Volume Ii Part 2 (2/2)
I am of Lord Actons opinion, that Mr. Disraeli was morally insupportable, though otherwise astonis.h.i.+ng. The pitiless resentment of ”Vivian Grey” towards whoever stood in his way was the prevailing characteristic of the triumphant Jew. Like other men of professional ambition, he had the charm of engaging amity to those who were for the time being no longer impediment to him. When showing distress at a few drops of rain falling, news was brought Her Majesty that Mr. Gladstone had returned from a voyage and addressed a crowd on the beach. Disraeli exclaimed with pleasant gaiety, ”What a wonderful man that Gladstone is. Had I returned from a voyage I should be glad to go to bed. Mr.
Gladstone leaps on sh.o.r.e and makes a speech.”
The moral of this singular career worth remembering, is that genius and versatility, animated by ambition without scruple, may attain distinction without principle. It can win national admiration, but not public affection. All it can accomplish is to leave behind a name of sinister renown. If we knew all, no doubt Lord Beaconsfield had, apart from the exigencies of ambition, personal qualities commanding esteem.
CHAPTER XXVII. CHARACTERISTICS OF JOSEPH COWEN
I
Political readers will long remember the name of Joseph Cowen, who won in a single night the reputation of a national orator. All at once he achieved that distinction in an a.s.sembly where few attain it. After a time he retired to his tent and never more emerged from it. The occasion of his first speech in Parliament was the introduction of the Bill for converting the Queen into an Empress. Queen was a wholesome monarchical name, which implied in England supremacy under the law; while Empress, alien to the genius of the political const.i.tution, is a military t.i.tle of sinister reputation, and implies a rank outside and above the law.
Like Imperialism, it connotes military government, which, in the opinion of the free and prudent, is the most odious, dangerous, and costly of all governments.
Mr. Cowen entertained a strong repugnance to the word ”Empress,” which might become a prelude to Imperialism--as it has done.
Mr. Cowen's father, who preceded him in the House of Commons, was scrupulous in apparel, never affecting fas.h.i.+on, but keeping within its pale. His son was not only careless of fas.h.i.+on--he despised it. He employed local tailors, from neighbourliness, and was quite content with their craftsmans.h.i.+p. He never wore what is called a ”top” hat, but a felt one, a better shape than what is known now as a ”clerical” hat It was thought he would abandon it when he entered Parliament, but he did not He commonly left it in the cloak-room. He had no wish to be singular. His attire was as natural to him as his skin is to an Ethiopian. His headgear imperilled his candidature, when that came about.
He had been two years in Parliament before he addressed it. When he rose many members were standing impatient for division and crying ”Divide!
Divide!!” Mr. Cowen, being a small man, was not at once perceived, but his melodious, honest, and eager voice arrested attention, though his Northumbrian accent was unfamiliar to the House. It was as difficult to see the new orator as to see Curran in an Irish Court, or Thiers in the French Chamber. Disraeli glanced at him through his eyegla.s.s, as though Mr. Cowen was one of Dean Swift's Lilliputians, and of one near him he asked contemptuously, as a Northern burr broke upon his ear, ”What language is the fellow talking?”
The speech had all the characteristics of an oration, historical, compact, and complete--though brief. In it he said three things never heard in Parliament before. One was that the ”Divine right of kings perished on the scaffold with Charles I.” Another was that ”the superst.i.tion of royalty had never taken any deep hold of the English people.” The third was to describe our august ally, the Emperor Napoleon III., as an ”usurper.” The impression the speech made upon the country was great. It so accorded with the popular sentiment that some persons paid for its appearance as an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Daily News_ and other papers of the day, and the speaker acquired the reputation of an orator by a single speech. Mr. Disraeli's contemptuous reception of it did not prevent him, at a later date, from going up to Mr. Cowen, when he was standing alone by a fire, and paying him some compliment which made a lasting impression upon him. Mr. Disraeli had discernment to recognise genius when he saw it, and generosity enough to respect it when not directed against himself. If it were, he was implacable.
For years, as I well knew, Mr. Cowen spent more money for the advancement and vindication of Liberalism than any other English gentleman. He was the most generous friend of ”forlorn hopes” England has known. How many combatants has he aided; how many has he succoured; how many has he saved! If the other world be human like this, what crowds of grateful spirits of divers climes must have rushed to the threshold of heaven to welcome him as he entered.
