Sketches in the House Part 9

THE END OF A GREAT WEEK.

[Sidenote: Mr. Goschen.]

The Tories were not in good heart at the beginning of the week which saw the second reading of the Home Rule Bill carried on April 21st, and perhaps it was owing to this that they put up one of their very best men. Mr. Goschen I have always held to be one of the really great debaters of the House of Commons. It is true that he has almost every physical disadvantage with which an orator could be cursed. His voice is hoa.r.s.e, m.u.f.fled, raucous, with some reminiscences of the Teutonic fatherland from which he remotely comes. His shortness of sight amounts almost to a disability. Whenever he has anything to read he has to place the paper under his eyes, and even then he finds it very difficult to read it. His action is like that of a distracted wind-mill. He beats the air with his whirling arms; he stands several feet from the table, and moves backwards and forwards in this s.p.a.ce in a positively distracting manner. And yet he is a great debater.

[Sidenote: In Opposition.]

But Mr. Goschen, like every other orator of the Opposition, has fallen on somewhat evil days, and is not at his very best now. "The world,"

said Thackeray long ago, "is a wretched sn.o.b, and is especially cold to the unsuccessful." This applies to that portion of the world which changes sides in the House of Commons according to the resolves of the popular verdict. Mr. Goschen, then, is not seen at his best in these days when all his arguments can receive the triumphant and unanswerable retort of a majority in the division lobbies. But still, the speech of Mr. Goschen on April 17th was an excellent one; it was really the first, since the beginning of this debate, which struck me as giving something to answer. Acute, subtle, a dialectician to his finger-tips, Mr. Goschen is best as a critic, and as a bit of criticism, his attack on the Bill was excellent. Mr. Morley found himself compelled for the first time for days to take serious notes; here at last were points which it was necessary to confront. After all the dreary plat.i.tudes of many days, this was a mercy for which to be thankful.

[Sidenote: Randolph dull.]

Lord Randolph Churchill, rising on the following evening, was not at his best. He has been pa.s.sing through what Disraeli once called a campaign of pa.s.sion in the provinces; and his speeches have been full of the wildest fury. But all the fire had become extinguished. When Lord Randolph Churchill makes up his mind to be rational, few people in the House of Commons can be more rational; but when he makes up his mind to throw prudence, sense, and reserve to the winds, n.o.body can rise to such heights and descend to such depths of wild, unreasonable, bellowing Toryism--always, of course, excepting Ashmead-Bartlett. But when he is rational he is often dull--when he is unreasonable he is often very entertaining. The speech of April 18th was a rational speech--it was, therefore, a dull one. Lord Randolph is not what he was. The voice which was formerly so resonant has become m.u.f.fled and sometimes almost indistinct, and the manner has lost all the sprightliness which used to relieve it in the olden days. The House of Commons is like the Revolution--it often swallows its own children.

[Sidenote: Father and son.]

Mr. Chamberlain might have been seen in two very different characters in the course of that same evening. He is not a soft man--amid sympathetic sn.i.g.g.e.rs from all the House, Mr. Morley at a later stage referred sarcastically to the "milk of human kindness" which flowed so copiously in his veins--but he is a man of strong and warm domestic affections. He has the proud privilege of having in the House of Commons not only a son, but one who, in many respects, seems the very facsimile of himself, for the likeness between Mr. Austen Chamberlain and his father is startlingly close. This likeness is heightened by the similarity of dress--by the single eyegla.s.s that is worn perennially in both cases, and, to a certain extent, by the walk. When the son began to speak this Tuesday night, there was even a stronger sense of the resemblance between the two. The voice was almost the same, the gestures were the same--the diction was not unlike--nearly all the tricks and mannerisms of the elder man were reproduced by the younger. For instance, when he is going to utter a good point, Mr. Chamberlain makes a pause--the son does the same: when Mr. Chamberlain is strongly moved, and wishes to drive home some fierce thrust, there is a deep swell in his otherwise even voice, and there is the same in the voice of the son. Then there is the same crisp, terse succession of sentences--altogether the likeness is wonderful.

[Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain pleased.]

It was pleasant, even to those who do not love Mr. Chamberlain either personally or politically, to watch him during this episode. When the son first stood up, the pallor of the face, the unsteadiness of the voice, the broken and stumbling accents, told of the high state of nervous strain through which he was pa.s.sing, and it was easy to see that the emotions of the son had communicated themselves to the father. Mr.

Chamberlain had his hat low down on his forehead so as to conceal his face and its tell-tale excitement as much as possible. But it turned out that he need not have been in the least alarmed. The speech of young Mr.

Chamberlain, for a maiden speech, was really wonderful. It was lucid, well knit, pointed, cogent. Its delivery was almost perfect; it had the true House of Commons air and manner. This young man will go far. I shouldn't be surprised if he became in time even a better debater than his father. His education, I should say, is broader and deeper, his mind finer, and his temper sweeter and more under control. During the latter portion of the speech his father's face had a smile, pleasant to behold; one could forgive him a great deal of his hardness, rancour, even ferocity, for this manifestation--open and frank--of kindly human-feeling.

[Sidenote: And angry.]

But, as I have said, there was another manifestation of Mr. Chamberlain in the course of this very evening. Shortly before ten o'clock Mr.

Morley rose to make his reply. It was twenty minutes to ten when he rose. It was close upon midnight when he sate down. And yet there wasn't one word too many--indeed, Mr. Morley might have gone even longer without wearying the House, for it was a speech which, although not free from some of the besetting weaknesses of his oratory, was an eloquent, impressive and convincing addition to the great argument on the Irish question. Giving himself a certain freedom--departing from the over-severe self-restraint which he so often imposes upon himself--abandoning the frigidity of manner which conceals from so many people his warmth of heart and of temper, he spoke with a go, a fire and a force of attack not very common with him. Above all things the speech gave the impression of one who spoke from the inside--who knew the subjects of which he was talking, not merely in their general aspects, but in their dark recesses--in their latent pa.s.sion--in their awful and appalling depths. It was while this fine speech was being delivered that the other and the darker side of Mr. Chamberlain's nature was to be seen. There are no such enmities as those between relatives or former friends; and so it apparently is between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr.

Morley--though it should be said most of the bitterness of the hatred seems to be on the one side. While Mr. Morley is speaking there is a frown on the face of Mr. Chamberlain that never lifts. Now and then, the sulky and sullen and frowning silence was broken by an observation evidently of bitter scornfulness addressed to Sir Henry James, and once there seemed even to be an angry interchange between him and Mr.

Courtney because Mr. Courtney had ventured to put a civil question to Mr. Morley. Mr. Morley had to address a few words of hearty congratulation to Mr. Austen Chamberlain on his very successful speech.

He spoke with the slowness, hesitation, and effort that betrayed a certain glimpse of the pain and grief that the political separations of life produce in all but the hardest and coldest natures. It was a graceful, generous, feeling tribute, but it did not soften Mr.

Chamberlain--the same steady unlifting frown was there--the same "puss"--and when Mr. Morley had finished, there was a repet.i.tion of the evidently scornful comment of Mr. Chamberlain.

[Sidenote: A hit at Mr. Chamberlain.]

But Mr. Morley may well bear all this, for he was able to strike some very effective blows at Mr. Chamberlain, and Mr. Chamberlain for a hard-hitter has a wonderfully keen appreciation and a very sensitive skin for anything like a dexterous. .h.i.t at his own expense. Alluding to the favourite argument of Mr. Chamberlain, that the speeches of Irish members in the past may have been deplorable, Mr. Morley asked were they the only people who had made such speeches? They might be repentant sinners, but who so great a prodigal as the member for Birmingham? The loud and triumphant laughter which this produced at the expense of Mr.

