by John Pearson
Instead, in many ways it seemed as if he was now becoming the dependent one. She was the one who had to reassure him (he seemed so anxious, so unnerved by the processes of procreation), particularly once Herr Professor Dr. von Bülow came on the scene. He was a fashionable women’s specialist, recommended to Richard as “quite the best man in London.” He had apparently studied under the famous Hoche in Munich, and Richard took every word he said as gospel. Generally the fat Prussian doctor merely made Marjorie laugh.
“There is absolutely no cause for alarrrm, Herr Bellamy,” he said in a voice of thunder after his first examination of his patient. “But she is delicate. She is highly strung. She is not what we would call a brood mare. She is, I think, anaemic, and she needs rest and fortifying foods, Herr Bellamy.”
So rest and fortifying foods she had, despite her strong objections. Mrs. Bridges proved a virtuoso of beef tea and calf’s-foot jelly.
“You’ll make me too gross to move,” cried Marjorie. “That’s what old Herr Dr. von Bülow wants. He’s only happy when his women are as fat as he is.”
And she was starting to get big, but Richard liked it. The larger Marjorie got, the more certain he became that she would have a boy.
To make sure she had the rest she needed, he insisted that she have breakfast in bed each morning. She would agree to this only if he was there, and so the habit began of Richard, once he was dressed and shaved, bringing in her breakfast himself. Hudson would take the double tray up to the landing. Richard would carry it in, then eat his breakfast with her on the edge of the bed. Afterwards they’d read the Times together. Marjorie had recently started to enjoy the agony column, and as Richard struggled with the leader page, she would read out items to make him laugh.
“Darling, we must send a contribution to the Royal Sea Bathing Infirmary at Margate for the treatment of scrofula. It says that scrofula’s our national disease.”
“Perhaps they would take your mother.”
“And perhaps you should apply to the Rupture Society. It says here it was founded in 1804 ‘for supplying trusses to the necessitous classes.’ I’m sure you’re necessitous, my love. Oh, and guess who it says the patron is?”
“The Archbishop of Canterbury.”
“Silly—try again.”
“Queen Victoria.”
“Warmer.”
“His Royal Highness …”
“… the Prince of Wales. Well done!”
Richard’s happiness affected his whole life. It was as if he’d reached one of those magic periods when nothing can go wrong—the equivalent of the gambler’s golden run of luck—and for these months he began to lead a charmed existence. As always happens, people began to recognise his luck, and at Westminster he was pointed out as “one of the coming men.”
It was a good moment for a young politician to be “promising.” Gladstone’s government was obviously doomed. Gordon was speared to death that January in Khartoum, and Gladstone’s unpopularity was almost as serious as Dangerfield had predicted. Richard was in the House for the great debate when the censure motion against the government failed by a mere fourteen votes.
From that moment the whole opposition sensed the exciting tang of blood—Gladstone’s blood, his whole ministry’s blood. Carnage was in the air, and Richard knew that once the quarry fell, the pickings would go to those with the confidence and the strength to take them. It was a rare occasion, one of those crucial moments that come perhaps twice in a century, when the whole field of politics is open, when the old are sacrificed and the young and resolute grasp at their opportunities.
Richard was more than ready. Gordon’s death had finally convinced him (not that he needed much convincing) of the “incompetence and moral bankruptcy” (as he put it) of the Liberals. And the outcry in the House had also finally given him a leader, someone whose cause he could believe in and whose personality he could entirely admire.
Even today it is impossible to read the tirades of Randolph Churchill against the Gladstone government without feeling something of the excitement of the time. For Richard the immediate effect of these passionately lucid speeches was electrifying. Richard had no time for Salisbury nor that oligarchy of rich landowners around him who still ruled the Party. (When Joseph Chamberlain the year before had accused great Salisbury of “constituting himself spokesman of a class who toil not, neither do they spin,” Richard had secretly applauded.) But in Randolph there seemed the hope of a different tradition, conservatism that was not simply a rich man’s club but had its roots in Disraeli’s dream of uniting Britain’s “two nations,” the rich and the poor. And under Randolph’s spell, Richard was rapidly becoming one of the new phenomena of English politics—a Tory Democrat.
In many ways it was a shrewd move, for it gave Richard a decisive chance to use his talents. Men of his abilities are rare in any party at the best of times: among the Tories that spring of 1885 he ranked as something of a potential prodigy. He could write. Perhaps he was no Zola, but his political journalism of this period gave him a standing well ahead of his rank as an unknown, and still untried, backbench M.P.
It also gave him money. Not a lot. Certainly nothing like that target of eight thousand pounds a year which he had set himself to gain his independence from the Southwolds. But he had started writing regularly for those influential literary-cum-political journals that abounded at the time—The New Age, The Political Gazette, even The Economist. And since he had a good brain and spoke his mind, he began to be respected.
It was a new and quite intoxicating experience for Richard. He began to be invited out and Marjorie with him. She, whilst suspicious of his views, enjoyed his new success, She also enjoyed the sort of political gossip that became their conversational life’s blood. He in his turn was very proud of her. Pregnancy seemed to suit her. She had lost that slightly waif-like air which she had had before her marriage, and in its place was a stately sort of beauty that naturally attracted attention. In Richard’s eyes she never had been lovelier than now.
