"My Novel" — Complete

by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton

Audley made no rejoinder, but tore a leaf out of his pocketbook, and wrote, in pencil, these words, “Say that you may well feel embarrassed how to reply to Mr. Avenel, because I had especially requested you not to be provoked to one angry expression against a gentleman whose father and brother-in-law gave the majority of two by which I gained my first seat in parliament; then plunge at once into general politics.” He placed this paper in Randal’s hand, just as that unhappy young man was on the point of a thorough breakdown. Randal paused, took breath, read the words attentively, and amidst a general titter; his presence of mind returned to him; he saw a way out of the scrape, collected himself, suddenly raised his head, and in tones unexpectedly firm and fluent, enlarged on the text afforded to him,—enlarged so well that he took the audience by surprise, pleased the Blues by an evidence of Audley’s generosity, and touched the Yellows by so affectionate a deference to the family of their two candidates. Then the speaker was enabled to come at once to the topics on which he had elaborately prepared himself, and delivered a set harangue, very artfully put together,—temporizing it is true, and trimming, but full of what would have been called admirable tact and discretion in an old stager who did not want to commit himself to anybody or to anything. On the whole, the display became creditable, at least as an evidence of thoughtful reserve, rare in a man so young; too refining and scholastic for oratory, but a very good essay,—upon both sides of the question. Randal wiped his pale forehead and sat down, cheered, especially by the lawyers present, and self-contented. It was now Leonard’s turn to speak. Keenly nervous, as men of the literary temperament are, constitutionally shy, his voice trembled as he began. But he trusted, unconsciously, less to his intellect than his warm heart and noble temper; and the warm heart prompted his words, and the noble temper gradually dignified his manner. He took advantage of the sentences which Audley had put into Randal’s mouth, in order to efface the impression made by his uncle’s rude assault. “Would that the Right Honourable Gentleman had himself made that generous and affecting allusion to the services which he had deigned to remember, for, in that case, he [Leonard] was confident that Mr. Avenel would have lost all the bitterness which political contest was apt to engender in proportion to the earnestness with which political opinions were entertained. Happy it was when some such milder sentiment as that which Mr. Egerton had instructed Mr. Leslie to convey, preceded the sharp encounter, and reminded antagonists, as Mr. Leslie had so emphatically done, that every shield had two sides, and that it was possible to maintain the one side to be golden, without denying the truth of the champion who asserted the other side to be silver.” Then, without appearing to throw over his uncle, the young speaker contrived to insinuate an apology on his uncle’s behalf, with such exquisite grace and good feeling, that he was loudly cheered by both parties; and even Dick did not venture to utter the dissent which struggled to his lips.

But if Leonard dealt thus respectfully with Egerton, he had no such inducement to spare Randal Leslie. With the intuitive penetration of minds accustomed to analyze character and investigate human nature, he detected the varnished insincerity of Randal’s artful address. His colour rose, his voice swelled, his fancy began to play, and his wit to sparkle, when he came to take to pieces his younger antagonist’s rhetorical mosaic. He exposed the falsehood of its affected moderation; he tore into shreds the veil of words, with their motley woof of yellow and blue, and showed that not a single conviction could be discovered behind it. “Mr. Leslie’s speech,” said he, “puts me in mind of a ferry-boat; it seems made for no purpose but to go from one side to the other.” The simile hit the truth so exactly that it was received with a roar of laughter: even Egerton smiled. “For myself,” concluded Leonard, as he summed up his unsparing analysis, “I am new to party warfare; yet if I were not opposing Mr. Leslie as a candidate for your suffrages, if I were but an elector,—belonging, as I do, to the people by my condition and my labours,—I should feel that he is one of those politicians in whom the welfare, the honour, the moral elevation of the people, find no fitting representative.”

Leonard sat down amidst great applause, and after a speech that raised the Yellows in their own estimation, and materially damaged Randal Leslie in the eyes of the Blues. Randal felt this, with a writhing of the heart, though a sneer on the lips. He glanced furtively towards Dick Avenel, on whom, after all, his election, in spite of the Blues, might depend. Dick answered the furtive glance by an encouraging wink. Randal turned to Egerton, and whispered to him, “How I wish I had had more practice in speaking, so that I could have done you more justice!”

“Thank you, Leslie; Mr. Fairfield has supplied any omission of yours, so far as I am concerned. And you should excuse him for his attack on yourself, because it may serve to convince you where your fault as a speaker lies.”