Chamberlain, was followed up by another even more victorious thrust. The Irish members had abandoned prairie value in the same way as the member for Birmingham had surrendered the doctrines of "ransom" and natural rights. Mr. Chamberlain was very uncomfortable, and soon showed it by an interrupting cheer. "Seriously," said Mr. Morley, pa.s.sing from this lighter, but very effective vein. And then he was interrupted by his foe. "Hear, hear," shouted Mr. Chamberlain in that deep, raucous, fierce note, in which he reveals the fierceness of his hatred, as though to say that it was time for Mr. Morley to address himself to serious things.

[Sidenote: Mr. s.e.xton.]

So the debate proceeded during the earlier part of the week; as it neared its close it increased in brilliancy, until in the last night it went out in a blaze of splendour and glory. On the Thursday evening Mr.

s.e.xton was the speaker. He made a speech which was two hours and a half in duration; it was in my opinion too long--I think that except in the most exceptional cases no orator ought to speak more than half an hour.

And yet I would not have had the speech shorter by one second; and it is a singular proof of the extraordinary command which this man holds over the House of Commons that he kept its attention absolutely without a moment's pause or cessation, during every bit of this tremendous strain upon his attention. With the exception of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. s.e.xton is the one man in the House who is capable of such a feat. This is largely due not merely to his oratorical powers but to the extraordinary range of his gifts. To the outside public--even to the House of Commons--he is chiefly known by his great rhetorical gifts; but this is only a part, and a small part, of his great mental equipment. His mastery over figures in its firmness of grasp, its lightning-like rapidity, its retentiveness, is almost as great as that of a professional calculator.

He has a judgment, cold, equable, far-seeing, and he has a humour that is kindly but can also be scorching, and that has sometimes been deadly enough to leave wounds that never healed.

[Sidenote: Mr. Chamberlain's arithmetic.]

Perhaps not even Mr. Gladstone--certainly not Mr. Goschen--though he, too, is a past master in figures--is as formidable and destructive a gladiator in a fight over figures as Mr. s.e.xton; I pity any mortal who gets into grips with him on that arena. Mr. Chamberlain was the unhappy individual whom Mr. s.e.xton took in hand. Mr. Chamberlain has the reputation of being a good man of business, he certainly was a most successful one; and one would expect from him some power, at least, of being able to state figures correctly. When the figures he had presented to the country in a recent speech at Birmingham came under a.n.a.lysis by Mr. s.e.xton, Mr. Chamberlain was exposed as a bungler as stupid and dense as one could imagine. Mr. Chamberlain's mighty fabric of a war indemnity of millions which the financial arrangements of this Bill would inflict on England, melted before Mr. s.e.xton's examination--palpably, rapidly, exactly as though it were a gaudy palace of snow which the midsummer sun was melting into mere slush. The c.o.c.ksureness of Mr. Chamberlain makes his exposure a sort of comfort and delight to the majority of the House; but still, the sense of his great powers--of his commanding position as a debater--of his formidableness as a political and Parliamentary enemy--made the House almost unwilling to realize that he could be taken up and reprimanded, and birched by anybody in the House with the completeness with which Mr. s.e.xton was performing the task. Mark you, there was nothing offensive--there was nothing even severe in the language of Mr. s.e.xton's attack. It was simply cold, pitiless, courteous but killing a.n.a.lysis--the kind of a.n.a.lysis which the hapless and fraudulent bankrupt has to endure when his castles in the air come to be examined under the cold scrutiny of the Official Receiver in the Bankruptcy Court.

[Sidenote: Johnston of Ballykilbeg.]

