XIIIPOLITICAL HISTORY
The majority of intelligent men and a considerable number of intelligent women enjoy reading authoritative and well-written books on political history. I recommend to them the political history of Great Britain and Ireland during the last fifty years. I do not know of any country or period—anyhow, since the French Revolution in 1789—that affords so much interesting material for serious consideration. And this for two reasons.
First, I do not believe there has ever been a country or an epoch when so many distinguished men played so prominent parts in politics.
Second, I do not know of any time or place where we have so much definite, precise and intimate information supplied with so much detail by the leading actors themselves.
Consider the following list of statesmen: Gladstone, Disraeli, Bright, Parnell, Morley, Bryce, Campbell-Bannerman, Chamberlain, Balfour, Salisbury, Roseberry, Asquith, McCarthy,Healy, O’Connor, Lloyd George, Haldane, Grey, Birrell, Baldwin, MacDonald, Churchill.
Nearly all of these men had a first-class education, were deeply read in the best literature, and many of them were authorities in some field of learning outside their profession as statesmen. It is doubtful if any period of history can show a group of politicians equal in intellectual culture and in high character to these.
Furthermore, to obtain intimate knowledge of the “inside politics” of the last fifty years, we have Morley’s monumental life of Gladstone, Morley’s ownRecollectionsandMemorandum, many Lives of Disraeli and Bright, T. P. O’Connor’sMemoirs of an Old Parliamentarian, J. A. Spender’sLife of Campbell-Bannermanand hisThe Public Life, Asquith’sMemories and Reflections, Churchill’sThe World Crisis, Swift MacNeill’sWhat I Have Seen and Heard, Haldane’sAutobiography, Memoirs by Tim Healy, Memoirs by Lord Grey, and many other works.
The history of Charles Stewart Parnell is one of the most thrillingly dramatic and romantic that can be found in either biography or legend. His practical ability as a statesman is summed up in a sentence in theDictionary of National Biography.
“His influence on the course of English and Irish history may be estimated by the fact that when he entered public life home-rule for Ireland was viewed by English politicians as a wild impracticable dream, while within 11 years he had induced a majority of one of the two great English political parties to treat it as an urgent necessity.”
Without meaning anything derogatory to his character as a public man, the portraits of Parnell, his attitude of command, and the methods by which he controlled his party have always brought to my mind the romantic pirate of melodrama. His bearded impassive face, the greatest “poker face” political history has ever known, his quiet tones, his utterly mysterious personality, his glacial manner, his iron resolution, his rule of his party, every member of which had to sign a pledge of absolute loyalty before he could be elected to Parliament, his intolerance of any partner in leadership, all combined to make him a romantically grim figure, hated and dreaded by his foes, dreaded and idolised by his followers.
They knew he alone could and would lead them to victory; and then, when the ten years in which he emerged from obscurity to dazzling eminence were over, and victory was in his grasp, he and his party went down to ruin through hisinfatuation for one woman, and in less than a year he was in his grave.
For he was drunk with power as well as with love; had he temporarily withdrawn from leadership, his party would have gone on to triumph, and within a very short period he would undoubtedly have been called back to the throne. But the absolute power he had enjoyed for years made him insensible to the rules of the game of life.
In September 1890, I saw Gladstone. He was eighty years old, full of confidence and vitality, for his partnership with Parnell, which had lost the election in 1886, was now the means of triumph, and it was a certainty that he would soon be in a position to make the dream of Home Rule a reality. But in November, in less than two months, the divorce suit brought by Captain O’Shea, in which Parnell was correspondent, and the terrible scenes in December in Committee Room No. 15 where Parnell tried in vain to maintain his rule over his party, changed the whole face of things.
After Gladstone brought in his Home Rule Bill in 1886, politics became violent. The Grand Old Man was hissed in London drawing-rooms. I remember talking in 1880 with that most extreme of Tories, Professor Mahaffy ofthe University of Dublin. I thought it strange that differences in political opinion should ruin personal friendship. “Why,” said Mahaffy excitedly, “Gladstone and I have been intimate friends for many years. If I met him on the street now, I would cut him dead.”
Then I asked him about Parnell, and he said contemptuously that Parnell’s relations with women were scandalous. But I think he was repeating the mere gossip of hatred; I do not think he knew anything about Mrs. O’Shea, and that he was as much surprised as anyone else when the truth came out the very next year.
Parnell was a great man. As the years pass, he will become more and more a legendary figure, and there will probably be dozens of biographies written about him. Already St. John Ervine, a man of Belfast who used to hate Parnell, has written a glowing, adulatory Life. I think we probably come nearest to the real Parnell in T. P. O’Connor’sMemoirs.
Those were the great days in Parliament. Listen to “T. P.” on Gladstone.
“The most remarkable thing in the appearance of Gladstone was his extraordinary eyes; they were large, black, and flashing; sometimes there came into them a look that was almost wild.... The blackness and the brightness ofhis eyes were brought into greater relief by the almost deadly pallor of his complexion.... As he walked up the floor of the House he seemed to be enveloped by a great solitude, so unmistakably did he stand out from all the figures around him.
I must add to this description of his extreme physical gifts the wonderful quality of his voice. It was a powerful voice, but sweet and melodious, and it was managed as exquisitely and as faithfully as the song of a great prima donna. If the speech were ringing, it came to your ears almost soft by that constant change of tone which the voice displayed; it could whisper, it could thunder.... I have seen many great figures, but, with all respect to the greatest among them, the House of Commons without Gladstone seems to me as great a contrast as a chamber illumined by a farthing dip when the electric light has failed.”