberal education; if he passes through the
"high school" he is, by a very long degree, the educational superior
of the majority of our youths who have spent years at Eton or at
Harrow. All this does not cost his parents one cent. Rich and poor
alike send their children to the public schools, and thus all class
prejudice is early stamped out of the American breast. Another
advantage of these schools is that boys and girls are taught
together. The girls thus learn early how to take care of themselves,
and the boys' manners are softened. When grown up, boys and girls
are not kept apart as though they were each other's natural enemies,
nor are there any ill effects from their associating together. If
some marry, the relations of those who do not are those of brothers
and sisters. The Duke of Wellington is reported to have said that
Waterloo was won in the Eton playing fields. Not only was the Union
maintained in many battlefields, but America has become the most
forward nation {43} in the world owing to her schools. How pitiably
small and narrow does our school system appear in comparison with
theirs! Why cannot we do what has been done in America? Why?
Because the land is too full of men ... ignorant, servile, and aware
that their only chance of succeeding in life is to perpetuate class
distinctions, and to deprive the vast majority of their
fellow-citizens of the possibility of competing with them by
depriving them of the blessings of any real education. Which would
be to the greater advantage of the country, a Church Establishment
such as ours, or a school establishment such as that of Illinois?
What Radical entertains a doubt? If so, why do not we at once
substitute the one for the other?[4]
In his letters to the _Daily News_ during the autumn and winter of
1870 and 1871, he wrote from Paris commenting on the behaviour of the
English and American officials of the Diplomatic Corps who remained
in Paris during the siege. "Diplomats," he wrote on September 28th,
"are little better than old women when they have to act in an
emergency. Were it not for Mr. Washburne, who was brought up in the
rough-and-ready life of the Far West, instead of serving an
apprenticeship in Courts and Government offices, those who are still
here would be perfectly helpless. They come to him at all moments,
and although he cannot speak French, for all practical purposes, he
is worth more than all his colleagues put together." In another
letter he gives an amusing picture of the worried English chargé
d'affaires, immersed in official trivialities: "A singular
remonstrance has been received at the British Embassy. In the Rue de
Chaillot resides a celebrated English courtesan, called Cora Pearl,
and above her house floats the English flag. The inhabitants of the
street request the Ambassador of England, 'a country, the purity and
decency of whose manners is well known,' to cause this bit of
bunting, which is a scandal in their eyes, to be hauled down. I left
Mr. Wodehouse consulting the text-writers upon international law, in
order to discover a precedent for {44} the case." It contrasts
sharply enough with the glimpse he gives his readers of the American
Embassy. "I passed the afternoon," he wrote on November 15th,
"greedily devouring the news at the American Legation. It was a
curious sight--the Chancellerie was crowded with people engaged in
the same occupation. There were several French journalists, opening
their eyes very wide, under the impression that this would enable
them to understand English. A Secretary of Legation was sitting at a
table giving audiences to unnumbered ladies who wished to know how
they could leave Paris; or, if this was impossible, how they could
draw on their bankers in New York. Mr. Washburne walked about
cheerily shaking every one by the hand, and telling them to make
themselves at home. How different American diplomatists are to the
prim old women who represent us abroad, with a staff of half a dozen
dandies helping each other to do nothing, who have been taught to
regard all who are not of the craft as their natural enemies." Yet
another quotation from Labouchere's journalistic correspondence,
illustrating his predilection for things American: "The ambulance
which is considered the best is the American. The wounded are under
canvas, the tents are not cold, and yet the ventilation is admirable.
The American surgeons are far more skilful in the treatment of
gunshot wounds than their French colleagues. Instead of amputation
they practise resection of the bone. It is the dream of every French
soldier, if he is wounded, to be taken to this ambulance. They seem
to be under the impression that, even if their legs are shot off, the
skill of the Esculapii of the United States will make them grow
again. Be this as it may, a person might be worse off than stretched
on a bed with a slight wound under the tents of the Far West. The
French have a notion that, go where you may, to the top of a pyramid
or to the top of Mont Blanc, you are sure to meet an Englishman
reading a newspaper; in my experience of the world, the American girl
is far more inevitable than the Britisher; and, of course, under the
stars {45} and stripes which wave over the American tents, she is to
be found, tending the sick, and, when there is nothing more to be got
for them, patiently reading to them or playing at cards with them. I
have a great weakness for the American girl; she always puts her
heart in what she is about. When she flirts she does it
conscientiously, and when she nurses a most uninviting-looking
Zouave, or Franc-tireur, she does it equally conscientiously;
besides, as a rule, she is pretty, a gift of nature which I am very
far from undervaluing."
To resume our narrative. At home the parental and avuncular
authorities had been at work, puzzling as to what career would best
suit the young searcher for wisdom, the irrepressible Eton blood--the
baby of the preparatory school, who, without his milk teeth, was able
to confound the ruffians of the cane and their assistants--the
undaunted enemy of university dons and pedagogues. Finally, it was
decided that the diplomatic service would be, at any rate for a time,
the best safety-valve for the inquisitive youth. Henry Labouchere
was on one of his unconventional tours in his beloved Wild West when
he heard of his first diplomatic appointment. He was appointed
attaché at Washington on July 16, 1854.
Mr. Crampton had been Minister at Washington since 1852, and, at the
time of Labouchere taking up his duties at the Legation, Lord Elgin,
then Governor of Canada, was on a special mission to Washington. Mr.
Crampton had not succeeded in making himself at all agreeable to the
American statesmen, and during the Crimean War he had nearly caused a
rupture between Great Britain and the United States over the question
of recruiting. The exigencies of war had brought about the
reprehensible practice of raising various foreign corps and pressing
them--or crimping them--into the British service. Crampton very
actively forwarded the schemes of his Government by encouraging the
recruiting of soldiers within the territories of the United States.
It was not, however, until 1856 that the President {46} of the United
States came to a determination to discontinue official intercourse
with him on account of the recruiting question. This necessitated
his removal from Washington, and the feeling against him in the
United States was so strong that diplomatic relations were not
renewed with Great Britain for more than six months.[5] There is no
evidence of any kind to support the statements that have appeared
from time to time in the press, to the effect that Henry Labouchere
was involved in the crimping business. During the time he spent at
Washington he seems to have been an assiduous worker--to which the
number of despatches in his handwriting preserved in the archives of
the Record Office bear witness.
He related in _Truth_, some years later, how his energy received a
check at the very outset of his career. "When I joined the
diplomatic service," he said, "I was sent as attaché to a legation
where a cynic was the minister. New brooms sweep clean. Every
morning I appeared, eager to be employed, a sort of besom tied up in
red tape. Said the cynic to me: 'If you fancy that you are likely to
get on in the service by hard work, you will soon discover your
error; far better will it be for you if you can prove that some
relation of yours is the sixteenth cousin of the porter at the
Foreign Office.' It was not long before I discovered that the cynic
was right."