A different tone was that which Mr. s.e.xton a.s.sumed to Mr. Johnston of Ballykilbeg. Mr. Johnston, known to the outer world as a fire-eater of the most determined order, inside the House is one of the most popular of men, and with no section of the House is he more popular than with those Irish Nationalists for whose blood he is supposed to thirst. With gentle and friendly wit Mr. s.e.xton dealt with the case of Mr. Johnston lining the ditch, declaring amid sympathetic laughter that the one object of any Irish Nationalist who should meet the Orangemen in such a position would be to take him out, even if he had to carry him to do so.

This reduction of the militancy of Ulster down to the level of playful satire did much to relieve the House from the tension which the wild language of Ulsteria had been calculated to provoke. Finally, there came a beautiful peroration--tender, touching, well sustained--which was listened to with breathless attention by the House, and produced as profound a depth of emotion on the Liberal as even on the Irish Benches.

It was a peroration which lifted the great issue to all the heights of solemnity, n.o.bility, and supreme interest which it reaches in the mouth of an eloquent orator. This tremendous speech--in its variety, in its power--in its alternation of scathing scorn, copious a.n.a.lysis, playful and gentle wit--was perhaps the most remarkable example in our times of the sway which an orator has over the House of Commons.

[Sidenote: Mr. Carson.]

Mr. Carson was unfortunate in every sense in having to follow an oration of such extraordinary power, and in having to follow it at that dread hour when every member of the House of Commons is thinking of his long-postponed dinner. The audience of "the Sleuth Hound of Coercion"--as Mr. Carson is usually called--if it was select, was at the same time, enthusiastic and appreciative. The little band of Unionists, who get very cold comfort, as a rule, during these hard times, sate steadily in their seats and eagerly welcomed and warmly cheered Mr.

Carson. Behind him, too, was a pretty strong band of Tories, and Mr.

Balfour sate throughout his entire speech listening to it with the keenest and most evident appreciation. I have already described the appearance of Mr. Carson and the impression he makes upon me; curiously enough, this impression was confirmed by an experience that afternoon. I happened to stand at a point of the House where I saw Mr. Carson from profile as he was speaking. He had just got to the point where, with a hoa.r.s.e and deep note in his usually cold voice, he said to Mr. Morley that if the Chief Secretary would move the omission of all the "safeguards" from the Bill, he would vote along with him. There was a tone almost of ferocity--the tone which conveyed all the rage and despair of the Ascendency party in Ireland at the prospect of departing power--the fury of the Castle official that saw the approaching overthrow of all the powerful citadel of fraud and cruelty and wrong, of which he had been one of the chief pillars. And as Mr. Carson was uttering these words, I saw his profile--which often reveals more of men's natures than the front face.

[Sidenote: A curious reminiscence.]

I suppose I shall be considered very fantastic--but do you know what I thought of at that very moment? Some years ago, I stood at Epsom close to the ropes and saw Fred Archer pa.s.s me as he swept like the whirlwind to the winning-post in the last Derby he ever rode. Between Mr. Carson and Mr. Fred Archer, especially in the profile, there is a certain and even a close resemblance; the same long lantern face, the same sunken cheeks, the same prominent mouth, the same skin dark as the gipsy's.

Never shall I forget the look on Fred Archer's face at the moment when I saw it--it was but for a second--and yet the impression dwells ineffaceable upon my memory and imagination. There was a curious mixture of terror, resolve, hope, despair on the sunken cheeks that was almost appalling--that look represented, embodied, summed up, as though in some sudden glimpse of another and a nether world, all the terrible and awful pa.s.sions that stormed at the hearts of thousands in the great gambling panorama all around. And there was something of the same look on the profile of Mr. Carson--I could almost have pitied him and the party and traditions and past which he represented as I saw its death-throes marked on his suffering and fierce face.

But the speech of Mr. Carson was a clever one. Whatever the inner eye may see in the depths of Mr. Carson's soul, to the outward eye he has an appearance of a self-possession amounting almost to the offensive. He is dressed almost as well as Mr. Austen Chamberlain, but, unlike Mr.

