It is no longer easy to understand the kind of man Sir William Harcourt was. When we speak now of an opportunist in politics we think of a rather shady person “on the make.” When we speak of an idealist in politics we think of a rather foolish and impracticable person, a man of fixed idea, a crank of some kind, who would cheerfully ruin the country, to say nothing of the party to which he gives preference, for the mere satisfaction of advertising his fad. Sir William Harcourt had ideals of his own kind, and even fads. He was a sincere Whig, and a fanatical Erastian. That he was never quite in the inner Gladstonian circle is chiefly attributable to his utter hostility to sacerdotalism. Mr. Gladstone could more easily take to his bosom an unbeliever like Mr. Morley than an eighteenth-century Protestant like Sir William. But though a Ritualistic prelate could always rouse him to fury, and though he could simulate a passion for certain articles in the Newcastle programme concerning which he poked admirable fun in private, Sir William was an eminently “practical politician,” and ordinarily his views and convictions were subordinated to something in his eyes vastly more important—the due playing of the political game. Yet we should altogether misunderstand him if we inferred any more affinity to the newer style of professional politician than to the newer style of political crank. He was in one sense absolutely disinterested. He could have been a very rich man had he stayed longer at the Parliamentary Bar. He left it, in fact, for politics, the very moment he could afford to do so, and his fidelity to politics kept him a poor man till almost the end of his life; till, indeed, the death of a nephew left him lord of the rich and pleasant Nuneham domain. Titular honour attracted him no more than money. His knighthood had to be forced on him. When he was appointed Solicitor-General, Mr. Gladstone had to insist on precedent being followed; Sir William wished to escape an honour suitable enough for Mayors and other deserving municipal persons, but scarcely fitting a man of his pedigree. Many years later, much to the delight of his friends in the House of Commons, he refused a much more considerable distinction offered by King Edward. It would have been much to him to be Prime Minister of England; it was nothing to him to be Viscount Harcourt. There was more pride than humility or democratic feeling in this disregard for titles; the pride of Sir William Harcourt was as much a feature of him as his almost gigantic height, his portentous under lip, and his keen enjoyment of his own jokes. A large part of the man was what had long been underground; this parson’s son, jests about whose Plantagenet blood seemed rather unmeaning to the uninitiated, was in very fact enormously interested in his genealogy. He could boast of a descent as noble as any in Europe, and though he readily saw the ridiculous side of pride of ancestry in others he could not help attaching an importance to himself as a Vernon Harcourt only second to that of being the Vernon Harcourt. There is a tale of his wearily repeating, with reference to an absurd person named Knightley, who bored dinner tables with his pedigree, the lines:
“And Knightley to the listening earth
Reveals the story of his birth.”
But Knightley, had he possessed the necessary powers of repartee, would not have lacked material for effective retort.
Wealth in the real sense being indifferent to him, small honours beneath his consideration, and overpowering enthusiasm for the greater ideals foreign to his nature, what remained as the motive power sufficing to propel the vast bulk of this political galleon through the cross-currents of over thirty years of varied navigation? The answer would seem to be sheer love of the game of politics. Sir William Harcourt delighted in political warfare almost as an end in itself. It would be unjust, no doubt, to style him a pure opportunist. His course was determined by a sense of loyalty to his party and by a general appreciation of the philosophy of Whiggism. He had his early days of Adullamitism, when he was rather the candid friend than the consistent supporter of his own leaders. But that was in strict accord with the rules of the game. Once he ceased to be a free lance he became the staunchest of partisans. His labours for Liberalism were Herculean. Considered as a mere output of mental energy his career from the early Seventies to the late Nineties was amazing. In every fight he was put forward in the fore-front of the battle, and acquitted himself with astonishing prowess. His sword-play might lack finesse, but its effect no man could deny, least of all that man who had to bear the brunt of his sweeping strokes. He rapidly became one of the greatest of House of Commons debaters, a little given, perhaps, to the declamatory, but never degenerating into mere verbiage or claptrap. On the platform he was, perhaps, less successful: he lacked the gift of emotional appeal, and was wholly wanting in imagination. The common man could laugh heartily at his quips, could cheer his knock-down blows, but his pulses were never stirred, and even his intellect was not conquered. For somehow Sir William Harcourt, with all his energy and incisiveness, never gave the impression of quite feeling what he said. He always seemed to be engaged rather in a boxing match than a fight—a match in which he was, quite indubitably, out to win, but still a match and not an affair of life-and-death earnestness. Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Morley, and Lord Rosebery each in their way got where Sir William Harcourt could never quite reach. He rather resembled, in fact, that kind of actor who is just a little too stagey for the stage, and is never more theatrical than when his heart is wholly in a part.
But the most stagey actor may have a very real human side, and Sir William Harcourt, so generally credited with a cynical outlook on public affairs, was in his family and social relations the most large-hearted and genuine of men. It would be a mistake, also, to think of him politically as a mere gladiator. It was certainly his misfortune that he had sometimes for party purposes to simulate enthusiasm for causes he had little at heart. On Home Rule and Local Option he privately was a Laodicean (if nothing more positive), attempting in public the ecstasy of a dancing dervish—and, in truth, his figure was ill-adapted to corybantic zeal. But he did really care for good administration, sound finance, and the Whig theory of exterior policy. There was pique in his attitude towards Lord Rosebery, but not pique alone; he saw what Mr. Gladstone did not see, what the Radicals who gave their voice for a Rosebery Premiership did not see, that Liberal Imperialism would not do; those who wanted Imperialism wanted the real article, and would go to the right shop for it. Indeed, though the last years of his career were pathetically in contrast with its first promise, they did much to kill the early legend of the pure opportunist. Sir William Harcourt might be cynical as to indifferent matters, and undoubtedly many things important to others were to him indifferent. But beneath the surface there was, besides much loyalty and generosity to individuals, a larger sincerity, if not to this idea or that, at least to a general conception which might be limited, but was certainly not ignoble.