It was the fate of Henry Labouchere, wherever he went, to create an
atmosphere of unconventionality, which formed a fitting background
for the numberless stories which seem still to collect and grow round
his name as time goes on. During one of Mr. Crampton's absences from
the Legation, he had an opportunity of exercising the official
reserve and {47} discretion for which the English diplomats have
always been so famous. An American citizen called one morning to see
Mr. Crampton. "I want to see the boss," he said. "You can't--he is
out," replied Labouchere. "But you can see me." "You are no good,"
replied the American. "I must see the boss. I'll wait." "Very
well," calmly said the attaché, and went on with his letter-writing.
The visitor sat down and waited for a considerable time. At last he
said: "I've been fooling round here two hours; has the chief come in
yet?"--"No; you will see him drive up to the front door when he
returns."--"How long do you reckon he will be before he comes?"
"Well," said Labouchere, "he went to Canada yesterday; I should say
he'll be here in about six weeks."
In spite of all his good resolutions Labouchere was still a gambler,
and once found himself in what might have been an awkward scrape
owing to this propensity. All who knew him at all intimately must
often have heard him tell the following episode, which I will relate
as nearly as possible in his own words: "While I was attaché at
Washington I was sent by the minister to look after some Irish
patriots at Boston. I took up my residence at a small hotel, and
wrote down an imaginary name in the hotel book as mine. In the
evening I went to a gambling establishment, where I lost all the
money I had with me except half a dollar. Then I went to bed,
satisfied with my prowess. The next morning the bailiffs seized on
the hotel for debt, and all the guests were requested to pay their
bills and to take away their luggage. I could not pay mine, and so I
could not take away my luggage. All that I could do was to write to
Washington for a remittance, and to wait two days for its arrival.
The first day I walked about, and spent my half dollar on food. It
was summer, so I slept on a bench on the common, and in the morning
went to the bay to wash myself. I felt independent of all the cares
and troubles of civilisation. But I had nothing with which to buy
myself a breakfast. {48} I grew hungry and, towards evening, more
hungry still, so much so that I entered a restaurant and ordered
dinner, without any clear idea how I was to pay for it, except by
leaving my coat in pledge. In those days Boston restaurants were
mostly in cellars, and there was a bar near the door, where the
proprietor sat to receive payment. As I ate my dinner I observed
that all the waiters, who were Irishmen, were continually staring at
me, and evidently speaking of me to each other. A guilty conscience
made me think that this was because I had an impecunious look, and
that they were discussing whether my clothes would cover my bill. At
last one of them approached me, and said: "I beg your pardon, sir;
are you the patriot Meagher?" Now this patriot was a gentleman who
had aided Smith O'Brien in his Irish rising, had been sent to
Australia, and had escaped thence to the United States. It was my
business to look after patriots, so I put my finger before my lips,
and said: "Hush!" while I cast up my eyes to the ceiling as though I
saw a vision of Erin beckoning to me. It was felt at once that I was
Meagher. The choicest viands were placed before me, and most
excellent wine. When I had done justice to all the good things I
approached the bar and asked boldly for my bill. The proprietor,
also an Irishman said: "From a man like you, who has suffered in the
good cause, I can take no money; allow a brother patriot to shake you
by the hand." I allowed him. I further allowed all the waiters to
shake hands with me, and stalked forth with the stern, resolved, but
somewhat condescendingly dismal air which I have seen assumed by
patriots in exile. Again I slept on the common, again I washed in
the bay. Then I went to the post office, found a letter for me from
Washington with some money in it, and breakfasted."
Another anecdote Labouchere was fond of recalling about his
Washington days was the following: Having planned a little holiday
excursion, he found at the Chancellerie a letter awaiting him,
addressed in the well-known handwriting of his {49} chief. Shrewdly
suspecting that the instructions it contained would render his
holiday impossible, he put the letter unopened in his coat-tail
pocket, and carried out with great satisfaction to himself his
holiday intentions. Then he opened his letter, and found that his
suspicions of its contents had been very well founded. He wrote a
nice letter of apology to his chief, beginning, "Your letter has
followed me here," which was, after all, nothing but the simple truth!
"It is a funny thing," Labouchere would often say, speaking of
treaties and diplomatic negotiations in general, "to notice on what
small matters success or the reverse is dependent"; and he would then
relate how, when he was attaché at Washington, he went down with the
British Minister to a small inn at Virginia to meet Mr. Marcy, the
Secretary of State for the United States, for the purpose of
discussing a reciprocity treaty between Canada and the United States.
Mr. Marcy, in general the most genial and agreeable of men, was as
cross as a bear, and would agree to nothing. Labouchere asked the
secretary to tell him, in confidence, what was the matter with his
chief. The secretary replied: "He is not getting his rubber of
whist." After that the British Minister proposed a rubber of whist
every night, which he invariably lost. Mr. Marcy was immensely
pleased at beating the Britishers at, what he called "their own
game," and his good humour returned. "Every morning," Labouchere
related, "when the details of the treaty were being discussed, we had
our revenge, and scored a few points for Canada."
Labouchere was transferred to the Legation at Munich in December,
1855. "Old King Louis was then alive," he wrote thirty years later,
"although he had been deposed for making a fool of himself over Lola
Montes. I used frequently to meet him in the streets, when he always
stopped me to ask how Queen Victoria was. I had at last respectfully
to tell him that Her Majesty was not in the habit of writing to me
every day respecting her health."
{50}
From Munich he went to Stockholm in 1857. I cannot resist quoting in
full his account of the duel he fought while at Stockholm with the
Austrian chargé d'affaires, it is so extremely characteristic of him
both in spirit and style.
At Stockholm "I found favour with my superiors for the curious reason
that I challenged an Austrian chargé d'affaires. Never was there a
more absurd affair. There was an Englishman who had been challenged
by a Swede, whom he declined to fight. A few days later the
Englishman went with my Minister to a box in the theatre. The next
day at a club the Austrian chargé d'affaires said before me and
others that Englishmen had odd ideas of honour, and more particularly
English Ministers. I replied that Englishmen were not so silly as to
fight duels, and that the English Minister was not a dishonourable
man for appearing in a theatre with his countrymen. As it was
generally felt that I ought to challenge this Austrian, I 'put myself
in the hands' of the French and Prussian Ministers. A few hours
later my seconds came to me. I expected that they were going to tell
me that the Austrian had apologised. Not at all. With a cheerful
smile they observed: 'It is arranged for to-morrow morning--pistols.'
