Shakespeare: “King Henry V.”
That reminds me that the little Welshman—and what race understands the rules of courtesy more truly—warns us against the ill manners of interrupting the story of our companion by our own incomparably wittier jest, until there has been a fair pause for the courtly reception of his somewhat antiquated tale, and then, I take it, good breeding compels us to pretend that out of the ashes of his dusty reminiscences our own admirable phœnix has sprung, and we begin our story with “That reminds me,” not as a boast, but out of mere complaisance. But when one has only oneself to interrupt the course is smoother. Nor is it at all necessary that there should be any real sequence in the story-telling to justify the phrase. It is a well-known convention of the game that you may dash off into a story having no reference to the past conversation as long as you preface it with some lip-service to the pleasures of memory. For the story-telling habit comes down to us, no doubt
from the East and the “Arabian Nights.” Poor Scheherazadé had a special reason for being reminded of a new story at the right moment, she indeed being the first lady novelist who literally made her living out of fiction. Really I cannot but think we should get some brighter and more entertaining stories from the fair writers of to-day if their novels were written under a similar stimulus. This habit of irrelevant story-telling is no new thing—Cervantes caught it from the East, perhaps, and our own Fielding glories in it as being part of the method of the Master; for is not the “History of the Man of the Hill” a corollary to the “Novell of the Curious Impertinent”? Dickens no doubt inherited the manner directly from Fielding, and in his earlier style will interrupt unblushingly the humours of an evening at Dingley Dell to narrate the unnecessary clergyman’s unnecessary narrative of “The Convict’s Return,” and then, as old Wardle says, “You are fairly in it!”
And having satisfied my petty legal mind with the precedents in the case, and convinced myself that irrelevant story-telling is, as the golfer would say, a fair hazard, I will confess that I should not have interrupted my narrative with this particular embarrassing and irrelevant chapter had I not seen an excellent portrait of Partington the other day. How many remember that sound artist? I last heard of him from Sir Henry Irving, who had seen him in San Francisco—and this picture of Partington’s reminded me of George Freemantle, that prince of musical critics, whose picture by the
same artist still hangs in the Brasenose Club, where he was so greatly beloved, and that reminded me of Murphy, Q.C., and that reminded me of the Right Honourable Arthur James Balfour, and not unnaturally that reminded me of “The Story of the Mysterious Barber,” which, as Sir Francis Burnand’s Mr. Barlow says—as you have not heard, I will now proceed to relate. And “The Story of the Mysterious Barber” is in reality the story of the election petition against Mr. Balfour in 1892.
Now, although this petition was a farce and a fiasco at that, yet I am far from thinking that, to those who started it, it was as obviously an ill-advised a proceeding as it quickly appeared to be in court. Of course, Mr. Balfour himself desired the election to be conducted on the purest lines, but, then, Mr. Balfour by himself probably could not have succeeded in winning the election. The man who won the election was Stephen Chesters Thompson, the uncrowned king of Ardwick, and at the back of Chesters Thompson was a brewery. In manner and appearance Chesters Thompson was as genial a ruffian as ever scuttled a ship, but he had a big heart and an open hand, and was genuinely fond of throwing largess to his poorer neighbours. I have heard that he would enter a grocer’s shop on a Saturday night or Monday morning, when the women were paying up their books, and, snatching the books from their hands with a “Now, missus, I’ll be settling this for you,” he would pay up all the books and depart with a jest and a laugh, as though the affair were
a commonplace pleasantry. He and Mr. Balfour were, indeed, an ill-assorted pair, but politics makes one acquainted with strange friends, and no one ever saw the least impatience exhibited by Mr. Balfour towards his adjutant. I never heard Chesters Thompson make a long oration, but I remember him once at the end of a meeting jumping up and delivering a panegyric on Mr. Balfour. At the close of its tawdry, fulsome, and sincere adulation, which Mr. Balfour bore like a hero, Chesters Thompson wound up by patting him endearingly on the shoulder with his heavy paw. “I luve Arthur James Balfour,” he said, swaying heavily about with suppressed emotion, and throwing the whole weight of his devotion into the second syllable of the word Balfour, which he always accented thus. “I luve Arthur James Balfour,” he continued, “and I tell you boys this, that should the day ever coom that it is necessary, I shall be there to place the body of Stephen Chesters Thompson between Arthur James Balfour and the dagger of the arsarsin.” The cheers that rent the stuffy atmosphere of the hired schoolroom at this magnificent sentiment proved that in Ardwick, at least, poetry, romance, melodrama—call it what you will—was a living force, and that Chesters Thompson was its high priest.
With such a general and many lieutenants who modelled themselves on their leader, it is not to be wondered at that stories came round bearing the interpretation of ill-doing. The election was a very
keenly contested one. Professor Munro, who fought for the Liberals, put up an excellent fight, and was only beaten by 398 votes. In August it was announced that a petition had been lodged by the defeated candidate. Nothing personal was alleged against Mr. Balfour, but there were allegations of illegal practices, bribery, treating, and general corruption.
What was done between August and November to collect the necessary evidence I have no idea, but when the briefs were delivered it was very clear that it would be a difficult task to prove any of the allegations that had been made. It was on November 4 that the case came on before Justices Cave and Vaughan Williams. Murphy, Q.C., Lewis Coward, and myself were for the petitioner, and Finlay, Q.C., Danckwerts, the Hon. A. Lyttelton, and Lord Robert Cecil for Mr. Balfour. Murphy, who was far from well, addressed the Bench sitting down. We really had no case to open, and those who had been employed by Professor Munro to collect facts had, I fear, been carried away by their enthusiasm and belief in the general iniquity of their opponents, and had mistaken rumour and hearsay for evidence. It was a lamentable position for counsel to be in, but Murphy—if one can predicate such movements about so genial a man-mountain as Murphy—skilfully danced among a labyrinth of eggs with as much certainty and decision as if he were upon a clear stage.