Lord Rosebery had the disadvantage of following upon a speaker who had reduced the House to a state of somnolent despair. Lord Selborne has an episcopal appearance, the manner of an author of hymns, and the unctuous delivery of a High Church speaker. But like most of the orators of the House of Lords, he considered two hours was the minimum which he was entitled to occupy, and though he spoke with wonderful briskness, for an octogenarian, at the beginning of his observations, his voice soon became so exhausted as to be a mere senile and inaudible whisper. Deeper and deeper it descended, and the House was in the blackest depths when the Foreign Secretary rose to speak. Everybody knows how embarrassing and distressing it is to an orator to have to begin by rousing an assembly that has been thus depressed; and the difficulty was increased in the case of Lord Rosebery by the fact that he had to address an audience in which four hundred men were against him and about forty in his favour; and there is no orator whose nerve is so steady, and whose self-confidence is so complete, as not to be depressed and weakened by such a combination of circumstances. This is partly the reason of the lighter tone of the earlier observations which offended some too sensitive critics. Indeed, it might have seemed for some time as if Lord Rosebery got up with the idea of treating the whole business as the merest unreality of comedy; and had resolved to signify this by refusing to treat either the House or the Bill or himself seriously. In face of the tragedies of the Irish sphinx—with all its centuries of brooding sorrow behind it, this was not a tone which commended itself to the judicious. But, then, this was a too hasty criticism. The light and almost chaffing introduction was necessary in the highest interests of art; for, as I have said, the House was depressed, and it was in no mood to listen to an orator whose creed appeared to it the merest rank treason. It was necessary to get the House into something like receptiveness of mood before coming to serious business; when that was done, it was time enough to seek to impress it.
An oratorical tour de force.
And this is just what happened. Everybody was in really good spirits by the time Lord Rosebery ten minutes on his legs; Lord Selborne's unctuous dronings had disappeared into the irrevocable and vast distances; in short, the moribund Chamber was alive, vivacious, and receptive. And when he had got them to this point Lord Rosebery took the serious part of his work seriously in hand. Not that he attempted lofty appeal. On the contrary, rarely throughout the speech did he raise his voice above that clear, penetrating, but eminently self-restrained tone which is the tone of a man of good society, discussing the loftiest and most complex problem with the easy and disillusioned composure of the experienced and slightly cynical man of the world. Nay, Lord Rosebery offended some of his critics by openly avowing the creed of the man of the world in dealing with the whole problem. He was careful to disown enthusiasm, or fanaticism, or even willingness in the service of Home Rule. It was with him simply a frigid matter of policy, a policy to which he had been driven by the resistless evidence of facts, the resistless logic of reason.
A deep-laid purpose.
This frankly was an attitude which grated slightly on the sensitive nerves of the many to whom Ireland's emancipation—with all the sobbing centuries which lie behind it—is a fanaticism, a faith, a great creed; but the point to be really considered is whether this was the tone to adopt for the purpose of carrying out the desired end. And I am inclined to think—and some of the hottest Irishmen I know agree with me—that this was the very way Lord Rosebery should have spoken. And after all it was wonderfully impressive—even to me with all I feel about the Irish question. For the image it presented—set forth by the physical aspect of the orator—was such as I can imagine to be wonderfully impressive to that dull, unimaginative, and unsentimental personage—the man of the shifting ballast, whose almost impenetrable brain has to finally decide this question. And the image presented to that very creature of clay was this: "Here is a man who is my Foreign Secretary; as such, he has every day of his life to deal with questions which affect my interests in the most direct way; to fight for my purse, my future, my Empire; and he has to do so with his brain matched against the brains of the astutest men in the world—the diplomatic representatives of other Powers. And all this he has to do with the sense that behind the smooth language of diplomacy, the unbroken and even voices of diplomatic representatives, there stand ironclads and mighty armies—bloodshed, wholesale, and hideous death—the tiger spirit and powers of war. And I see that the man who has all these complex problems to solve—these trained gamblers to watch—these sinister Powers to confront and think of—is a man of cold temper, of frigid understanding, of a power of calm calculation in face of all the perils and all the emotions and all the sentiment of the perplexing Irish problems; and to him Home Rule has come as a set, sober choice of possible policies for the interest of our Empire." Such an attitude—exalted by the even, though powerful, the cold, though penetrating voice—the face impassive and inscrutable—the eye, steady, unmoving, and unreadable—all this, I say, was just the kind of thing to produce an immense impression on those who are ready only to accept Home Rule as the policy that pays best.
Even the Peers impressed.
And certainly the House of Lords was wonderfully impressed by this attitude. There was no applause, except now and then from those skeleton ranks that lay behind Lord Rosebery, but then there was in the whole air that curious and almost audible silence—to use a conscious paradox—which conveys to the trained ear clearer sounds of absorption and attention than the loudest cheers. And then you began to forget the badinage of the earlier sentences—you forgave the frigidity and self-repression—you became strongly fascinated by the mobile face, inscrutable eyes, and the voice penetrated to your innermost ear; he gave you an immense sense of a clear, masterful, and resolute mind and character. And, finally, towards the end, when, to a certain extent, Lord Rosebery let himself go, there was a ring not of ordinary emotion, but of the passion of a great Minister who was fully conscious of the Imperial and supreme responsibility of a Foreign Minister, who was able to look great and even complex facts straight in the face, who had the courage to face the disagreeable solution of a troublesome and perilous problem. And, in spite of its lethargy, its hatred of his opinions, the House of Lords felt this also, and there was something of awe in the silence with which it listened to the ringing words of warning with which the speech concluded. And its attitude showed more. It was, so to speak, a soul's awakening; it was the discovery of having found at last a man who could sway, impress, and strike its imagination.
Salisbury's signal failure.
On Friday night, September 8th, Lord Salisbury had his opportunity of undoing this great effect—of reasserting that intellectual as well as mere voting dictatorship which he holds in the House of Lords; and he signally failed to rise to the occasion. I do not like the policy of Lord Salisbury, but there is a lucidity, a point, and sometimes a vigour in his speeches which make them usually charming reading. It was, therefore, with the full expectation of being interested that I listened to him, but he drove me out of the House by the impossibility of my keeping awake under the influence of his dull, shallow, and disappointing speech. He began with a little touch of nature that certainly was prepossessing. He had brought in with him a dark-brown bottle, like the bottle one associates with seltzer water. The fluid was perfectly clear; it was evidently not like the strong wine which Prince Bismarck used to require in the days when he used to make great speeches. And Lord Salisbury, as he poured out a draught—it looked very like Johannis water—lifted up the bottle to the Ministers opposite with a pleasant smile, as though to prove to them that he was not offending against even the sternest teetotal code.
It was the first and the last bit of real human naturalness in the whole speech, for Lord Salisbury's manner and delivery are wooden, stiff, awkward and lumbering. He stands upright—except, of course, for that heavy stoop of the shoulders which is one of his characteristics—and rarely moves himself one-hundredth part of an inch. The voice—even, clear, and strong, and yet not penetrating, and still less inspiring—rarely has a change of note; it is delivered with the strange, curious air of a man who is thinking aloud, and has forgotten the presence of any listeners. The eyes—hidden almost amid the shaggy and black-grey hair which covers nearly the whole face—are never directed to any person around. They seem to gaze into vacancy; altogether there is something curious, weird, almost uncanny, in this great, big whale of a man, intoning his monologue with that curious detachment of eye and manner in the midst of a crowded, brilliant, and intensely nervous and restless assembly of men and women.