At seven o'clock A.M. they reappeared. Their countenances were
downcast. 'I have lost the mould for the bullets of my duelling
pistols,' observed the Prussian, 'and we have had to borrow a pair of
pistols, for whose accuracy of aim I cannot vouch.' This inwardly
rejoiced me, but, of course, I pretended to share in the regret of my
seconds. We sat down to an early breakfast. 'You are young, I am
old,' said the Frenchman; 'would that I could take your place.' I
wished it as sincerely as he did, but I tried to assume an air of
rather liking my position, and I grinned a ghastly grin. Then we
started for the park. The opposition had not arrived; but there was
a surgeon, who had been kindly requested to attend by my sympathising
friends. 'An accident may happen,' observed the Prussian; 'do you
wish to confide to me any dispositions that you may {51} desire to be
carried out after----?' and he sighed in a horribly suggestive
manner. 'No,' I said; I had nothing particular to confide; and as I
looked at the surgeon I thought what an idiot I was to make myself
the target for an Austrian to aim at, in order to establish the
principle that Englishmen have a perfect right to decline to fight
duels. There was a want of logic about the entire proceeding that
went to my heart. To be killed is bad enough, but to be killed
paradoxically is still worse. Soon the Austrian and his seconds
appeared. I never felt more dismal in my life. The Austrian stood
apart; I stood apart. The surgeon already eyed me as a 'subject.'
The seconds consulted; then the Frenchman stepped out twelve paces.
He had very short legs, and they seemed to me shorter than ever.
After this came the loading of the pistols. Sometimes, I thought,
seconds do not put in the bullets; this comforted me, but only for a
moment, for the bullets were rammed down with cheerful energy. By
this time we had been placed facing each other. A pistol was given
to each of us. 'I am to give the signal,' said the Prussian; 'I
shall count one, two, three, and then at the word fire, you will both
fire. Gentlemen, are you ready?' We both nodded. 'One, two, three,
fire!' and both our pistols went off. No harm had been done. I felt
considerably relieved when to my horror the Frenchman stepped up to
me, and said: 'I think that I ought to demand a second shot for you,
but mind, if nothing occurs again, I shall not allow a third shot.'
'Ye--es,' I said; so we had a second shot, with the same result.
Knowing that my Frenchman was a man of his word, I felt now that I
might at no risk to myself display my valour, so I demanded a third
shot. The seconds consulted together; for a moment I feared that
they were going to grant my request, and I was greatly relieved when
they informed me that they considered that two shots were amply
sufficient. I was delighted, but I pretended to be most unhappy, and
religiously kept up the farce of being an aggrieved person."[6]
{52}
He was at Frankfort and St. Petersburg between November, 1858, and
the summer of 1860. While he was at Frankfort he made the
acquaintance of Bismarck, who was the Prussian representative at the
restored Diet of Frankfort. Labouchere had a constitutional dislike
of the German people, with the exception of the great Chancellor. He
wrote some years later: "The only Prussian I ever knew who was an
agreeable man was Bismarck. All others with whom I have been
thrown--and I have lived for years in Germany--were proud as
Scotchmen, cold as New Englanders, and touchy as only Prussians can
be. I once had a friend among them. His name was Buckenbrock. I
inadvertently called him Butterbrod. We have never spoken since!"
Bismarck was an eminently social person, fond of drinking and
smoking, and many a time did Labouchere listen to his jovial
loud-toned talk in the cafés at Frankfort. "Bismarck," he wrote in
later life, "used to pass entire nights drinking beer in a garden
overlooking the Main. In the morning after a night passed in
beer-drinking he would write his despatches, then issue forth on a
white horse for a ride, and on his return, attend the Diet, of which
he was a member."[7] It is interesting to note how very similar were
the judgments of these two exceedingly different characters upon the
subject of diplomacy and its aspects of absurdity and pomposity.
Bismarck wrote from Frankfort: "Frankfort is hideously tiresome. The
people here worry themselves about the merest rubbish, and these
diplomatists with their pompous peddling already appear to me a good
deal more ridiculous than a member of the second chamber in all the
pride of his lofty station. Unless external accidents should accrue,
... I know exactly how much we shall effect in one, two, or five
years from the present time, and will engage to do it all myself
within four-and-twenty hours, if the others will only be truthful and
sensible throughout one single day. I never doubted that, one and
all, these gentlemen prepared their {53} dishes _à l'eau_, but such
thin, mawkish water soup as this, devoid of the least symptom of
richness, positively astounds me. Send me your village schoolmaster
or road inspector, clean washed and combed; they will make just as
good diplomatists as these."[8] Of diplomatic literature Bismarck
observed: "For the most part it is nothing but paper and ink. If you
wanted to utilise it for historical purposes, you could not get
anything worth having out of it. I believe it is the rule to allow
historians to consult the F. O. Archives at the expiration of thirty
years (after date of despatches, etc.). They might be permitted to
examine them much sooner, for the despatches and letters, when they
contain any information at all, are quite unintelligible to those
unacquainted with the persons and relations treated of in them."[9]
Labouchere wrote in 1889: "If all Foreign Office telegrams were
published, they would be curious reading. Years ago I was an attaché
at Stockholm. The present Queen, then Duchess of Ostrogotha, had a
baby, and a telegram came from the Foreign Office desiring that Her
Majesty's congratulations should be offered, and that she should be
informed how the mother and child were. The Minister was away, so
off I went to the Palace to convey the message and to inquire about
the health of the pair. A solemn gentleman received me. I informed
him of my orders, and requested him to say what I was to reply. "Her
Royal Highness," he replied, "is as well as can be expected, but His
Royal Highness is suffering a little internally, and it is thought
that this is due to the milk of the wet nurse having been slightly
sour yesterday evening." I telegraphed this to the Foreign
Office."[10]
In a speech he made in the House of Commons,[4] protesting against a
sum of nearly £50,000 being voted for the salaries and expenses of
the department for Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, Mr. Labouchere said, {54} referring in particular to Foreign
Office messengers, that very often these gentlemen were sent abroad,
at a very large cost to the country, for no practical object
whatever. They went on a certain route, and the business was made up
for them as they went. He had had the honour to serve at one time
under Sir Henry Bulwer at Constantinople. Now Sir Henry Bulwer was
always ill; and on one occasion he remembered making a calculation
that a box of pills Sir Henry was anxious to obtain, and which was
sent out by a Foreign Office messenger, cost the country from £200 to
£300. Probably the pills did Sir Henry good, and pills were much
more useful than a good deal of the stuff sent out by the Foreign
Office. He went on to tell the House that he had himself been in the
diplomatic service for ten years, and he had spent a great deal of
his time in ciphering and deciphering telegrams, and that he could
not remember half a dozen of them that any man, woman, or child in
the whole world would have taken any trouble to decipher for any
information that could have been derived from them.
Labouchere used always to say that, while he was attaché at
Frankfort, he spent most of his time at Wiesbaden, Homburg, or Baden,
because he found the Diet of the German Confederation "rather a dull
sort of affair." He managed, however, to make a great many very
staunch friends at this period of his life. One of these was the old
Duchess of Cambridge. He was a frequent visitor at the Schloss of
Ruppenheim, which was the summer meeting-place of the main stock and
branches of the Hesses. The old Duchess made a great fuss over him,
for he could speak the German of Hanover so well that she could
understand his banter and enjoy it. His popularity at Frankfort,
according to his own account, rested on a very simple basis. Great
Britain was represented at the Diet by Sir Alexander Malet, one of
the most popular chiefs to be found in the Service. "But I was even
more appreciated than my chief," he would relate, "and this is why.