Chamberlain's promising lad--who still has much of the graceful shyness and unsteady nerve of youth--Mr. Carson has all the coolness, self-a.s.sertion, and hardness of the man who has pa.s.sed through the fierce and tempestuous conflicts of Irish life. Mr. Carson stands at the box and leans upon it as though he had been there all his life; he shoots his cuffs--to use a House of Commons' phrase--as dexterously and almost as frequently as Mr. Gladstone; his points are stated slowly, deliberately, with that wary and watchful look of the man who has been accustomed to utter the words that consigned men to the horrors of Tullamore. The speech of Thursday evening was a clever speech. It wasn't broad--it wasn't generous--there was not a note in it above the tone of the Crown Prosecutor, but it was subtle, well-reasoned--the blows were happy, and told--and the Tories and Unionists were hugely and justly delighted.

[Sidenote: The approach of the division.]

At last we are within sight of the end. Friday had come, and everybody knew that this was the day which would see the division; and, after all, the division was the event of the debate. In moments such as these you can hear the quickened throb of the House of Commons, and if you fail to notice it you soon learn it from the public. In the lobbies outside stand scores of excited men and women begging, imploring, threatening--using every means to get admission into the galleries to witness a historic and immortal scene. Outside there is an even denser crowd--ready to hoot or cheer their favourites. The galleries are all crowded; peers stand on each other's toes, and patiently wait for hours.

About ten o'clock a man rushes into the lobby, and there is a movement that looks most like a scare--as though the messenger were some herald of disaster. In a few minutes you see a great stir and a curious suppressed excitement in the lobby, and then you observe that the Prince of Wales has come down to pay the House one of his rare visitations, and to take that place above the clock which it is his privilege on these occasions to occupy.

[Sidenote: Sir Henry James.]

The evening began with a speech of Sir Henry James for the Unionist party--legal and dry as dust, but, towards the end, reaching a height--or shall I say a depth--of fierce party pa.s.sion. In language more veiled, more deliberate, but as intelligible as Mr. Balfour's and Lord Randolph Churchill's, the ex-Attorney-General called upon the Orangemen to rise in rebellion. And, working himself up gradually from the slow and funereal tones which he usually employs, Sir Henry James wound up with a fierce, rude, savage gibe at Mr. Gladstone. Almost shouting out the word, "Betrayed!" he pointed a threatening and scornful finger at the head of Mr. Gladstone, and the Tories and Unionists frantically cheered.

It was more than ten o'clock when Mr. Balfour rose. The a.s.sembly was brilliant in its density, its character, its pent-up emotion, and in many respects the speech was worthy of the occasion. He was wise enough not to entangle himself in the inextricable network of clauses and sub-sections. In broad, general lines he a.s.sailed the policy of the Bill and of the Government, and now and then worked up his party to almost frenzied excitement. The cheers of the Tories were taken up by the Unionists, who thronged their benches with unusual density of attendance. Now and then there were fierce protests from the Irish Benches; but, on the whole, they were patient, self-restrained, and silent.

[Sidenote: Gladstone.]

Mr. Gladstone, meantime, was down early, after but a short stay for dinner. His face had that rapt look of reverie which it wears on all these solemn and great occasions, and there was a slightly deadlier pallor on the cheek. Mr. Balfour persisted with his speech to the bitter end, and now and then Mr. Gladstone gave an impatient and anxious look at the clock. The hands pointed to ten minutes to midnight before this man of eighty-three was on his legs to address a crowded, hot, jaded a.s.sembly in a speech that would wind up one of the great stages in the greatest controversy of his life.

[Sidenote: The opening.]

