Prime Ministers And Some Others - free ebook by George William Erskine Russell

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Prime Ministers And Some Others

George William Erskine Russell

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PRIME MINISTERS AND SOME OTHERS

PRIME MINISTERS AND SOME OTHERS

A BOOK OF REMINISCENCES BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL TO THE EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON, K.G., I INSCRIBE THIS BOOK, NOT SHARING HIS OPINIONS BUT PRIZING HIS FRIENDSHIP NOTE My cordial thanks for leave to reproduce papers already published are due to my friend Mr. John Murray, and to the Editors of the Cornhill Magazine , the Spectator , the Daily News , the Manchester Guardian , the Church Family Newspaper , and the Red Triangle . G. W. E. R. July , 1918. I.—PRIME MINIST

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I

I

LORD PALMERSTON I remember ten Prime Ministers, and I know an eleventh. Some have passed beyond earshot of our criticism; but some remain, pale and ineffectual ghosts of former greatness, yet still touched by that human infirmity which prefers praise to blame. It will behove me to walk warily when I reach the present day; but, in dealing with figures which are already historical, one's judgments may be comparatively untrammelled. I trace my paternal ancestry direct to a Russell who entered the H

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II

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LORD RUSSELL Lord John Russell was born in 1792, and became Prime Minister for the first time in 1846. Soon after, Queen Victoria, naturally interested in the oncoming generation of statesmen, said to the Premier, "Pray tell me, Lord John, whom do you consider the most promising young man in your party?" After due consideration Lord John replied, "George Byng, ma'am," signifying thereby a youth who eventually became the third Earl of Strafford. In 1865 Lord John, who in the meantime had been cre

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III

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LORD DERBY My opportunities of observing Lord Derby at close quarters, were comparatively scanty. When, in June, 1866, he kissed hands as Prime Minister for the third time, I was a boy of thirteen, and I was only sixteen when he died. I had known Lord Palmerston in the House of Commons and Lord Russell in private life; but my infant footsteps were seldom guided towards the House of Lords, and it was only there that "the Rupert of debate" could at that time be heard. The Whigs, among whom I was r

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IV

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BENJAMIN DISRAEI I always count it among the happy accidents of my life that I happened to be in London during the summer of 1867. I was going to Harrow in the following September, and for the next five years my chance of hearing Parliamentary debates was small. In the summer of 1866, when the Russell-Gladstone Reform Bill was thrown out, I was in the country, and therefore I had missed the excitement caused by the demolition of the Hyde Park railings, the tears of the terrified Home Secretary,

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V

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WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE Most people remember Gladstone as an old man. He reached the summit of his career when he had just struck seventy. After Easter, 1880, when he dethroned Lord Beaconsfield and formed his second Administration, the eighteen years of life that remained to him added nothing to his fame, and even in some respects detracted from it. Gradually he passed into the stage which was indicated by Labouchere's nickname of "The Grand Old Man"; and he enjoyed the homage which rightly att

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VI

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LORD SALISBURY This set of sketches is not intended for a continuous narrative, but for a series of impressions. I must therefore condense the events of Disraeli's second Administration (during which he became Lord Beaconsfield) and of Gladstone's Administration which succeeded it, hurrying to meet Lord Salisbury, whom so far I have not attempted to describe. From February, 1874, to May, 1880, Disraeli was not only in office, but, for the first time, in power; for whereas in his first Administra

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VII

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LORD ROSEBERY It was in December, 1885, that the present Lord Gladstone; in conjunction with the late Sir Wemyss Reid, sent up "the Hawarden Kite." After a lapse of thirty-two years, that strange creature is still flapping about in a stormy sky; and in the process of time it has become a familiar, if not an attractive, object. But the history of its earlier gyrations must be briefly recalled. The General Election of 1885 had just ended in a tie, the Liberals being exactly equal to the combined T

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VIII

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AUTHUR JAMES BALFOUR When Lord Rosebery brought his brief Administration to an end, Lord Salisbury became Prime Minister for the last time. His physical energy was no longer what it once had been, and the heaviest of all bereavements, which befell him in 1899, made the burden of office increasingly irksome. He retired in 1902, and was succeeded by his nephew, Mr. A. J. Balfour, The Administration formed in 1895 had borne some resemblance to a family party, and had thereby invited ridicule—even,