“Where?” asked Leslie, with jealous sullenness.

“In not believing a single word that you say,” answered Egerton, very dryly; and then turning away, he said aloud to his proposer, and with a slight sigh, “Mr. Avenel maybe proud of his nephew! I wish that young man were on our side; I could train him into a great debater.”

And now the proceedings were about to terminate with a show of hands, when a tall, brawny elector in the middle of the hall suddenly arose, and said he had some questions to put. A thrill ran through the assembly, for this elector was the demagogue of the Yellows,—a fellow whom it was impossible to put down, a capital speaker, with lungs of brass. “I shall be very short,” said the demagogue. And therewith, under the shape of questions to the two Blue candidates, he commenced a most furious onslaught on the Earl of Lansmere, and the earl’s son, Lord L’Estrange, accusing the last of the grossest intimidation and corruption, and citing instances thereof as exhibited towards various electors in Fish Lane and the Back Slums, who had been turned from Yellow promises by the base arts of Blue aristocracy, represented in the person of the noble lord, whom he now dared to reply. The orator paused, and Harley suddenly passed into the front of the platform, in token that he accepted the ungracious invitation. Great as had been the curiosity to hear Audley Egerton, yet greater, if possible, was the curiosity to hear Lord L’Estrange. Absent from the place for so many years, heir to such immense possessions, with a vague reputation for talents that he had never proved,—strange, indeed, if Blue and Yellow had not strained their ears and hushed their breaths to listen.

It is said that the poet is born, and the orator made,—a saying only partially true. Some men have been made poets, and some men have been born orators. Most probably Harley L’Estrange had hitherto never spoken in public; and he had not now spoken five minutes before all the passions and humours of the assembly were as much under his command as the keys of the instrument are under the hands of the musician. He had taken from nature a voice capable of infinite variety of modulation, a countenance of the most flexible play of expression; and he was keenly alive (as profound humourists are) equally to the ludicrous and the graver side of everything presented to his vigorous understanding. Leonard had the eloquence of a poet, Audley Egerton that of a parliamentary debater; but Harley had the rarer gift of eloquence in itself, apart from the matter it conveys or adorns,—that gift which Demosthenes meant by his triple requisite of an orator, which has been improperly translated “action,” but means in reality “the acting,” “the stage-play.” Both Leonard and Audley spoke well, from the good sense which their speeches contained; but Harley could have talked nonsense, and made it more effective than sense,—even as a Kemble or Macready could produce effects from the trash talked by “The Stranger,” which your merely accomplished performer would fail to extract from the beauties of Hamlet. The art of oratory, indeed, is allied more closely to that of the drama than to any other; and throughout Harley’s whole nature there ran, as the reader may have noted (though quite unconsciously to Harley himself), a tendency towards that concentration of thought, action, and circumstance on a single purpose, which makes the world form itself into a stage, and gathers various and scattered agencies into the symmetry and compactness of a drama. This tendency, though it often produces effects that appear artificially theatrical, is not uncommon with persons the most genuine and single-minded. It is, indeed, the natural inclination of quick energies springing from warm emotions. Hence the very history of nations in their fresh, vigorous, half-civilized youth always shapes itself into dramatic forms; while, as the exercise of sober reason expands with civilization, to the injury of the livelier faculties and more intuitive impulses, people look to the dramatic form of expression, whether in thought or in action, as if it were the antidote to truth, instead of being its abstract and essence.

But to return from this long and somewhat metaphysical digression: whatever might be the cause why Harley L’Estrange spoke so wonderfully well, there could be no doubt that wonderfully well he did speak. He turned the demagogue and his attack into the most felicitous ridicule, and yet with the most genial good-humour; described that virtuous gentleman’s adventures in search of corruption through the pure regions of Fish Lane and the Back Slums; and then summed up the evidences on which the demagogue had founded his charge, with a humour so caustic and original that the audience were convulsed with laughter. From laughter Harley hurried his audience almost to the pathos of tears,—for he spoke of the insinuations against his father so that every son and every father in the assembly felt moved as at the voice of Nature.

A turn in a sentence, and a new emotion seized the assembly. Harley was identifying himself with the Lansmere electors. He spoke of his pride in being a Lansmere man, and all the Lansmere electors suddenly felt proud of him. He talked with familiar kindness of old friends remembered in his schoolboy holidays, rejoicing to find so many alive and prospering. He had a felicitous word to each.