Sometimes there was a ball at the {55} Court, which we were expected
to attend. At my first ball supper I found myself next to a grandee,
gorgeous in stars and ribbons. The servant came to pour out
champagne. I shook my head, for I detest champagne. The grandee
nudged me, and said, 'Let him pour it out.' This I did, and he
explained to me that our host never gave his guests more than one
glass, 'So you see, if I drink yours, I shall have two.' After this
there used to be quite a struggle to sit near me at Court suppers."
Yet another ridiculous reminiscence of the Court of Darmstadt, dating
from his attaché days at Frankfort. Sir Alexander Malet was fond of
whist, and it was felt, said Labouchere, that an English diplomatist
could not be expected to play the game for less than florin points.
Such stakes, however, the fortune of no Darmstadt nobleman could
stand. A sort of joint purse was therefore formed, which was
entrusted to the three best players of the grand-ducal Court, and
these champions encountered the Englishman. "It was amusing,"
Labouchere would relate, "to watch the anxiety depicted on all
countenances: when the Minister won all was gloom; when he lost,
counts and countesses, barons and baronesses, skipped about in high
glee, like the hills of the Psalmist."
Bismarck was Ambassador at St. Petersburg during the year that
Labouchere was there as attaché in 1860, so it is very probable that
he continued to imbibe wisdom from listening to the conversation of
the great German, for whose powers of statecraft he always expressed
the warmest admiration. The following amusing episode occurred
during his year at St. Petersburg. He was in love with the wife of
one of the gentlemen about the Court. So was a tall, smart young
Frenchman. Labouchere was desperately jealous of his rival, but
could think of no means of outwitting him. At a Court function they
were both standing near the object of their admiration, the Frenchman
making, it seemed to Labouchere, marked advances in the lady's
favour. {56} However he was soon called away for some reason or
another. Labouchere, in his eagerness to seize the opportunity and
advance his own suit, inadvertently tipped his cup of black coffee
over the lady's magnificent yellow satin train. He was in despair,
but, seeing that she had not yet perceived the tragedy, he slipped
the cup and saucer into his tail-coat pocket, and then, with an air
of commiseration, drew her attention to the ruined gown. "Who did
it?" she exclaimed furiously. Labouchere put his finger to his lips,
at the same time looking significantly at the form of his rival, at
that moment disappearing through the doorway. "I know who did it,"
he said, "but wild horses would not induce me to tell you." Of
course, the lady had followed the direction of his glance. She
exclaimed: "That ruffian, I will never speak to him again as long as
I live!" History does not relate how the adventure proceeded for the
handsome Frenchman's rival.
Labouchere did not think much of the Russians. He used to say that
they were like monkeys, eager to copy the manners of civilised
Europe, but that the copy they succeeded in producing was a daub and
not a picture, because they always exaggerated their originals. When
they were polite, they were too polite; when they were copying
Frenchmen, they were too much like dancing masters; and when they
were copying Englishmen they were too much like grooms. He had an
amusing account to give of a visit he once paid to a Russian country
house. "Card-playing, eating and drinking--and more especially the
latter," he related--"went on all day and nearly all night. I never
could understand where my bedroom was, for the excellent reason, as I
at length discovered, that I hadn't one. At a late hour I saw
several of the guests heaping up in corners cushions which they had
taken from sofas, to serve as beds, so I followed their example.
When I woke up in the morning I could not see any apparatus to wash
in, so I filled a china bowl with water, and, having dried myself
with a tablecloth which I found in an adjoining room, I dressed." He
{57} gave a charming thumb-nail sketch of a Russian drawing-room, à
propos of a visit of Mr. Augustus Lumley to the Russian capital. Mr.
Lumley was a famous cotillon leader. "I was at St. Petersburg when
Mr. Lumley arrived on a visit. He was solemnly introduced to the
Russian leader of cotillons, who is invariably an officer of
distinction, as a colleague. It was like the meeting between two
famous generals, and reminded me of the pictures of Wellington and
Blücher on the field of Waterloo. It took place at a ball, and the
Russian, with chivalrous courtesy, offered to surrender to his
English colleague the direction of the cotillon."
The Emperor of Russia[12] once stood beside Henry Labouchere whilst
he was playing at écarté to watch his game. The occasion was a ball
given by the Empress to the Emperor on his birthday. Labouchere and
his adversary were both at four, and it was Labouchere's deal.
"Now," said the Emperor, "let us see whether you can turn up the
king." Labouchere dealt, and then held out the turn-up card,
observing: "Your orders have been obeyed, sir." The Emperor asked
him, as often as a dozen times subsequently, how he had managed it,
and never could be persuaded that it was a mere coincidence, and that
the young attaché had taken the chance of the card being a king. It
was a trifling example of the luck, or its reverse, that seemed to be
for ever crossing and recrossing Labouchere's path, in spite of his
own belief in nothing but the logical sequence of events.
A popular anecdote of his Petersburg days is the following: A fussy
German nobleman pushed his way into the Chancellerie, where
Labouchere was working, asking to see the Ambassador. "Please take a
chair," said the secretary; "he will be here soon." "But, young
man," blustered the German, "do you know who I am?" And he poured
out a string of imposing titles. Labouchere looked up in
well-simulated awe. "Pray take two chairs," he remarked quietly, and
went on writing.
{58}
When Khalil Pasha was recalled from being Ambassador in Paris,
Labouchere published the following reminiscence of his year in the
Russian capital: "Khalil Pasha once saved me from a heavy loss, and
that is why I take an interest in him. He, a Russian, and I sat down
one evening to have a quiet rubber. The Russians have a hideous
device of playing with what they call a zero; that is to say, a zero
is added to all winnings and losses, so that 10 stands for 100, etc.
When Khalil and the Russians had won their dummies, I found to my
horror that, with the zero, I had lost about £4000. Then it came to
my turn to take dummy. I had won a game, and we were playing for the
odd trick in the last game. If I failed to win it I should lose
about £8000. Only two cards remained in hand. I had marked up six
tricks and my opponents five. Khalil had the lead; he had the best
trump and a thirteenth card. The only other trump was in the hands
of the dummy. He had, therefore, only to play his trump and then the
thirteenth card to win the rubber, when he let drop the latter card,
for his fingers were of a very 'thumby' description. Before he could
take it up I pushed the dummy's trump on it and claimed the trick.
The Russian howled, Khalil howled; they said this was very sharp
practice. I replied that whist is essentially a game of sharp
practice, and that I was acting in accordance with the rules. The
lookers-on were appealed to, and, of course, gave it in my favour.