He was glad that she made no attempt to hide her pregnancy (it would have been difficult). Instead she seemed to glory in it, wearing loose-fitting long silk dresses and having her hair unfashionably long. Richard called her his “earth mother” and his “fertility goddess,” and there was something goddess-like about her now. Together they made a rather splendid couple. Men made a fuss of her and envied him. Success became them.
One night at Manchester House she found herself talking to Lord Randolph Churchill. He was extremely flattering, as he could be when he wanted to. Then he spoke of Richard just as gracefully. “We are all waiting, Lady Marjorie, for your husband’s maiden speech.”
“And so am I,” she said.
And so was Richard. He knew that it was overdue and that if he was ever to achieve his real ambition as a politician he would need to make his name in debate. His journalism on its own would never be enough. But the idea of speaking secretly appalled him. He felt he was no orator, and the prospect of rising in the House of Commons and risking everything before that critical assembly was a nightmare. He told himself that there was nothing in it to be afraid of, that the standard of debate was lamentably low, that he was cleverer, brighter, better educated than three quarters of the House, but it was still no use. The fearful duty of his maiden speech hung over him like a suspended sentence.
March came, and with it, life at 165 began to change. Marjorie was now beginning her eighth month and Herr Dr. von Bülow ruled that she must stop her social life. This did not worry Richard, who was delighted to spend more evenings with his wife at home. But then something did upset him. Southwold again impinged upon the private world he shared with Marjorie, and in a way that he could not do much about.
The first he knew of it was when he returned one Wednesday evening from the House to find an irate Mrs. Bridges puffing up the stairs with a tray. He asked her why.
“It’s her,” said Mrs. Bridges darkly.
“Who?”
; “Her. Nanny Whatsername. She came this afternoon, and not a word or a by-your-leave. The girls all have their half-day, Alice is sick, but Nanny Whatsername demands her supper. I tell you, sir, some people!” and with a flurry of her outraged rump, the good Mrs. Bridges went on up the stairs. Richard followed her, to be met outside the bedroom door by Marjorie.
“Dearest,” she said a little awkwardly, “I’ve something to confess.”
Richard looked puzzled.
“Nanny’s arrived.”
“Who is this Nanny creature?” he said testily. “Already she seems to have brought our Mrs. Bridges to the brink of mutiny. It really is too much!”
“She’s Nanny Webster. My old nanny. She looked after me and after Hugo, so naturally I want her here for our baby too.”
“You mean she’s come from Southwold?
“But of course.”
“And by arrangement with your mother?”
“Richard, be reasonable!”
And, of course, he was. But he could hardly help feeling resentful of the way the influence of hated Southwold seemed to be infiltrating the most private places in his marriage. And Nanny Webster didn’t help. She was a gaunt, dark-eyed woman with a dominating manner. Since she had nursed and loved Marjorie from babyhood, she still acted just as if she owned her. Like so many of her kind, she seemed to think that fathers were some alien, unfeeling, barely necessary class who were best kept out of things at times like this. From the day that she appeared at 165, Marjorie was firmly taken over.
“Now, Mr. Bellamy, her ladyship must have her rest”—this when he was settling for the after-lunch chat he often had with Marjorie, only to have her hustled off to bed. Or “Surely you realise her ladyship should never drink champagne in her condition.”
It was her manner that annoyed him—as it did the servants, all of whom loathed her. But Nanny Webster knew her rights and used them ruthlessly. Richard could do no more than grumble impotently to Hudson.
“But, sir, just a few weeks, then you can send her packing,” Hudson would say encouragingly.
“That’s just the hell of it—I can’t. Once the baby’s born, she’s here forever.”
“Patience, sir,” Hudson would reply. “Things have a way of working out.”
“Usually for the worse,” Richard said gloomily.
What Richard hated most about the situation was that it cut him off from Marjorie. Just when he’d felt so close to her, so proud of her, so very much in love with her, this dreadful harridan from Southwold had come and thrust herself between them. And there was nothing he could do.
Inevitably he began to stay later at the House. And inevitably too, the question of his maiden speech began pursuing him again. How effortless it seemed, this business of making a speech in a debate! Most of the members could apparently rattle off their speeches in their sleep (and many of them sounded like it too). Yet for him it was a paralysing chore. Part of his trouble was that he felt so much was now expected of him. It had been a mistake to wait so long, and the perfectionist in him made it more difficult still. What should he speak on? Foreign affairs? Finance? The Suez policy? They were all subjects he had views on, and he prepared himself before each big debate. (Dangerfield advised him to learn his first speech off by heart, then practice it before his mirror. This he had done, to Marjorie’s great amusement.) But when the big debates occurred, he either lost his nerve or was not called. Once he had sat on till nearly midnight with his word-perfect speech on Gladstone’s Balkans policy ticking in his head, only to hear Herbert Wilson, the government chief whip, move the adjournment of the house “owing to the lateness of the hour.” Never again!