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IX

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HENRY CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN "He put his country first, his party next, and himself last." This, the noblest eulogy which can be pronounced upon a politician, was strikingly applicable to my old and honoured friend whose name stands at the head of this page. And yet, when applied to him, it might require a certain modification, for, in his view, the interests of his country and the interests of his party were almost synonymous terms—so profoundly was he convinced that freedom is the best security fo

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I

I

GLADSTONE—AFTER TWENTY YEARS The 19th of May, 1898, was Ascension Day; and, just as the earliest Eucharists were going up to God, William Ewart Gladstone passed out of mortal suffering into the peace which passeth understanding. For people who, like myself, were reared in the Gladstonian tradition, it is a shock to be told by those who are in immediate contact with young men that for the rising generation he is only, or scarcely, a name. For my own part, I say advisedly that he was the finest sp

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II

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HENRY SCOTT HOLLAND [*] [Footnote *: Written in 1907.] The Hollands spring from Mobberley, in Cheshire, and more recently from the town of Knutsford, familiar to all lovers of English fiction as "Cranford." They have made their mark in several fields of intellectual effort. Lord Knutsford, Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1887 to 1892, was a son of Sir Henry Holland, M.D. (1788-1873), who doctored half the celebrities of Europe; and one of Sir Henry's first cousins was the incomparable M

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LORD HALIFAX There can scarcely be two more typically English names than Wood and Grey. In Yorkshire and Northumberland respectively, they have for centuries been held in honour, and it was a happy conjunction which united them in 1829. In that year, Charles Wood, elder son of Sir Francis Lindley Wood, married Lady Mary Grey, youngest daughter of Charles, second Earl Grey, the hero of the first Reform Bill. Mr. Wood succeeded his father in the baronetcy, in 1846, sat in Parliament as a Liberal f

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IV

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LORD AND LADY RIPON [*] [Footnote *: George Frederick Samuel Robinson, first Marquess of Ripon, K.G. (1827-1909); married in 1851 his cousin Henrietta Ann Theodosia Vyner.] The Character of the Happy Warrior is, by common consent, one of the noblest poems in the English language. A good many writers and speakers seem to have discovered it only since the present war began, and have quoted it with all the exuberant zeal of a new acquaintance. But, were a profound Wordsworthian in general, and a de

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V

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" FREDDY LEVESON " When a man has died in his eighty-ninth year, it seems irreverent to call him by his nickname. And yet the irreverence is rather in seeming than in reality, for a nickname, a pet-name, an abbreviation, is often the truest token of popular esteem. It was so with the subject of this section, whose perennial youthfulness of heart and mind would have made formal appellation seem stiff and out of place. Edward Frederick Leveson-Gower was the third son of Granville Leveson-Gower, fi

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SAMUEL WHITBREAD The family of Whitbread enjoyed for several generations substantial possessions in North Bedfordshire. They were of the upper middle class, and were connected by marriage with John Howard the Prison-Reformer, whose property near Bedford they inherited. As years went on, their wealth and station increased. Samuel Whitbread, who died in 1796, founded the brewery in Chiswell Street, E.C., which still bears his name, was Member for the Borough of Bedford, and purchased from the four

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VII

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HENRY MONTAGU BUTLER The loved and honoured friend whose name stands at the head of this section was the fourth son and, youngest child of Dr. George Butler, Dean of Peterborough, and sometime Head Master of Harrow. Montagu Butler was himself-educated at Harrow under Dr. Vaughan, afterwards the well-known Master of the Temple, and proved to be in many respects the ideal schoolboy. He won all the prizes for composition, prose and verse, Greek, Latin, and English. He gained the principal scholarsh

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VIII

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BASIL WILBERFORCE [*] [Footnote *: A Memorial Address delivered in St. John's Church, Westminster.] In the House of God the praise of man should always be restrained. I, therefore, do not propose to obey the natural instinct which would prompt me to deliver a copious eulogy of the friend whom we commemorate—an analysis of his character or a description of his gifts. But, even in church, there is nothing out of place in an attempt to recall the particular aspects of truth which presented themselv

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IX

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EDITH SICHEL This notice is more suitably headed with a name than with a title. Edith Sichel was greater than anything she wrote, and the main interest of the book before us[*] is the character which it reveals. Among Miss Sichel's many activities was that of reviewing, and Mr. Bradley tells that "her first object was to let the reader know what kind of matter he might expect to find in the book, and, if necessary, from what point of view it is treated there." Following this excellent example, l