Penniless, and his crew foodless, Garibaldi steered his vessel up the Tyne. Mr. Cowen was the only man in England Garibaldi then sought or confided in. Before he left the Tyne, Mr. Cowen, on behalf of subscribers (of whom many were pitmen), presented Garibaldi with a sword which cost 146. Goldwin Smith says, in his picturesque way, Henry III. had a ”waxen heart.” Mr. Cowen had an iron heart, steeled by n.o.ble purpose. He knew no fear, physical or mental. Not like my friend, George Henry Lewes, whose sense of intellectual right was so strong that he never saw consequences. Cowen did see them, and disregarded them; he ”nothing knew to fear, and nothing feared to know”--neither ideas nor persons. How many men, not afraid of ideas, are much afraid of knowing those who have them? Unyielding to the high, how tender he was to the low!
Riding home with him one night, after a stormy meeting in Newcastle, when we were near to Stella House (he had not gone to reside in the Hall then) the horse suddenly stopped. Mr. Cowen got out to see what the obstruction was, and he found it was one of his own workmen lying drunk across the road. His master roused him and said: ”Tom, what a fool thou art! Had not the horse been the more sensible beast, thou hadst been killed.” He would use these Scriptural p.r.o.nouns in speaking to his men.
The man could not stand, and Mr. Cowen and the coachman carried him to the door of another workman, called him up, and bade him let Tom lie in his house till morning. Then we drove on.
Another time a workman came to Mr. Cowen for an advance of thirty s.h.i.+llings. Being asked what he wanted the money for, the man answered: ”To get drunk, sir; I have not been drunk for six weeks.” ”Thou knowest,” said Mr. Cowen, ”I never take any drink, because I think the example good for thee. Thou will go to Gateshead Fair, get locked up, and I shall have to bail thee out. There is the money; but take my advice, get drunk at home, and thy wife will take care of thee.” How many employers possess workmen having that confidence in them to put such a question as this workman did, without fear of losing their situation? No workman lied, or had need to lie, to Mr. Cowen. He had the tolerance and tenderness of a G.o.d.
When I was ill in his house in Ess.e.x Street, Strand, he would come up at night and tell me of his affairs, as he did in his youth. He had for some time been giving his support to the Conservative side. I said to him, ”Disraeli is dead. Do you not see that you may take his place if you will? It is open. His party has no successor among them.
He had race, religion, and want of fortune against him. You have none of these disadvantages against you. You are rich, and you can speak as Disraeli never could. He had neither the tone nor the fire of conscience--you have both. You have the ear of the House, and the personal confidence of the country, as he never had. In his place you would fill the ear of the world.” He thought for a time on what I said to him; then his answer was: ”There is one difficulty--I am not a Tory.”
I saw he was leaving the side of Liberalism and that he would inevitably do Conservative work, and I was wishful that he should have the credit of it. He was under a master pa.s.sion which carried him he knew not whither.
It was my knowledge of Mr. Cowen, long before that night, that made me oft say that a Tyneside man had more humility and more pride than G.o.d had vouchsafed to any other people of the English race. Until middle life Mr. Cowen was as his father, immovable in principle; afterwards he was as his mother in implacableness. That is the explanation of his career.
The ”pa.s.sion” referred to--never avowed and never obtruded, but which ”neither slumbered nor slept”--was ambition. It might be called Paramountcy--that dangerous war-engendering word of Imperialism--which only the arrogant p.r.o.nounce, and only the subjugated submit to.
The Cowen family had no past but that of industry, and in Mr. Cowen's youth the ”slings and arrows of outrageous” Toryism, shafts of arrogance, insolence, and contempt, flew about him. He inherited from his mother a proud and indomitable spirit, and resolved to create a Liberal force which should withstand all that--and he did. Then, when he came to be, as he thought, flouted by those whom he had served (the common experience of the n.o.blest men), he at length resented and turned against himself. He had reached the heights where he had been awarded an imperishable place, and then descended in resentment to mingle and be lost in the ignominious faction whom he had defeated and despised. Those who had enraged him were not, as we shall see, worth his resentment
It was not for ”a handful of silver” he left us--for he had plenty--nor for ”a ribbon to stick in his coat,” for he would not wear one if offered a basketful. It was just indignation, stronger than self-respect.
Not all at once did the desire of control a.s.sume this form. By his natural n.o.bility of nature he inclined to the view that all the supremacy inherent in man is that of superior capacity, to which all men yield spontaneous allegiance.
Some time elapsed before the bent of his mind became apparent. Possibly it was not known to himself.
When a young man, he promoted and maintained two or three journals, in which he also wrote himself, without suggesting to others the pa.s.sion for journalism by which he was possessed. Some years later, when proofs of one of his speeches which a reporter had taken down, and Mr. Cowen had himself corrected, pa.s.sed through my hands, I was struck with the dexterity with which he put a word of fire into a tame sentence, infused colour into a pale-faced expression, and established a pulse in an anaemic one. It was clear that he had the genius of speech in him and was ambitious of distinction in it.
<script>