Thus did I make, or rather save, £8000 against Russia and Turkey in
alliance, through the fault of the Turk; and it seems to me that the
poor Ottoman, now that he is at war (1877) with his ally of the
card-table, is losing the game, much as Khalil lost his game of whist
to me. To have good cards is one thing, to know how to make use of
them quite another."[13]
Labouchere used to tell a good story of how he got at the secrets of
the Russian Government. His laundress was a handsome woman, and
having made friends with her on {59} other than professional grounds,
she happened to mention that her husband was a compositor in the
government printing office. The minutes of the Cabinet councils were
printed in French, of which the printers, of course, understood
nothing. Labouchere persuaded her, for a consideration, to obtain
from her husband the loose sheets from which the minutes had been
printed. They were brought to him by the faithful woman every week,
concealed among his starched shirts and collars. As soon as Lord
John Russell discovered the source of the interesting information
that reached him from Petersburg, he put a stop to the simple
intrigue. Labouchere would always wind up his narrative of this
episode with the words: "For what reason, I wonder, did Russell
imagine, diplomacy was invented?"
After Petersburg, Dresden was Labouchere's next appointment. He had
previously assiduously studied the German language, in which, being a
born linguist, he was remarkably proficient. He had been for a time
to Marburg to reside in a German family for the purpose of acquiring
conversational fluency. All through his life one of his fads
consisted in working out on how small an income an economical family
might live in comfort, and he used frequently to commend the
management of means practised in the bourgeois family at Marburg
where he boarded. It consisted of a mother, two daughters, a father,
and an elementary maid-of-all-work. The daughters did the housework
alternately. The daughter, whose turn it was to be the young lady,
used to dress herself gorgeously every afternoon and evening,
receiving visitors or paying calls. She would play Chopin and
Beethoven on the pianoforte, and make herself an exceedingly
agreeable social personage. The following week she would retire to
the domestic regions and be an excellent servant, while her sister
took her turn as _femme du monde_. Occasionally the whole family,
including Labouchere, would be invited to a party. It was the custom
on such occasions for both the daughters to be "young {60} ladies."
The maid-of-all-work would accompany them to the neighbour's house
whither they had been bidden, carrying their suppers in paper
bags--for the hospitality proffered at Marburg was intellectual, not
material. All the guests brought similar paper bags, and at the
conclusion of the repast the remains of the various meals were
carefully collected by their respective owners, and carried home to
figure at the next day's _mittagessen_. Labouchere used often to
assert that the evening parties at Marburg were the most delightful
and amusing ones he ever attended. While there he frequented the
hospital, and attended the lectures given for the instruction of the
medical students. He was always fond of developing extraordinary
theories on the subject of medical science, more remarkable for their
originality than for their probable ultimate utility. The authority
upon which these theories would be based was invariably that of the
lecturer at the Marburg Hospital. Even as late as 1905, Mr.
Labouchere still remembered his medical student days. He wrote to
one of his sisters in that year on the occasion of her son becoming a
doctor: "A doctor is a good profession. I learnt doctoring at
Marburg in order to learn German. I rather liked it, and have vainly
offered to doctor people gratis since then, but no one seems
inclined."
Between his diplomatic appointments at Frankfort and Petersburg,
Labouchere spent several months at Florence, and he described in
_Truth_ how it was that he came to have a year's free time on his
hands: "Once did I get the better of the Foreign Office. I was on
leave in Italy when I received a notification that Her Majesty had
kindly thought fit to appoint me Secretary of Legation to the
Republic of Parana. I had never heard of this republic. After
diligent inquiry, I learnt that Parana was a sort of Federal town on
the River Plate, but that a few months previously the republic of
that name had shared the fate of the Kilkenny cats. So I remained in
Italy, and comfortably drew my salary like a bishop of a see _in
partibus infidelium_. A year later came a {61} despatch couched in
language more remarkable for its strength than its civility, asking
me what I meant by not proceeding to my post. I replied that I had
passed the twelve months in making diligent inquiries respecting the
whereabouts of the Republic of Parana, hitherto without success, but
if his lordship would kindly inform me where it was, I need hardly
say that I would hasten there!"[14]
While in Florence Labouchere witnessed the revolution which deposed
the Grand Duke and provided Tuscany with a provisional government of
her own choice, preparatory to the union of all the Italian States
under the King of Sardinia. He was a personal friend of Mr.
(afterwards Sir) James Hudson, the English Minister at Turin, whose
Nationalist sympathies, like Labouchere's, were well known, and he
was an invaluable reporter to the Liberals in Turin of the news of
the struggle for liberty in Tuscany. On the morning of the
revolution, after the Grand Duke and his family had left the Pitti
Palace, he, with many of his revolutionary friends, entered the
forsaken home of Austrian royalty, and had the astuteness to procure
on the spot what was left of the famous Metternich Johannisberger for
the newly founded _Unione_ Club, of which he was a member. He had an
amusing story to tell about the flight of the grand-ducal family from
the City of Flowers, which is best repeated in his own words, as he
used to relate it to his Florentine friends after he had returned to
end his days in the place which he had loved so well in his youth.
"The news was brought back here by some of the people who had seen
them off the premises, that, on the road to Bologna, they all got out
and stopped an hour or two at an inn, where they all sat in a row
crying. After this had gone on for some time, it was discovered that
the whole party had forgotten their pocket-handkerchiefs.
Fortunately the Grand Duchess had on a white petticoat with very
ample frills, so she went round to each of the grand-ducal family in
turn, and wiped their {62} eyes and noses for them in the frills of
her petticoat. And then she did the same for the ladies and
gentlemen in waiting."
"Do I think that incident really is true?" he would reply to his
incredulous audience, "probably not. But from what I know of
royalties in general, and from what I remember about the grand-ducal
family of Tuscany in particular, I think that it is exceedingly
probable that they would start out on an expedition of that kind
without a pocket-handkerchief between them."[15] His personal
reminiscences of Victor Emmanuel II. and of Cavour were of the
raciest description and would enthral his hearers by the hour, told
as only he could tell them, with all the decorative touches of local
colour and local dialect.
He was also very fond of telling a story about an outrageous
compliment he paid to a lady belonging to the Court of the Grand
Duchess, which, if true, showed that at least one of the resolutions
he had made in the inn at Quotla di Amalpas had been carried into
successful practice: "The Grand Duchess of Tuscany had a venerable
maid of honour above seventy years of age. She had piercing black
eyes, and looked like an old postchaise, painted up and with new
lamps. 'How old do you think I am?' she once asked me, with a
simpering smile that caused my blood to run cold. I hesitated, and
then said 'Twenty.' 'Flatterer,' she replied, tapping me with her
fan, 'I am twenty-five.'
