by Frank Harris
"That must cause you some regret," I said, "seeing that it was such a success: even Rothschild's must think a million worth putting in their pockets."
"I don't look at it quite in that way," retorted Lord Rothschild. "I go to the House every morning and when I say 'No' to every scheme and enterprise submitted to me, I return home at night carefree and contented. But when I agree to any proposal, I am immediately filled with anxiety. To say 'Yes' is like putting your finger in a machine: the whirring wheels may drag your whole body in after the finger."
"Goodness gracious," I cried, "I never thought of looking at it from that point of view." The great financier seemed to me extra cautious, rather than clever, but he had clever people about him, strange to say, and notably Carl Meyer, whom I shall tell about in a later volume.
Talking of Lord Rothschild with Dilke later, I found that he agreed with me in my estimate of the gentleman. "When you get to the top of life's pyramid," he said, "caution becomes a virtue, and you have no idea how broad the foundation is laid. The Baron one day took me over the great banking house and showed me in the strong room a million sterling, in sovereigns, that had been put there by his grandfather with the injunction that his father should never touch it, except in case of great emergency. "Wouldn't a draft on the Bank of England," said the son, "be just as good and bring us in thirty thousand a year interest?"
"No," said the grandfather, "there are moments when you need gold if it were for nothing but to give you the sense of security."
I heard later a story of William Waldorf Astor which bore out the same lesson. I shall probably tell it in my next volume.
CHAPTER XXII
Lord Randolph Churchill
A great deal has been written about Lord Randolph Churchill by those like Sir Henry Lucy, who met everyone and knew no one. And Randolph Churchill was not easy to know. The mere outward facts about him and his career have been set forth by his son in two stout volumes, an admirable official Victorian biography distinguished by the remarkable fairness used to explain every incident in his political career, a politician writing of a politician. But of the man himself, his powers, his failing and his quiddities, hardly a soul-revealing word; yet Winston might, nay, probably would have written a real life, had not Randolph been his father, and had he not had his own political career to consider. However, it must be confessed that the sympathy between father and son was very slight. Winston told me once that time and again when he tried to talk seriously on politics, or indeed on anything else, his father snubbed him pitilessly. "He wouldn't listen to me or consider anything I said. There was no companionship with him possible to me and I tried so hard and so often. He was so self-centred no one else existed for him. My mother was everything to me."
So remarkable a personality was Lord Randolph Churchill and such a whispering gallery and sounding board at the same time is London society that it would be almost possible to paint him in his habit as he lived by a series of true anecdotes. Winston enlivened his pages with a couple.
Everyone will remember how as a mere youth Randolph "scored" off Tom Duffield, the Master of the Old Berkshire hounds. In the winter of 1868, when Randolph was not yet twenty years old, he had the ill luck one day to ride very close to the hounds and got himself violently scolded by the irascible old Master: he went off the field at once without replying. But at a hunt dinner shortly afterwards, when he was made chairman by his mother, who was always putting him forward, he was called on to propose the toast of fox hunting, and Mr. Duffield was to respond. Randolph began by declaring himself an enthusiast for all forms of sport. "Fox hunting first, but I've often had good sport after hares. So keen am I that if I can't get fox hunting or hare hunting, I'll go with terriers after rats in a barn; and if I can't get that," he added, pausing, "why, rather than dawdle about indoors, I'd go out with Tom Duffield and the Old Berkshire." A pause of consternation while everybody wondered what would happen; but it was Tom Duffield himself who burst into a peal of good-natured laughter and made of the story a classic.
For years and years, indeed from his entrance into the House till 1886, it was Randolph's courage chiefly that commended him to the House of Commons.
It may have been mainly aristocratic morgue, but Englishmen liked it none the less on that account.
It is usual for the extremists in a reform party to criticize their more conventional leaders, but this procedure is very unusual among Conservatives. From the beginning Lord Randolph showed this audacity, with a contempt, too, for titular authority that would have been marked, even in a Radical. In 1878 he attacked a Minister, ponderous Sclater-Booth, in a way that rejoiced the House.
