“You’d scarce fancy, Mr. Kitely,” said my father, whose patience was sorely tried; “you’d scarce fancy that river you see there was only a mill-stream.”
“I’d scarcely think of calling that mill-stream a river, my lord,” was the reply.
“Hence the borough of Collyton is still open, and I have come, by his grace’s request, to say that if you desire to enter Parliament it is very much at your service.”
This was my introduction to the House.
My parliamentary life was, as I have said, a brief one, but not without its triumphs. I was long enough a member to have excited the ardent hopes of my friends, and make my name a thing quoted in the lists of party.
Had I remained, I was to have spoken second to the address on the opening of the new session. There was, I own, a most intoxicating sense of pleasure in the first success. The moment in which, fatigued and almost overpowered, I sank into a chair at Bellamy’s, with some twenty around me, congratulating, praising, flattering, and foretelling, was worth living for; and yet, perhaps, in that same instant of triumph were sown the seeds of my malady. I was greatly heated; I had excited myself beyond my strength, and spoken for two hours—to myself it seemed scarce twenty minutes; and then, with open cravat and vest, I sat in the current of air between a door and window, drinking in delicious draughts of iced water and flattery. I went home with a slight cough, and something strange, like an obstruction to full breathing, in my chest. Brodie, who saw me next day, I suppose, guessed the whole mischief; for these men look far a-head, and, like sailors, they see storm and hurricane in the cloud not bigger than a man’s hand.
I often regret—I shall continue to do, perhaps, still oftener—that I did not die in the harness. To quit the field for sake of life, and not secure it after all, was paltry policy. But what could I do? a severe and contested election would have killed me, and for Collyton it was impossible I could continue to sit.
Irish politics would seem the rock a-head of every man in the House. On these unhappy questions all are shipwrecked: the Premier loses party—Party loses confidence—members displease constituents, and protégés offend their patrons. Such was my own case: the Duke who owned the borough of Collyton, resolved on making a great stand and show of his influence in both Houses. All his followers, myself among the number, were summoned to a conference, when the tactic of attack should be adopted, and each assigned his fitting part. To me was allotted the office of replying to the first speaker of the Treasury Bench—a post of honour and of danger, and only distasteful because impossible: the fact was, that my own opinions were completely with the Government on the subject in dispute, and consequently at open variance with those of my own friends. This I declared at once, endeavouring to shew why my judgment had so inclined, and what arguments I believed to be unanswerable.
Instead of replying to my reasons, or convincing me of their inefficiency, my colleagues only ap-pealed to the “necessity of union”—the imperative call of party—and “the impossibility,” as they termed it, “of betraying the Duke.”
I immediately resolved to resign my seat, and accept the Chiltern Hundreds. To this there was a unanimous cry of dissent, one and all pronouncing that such a step would damage them more even than my fiercest opposition. The Duke sat still and said nothing. Somewhat offended at this, I made a personal appeal to him resolving by the tone of his reply to guide my future conduct. He was too old a politician to give me any clue to his sentiments, shrouding his meaning in vague phrases of compliment to my talents, and his perfect confidence that, however my judgment inclined, I should be able to shew sufficient reasons for my opinion. I went home baffled, worried, and ill. I sent for Brodie. “You cannot speak on the coming question,” said he; “there is a great threat of haemorrhage from the lungs—you must have rest and quiet. Keep beyond the reach of excitement for a few weeks—don’t even read the newspapers. Go over to Spa—there you can be quite alone.”