London Days: A Book of Reminiscences

by Arthur Warren

It is sometimes unwise to avoid digressions. No apology is made, or considered necessary, for this one.

I was speaking of Mr. Gladstone. It was my privilege to see him and hear him frequently during twenty years. Perhaps it was due to some defect of nature that I was never much influenced politically by him. His eloquence was anything you may choose to imagine it, and you would have admired it, if you could dissociate from it the involved phrases, the delicate adjustments, the hair-split meanings which might balance any interpretation that might be put upon them, the contradictions, the finely-spun arguments which, woven into the texture of his speeches, would enmesh the unwary,—you would have admired it hugely if you could have dissociated these things from it. His majorities probably did not make the effort. He had the magic of making them forget.

He could be, and was, eloquent on any subject, and, for that reason, he could and did unsettle many minds on many themes. He was a word-spinner of extraordinary skill and charm, and he made multitudes think they had opinions of their own when their opinions were what he had taught them. That is one of the gifts of leadership. And it was a special privilege of Mr. Gladstone's leadership of democracy that he remained an aristocrat by habit and inclination. Morley's "Life" of him contains this passage from a privately printed account of Ruskin at Hawarden:

"Something like a little amicable duel took place at one time between Ruskin and Mr. G. when Ruskin directly attacked his host as a 'leveller.' 'You see you think one man is as good as another, and all men equally competent to judge aright on political questions; whereas I am a believer in an aristocracy.' And straight came the answer from Mr. Gladstone, 'Oh dear, no! I am nothing of the sort. I am a firm believer in the aristocratic principle—the rule of the best. I am an out-and-out inequalitarian,' a confession which Ruskin treated with intense delight, clapping his hands triumphantly."

Eloquence has not been rated modestly among the arts during some thousands of years. Whether it has done more for the advancement or the retardation of man may be a subject for dispute. That it has done both is unquestioned by those who talk less than they think. It is a useful accomplishment when the object is to get a body of men to think and act in unison; it is equally useful in promoting disunion. It is therefore of most service to politicians and preachers, the aim of these gentlemen being to promote unity for their own causes by promoting disaffection in and with all other causes. Of all the statesmen of the nineteenth century, Mr. Gladstone was preëminent in the promotion of disaffection. I do not know that he uprooted anything that deserved to remain among the habits or institutions of mankind; I do not know that he preserved anything that should have been cast upon the dust heap; I do not know that he originated anything; but I always think of him as a great opportunist who was sometimes on the right side, and quite as likely to be on the wrong. But he differed from other conspicuous opportunists in this: he always wrestled with the devil of unbelief. Before adopting a policy he would ask himself, "Is this right?" If he adopted it, you would know that he was convinced of the righteousness of his cause. That he had converted himself, convinced himself by his own eloquence, did not make his conviction less sure, but made it perhaps, more clinching because he had talked himself into belief. His eloquence, therefore, had effect upon himself no less than upon others, as Lord Beaconsfield more than implied when, in a political speech at Knightsbridge, in 1878, he alluded to Mr. Gladstone as "a sophistical rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity."

If Mr. Gladstone has been credited too much and too often with all the qualities of a saint, it was, perhaps, because his opponents were always ready to attribute to him the traits of a devil. In our later time there has been no such adulation and no such hatred as were poured upon him. And I take it that these excesses were due to his absorption in things, or subjects, rather than to interest in men. Individuals did not interest him; causes did. The cause, whatever it might be, filled the universe. He could not see men, the people were so conspicuous.

It may have been a fault, it was certainly a characteristic, that when he had once resolved, he expected his followers to exchange, as quickly as himself, old ways of thought for new. It did not occur to him until after the event that he had struck not only the wrong but the unpopular note in the American Civil War. He saw the thing in one way only, and he was immensely surprised when he learned that there was another side to the question, and that it was taken by the country most concerned. But he did what he could and subsequently made a long and almost abject confession of error, which might have shaken, if it did not, the general appreciation of his powers of judgment. It will be said there was the case of Ireland. To be sure there was the case of Ireland. It is always with Britain, even if the Irish are not,—as in the war against Germany. But Mr. Gladstone understood Ireland and the Irish as little as,—well, as little as the Americans understand them. Lord Salisbury, on a certain occasion, said that he (Salisbury) had never seen Mr. Parnell. Almost any one, then, might have repeated to him the famous injunction of Oxenstiern: "Go forth, my son, and see with how little wisdom the world is governed."

Lord Salisbury did not know Parnell by sight, and he gave Heligoland to the Kaiser. Neither Parnell nor Heligoland were important enough in his opinion to justify even visual acquaintance. The world has suffered for his superior neglect in one particular, perhaps in both. But if he, or if Gladstone, or if Gladstone and Salisbury had foreseen what would happen, the world might not have acted any more wisely than it did. It is always too late to be wise. Nobody would have believed the oracles; the truth was in opposition to the world's inclinations. It is usually so. And that is why great men are shunted to the wrong tracks, and so are "great" men only for their age and hour; it is why prophets are stoned, and mediocrities arise and talk, prevailing by sound. Nowadays the eminence of men is fixed by their capacity for catching votes and the commotion they make in doing so.

I thought Mr. Gladstone a vindictive old gentleman. It was not the fashion to think of him in that way. You were supposed to insist upon his more saintly qualities, but there is some difficulty in associating attributes of saintship with eminent politicians during their lifetime, and at the same moment keeping your face straight. The Roman Church, in its sagacity, defers consideration of saintship until long after the decease of the candidates for canonisation. Some centuries, indeed, are required before the purely human element in man may be superseded by the purely divine, even in cases where the voting majority is heavy.

If Mr. Gladstone were not vindictive, I do not see how he contrived so successfully to give that character to his countenance when he was not speaking. One does not say when his countenance was in repose. Repose was unacquainted with his countenance, or with any part of him. The energy which fully charged his body flowed through his mind in a restless and surging torrent. And if he were vindictive, I do not see anything strange, or much that is derogatory in that. A leader of politics must be genuine, or fall far short of greatness. His opponents cannot be opposed to him merely in a parliamentary sense. They may be as genuine as he, but if he hates their acts as evil in nature and result, he cannot in honesty refrain from distrusting the men who lead and inspire the acts, though he may pretend as much as he pleases to do otherwise. His indignation against men and measures does not cease with the adjournment of the House, or with the close of an electioneering campaign, unless he is a hypocrite. And if he fail to pursue his public enemy for the purpose of making him ineffective for public harm, does he not give a too generous interpretation to public duty? That a man is to be hated only at certain hours, or when he says certain things, is conceivable only by the tolerant mass which must usually be told what to think, and which, nine times out of ten, can be relied upon to think to order, especially on party matters. A political party, in any country, is not intended for thinking purposes, but, like an army, is for fighting purposes. If it's in, it fights to stay in; if it's out, it fights to get in. It uses speeches and programmes as military leaders use smoke-screens and gas-discharges, to obscure the real operations and confound the enemy. In the last century we had not learned, although we may have suspected, that the world must be made safe for hypocrisy. It remained for the twentieth century to announce this.