We who love and follow him hold our breaths, and our nervous anxiety rises almost to terror. Can he stand the strain?--will he break down from sheer physical fatigue and the exhaustion of long waiting? The first few notes of the deep voice are rea.s.suring. The opening sentences also have that full roll which nearly always is inevitable proof that the great swelling opening will carry him on to the end; and yet there is anxiety. Those who know him well cannot help observing that there is just a slight trace of excitement, nervousness, and anxiety in the voice and manner. He has evidently been put out by the lateness of the hour to which the speech has been postponed. There is beside him a vast ma.s.s of notes, and then, before he reaches that, there is the long speech to which he has just listened, many points of which it is impossible to leave unnoticed. And so the first ten minutes strike me as rather poor--poor, I mean, for Mr. Gladstone--and my heart sinks. In memory I go back to that memorable and unforgettable speech on that terrible night in 1886, when, with dark and disastrous defeat prepared for him in the lobbies the moment he sat down, Mr. Gladstone delivered a speech, the echoes of whose beautiful tones--immortal and ineffaceable--still linger in the ear. And now the moment of Nemesis and triumph has come, and is he going to fall below the level of the great hour?

Ah! these fears are all vain. The exquisite cadence--the delightful bye-play--the broad, free gesture--the lofty tones of indignation and appeal--but, above all, the even tenderness, composure, and charity that endureth all things--all these qualities range through this magnificent speech. Thus he wishes to administer to Sir Henry James a well-merited rebuke for his terrible and flagitious incitements, and, with uplifted hands, and in a voice of infinite scorn, Mr. Gladstone turns on Sir Henry, and overwhelms him, amid a tempest of cheers from the delighted Irishry and Liberals.

[Sidenote: Chamberlain touched.]

But there is another and an even more extraordinary instance of the power, grace, and mastery of the mighty orator. The G.O.M. had made an allusion to that pleasant and promising speech of young Austen Chamberlain, of which I have spoken already. Just by the way, with that delightful and unapproachable lightness of touch which is the unattainable charm of Mr. Gladstone's oratory, he alluded to the speech and to Mr. Chamberlain himself. "I will not enter into any elaborate eulogy of that speech," said Mr. Gladstone. "I will endeavour to sum up my opinion of it by simply saying that it was a speech which must have been dear and refreshing to a father's heart." And then came one of the most really pathetic scenes I have ever beheld in the House of Commons--a scene with that touch of nature which makes the whole akin, and, for the moment, brings the fiercest personal and political foes into the holy bond of common human feeling. Mr. Chamberlain is completely unnerved--I should have almost said for the first time in his life. I have seen this very remarkable man under all kinds of circ.u.mstances--in triumph--in disaster--in rage--in composure--but never before--not even in the very ecstasy of the hours of party feeling--never before did I see him lose for a moment his self-possession. First, he bowed low to Mr. Gladstone in grat.i.tude--and then the tears sprang to his eyes; his lips trembled painfully, and his hand sprang to his forehead, as though to hide the woman's tears that did honour to his manhood. And, curiously enough, the feeling did not pa.s.s away. I know not whether Mr. Chamberlain was out of sorts on this great night; but his manner was very different on this night of nights; indeed, from what it has been at every other period of this fierce, stormy Session. He cheered as loudly and as frequently as the best of the rank and file--interrupted--in short, manifested all the pa.s.sions of the hour. But on that Friday night--specially after this allusion of Mr. Gladstone's to his son--he sate silent, and in a far-off reverie.

But the Old Man still pa.s.ses on his triumphant way--now gently, now stormy--listened to in delight from all parts; and when he is now and then interrupted by some small and rude Tory, dismissing the interruption with delightful composure and a good humour that nothing can disturb. It is only the marvellous powers of the man that can keep the House patient, for it is pointing to one o'clock, and the division has not yet come. But at last he is approaching the peroration. It has the glad note of coming triumph--subdued, however, to the gentle tone of good taste. It is delivered, like the whole of the speech, with extraordinary nerve, and without any abatement of the fire, the vehemence, the sweeping rapidity of the best days. And it ends in notes, clear, resonant--almost like a peal of joy-bells.

[Sidenote: The division.]