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X

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"WILL" GLADSTONE "He bequeathed to his children the perilous inheritance of a name which the Christian world venerates." The words were originally used by Bishop Samuel Wilberforce with reference to his father, the emancipator of the negro. I venture to apply them to the great man who, in days gone by, was my political leader, and I do so the more confidently because I hold that Gladstone will be remembered quite apart from politics, and, as Bishop Westcott said, "rather for what he was than for

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XI

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LORD CHARLES RUSSELL A man can have no better friend than a good father; and this consideration warrants, I hope, the inclusion of yet one more sketch drawn "in honour of friendship." Charles James Fox Russell (1807-1894) was the sixth son of the sixth Duke of Bedford. His mother was Lady Georgiana Gordon, daughter of the fourth Duke of Gordon and of the adventurous "Duchess Jane," who, besides other achievements even more remarkable, raised the "Gordon Highlanders" by a method peculiarly her ow

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I

I

A STRANGE EPIPHANY Whenever the State meddles with the Church's business, it contrives to make a muddle. This familiar truth has been exemplified afresh by the decree which dedicated last Sunday[*] to devotions connected with the War. The Feast of the Epiphany has had, at least since the fourth century, its definite place in the Christian year, its special function, and its peculiar lesson. The function is to commemorate the revelation of Christianity to the Gentile world; and the lesson is the

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II

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THE ROMANCE OF RENUNCIATION "What is Romance? The world well lost for an ides." I know no better definition; and Romance in this sense is perpetually illustrated in the history of the Church. The highest instance-save One—is, of course, the instance of the Martyrs. When in human history has Romance been more splendidly displayed than when the young men and maidens of Pagan Rome suffered themselves to be flung to the wild beasts of the arena sooner than abjure the religion of the Cross? And close

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PAN-ANGLICANISM It is an awful word. Our forefathers, from Shakespeare downwards, ate pan-cakes, and trod the pantiles at Tunbridge Wells; but their "pan" was purely English, and they linked it with other English words. The freedom of the "Ecclesia Anglicana" was guaranteed by the Great Charter, and "Anglicanism" became a theological term. Then Johnson, making the most of his little Greek, began to talk about a "pancratical" man, where we talk of an all-round athlete; and, a little later, "Panth

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LIFE AND LIBERTY The title is glorious; and, so far as I know, the credit of inventing it belongs to my friend the Rev. H. R. L. Sheppard, the enterprising Vicar of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. Mr. Sheppard has what in newspapers we call a "magnetic personality," and no one has more thoroughly laid to heart the sagacious saying that "Sweet are the uses of advertisement." Whatever cause he adopts, the world must know that he has adopted it; and it shall obtain a hearing, or he will know the reason

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V

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LOVE AND PUNISHMENT Lord Hugh Cecil is, I think, one of the most interesting figures in the public life of the time. Ten years ago I regarded him as the future leader of the Tory party and a predestined Prime Minister. Of late years he has seemed to turn away from the strifes and intrigues of ordinary politics, and to have resigned official ambition to his elder brother; but his figure has not lost—rather has gained—in interest by the change. Almost alone among our public men, he seems to have "

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VI

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HATRED AND LOVE I lately saw the following sentence quoted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: "Hatred steels the mind and sets the resolution as no other emotion can do." The enlightened conscience of humanity (to say nothing of Christianity) repudiates this sentiment as ethically unsound and historically untrue; and yet, erroneous as it is, it is worth pondering for the sake of a truth which it overstates. However little we may like to make the confession in the twentieth century of the Christian era

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VII

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THE TRIUMPHS OF ENDURANCE "By your endurance ye shall make your souls your own." If the origin of this saying were unknown, one could fancy much ingenious conjecture about it; but no one, I think, would attribute it to an English source. An Englishman's idea of self-realization is action. If he is to be truly himself he must be doing something; life for him means energy. To be laid on one side, and to exist only as a spectator or a sufferer, is the last method of making his soul his own which wo

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VIII

VIII

A SOLEMN FARCE Sweet to the antiquarian palate are the fragments of Norman French which still survive in the formularies of the Constitution. In Norman French the King acknowledges the inconceivable sums which from time to time his faithful Commons place at his disposal for the prosecution of the war. In Norman French the Peers of the Realm are summoned to their seats in Parliament which they adorn. In Norman French, the Royal Assent has just been given to a Bill which doubles the electorate and

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I

I

MIRAGE "Operations had to be temporarily suspended owing to the mirage." This sentence from one of Sir Stanley Maude's despatches struck me as parabolic. There are other, and vaster, issues than a strategic victory on the Diala River which have been "suspended owing to the mirage." Let us apply the parable. The parched caravan sees, half a mile ahead, the gleaming lake which is to quench its thirst. It toils along over the intervening distance, only to find that Nature has been playing a trick.

