Part 4 (2/2)

On the night on which Disraeli's governave the House of Commons a last proof of his unconquerable ”cheek and pluck” The Marquis of Hartington had delivered a speech which everybody knew to have sealed the fate of the party in power, but the great Jew statesman rose up imperturbable and audacious to the last ”There is, sir,” he said in that veiled voice of his which sounded as if it were struggling through dense fog and could indeed only have been hout the chamber by a trained master in elocution--”there is in war a manoeuvre which is well known First the cavalry advance creating dust and waving sabres, then a rattle of uns are brought into play, and when the dust and smoke have cleared away the force which has created it is found to have removed to a considerable distance Thisof a retreat and this manoeuvre has been executed with an ad” He knew, of course, that he was beaten, he knew that in an hour's time the reins of Government would have passed from his own hands to those of his rival, but he took defeat with his own sardonic gaiety andbreath

I had a curious little instance of this indo when the House had risen after sunrise and I overtook him on his way to his official residence The street was e stick and clasping his left hand on the s in severe pain He heard my footstep behind hilance had crossed my face a score of times and he could not fail to have known at least that he was known to me At the second at which he becaht and stepped out with the assured gait of a th He twirled his walking stick quite gaily and he maintained that attitude until I had passed him by I had not the heart to look back afterwards I saw hi writing in raenius of the _Daily News_, instructingthere, I received instructions to repair at once to the House of Lords and there, no other journalist being present, I witnessed the formal installation of Lord Beaconsfield There were four peers present in their robes of scarlet and ermine and their beaver bonnets and the Lord Chancellor was seated on the woolsack An attendant brought a scarlet cloak, and a very shabby and faded garment it was indeed, and adjusted it about the shoulders of the neophyte The second attendant handed to him a black beaver which he assumed, then he was led in a sort of solemn dance to the four quarters of the House, at each of which he made an obeisance Finally he was conducted to the Lord Chancellor and the ceremony came to an end Everybody supposed that Disraeli's career had come to an end also, and Iat the time a weekly set of verses for _Mayfair_, a sixpenny Society journal long since defunct, and in the next issue of that journal I took Mr Disraeli's formal installation for my theme I remember two verses which may perhaps be allowed to serve as an expression of the almost universal opinion of the time, an opinion which everybody now _knows_ to have been contradicted in the s of the next four years I wrote:--

”Sitting last Thursday in the House of Peers, A little ere the hour of five I saw The Muse of History weeping stony tears Above the picture I'm about to draw

The saddest spectacle the place has known Since Barry planned its first foundation stone

”Tired with the weight of triurave for fa To this dirieving few He read his own brief burial service through”

The House of Lords had proved a grave for so many brilliant reputations which had been built up in the Lower Chaeneral prophecy,to be surprised at; Mr Punch's cartoon of Lord John Russell's entry into the House of Peers is not forgotten Theby Lord Brougham si, ”You'll find it very cold up here, Johnnie”

I was in the House also when Mr Biggar introduced the great parliaar would take the first half-dozen blue books he cain to read aloud whenever any new measure of which he disapproved was about to be introduced At half-past two he would begin to read, and continue, oblivious of the passing of the hours, until the time after which no new measure could be introduced Sir Wilfrid Lawson, in his characteristic way, ”wanted to know if the honto himself for sixty minutes at a stretch?” Mr Speaker, who at that time was Mr Brand, rolled out the instruction that ”the honourable ar forthwith put three blue books under each arlass of water said, ”I will come a little nearer, Mr Speaker,” and came Mr Speaker told him on one of these occasions, ”So far as I can understand the line you are taking, I do not see how these matters are related” ”I will establish the connection by and by, sir,” replied Mr Biggar This art of ”stonewalling” was practised in the House for a number of years until at last the rules were so altered as to make it impossible It was remarkable how quickly a member found his level in the House If he started with the idea that he would ”boss” the House he would quickly find that the House ”bossed” hiht make one speech in the House It was an iht in a passion was a person to be listened to I heard hiham just after his appointment to the Presidency of the Board of Trade A Conservative banker opposed his re-election, and Bright was veryopposed When he came on the Town Hall platform, that horse-shoe in the forehead, of which Sir Walter Scott speaks as beco out scarlet He plunged into his speech at once He did not say ”Ladies and gentle of the kind

”I call it a piece of ie of political history that here in this home of freedom, and now at this hour when the fetters you have worn for a lifetime are but newly smitten fro, and the sound of their clanking is yet in your ears, that a Tory should come forward and ask your permission--to do what?--to rivet those fetters anew upon you Will you give hiht thousand people answered ”No,” which sealed the doom of the banker

Robert Lowe afforded one of themade a fine reputation in the House of Commons, failed to sustain it in the House of Lords I did not myself witness the scene of his discomfiture, but I had the story of it at first hand within ten entlehted that he could read only when his eyes ithin one or two inches of the page

He had prepared himself with a sheaf of notes for his first address to the Upper House; he had contrived in the nervousness natural to the occasion to e them, he sat down discomfited, and he appears to have accepted that one disaster as final