Having become third secretary in November, 1862, Labouchere was
appointed to Constantinople. He wrote in _Truth_ nearly thirty years
later: "I was once Secretary of Embassy at Constantinople and I
passed my time reading up Lord Stratford's despatches before and
during the Crimean War. No one could have recognised them as the
originals from which Mr. Kinglake drew his material for a narrative
of the Ambassador's diplomatic action. The fact was that Lord
Stratford was one of the most detestable of the human race. {63} He
was arrogant, resentful, and spiteful. He hated the Emperor Nicholas
because he had declined to receive him as Ambassador to Russia, and
the Crimean War was his revenge. In every way he endeavoured to
envenom the quarrel and to make war certain. His power at
Constantinople was enormous. This was because, whilst the
Ambassadors of other Powers changed, his stay there seemed eternal.
A Grand Vizier, or a Minister of Foreign Affairs, knew that, if he
offended the English Ambassador, he would never cease plotting to
drive him out, and to keep him out of power. He therefore thought it
better to keep on good terms with him and to submit to his arrogance.
But Lord Stratford never used his power for good. It was enough for
him to get the Sultan to publish a decree. This he would send home
as evidence of good government. He never, however, explained that
the decree, when published, remained a dead letter. When Sir Henry
Bulwer (Lord Dalling) was sent as Commissioner to the Principalities,
he passed a considerable time (as indeed was necessary) at
Constantinople. Lord Stratford knew that Sir Henry wanted to replace
him, and he feared that he would succeed in doing so. His rage and
indignation were therefore unbounded. One day the Ambassador and the
Commissioner were together at the Embassy. 'I know,' said the
Ambassador, 'that you are trying to get my place,' and he shook his
fist in the face of Sir Henry, who mildly surveyed him and shrugged
his shoulders."
Sir Horace Rumbold writes charmingly of Henry Labouchere at
Constantinople in 1863. "In August," he says, "the torrid heat drove
me to seek for a while the cool breezes of the Bosphorus, and I then,
for the first time, became acquainted with the wonders of
Constantinople. Here I found at the Embassy Edward Herbert and got
to know that remarkable, _original_, and most talented and
kind-hearted of would-be cynics, Henry Labouchere."[16] Later on, in
the same volume of reminiscences, he gives another picture of {64}
the young secretary, whose diplomatic career was, however, soon to
come to a close. "The Pisani dynasty were still masters of the
situation when I arrived. Under the, in many ways, unfortunate
tenure of the Embassy by Sir Henry Bulwer, Alexander Pisani, best
known as the 'Count,' who was simply the Keeper of the Archives, had
been made head of the Diplomatic Chancellerie of the Embassy, to the
intense disgust of successive secretaries properly belonging to the
Service. Pisani, it was said, had extorted this abnormal appointment
from his chief by threatening to resign and write his memoirs. Henry
Labouchere, among others, greatly resented the arrangement. Some
years before, he had a passage of arms with the 'Count,' who had
reproved him, so to speak, officially for absenting himself for the
day from the Chancery on some occasion, without applying to him for
leave to do so. The ridiculous affair was referred to Sir Henry
Bulwer, and gave my friend Labby a charming opportunity of describing
the 'Count' in a formal letter to the Ambassador. 'It seems to me,'
he wrote, 'a singular dispensation that places a Greek nobleman of
Venetian extraction, who profited by the advantages of a Pera
education, in authority over a body of English Gentlemen.'"
Mr. Labouchere was always very amusing on the subject of his chief at
Constantinople. He said that Lord Balling could not understand the
value of money. He was so generous that he was always in financial
difficulties. At one time the Embassy was reduced to such straits
that there was no money to buy any decent wine. The difficulty was
met in the following manner: At official dinners the grand-looking
_maître d'hôtel_ would solemnly say before pouring out the wine,
"Château Lafitte '48," or "La Rose '52," and so on, all through
dinner. As a matter of fact, the wine had really come from the
neighbouring Greek isles, and had been doctored with an infusion of
prunes to tone down the flavour of tar, which is inseparable from
these insular vintages. Lord Dalling himself was so anxious to
please that he would {65} quaff glass after glass of the horrible
beverage, swallowing numberless pills the while as an antidote.
There are many versions of the incident with which Labouchere chose
to conclude his relations with the Diplomatic Service. The Foreign
Office records of the date are not yet available, but I am indebted
to Sir Audley Gosling for his recollections of the affair as it
happened. In the summer of 1864, Labouchere found himself at
Baden-Baden, enjoying the relaxation of a little gambling after his
strenuous work in the service of his country. While there he
received from Lord Russell, the Foreign Secretary, the usual
stereotyped announcement of his promotion in the Diplomatic Service.
It ran: "I have to inform you that Her Majesty has, on my
recommendation, been pleased to promote you to be a Second Secretary
in the Diplomatic Service to reside at Buenos Ayres."
Labouchere is said to have replied as follows: "I have the honour to
acknowledge the receipt of your Lordship's despatch, informing me of
my promotion as Second Secretary to Her Majesty's Legation at Buenos
Ayres. I beg to state that, if residing at Baden-Baden I can fulfil
those duties, I shall be pleased to accept the appointment." As this
was the second joke he had played on Lord Russell, he was politely
told that there was no further use for his services.[17]
A successful "system" is not an essential part of the educational
equipment of a diplomat, but it may on occasion be a very useful
extra to his other accomplishments. Mr. Labouchere found it so. "I
used at one time," he said, "to take the waters every year at
Homburg, and I invariably paid the expenses of my trip out of my
winnings at the gambling-tables. It may have been luck, or it may
have been system; but I give my system for what it is worth. I {66}
used to write the following figures on a piece of paper: 3, 4, 5, 6,
7. My stake was always the top and bottom figure added together. If
I won, I scratched out these figures; if I lost, I wrote down the
stake at the bottom of the figures, and I went on playing until all
the figures on my piece of paper were erased. Thus my first stake
(and I played indifferently on red or black) would be ten. If I won
it, I scratched out three and seven. My next stake would be ten
again, as four and six make ten. If I lost it, I wrote down ten at
the bottom of my list of figures, and played fourteen, being the
addition of the first and last figure on the list, viz. fourteen.
The basis of the 'system' was this. Before reaching the maximum, I
could play a series of even chances for about two hours, and if
during these two hours I won one quarter as many times as the bank,
plus five, all my figures were erased. During these two hours an
even chance would be produced two hundred times. If, therefore, I
won fifty-five times, and the bank won one hundred and forty-five
times, I was the winner of twenty-five napoleons, florins, or
whatever was my unit. Now let any one produce an even chance by
tossing up a coin and always crying 'heads,' he will find that he may
go on until Doomsday before the 'tails' exceed the 'heads,' or the
'heads' exceed the 'tails,' by ninety-five. I found this system in a
letter from Condorcet to a friend, which I read in a book that I
purchased at a stall on the 'Quai' at Paris. It may have been, as I
have said, only luck; but all I can say is, that whenever I played it
I invariably won."