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II

II

MIST "Mistiness is the Mother of Wisdom." If this sarcastic dogma be true, we are living in a generation pre-eminently wise. A "season of mists" it unquestionably is; whether it is equally marked by "mellow fruitfulness" is perhaps more disputable. My path in life is metaphorically very much what Wordsworth's was literally. "I wander, lonely as a cloud that floats on high, o'er vales and hills." I find hills and vales alike shrouded in mist. Everyone is befogged, and the guesses as to where exac

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III

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" DISSOLVING THROES " I borrow my title from a poet. "He grew old in an age he condemned; He looked on the rushing decay Of the times which had sheltered his youth; Felt the dissolving throes Of a social order he loved." It seems odd that Matthew Arnold should have spoken thus about Wordsworth; for one would have expected that the man who wrote so gloriously of the French Revolution, "as it appeared to enthusiasts at its commencement," would have rejoiced in the new order which it established fo

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IV

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INSTITUTIONS AND CHARACTER As a rule, I call a spade a spade. When I mean The Times , I say The Times , and I condemn the old-fashioned twaddle of talking about "a morning contemporary." But to-day I depart from my rule and content myself with saying that I lately read in an important newspaper a letter dealing with Mr. Asquith's distinction between "Prussian Militarism" and "German Democracy." For my own part, I did not think that distinction very sound. The experience of the last three years h

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V

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REVOLUTION—AND RATIONS "A revolution by due course of law." This, as we have seen, was the Duke of Wellington's description of the Reform Act of 1832, which transferred the government of England from the aristocracy to the middle class. Though eventually accomplished by law, it did not pass without bloodshed and conflagration; and timid people satisfied themselves that not only the downfall of England, but the end of the world, must be close at hand. Twenty years passed, and nothing in particula

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" THE INCOMPATIBLES " My title is borrowed from one of the few Englishmen who have ever written wisely about Ireland. Our ways of trying to pacify our Sister Kingdom have been many and various—Disestablishment Acts, Land Acts, Arrears Acts, Coercion Acts, Crimes Acts, and every other variety of legislative experiment; but through them all Ireland remained unpacified. She showed no gratitude for boons which she had not asked, and seemed to crave for something which, with the best intentions in th

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VII

VII

FREEDOM'S NEW FRIENDS Many, said the Greek proverb, are they who bear the mystic reed, but few are the true bacchanals. Many, in the present day, are they who make an outward display of devotion to Liberty, but few, methinks, are her real worshippers. "We are fighting for Freedom" is a cry which rises from the most unexpected quarters; and, though 'twere ungracious to question its sincerity, we must admit that this generous enthusiasm is of very recent growth. Liberty has always had her friends

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I

I

EDUCATION AND THE JUDGE Not long ago a Judge of the High Court (who was also a Liberal) made what struck me as an eminently wise observation. While trying a couple of Elementary School-teachers whose obscenity was too gross for even an Old Bailey audience, and who themselves were products of Elementary Schools, the Judge said: "It almost makes one hesitate to think that elementary education is the blessing which we had hoped it was." Of course, all the prigs of the educational world, and they ar

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II

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THE GOLDEN LADDER Education is an excellent thing, but the word has a deterrent sound. It breathes pedantry and dogmatism, and "all that is at enmity with joy." To people of my age it recalls the dread spirits of Pinnock and Colenso and Hamblin Smith, and that even more terrible Smith who edited Dictionaries of everything. So, though this chapter is to be concerned with the substance, I eschew the word, and choose for my title a figurative phrase. I might, with perfect justice, have chosen anoth

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III

III

OASES My title is figurative, but figures are sometimes useful. Murray's Dictionary defines an oasis as "a fertile spot in the midst of a desert"; and no combination of words could better describe the ideal which I wish to set before my readers. The suggestion of this article came to me from a correspondent in Northumberland—"an old miner, who went to work down a mine before he was eight years old, and is working yet at seventy-two." My friend tells me that he has "spent about forty years of his

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IV

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LIFE, LIBERTY, AND JUSTICE When an article in a newspaper produces a reply, the modest writer is gratified; for he knows that he has had at any rate one reader. If the reply comes to him privately, he is even better pleased, for then he feels that his reader thinks the matter worthy of personal discussion and of freely exchanged opinion. I have lately written an article on "Life and Liberty" as proposed by some earnest clergymen for the English Church, and an article on Mr. Fisher's Education Bi