"I don't object," he said, "to the Head of the Local Government Board dealing with such grave questions as the salaries of inspectors of nuisances. But I have the strongest possible objection to his coming down here with all the appearance of a great lawgiver to repair, according to his small ideas and in his little way, breaches in the British Constitution." And then the witty sneer that set the House roaring: "Strange," he went on, as if speaking to himself,
"strange, how often we find mediocrity dowered with a double-barreled name!"
Sclater-Booth's harmless little bill introduced the elective principle timidly into County Government. Randolph attacked it as of "brummagem-make," a "most Radical measure, a crowning desertion of Tory principles, a supreme violation of political honesty." Everyone went out of the House comparing this with Disraeli's famous attacks on Peel.
A little later Randolph spoke on Irish education in the most liberal and pro- Irish spirit. Thanks to the years he had passed in Dublin when his father was Viceroy, he knew Ireland and Irish matters better than almost any English politician and so established his reputation for brains as well as audacity. The House always filled to hear him, even more than for any Minister. In spite of the fact that he was still a bad speaker, now too loud, now too low, always dependent on his notes and frequently at a standstill, confused by their volume, he was the greatest attraction in the Chamber; and in the beginning of the Parliament of 1880 the Bradlaugh incident gave him his first real opportunity. He changed his seat to the corner seat below the gangway and at once made himself the head of the new group composed of Drummond Wolff, Gorst and Arthur Balfour, which he himself christened the "Fourth Party," as Winston relates. For the next seven years Randolph Churchill was incontestably the most sensational figure in the House of Commons, and long before the defeat of Gladstone's government he was recognized as the ablest Conservative in the Chamber. The House of Commons has a very strong schoolboy element in it, and Gladstone's defeat was symbolized to everyone by the fact that hardly were the division figures given to the Opposition Whip, when Randolph jumped up on his corner seat and started all the cheering!
Naturally, he became Leader of the House and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Conservative Ministry of Lord Salisbury, and here another trait showed itself, his gratitude. Randolph took care that all supporters should be rewarded: Wolff was made a privy counsellor and Gorst an un-der-secretary of state: honor to the Jew and a salary to the needy.
I remember, after I had got to know and like Lord Randolph, lunching on Sunday at Mrs. Jeune's when he was at the same table. Almost before lunch was finished, Lord Randolph got up and excused himself with "urgent business" and left the room, followed closely by the Conservative Whip. In a few moments, to our astonishment, this gentleman, Winn, if my memory serves me truly, returned, pale as a ghost and evidently too angry to choose his words. When Mrs. Jeune pleasantly asked him, "Has anything happened," he replied, "A piece of brutal rudeness entirely unprovoked. Yesterday Randolph came to me and said he wanted half an hour's talk. I had to tell him I was too busy then. He asked me to meet him here today, said he'd leave early, begged me to follow his example and we might have half an hour's quiet talk. A little against my habit, I consented; you saw how I followed him; in the hall I asked him, 'Where shall we go for our talk?' He cried, 'Can one never get rid of you and yo
ur talks!' and flung out of the house. I was never so insulted in my life!" The poor gentleman seemed almost unable to get over the shock to his dignity; we all commiserated with him while secretly diverted by Randolph's rudeness.
But no one who wishes to win in English political life, not even a Duke's son, can afford to be habitually rude, and especially not to a Whip of his own party. When a day or two later I mentioned the fact to Lord Randolph, he merely grinned. "I had forgotten," he said, "that I asked him to follow me, but he's rather a fool." Still, men intent on gaining and keeping power should learn "to suffer fools gladly," as St. Paul knew.