In the Coood personal reason to re effort His speech had relation to an Army Reform Bill, and it was a mosaic of the aptest and most wittily applied literary quotations It was of so fine a literary quality that I veryhis hearers ere able fully to appreciate its excellence

Those who could follow his allusions were delighted beyond hed and cheered uproariously at s it did not understand Mr Gladstone acted as a sort of fugle chuckle at soilian or Homeric phrase was a cue which was instantly seized upon

Loas always a terror to the reporters, for he spoke at a pace which no stenographer's or phonographer's pen could follow, but it was not merely the speed of his utterance whichof a sentence, and would stammer over it until the reporter was half ith expectancy, and then he would be away at racing pace, gabbling at the rate of three or four hundred words a ht the Speaker's eye on this particular evening, and the chief of the staff, who sat next to ent whisper, ”We want the fullest possible note of this” I suffered a twenty ony I believe that for -shop, I was credited with having been one of the lamest shorthand writers who ever sat there, and in my anxiety and with the certainty of failure before itation that my hand perspired so that my pencil would not mark a line upon the paper I threw it down in despair and stared upward at the painted ceiling, listening for all I orth, and determined to rely upon as then a really pheno?” my chief whispered to ave a moan and went to work feverishly at a supplereat burst of cheers, just as my relief tapped me on the shoulder, and I walked away to coallery reporters as a transcribing roo the corridor that nominious close

Near the door of the committee room I encountered old Jack O'Hanlon, one of the veterans of the gallery and reputed the best classic in all Westminster His note-book was tucked in his arhtedly ”That's parliamentary eloquence, if you like,”

he said as I ca loike that been heard in the House of Commons these thirty years There's hardly a scholar in the classics left in the House” We sat down side by side, and e had been at work in silence for a minute or two, the old scholar turned to me and asked, ”Did you happen to catch that phrase of Saave it to him without difficulty and then an inspiration occurred to ue had plundered Father Prout and the prophet Malachi, dickens and Ingoldsby, Pope and Smollett and Defoe, and as it chanced he had lish which did not recall soain If O'Hanlon would give an darkness, I would give hilish hich he was less well-acquainted We exchanged notes and between us we turned out an excellent if a somewhat compressed and truncated report I felt that I was saved, and on the following , I made an anxious survey of the work of my rivals O'Hanlon represented _The Advertiser_, and I found that the report of a bigof the Licensed Victuallers'

association which had been held somewhere in the provinces had swaraph and as for the other journals--_The Tiraph_ and _The Standard_--they were all hopelessly at sea There was but one report of that a discourse which was even distantly worthy of it, and that was in _The Daily News_

I received a special letter of congratulation from Mr J R Robinson who, to the day of his death, persisted in regarding me as a classical scholar of exceptional acquire him or I would certainly have taken it, but I have since been content to regard this as an example of the haphazard way in which reputations are sometimes made I learned, allery as the man who took a note of theat the painted ceiling

It was surprising to notice to what heights party feeling ran aallery When Mr Gladstone came into power, hundreds of st the supporters of the Opposition, and in the little Tabagie at the foot of the gallery stairs in which most of our spare hours were spent, there were heated discussions in which his eloquence, his financial capacity and his scholarshi+p were all decried I reraph_ staff walked into the room with the announceain,” and a general groan went round I was, and have never ceased to be, an ardent adenius, and I used constantly to chafe at his belittling by little men, but I never found a real opportunity for the expression of my own opinion until one day when I was sent down to report the annual outing of the Co up with a very substantial dinner and a drive back to London in a string of open brakes There was a basket of chane aboard the brake in which I found a seat, and it turned out that nobody in the whole asse which could be utilised as a chaentle off the necks of the bottles, and before ere half-way horeat contentment and joviality There was a rather noisy discussion about politics and, with one exception, my companions were all fierce opponents of Gladstone I fired at last--I daresay the cha to do with it--and I ventured to tell those gentle about beneath the instep of a greatan architectural survey of the man

”You will have,” I said, ”to travel to a telescopic distance before you will be able to realise his proportions,” and there I burst into quotation:

”Every age, Through being beheld too close, is ill-discerned By those who have not lived past it; we'll suppose Mount Athos carved, as Persian Xerxes sche brushwood in his ear, Had guessed as little of any huoats

They'd have, in fact, to travel ten iant broke on them, Full hu rhyth with the blood of suns; Grand torso,--hand, that flung perpetually The largesse of a silver river down To all the country pastures 'Tis even thus With tireat To be apprehended near”

I supposed that even if the quotation were not recognised, everybody would at least know that it was a quotation, and that it could not conceivably have been an impromptu, but one man turned on another and said: ”By Jove! that's eloquence,” and a gentleman at the rear of the brake asked me out of the darkness why I didn't make a try for Parliament, and assured me that I had a future there before me

CHAPTER IX

The Russo-Turkish War--Constantinople--His Friend the Enee of Non- Combatants--Father Stick--Turkish Economy--Memories of Constantinople