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V

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THE STATE AND THE BOY When Mr. A. J. Balfour was a very young man he published A Defence of Philosophic Doubt . Nobody read it, but a great many talked about it; and serious people went about with long faces, murmuring, "How sad that Lord Salisbury's nephew should be an Agnostic!" When Mr. Balfour had become a conspicuous figure in politics, the serious people began to read the book which, so far, they had only denounced, and then they found, to their surprise and joy, that it was an essay in or

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VI

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A PLEA FOR THE INNOCENTS My "spiritual home" is not Berlin, nor even Rome, but Jerusalem. In heart and mind I am there to-day, and have been there ever since the eternally memorable day on which our army entered it. What I am writing will see the light on the Feast of the Holy Innocents;[*] and my thoughts have been running on a prophetic verse which unites the place and the festival in a picturesque accord: "Thus saith the Lord, I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem:

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I

I

THE "HUMOROUS STAGE" I am not adventuring on the dangerous paths of dramatic criticism. When I write of the "humorous stage," I am using the phrase as Wordsworth used it, to signify a scene where new characters are suddenly assumed, and the old as suddenly discarded. Long ago, Matthew Arnold, poking fun at the clamours of Secularism, asked in mockery, "Why is not Mr. Bradlaugh a Dean?" To-day I read, in a perfectly serious manifesto forwarded to me by a friendly correspondant, this searching que

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II

II

THE JEWISH REGIMENT It was an old and a true allegation against John Bull that he had no tact in dealing with other races than his own. He did not mean to be unjust or unfair, but he trampled on the sensitiveness, which he could not understand. In Ireland he called the Roman Catholic faith "a lie and a heathenish superstition"; or, in a lighter mood, made imbecile jokes about pigs and potatoes. In Scotland, thriftiness and oatmeal were the themes of his pleasantry; in Wales, he found the languag

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INDURATION Though my heading is as old as Chaucer, it has, I must admit, a Johnsonian sound. Its sense is conveyed in the title of an excellent book on suffering called Lest We Grow Hard , and this is a very real peril against which it behoves everyone "Who makes his moral being his prime care" to be sedulously on his guard. During the last four years we have been, in a very special way and degree, exposed to it; and we ought to be thankful that, as a nation, we seem to have escaped. The constan

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FLACCIDITY My discourse on "Induration" was intended to convey a warning which, as individuals, we all need. But Governments are beset by an even greater danger, which the learned might call "flaccidity" and the simple—"flabbiness." The great Liddon, always excellent in the aptness of his scriptural allusions, once said with regard to a leader who had announced that he would "set his face" against a certain policy and then gave way, "Yes, the deer 'set his face,' but he did not 'set it as a flin

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V

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THE PROMISE OF MAY This is the real season for a holiday, if holidays were still possible. It is a point of literary honour not to quote the line which shows that our forefathers, in the days of Chaucer, felt the holiday-making instinct of the spring, and that instinct has not been affected by the lapse of the centuries. It stirs us even in London, when the impetuous lilacs are bursting into bud, and the sooty sparrows chirrup love-songs, and "a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove"—or, t

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PAGEANTRY AND PATRIOTISM Long years ago, when religious people excited themselves almost to frenzy about Ritualism, Mr. Gladstone surveyed the tumult with philosophic calm. He recommended his countrymen to look below the surface of controversy, and to regard the underlying principle. "In all the more solemn and stated public acts of man," he wrote, "we find employed that investiture of the acts themselves with an appropriate exterior, which is the essential idea of Ritual. The subject-matter is

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I

I

A FORGOTTEN PANIC Friday, the 13th of September, 1867, was the last day of the Harrow holidays, and I was returning to the Hill from a visit to some friends in Scotland. During the first part of the journey I was alone in the carriage, occupied with an unlearnt holiday task; but at Carlisle I acquired a fellow-traveller. He jumped into the carriage just as the train was beginning to move, and to the porter who breathlessly enquired about his luggage he shouted, "This is all," and flung a small l

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II

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A CRIMEAN EPISODE It was eight o'clock in the evening of the 5th of April, 1880, and the Travellers' Club was full to overflowing. Men who were just sitting down to dinner got up from their tables, and joined the excited concourse in the hall. The General Election which terminated Lord Beaconsfield's reign was nearing its close, and the issue was scarcely in doubt; but at this moment the decisive event of the campaign was announced. Members, as they eagerly scanned the tape, saw that Gladstone w

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