Then on the twenty-third of March came the big debate on Gladstone’s Irish policy, and the opposition planned a full attack upon the government. Richard had written several pieces recently criticising Gladstone—for his weakness, for the way he seemed to abdicate to force, for his lack of a coherent policy. And on the day before, a note arrived at 165 for Richard Bellamy, M.P.
“Perhaps you would care to speak on the motion for the adjournment?”
It was signed by Elkins, one of the opposition whips. For a backbencher it was a rare honour—and a challenge—to be singled out in this way for a maiden speech. Richard was terrified, but there was no evading this time, and he spent many of the following twenty-four hours polishing, perfecting, memorising what he intended as the great speech of his career.
Perhaps wisely he said nothing now to Marjorie, except to warn her that with the big debate he’d probably be late. It was a great, full-dress occasion. Gladstone spoke magnificently. What an extraordinary performer the old man was! Here he was, harried and reviled by the press and the opposition, just on the edge of losing power, and yet for nearly two hours he held the House of Commons in the palm of his strong old hand. No one could match him—with Disraeli dead—for his combination of lucidity and feeling; not even Randolph Churchill, who spoke after him. Randolph could attack—and did—with sarcasm and wit and extraordinary passion. Richard was reminded of some violent swordsman, lunging again and yet again at the body of the government. Yet somehow Gladstone stayed aloof, untouched by the intensity of feeling, and did so through the rest of the debate. Parnell, O’Donovan and several of the Irish members had their say. So did the opposition’s stars—Chamberlain (distinctly pompous), Bright (restrained), Hatherfield (too legalistic). It was, as Richard realised, a great set-piece of parliamentary history, the like of which he’d never see again, and yet he had the feeling that none of these fine phrases, none of this eloquence would change that rainswept, bitter island where the ricks were burning and the people starving.
Richard had the dreadful task too of attempting to hold on to his own speech as one by one his favourite points got swept away by other speakers. There was no question of his being called to speak until towards the end of the debate, and he stayed gamely on until seven-thirty, when the House began to empty. Then finally he rose, trying to catch the Speaker’s eye. But so did someone else, just ahead of him, a tall, thin, rather languid-looking man recently elected to the House. Richard had not met him but knew him as young Arthur Balfour, Salisbury’s nephew. He and not Richard was called to speak.
The next fifteen minutes were among the most excruciating in Richard’s life, as one by one young Arthur Balfour made the points that Richard had prepared. It was uncanny, like some exercise in thought transference: the need for firmness and for justice, Ireland’s economic ills, the doubts he had about the Irish members. And to make it worse, Balfour spoke with an extraordinary elegance and ease, which Richard knew quite well he could not hope to equal.
So he sat listening—hopeless and rather envious—as this gilded youth spoke on, then sat to a chorus of “hear-hears.” There was silence then, as more members anxious for their dinner left the chamber. And then, to his alarm, Richard saw that the Speaker was looking straight at him and nodding. Flustered, Richard half rose as he heard the Speaker calling the name of his constituency. The moment he had dreaded and dreamed about had come, and with a vacuum in his head, he was on his feet.
He never forgot those next few seconds as he stood mute and mindless in the House of Commons, trying to find the words he needed. That telling opening and those Gibbonesque phrases he had labouriously prepared had gone, and he stood tongue-tied, horribly aware of members watching and of the Speaker’s eye (like a brown glass marble) fixed on him from beneath the long grey wig.
He faltered. Then suddenly, just ahead of him, he caught sight of the small fiery figure with the bulging eyes and enormous black moustache. Randolph Churchill was watching him and nodding towards him.
Somehow this was all Richard needed. Somewhere in the recesses of his brain he found a phrase that he had written recently on the Sinn Fein terrorists—“these murderous men who feel that they can make their way with bomb and bludgeon …” It was enough, the opening he needed, and the remainder of his speech came almost automatically. It was not a polished speech l
ike Arthur Balfour’s but it somehow caught the mood of ordinary people who were appalled and sickened by the Irish violence. Once he had started, Richard had the feeling that the House was with him: no one else left for dinner and he enjoyed the silence that a speaker gets only when everyone is waiting for each succeeding phrase. He didn’t speak for long, but when he sat the “hear-hears” were as loud as Balfour’s.
There is a tradition in the House of indulgence and politeness for a maiden speech. Richard enjoyed it, and stayed long enough to hear the next speaker praise the “wisdom and sagacity, unusual in a maiden speech” of “the honourable member who preceded me.” It was all he wanted, and he left the chamber.
As he passed the opposition lobby, somebody stopped him.
“Well done, Bellamy, well done! You’ve finally pulled it off! Feeling better? We’ll be hearing more from you.”
There was a nod, a smile from those strange protuberant eyes, and the black moustache was gone before Richard could so much as stammer out his thanks.
This was a moment of pure triumph which Richard remembered all his life. It was a fine spring night, and as he walked out into Palace Yard the sky was clear, the moon above the river.
“Cab, Mr. Bellamy?” inquired the policeman at the gate.
For just that moment Richard felt like telling the policeman that he had made his maiden speech and been praised by Randolph Churchill. Instead he said, “No thank you, officer. I’ll walk.”