Two gentlemen of Yorkshire had a dispute about his correct height, and one of them, anxious to have an authoritative pronouncement, wrote to the noble Lord, and received the following reply:
"2, Connaught Place, W.
"Dear Sir,—Lord Randolph Churchill desires me to say, in reply to your letter of the 21st inst., that his height is just under 5ft. 10in.
"I am, yours faithfully,
"Cecil Drummond-Wolff, Secretary."
MR. LOUIS JENNINGS.
Lord Randolph Churchill was a mere creature of impulse, the spoilt pet of Parliament—what you will—but no one can deny that he was the most interesting figure in the House since Disraeli. He had none of Disraeli's chief attraction—namely, mystery. Nor had he Disraeli's power of organisation, for, although Lord Randolph "educated a party" of three—the first step to his eventually becoming Leader of the House—it cannot be said that at any time afterwards he really had, in the strict sense of the word, a party at all. He was a political Don Quixote, and he had his Sancho Panza in the person of Mr. Louis Jennings. Perhaps nothing can show the impulsive nature of Lord Randolph more than the incident which was the cause of Mr. Jennings breaking with Lord Randolph. Mr. Louis Jennings was, in many ways, his chief's superior: a brilliant journalist, originally on the Times, afterwards editor of the New York World, when, by dint of his energy and pluck, he was the chief cause of breaking up the notorious Tammany Ring; a charming writer of picturesque country scenes—in fact, an accomplished man, and one harshly treated by that fickle dame Fortune by being branded, rightly or wrongly, as the mere creature of a political adventurer.
One afternoon I was standing in the Inner Lobby when Mr. Jennings asked me to go into the House to a seat under the Gallery to hear him deliver a speech he had been requested to make by the Government Party, and one he thought something of. At that moment Lord Randolph came up and said, "I am going in to hear you, Jennings; I have arranged not to speak till after dinner." And we all three entered the House.
Lord Randolph, who had then left the Ministry, sat on the bench in the second row below the gangway, on the Government side of the House. Mr. Jennings was seated on the bench behind, close to where he had found a place for me under the Gallery. He carefully arranged the notes for his speech, and directly the Member who had been addressing the House sat down, Mr. Jennings jumped to his feet to "catch the Speaker's eye." But Lord Randolph, who had been very restless all through the speech just delivered, sprang to his feet. Jennings leant over to him and said something, but Churchill waved him impatiently away, and the Speaker called upon Lord Randolph. Jennings sank back with a look of disgust and chagrin, which changed to astonishment when Lord Randolph fired out that famous Pigott speech, in which he attacked his late colleagues with a vituperation and vulgarity he had never before betrayed. His speech electrified the House and disgusted his friends—none more so than his faithful Jennings, who left the Chamber directly after his "friend's" tirade of abuse, returning later in the evening to make a capital speech, full of feeling and power, in which he finally threw over Lord Randolph. In the meantime, meeting me, he did not hide the fact that the incident had determined him to have nothing more to say to Churchill. And this was the man I once drew a cartoon of in Punch on all fours, with a coat covering his head (suspiciously like a donkey's head), with "Little Randy" riding on his back!