One of Mr. Labouchere's oldest friends, Mrs. Crawford, recently wrote
to me a letter in which she made the following lucid remarks about
his career in the Diplomatic Service: "I was acquainted," she says,
"with many of his diplomatic comrades, and they often spoke of him in
chat with me. Some were friendly, some were not. He had a very
unguarded tongue, and discharged his shafts of satire, irony, humour
in all directions, and every arrow that hit made an {67} enemy. I,
mentally, used to take this into account in judging of their
judgments, and the habit, which does not exist in England, of
searching for mitigating circumstances helped me to make a fair and
true estimate of his complex nature. I think he rather enjoyed, but
_passagèrement_, being thought a Richard III., an Iago--an inveterate
gambler. I soon came to the conclusion that this was partly due to a
reaction against the idolatrous attitude of the English middle class
and religious people towards Victoria and Albert, for it was
shockingly fulsome--and the Queen early showed hostility towards him.
His uncle, Lord Taunton, reflected her known sentiments, and so did
Lord Clarendon. He was wrong, very wrong, to have treated the vile
crime of Grenville Murray, and committed too in an Office capacity,
as a thing of no consequence and the stumble made by an exceedingly
clever man--a too great rarity in the British Consular Service. I
have some recollection that she was furious with the Prince of Wales,
who had not the virtue, in his early years at any rate, of reticence
in speaking, for, on the authority of Mr. Labouchere, taking
Grenville Murray's part against the Foreign Office in her presence.
This, however, was only one of the reasons of her fixed hostility...."
The crime to which Mrs. Crawford refers as having been committed by
Grenville Murray in an official capacity was that of forwarding
private news to the _Morning Post_ (to which paper he was secretly
acting as correspondent) in the Foreign Office bag from Vienna, where
he was an attaché in 1852, under Lord Westmorland. Mr. Labouchere
declared in _Truth_ that Lord Palmerston, having a private grudge
against Prince Schwarzenberg, the Prime Minister of Austria, and
wishing for special information about him to reach the British
public, had come to a private understanding with Grenville Murray
that his journalistic correspondence would be winked at.
Unfortunately the "copy" fell into the hands of Lord Westmorland, who
demanded from Lord {68} Palmerston the instant dismissal of Murray.
Murray was not dismissed, but in a year's time was transferred to
Constantinople, where Lord Stratford de Redcliffe reigned supreme.
He had, of course, heard from Lord Westmorland about Murray's
journalistic indiscretions, and hated him accordingly. Murray
retorted by holding up his chief to every sort of ridicule to the
English magazine-reading public; for he was a clever writer, and
contributed largely to _Household Words_, then under the editorship
of Charles Dickens. The Foreign Office soon thought it necessary to
remove him, and he was appointed to the consul-generalship of Odessa.
At Odessa the consul was just as unpopular as the attaché had been at
Vienna and Constantinople. The defence of Grenville Murray, to which
Mrs. Crawford refers, was probably founded upon facts contained in
the following passage of an "Anecdotal Photograph" of Lord Derby,
published by Mr. Labouchere in an early number of _Truth_:
When Lord Derby was at the head of the Foreign Office, he left all
the appointments in the Diplomatic Service to the permanent
officials, and, owing to this pococurantism, he did an act of
injustice to one of the most brilliant _littérateurs_ of the day.
The gentleman in question had a consulship in the East. An able and
brilliant man, he was naturally a _persona ingrata_ to the high
priests of red tape, and between them and him there was perpetual
war, which at length culminated in a determination to remove him _per
fas_ or _per nefas_ from the service. Certain charges were
accordingly brought against this gentleman, who was put on his
defence. The accused, who was then in London, applied for copies of
certain papers from the archives of the Foreign Office which he
considered essential to his complete exculpation. The officials at
first declined to grant them, but, after a long correspondence,
admitted the justice of the claim. The papers were sent accordingly,
together with two separate letters, both bearing the same date. One
announced that the documents had been forwarded, the other that Lord
Derby had made up his mind on the whole case, and his decision was in
these words: "I have accordingly advised the Queen to cancel your
{69} commission as ----, and it is hereby cancelled accordingly."
The recipient of this interesting epistle was at first inclined to
treat it as a bad joke, but soon found that it was an authentic
fact.[18]
I have the great good fortune also to have received from Mr. Wilfrid
Blunt a brief memoir of Mr. Labouchere, which commences in his early
diplomatic days, and though it carries us on almost to the end of his
life, I think that its publication here will enable those readers who
did not know Mr. Labouchere personally to get a sincere impression of
the whole of his career, which cannot fail to be of assistance to
them in elucidating his curious original personality from the maze of
dates and details which are the inevitable appendages of a
comprehensive biography. Mr. Blunt writes as follows:
Feb. 13, 1913.
My acquaintance with Henry Labouchere dates, if I remember rightly,
from the early spring of 1861. We were both then in the Diplomatic
Service, and though not actually employed together, I had just
succeeded him as unpaid attaché at the Frankfort Legation, and found
him still lingering there when I came to take up my not very onerous
duties that year under our chief, Sir Alexander Malet, Edward Malet's
father. Labouchere's attraction to Frankfort was not Frankfort
itself, but its close neighbourhood to Hombourg, where the
gambling-tables still flourished, and where he spent nearly all his
time. By rights he ought to have been at St. Petersburg, but
pretended that he could not afford to travel to his new post except
on foot, and so was staying on waiting to have his expenses paid by
Government. His life at that time was an avowedly disreputable one,
the society of Hombourg being what it was; and he was looked upon by
the more strait-laced ladies of the Corps Diplomatique as something
of a pariah. There was a good deal of talk about him, opinions being
divided as to whether he was more knave or fool, greenhorn or knowing
fellow, all which amused him greatly. He was in reality the
good-hearted {70} cynic the world has since acknowledged him to be,
with a keen appreciation of the _comédie humaine_, a contempt for
aristocratic shams, and a philosopher's taste for low society.
I have a coloured caricature I made of him of that date, 1861, in
which he is represented as undergoing a conversion to respectability
at the hands of Countess d'Usedom, the Olympia of the Bismarck
memoirs, and wife of the Prussian Ambassador, with her two Scotch
nieces in the preposterous crinoline dresses of the time. He figures
in it as a round-faced young man with highly coloured cheeks, and an
air of mock modesty which is very characteristic. It is labelled
"The Deformed Transformed."
Later, I used to see him pretty frequently in London at the St.