Another story here that should have found a place before his triumph. He dined with me one night-if I remember rightly, at the short-lived Amphitryon Club-and afterwards he took me with him to a meeting at Paddington, where he was 'billed' to speak. The dinner had been excellent and the Perrier-Jouet of 1875 was, I think, about the best champagne I ever drank. We had a magnum, and for the first and last time in my knowledge of him, Randolph showed himself a little excited, or perhaps I should say, reckless. At any rate, I had never heard him speak so well: in his own constituency, with none but friends and admirers about him, he spoke without notes. Usually he wrote out his speeches and learned them by heart and even then depended on notes for the sequence of subjects and special phrases. This night he talked extemporaneously, and to my astonishment adapted without knowing it a thought in the second part of Goethe's Faust to the condition of English politics at that moment. He began by predicting that a general election was at hand, and "which party will win in it, is the question of questions. The Liberals and Mr. Gladstone are very confident; they know that the working classes hold the balance of power; and the Liberal bourgeoisie think they are nearer the workmen than the aristocratic Conservatives can possibly be. But my feeling is that this earl or that marquis is much more in sympathy with the working man than the greedy nonconformist butcher or baker or candlestick maker. I want you to seize my point because it explains what I have always meant when I spoke of myself as a Tory-democrat. The best class and the lowest class in England come together naturally: they like and esteem each other; they are not greasy hypocrites talking of morality and frequenting the Sunday school while sanding the sugar; they are united in England in the bonds of a frank immorality."
Naturally I led the cheering, which, however, was curiously feeble and soon died away into half-hearted laughter and much shamefaced grinning. In the pause that followed I looked over the side of the platform to the reporters' table: everyone had dropped his pen or pencil and was waiting for the rest of the speech. Randolph spoke for some time longer and, I thought, with effort, as if to efface the impression of his great and true word.
When we were driving away, he asked me whether he had said anything very dreadful. I sought to reassure him. "The best thing I ever heard or ever expect to hear on an English platform," I said, and I told him what he had said.
At once he took fright. "It's all that d… d champagne," he cried, "but we must see that the phrase doesn't get into The Times so that it can be dexterously contradicted or perhaps smothered. You'll help me, won't you?"
Of course I consented, but assured him that the reporters hadn't taken down the phrase. He laughed, but insisted on making assurance doubly sure, so we drove first to The Times office; and as good luck would have it, I found Arthur Walter there, who, after hearing everything, sent to the composing room for a "pull" of the report, and to my amusement, the great phrase had been carefully omitted. Next morning I went through all the newspapers: not a single one had thought the truth worth recording. This phrase is still to me the high-water mark of Randolph Churchill's intelligence.
Either a little before or a short time after this occurrence, I was dreadfully disappointed in him. The channel-tunnel scheme had been set on foot and at once I took fire for the idea. A little earlier I had been astonished by the extraordinarily rapid growth both of Antwerp and Hamburg as ports, and I had found out that this was due partly to the fact that freights brought to any British port had to "break cargo" and be transhipped again because there was no channel tunnel which would have allowed trains to run right through to the continent. I made a special study of the question and came to the conclusion that if a tunnel were running, the port of London would soon be once more the first in the world. I couldn't but believe that English common sense would insist on the enterprise being carried out with the briefest possible delay. And there was big money in the gamble. Accordingly, I went to work with pen and word of mouth to convince the English public of its plain self-interest. In ten minutes' talking I persuaded Lord Randolph Churchill, and encouraged by my warm praise of him as a "pioneer," he declared that he would not only vote for the project, but speak for it to boot.
On hearing this I felt sure of victory. To cut a long story short, when the debate came on, a new thought entered Randolph Churchill's brain. With a great deal of humor he pictured an English official, the secretary of state for home affairs, hearing that five thousand French troops had seized the tunnel and were coming through to Dover. Ought he or ought he not to blow them all up?
