When the second minute was completed, the excitement in the House began to grow intense. Disraeli seemed to be transfixed. Was he ill? Was the great man sulking? What could this strange silence portend?
Two minutes and a half!
Some Members rose and approached him, but Disraeli raised his hand as if to deprecate their interference, and they stole back to their places conscious that they were forbidden to interrupt. Then, at last, when the second hand of the clock had passed three times round its course, the most remarkable silence which the House had ever experienced within living memory was broken as the Tory leader slowly began once more to speak.
"'Mr. Chairman,'" he said, "'and gentlemen,'" and then word for word he repeated the whole speech of Mr. Gladstone from which he had made his quotation, duly introducing the particular passage which the Liberal leader had denied. Then he paused and looked across at his rival. The challenge was not to be avoided, and Mr. Gladstone bowed. He would have raised his hat did he wear one in the House, which, in the phraseology of the ring, was equivalent to throwing up the sponge. Mr. Disraeli afterwards informed a friend that, working backwards, he had recalled the whole of Mr. Gladstone's speech to his mind. Beginning at the disputed quotation, he recovered the context which led up to it, and so step by step the entire oration. Then he was enabled to repeat it from the outset, exactly as he had read it.
I saw Lord Beaconsfield in the House of Commons on the occasion of his last visit to that chamber in which he had been the moving spirit. I well recollect that morning. There had been an Irish all-night sitting: the House was supposed to be listening to the droning of some Irish "Mimber." The officials were weary, the legislative chamber was untidy and dusty, and many of those present had not had their clothes off all night. Lord Beaconsfield, scented, oiled, and curled, the daintiest of dandies, sits in the gallery, examining the scene through his single eye-glass. Leaning over him stands the ever-faithful Monty Corry—now Lord Rowton. I sat within a few yards of them, and made a sketch which happens to be the most successful study I ever made. The Academy wrote of it: "In humour Mr. Harry Furniss generally excels; but his portrait of Lord Beaconsfield on his last appearance in the House of Commons is something else than amusing—it is pathetic, almost tragic, and will be historical;" and columns of flattering notices must be my excuse for confessing in these pages that I myself consider it to be the best portrait of Lord Beaconsfield, and in no way a caricature.
THE LAST VISIT OF LORD BEACONSFIELD TO THE HOUSE.