I felt a little sorry to have disturbed him so much, and yet I knew that I very much preferred an anxious, harassed Wilson to a Wilson who was smooth and sleek.
Next morning at breakfast he was again smooth and self-satisfied.
“I have seen him,” he whispered, like a conspirator; “I have seen him. It is arranged. Everything is all right.”
Later on that morning I was myself received by Mr Lloyd George in his house. I went prejudiced against him and determined at all hazards not to allow myself to be won over by that charm of manner of which I had heard so much.
But in five minutes I had succumbed. He has a wonderful gift of making you feel that he thinks you are the most interesting and most intelligent person he has ever met. What he really does think, I suppose, is that you (of course, I don’t mean you; I mean myself) are an unmitigated bore, and while his eyes are smiling at you he is really saying to himself: “Why doesn’t the fellow go?...” Yes, he has charm. He does not fuss and he is not over-emphatic in his manner. And he is a most [28] ]deferential listener. He will even ask you your opinion about matters of which he knows ten times more than yourself, and he will do you the honour of arguing with you.
That afternoon, at the formal ceremony of “opening” the institute, my warning concerning the suffragettes was nearly prophetic. Mr Lloyd George, of course, did all in his power to quell the mob’s anger, but the women were violently assaulted, their breasts beaten, their clothes ripped from their backs, their hair torn by the roots from their heads.... On the edge of the mêlée I saw P. W. Wilson standing deploring it.
. . . . . . . .
It has always seemed to me an extraordinary thing that, in company with Dr Walford Davies, I should have been asked some years ago to be a guest at the annual dinner of the Church Diocesan Music Society. I am always ready for adventure, of however hazardous a nature, so I accepted the invitation even after I had been told that a speech was expected from me.
Bishop Welldon, arriving late—in fact, I believe he had dined elsewhere—plumped himself on a chair next to me, and immediately began to dominate everything and everybody within a radius of twenty yards. He is one of those distressing people who will be jocular. And his jocularity is rather noisy. He laughed a great deal and rubbed his hands together. And he asked me a question and then asked me another before I had had time to answer the first. And, really, he did talk so awfully loudly.... I had come across him before in trams and shops and places of that kind, and it was always the same; he invariably talked at you.... Even in the Manchester Cathedral, where Dr Kendrick Pyne introduced me to him, he shouted at me and never allowed me to finish a sentence.
But I perceive that I am becoming petulant, and I [29] ]ought not to do so for, as a matter of fact, the dinner was a screamingly funny affair. I had prepared a fierce and warlike speech, a speech attacking the Society whose food I had just eaten and whose wine was still warm in my veins. I am, I suppose, quite the worst speaker in the world; so I had memorised my speech and, so good I thought it that I had vastly enjoyed doing so. But alas! when the minute drew near for me to deliver it, I found myself in an atmosphere of such conviviality, such kindness, such flattering attention, that I could not find it in my heart to deliver the words I had prepared and memorised. Yet an impromptu speech of a different tenor was impossible. I simply hadn’t the talent to do it. My name was called and I rose to my feet.