London is not pleasant in winter, while Cairo is; and, as a general rule, I would rather spend my Christmas on the Nile than by the Thames. But I would not have missed seeing the event, which I am about to tell you, even to have been at Luxor a few weeks earlier, for I got off to Egypt immediately after the House rose, thank goodness!
That winter session was unavoidable. There were things to do, which ought to have been done before, and which had to be done then, on the “better late than never” principle. We were really not very far off from Christmas Eve, when the event took place, which compensated me at least for the grey city and the weary winter days and the belated Commons.
Mr. Drury had proved himself to be a force in English public life, before he entered the House of Commons.
His newspaper, The Planet, had made itself the outspoken mouthpiece of all the interests of the labouring classes and of the poor, and he himself had earned a very considerable reputation, as a public speaker at more than one platform in the mining and agricultural regions of England.
Naturally, when a man attains to any degree of eminence in England, his fellow citizens want to know all about him. Demand creates a supply, and the Society papers afforded the world at large the opportunity of learning a number of facts about the past life of Mr. Drury.
It was soon well known that he had made his fortune at the gold-fields.
It was well known, also, that when he went to the gold-fields he went as a pardoned felon, as a convict, who had been set at liberty on account of his gallant conduct in saving a warder’s life, during a mutiny of his fellow prisoners on board the transport ship.
It would be idle to deny that at first the stories which got into circulation raised a kind of prejudice against Mr. Drury.
Of course the wrong version of any story always gets the greatest hearing, and, as the particular line which Mr. Drury took up in politics was not calculated to make him extremely popular with the easy-going and with the well-to-do, the wrong story obtained a very considerable amount of credence.
But it was an entirely wrong story, and its wrongfulness was made plain soon enough, even to the most obstinate intelligence. For Mr. Drury took the bull by the horns at once.