"For one," summed up Lord Randolph, "I prefer security to the doubt." The whole picture was idiotic. As I had pointed out to Randolph, no French troops would take such a desperate risk; both ends of the tunnel could be raised above water level, so that they could be easily blown to pieces by a mere gunboat. No general would send troops through such a defile, and if he did, ten to one they'd all have to surrender the next day. But the parliamentary triumph was all Randolph cared for and the whole thing gave me the measure of his insularity. But why, after all, should I blame him, when now, forty years later, the channel tunnel scheme has just been vetoed again by five prime ministers considering the whole question in cold blood, now that airplanes have dropped bombs in London and played havoc with the protection given to England by the sea. At the very moment of writing this, too, I find Winston Churchill defending the construction of a channel tunnel with the very arguments I had used to persuade his father a generation ago.
At the moment I was wretchedly disappointed, for I had been fool enough to say that Randolph Churchill would defend the scheme, whereas it was he who damned it altogether. He had made a fool of me and merely grinned when I told him how I had come to grief through believing in his word: from that time on my faith in him was shaken.
He knew more about Ireland, as I have said, than any English member or minister I had come across, and when over the Home Rule Bill of Gladstone he started the slogan, "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right," I was paralyzed with horror, for I understand the demoniac cleverness of the vile appeal and realized some of the evil consequences. I could not but remonstrate with him. "You are fighting for today," I said, "but tomorrow, with or without Gladstone, Irish Home Rule will come into being and you'll look like Mrs. Partington."
"Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof" was his cynical answer. He was always the fighting politician out to win personal victories, careless of the evil seed he flung broadcast, with absolutely no vision of an ideal future. I was forced to see that my hopes of him were ill-founded.
We were both at Wadhurst once, the Murietta's place in Sussex, where Madame de Sainturce dispensed a most gracious hospitality. Sir William Gordon Gumming, I remember, was one of the party, the Sir William who at that time was supposed to be a bosom friend of Prince Edward and gave himself considerable airs because of the royal support. The second day Randolph asked me to come with him to a private room for a talk: he knew that I knew Parnell and Mrs. O'Shea, and he wanted to find out whether it was true that Parnell disguised himself to visit Kitty, and whether that was the explanation of his astonishing changes in appearance. Sometimes Parnell would appear in the House of Commons with a full beard; a week later it was shaved off; now he wore his hair down on his shoulders; next week it was cropped close; and again the top of his head was clean-shaven, as if he had been playing priest.
"What d
id it all mean?" Randolph wanted to know. I told him the truth as I saw it, that Parnell was one of the strangest human beings I had ever met. He was constantly visiting Mrs. O'Shea in disguise, whether to escape notice or merely because he was superstitious I could never quite determine; thirteen terrified him; he counted the paving stones, and if nine brought him with his right foot to the threshold, he walked in happily; I have known him to walk around for half an hour till a lucky number freed him from fear. To my astonishment, Randolph nodded his head, "I can understand that." I could only stare at him in blank wonder.
While we were talking the door opened and Lady Randolph appeared.
Naturally, I got up as she called out, "Randolph," but he sat still. In spite of his ominous silence, she came across to him, "Randolph, I want to talk to you!"
"Don't you see," he retorted, "that I've come here to be undisturbed?"
"But I want you," she repeated tactlessly.
He sprang to his feet. "Can't I have a moment's peace from you anywhere?" he barked. "Get out and leave me alone!" At once she turned and walked out of the room.
"You ought not to have done that, for my sake," I said.
"Why not?" he cried. "What has it to do with you?"
"Your wife will always hate me," I replied, "for having been the witness of her humiliation. You, she may forgive; me, never."
He laughed like a schoolboy. "Those are the astonishing things in you," he said. "You have an uncanny flair for character and life; but never mind: I'll say you were angry with me for my rudeness and that will make it all right!"
"Say nothing," I retorted. "Let us hope that she may forget the incident, though that's not likely. Ever afterwards Lady Randolph missed no opportunity of showing me that she disliked me cordially. I remember some years later how she got into the express train for the south in Paris and coolly annexed an old man's seat. I spent ten minutes explaining who she was and pacifying the old Frenchman, but she scarcely took the trouble to thank me.