Volume I Part 20 (2/2)
The night before he had spoken in Newcastle, when he made the long-remembered declaration on the war then raging in America, the reporter of the Electric Telegraph Company had fallen ill, and Mr.
Cowen asked me to take his place. It is easier to report Mr. Gladstone verbatim than to summarise his speech as he proceeded on his rapid, animated, and unhesitating way. So I condensed the famous pa.s.sage in these words: ”Jefferson Davis had not only made a navy, he had made a nation (Sensation).” The word was too strong. There was no ”sensation;”
there was only a general movement as of unexpectedness, and ”surprise”
would have been a more appropriate word; but it did not come to me at the moment, and there was no time to wait for it, and the ”sensational”
sentence was all over London before the speech was ended. The next night he recurred to the subject at Middlesboro' with qualifications, but the Press took no notice of them. The ”sensation” appended to the sentence had set political commentators on fire.
A notable speech was made by the Mayor of Middlesboro'. In presenting addresses to Mr. Gladstone, local magnates complimented him upon his distinction in Greek, which none of them were competent to appraise. The Mayor of Middlesboro', an honest, stalwart gentleman, said simply, ”Mr.
Gladstone, if I could speak as well as you can speak, I should be able to tell you how proud we are to have you among us.” No speech made to him was more effective or relevant, or pleased him more.
By the courtesy of Mr. Bright, who procured me a seat in the Speaker's gallery when there was only one to be had, I heard Mr. Gladstone deliver, at midnight, his famous peroration, when, with uplifted hand, he said, ”Time is on our side.”
I remember the night well. The Duke of Argyll came into the gallery, where he stood four or five hours. I would gladly have given him my seat, but if I did so I must relinquish hearing the debate, as I must have left the gallery, as no stranger is permitted to stand. So I thought it prudent to respect the privileges of the peerage--and keep my seat.
In the years when I was constantly in the House of Commons, I was one day walking through the tunnel-like pa.s.sage which leads from Downing Street into the Park, I saw a pair of gleaming eyes approaching me. The pa.s.sage was so dark I saw nothing else. As the figure pa.s.sed me I saw it was Mr. Gladstone. On returning to ”The House,” as Parliament is familiarly called, I mentioned what I had seen to Mr. Vargus, who had sat at the Treasury door for fifty years. ”Yes,” he answered, ”there have been no eyes enter this House like Mr. Gladstone's since the days of Canning.”
Yet those eyes of meteoric intensity so lacked quick perception that he would pa.s.s by members of his party in the Lobby of Parliament without accosting them, fearing to do so when he desired it, lest he should mistake their ident.i.ty and set up party misconceptions. Mr. Gladstone ignored persons because he did not see them. It should not have been left to Sir E. Hamilton to make this known after Mr. Gladstone's death.
The fact should have been disclosed fifty years before.
To disappointed members with whom I came in contact, I used to explain that Mr. Gladstones apparent slightingness was owing to preoccupation.
He would often enter the House absorbed by an impending speech--which was true--and thought more of serving his country than of conciliating partisans. Lord Palmerston was wiser in his generation, who knew his followers would forgive him betraying public interest, if he paid attention to them.
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