James' Club, of which we were both members. He was already beginning
to be a recognised wit, and a central figure among talkers in the
smoking-room. But I remember old Paddy Green of Evans' still
maintaining that he was for all that a simple-minded fellow, made to
be the prey of rogues. It was as such that he had known him some
years before when Labouchere first appeared in London life and took
up his quarters at Evans' Hotel in Covent Garden. The good Irishman
had dolorous stories of the way in which his protégé had then been
fleeced. "Poor Labouchere, poor Labouchere," he used to say, in his
paternally emotional voice; "a good young man, but always his own
worst enemy." His own worst enemy he certainly often was. I
remember his coming into the Club one evening, it must have been in
1865, when he had just been elected M.P. for Windsor, and boasting to
all of us who would listen to him, with every detail, how he had
bribed the free and intelligent electors of the Royal Borough, an
imprudence which caused him the misfortune of his being unseated
immediately afterwards on petition.
Of the years that followed, when he was making his name as a
journalist, and his fortune on the Stock Exchange, I have nothing
particular to record. I came once more into close connection with
him in 1882, at the time of the trial of Arabi at Cairo after
Tel-el-Kebir. Labouchere, during the early months of the year, had
been among those Radicals who in the House of Commons had followed
Chamberlain and Dilke in pressing intervention in Egypt on the
Foreign Office, and he made no {71} secret of the reason--he was a
holder of Egyptian Bonds. The bombardment of Alexandria and the
massacre of Tel-el-Kebir, with the revelations which followed of the
intrigues which had caused the war, proved, however, too much for his
political conscience, which was really sound, and having unloaded his
Egyptian stock, which had gone up to higher prices (for he was not a
man to neglect a Stock Exchange opportunity), he frankly repented of
his sin, and from that time onwards did his best to repair the wrong
to Egypt he had joined in doing. He subscribed handsomely to the
"Arabi Defence Fund," was always ready to ask questions in the House,
and did not scruple to reproach the Grand Old Man with his lapses at
Cairo and in the Soudan from his Midlothian principles. In this
connection I saw much of him from 1883 to 1885, years during which
Egypt occupied so large a share of public attention, and always found
him interested in the Egyptian cause and helpful.
He was living then in Queen Anne's Gate, and I was pretty sure to
find him in the morning, and often stayed to lunch with him and his
wife. He was uniformly gay and pleasant and ready to give news. No
one ever was more generous in sharing his political knowledge with
his friends, and I could count on him to tell me the true and exact
truth of what was going on in the directions that interested me,
without regard to the rules of secrecy so many public men affect. Of
his wit too he was copiously lavish, as only those are who have it in
supreme abundance, giving of his very best to a single listener as
freely as to a larger audience. This, I always think, is the test of
genius in the department of brilliant talking, and no one ever shone
there more conspicuously than he did. His worldly wisdom was
wonderful. Nor was it confined to things at home, the House of
Commons, and the intrigue of Downing Street. He was really the only
English Radical, with Dilke, who had an accurate acquaintance with
affairs abroad, and he had his Europe at his finger-ends. He would
have made an admirable ambassador, where any difficult matters had to
be carried through, and he ought certainly to have been given the
Embassy he so much desired at Washington. It was always his
ambition, even stronger I think than that of holding Cabinet Office,
to go back to his old diplomatic profession and give serious proof of
his capacity in a service {72} where, as a young man, he had played
the fool. The Foreign Office would have found itself the stronger
for his help.
Our sympathy, which had begun about Egypt, was carried on, I am glad
to remember, during the years of stress which followed, also to
Ireland; and from first to last my experience of his political action
has been that of a man courageously consistent in his love of
liberty, his hatred of tyranny, and his contempt of the insincerities
of public life. He was never taken in by the false arguments with
which politicians conceal their treacheries, and he was never himself
a betrayer. If my testimony can be of any service to his memory as
an honest man, I freely give it.
The last time I saw him was in the summer of 1902, when he came down
with his wife and daughter to spend a week-end, July 12th to 14th,
with me and my wife in Sussex. He had resolved to pass the rest of
his days at Florence, and it was a farewell visit that he paid us.
He had just bought Michael Angelo's Villa, and talked much about it
and his design, philistine that he was, of turning it inside out,
fitting it with electric light, and otherwise bedevilling it with
modern improvements, uprooting the old trees in the _podere_ and
planting new ones. On matters of this sort he was a terrible
barbarian, and took delight in playing the vandal with places and
things which the rest of the world held in reverence. "Old Michael,"
he explained, "knew nothing about the comforts of a modern
establishment, and it was time that he should learn them." Apart
from this little _méchanceté_, he proved himself a most delectable
companion, giving us a true feast of wit and wisdom the whole Sunday
through. Sibyl, Lady Queensberry, was of our party, and Colonel Bill
Gordon, General Gordon's nephew, with whom he had much talk about
Khartoum and Egypt. Gordon was a good talker on his own subjects,
and they got on well together, sitting up till half-past one the
first night, telling story after story. Among them, I remember,
Labouchere gave us accounts of his adventures in Mexico, and also of
a ride he had taken from Damascus to Palmyra with Lady Ellenborough
and her Bedouin husband, Sheykh Mijwel el Mizrab, with reminiscences
of the early days we had spent together in the Diplomatic Service,
his gambling acquaintances at Hombourg, and his duel in Sweden. He
was especially interested in this visit to the Weald of Sussex, and
in {73} his having passed in the train almost within sight of Broome
Hall, under Leith Hill, where he had lived as a boy. He had not been
that way since, he said. The second evening he was less brilliant,
as Hilaire Belloc had joined our party, a rival talker to whom he
left the monopoly of our entertainment. But it was an altogether
pleasant two days that we passed together. I am glad to have the
recollection of them. Alas, they were the last we were to see of
him, for he left England soon afterwards, and we never met again.
[1] Joseph Hatton, _Journalistic London_.
[2] Mrs. T. P. O'Connor, _I, Myself_.
[3] For the rest of this interesting letter see Chapter X.
[4] "Radical and Whigs," _Fortnightly Review_, Feb. 1, 1884.
[5] It is interesting to note that Mr. Crampton's proceedings in
America did not stand in his way, so far as promotion in the service
was concerned. He was appointed Envoy-Extraordinary at Hanover
almost immediately; Lord Palmerston insisted upon his being made a
K.C.B., and he became Ambassador at St. Petersburg in 1858.
(_Dictionary of National Biography_.)
[6] _Truth_, May 23, 1878.
[7] _Truth_, Feb. 8, 1877.
[8] Busch, _Our Chancellor_.
[9] _Ibid._
[10] _Truth_, May 23, 1889.
[11] _Hansard_, July 14, 1884.
[12] Alexander II.
[13] _Truth_, July 16, 1877.
[14] _Truth_, May 23, 1878.
[15] _Florence Herald_, Dec. 28, 1909.
[16] Rumbold, _Recollections of a Diplomatist_, vol. ii.
[17] The letter, signed by Lord Russell, appointing Henry Labouchere
Second Secretary is dated February 3, 1863, so that the one, referred
to by Sir Audley Gosling, appointing him to Buenos Ayres, must have
been of later date. The latter is not in my possession.
[18] _Truth_, Nov. 20, 1879.
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