A CHARACTERISTIC ATTITUDE OF THE LATE MR. GLADSTONE.
On the evening before this speech Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden had been the guests of a former kind friend of mine, Mr. W. S. Lindsay, M.P., in his beautiful house on the banks of the Thames. Mr. Lindsay had been the warm ally of both these great leaders in the Free Trade agitation, and he told me this curious anecdote. Mr. Bright, as is well known, carefully studied his speeches and committed them to memory word for word, delivering them in such measured, yet often thrilling, tones as gave to each word its utmost force. Mr. Lindsay said that the evening before—knowing the extreme importance of the speech, and the fact that he would be trying to persuade a multitude of hearers against their will—Mr. Bright had recited to these two friends in the drawing-room the arguments which he intended to enunciate. But he had not then brought in the allusion to the Angel of Death. The three members were sitting side by side during the debate; and it was perhaps as a relief to his own over-burdened feelings that Mr. Cobden, when the tumult of applause which followed the speech had subsided, said to Mr. Bright, "Where did you get hold of that passage about the angel, John? You did not say it to us last night." "No," answered the orator; "I only thought of it while I was dressing this morning." "Now, if you had said 'the flapping of his wings,' instead of 'the beating of his wings,'" said Cobden, "everyone would have laughed." I have no doubt that in this apparently trivial criticism Cobden was only seeking to lighten the oppression of his own misgivings about the national policy of that time; but, curiously enough, I several times heard Dean Stanley allude to the great speech, both in conversation and in sermons, and he always quoted the passage, "We may almost hear the flapping of his wings."
(Photo: Elliott and Fry, Baker Street, W.)
RICHARD COBDEN.
Several of Mr. Bright's best points seem to have occurred to him suddenly. In the days when there was the secession from the Liberal party to which he gave the popular nickname of "the Cave of Adullam," speaking of the fact that the members of the party seemed to be all on an equality, and to have no acknowledged leader, he convulsed the House with laughter by comparing them to one of those shaggy lapdogs of which it was difficult to distinguish which was the head and which was the tail. One leading member of this party was the late Mr. Horsman—a very forcible debater, who used sometimes to be spoken of as "the wild Horsman." I once heard a little passage of arms between him and the late Lord Houghton. "Ah!" said Mr. Horsman, "you can't boast of a Cave of Adullam in the House of Lords!" "No," replied Lord Houghton, with the readiness of a rapier thrust, "in the House of Lords we have nothing so hollow!"
It is extraordinary how much our judgment of oratory is affected by our opinion as to the point at issue. I once heard Mr. Bright deliver a speech of great force and beauty on the second Reform Bill; and his speeches were always eloquent and admirable so that he never seemed to sink below himself. Indeed, one secret of his splendid success was the care and study which he devoted to master every detail of what he intended to say; so that—to the astonishment of Mr. Gladstone, who had the happy art of falling to sleep as soon as he laid his head on the pillow—Mr. Bright's speeches often caused him sleepless nights. The oration to which I refer was delivered, if I remember rightly, in 1857. I was listening with admiration in the Speaker's gallery, when suddenly an ardent Conservative, who was sitting next to me, showed himself so entirely impervious to the charm and power of the orator that he flung himself back in his seat with the contemptuous remark, "I thought the fellow could speak!"
This reminds me of one or two incidents in the great debate on the Disestablishment of the Irish Church in the House of Lords. The Earl of Tankerville, whose son was a boy in my house at Harrow, had very kindly given me a seat in the gallery, and I heard a great part of that very famous discussion. The learned and lovable Archbishop Trench had to plead the cause of his Church; but he was old and deeply depressed, and his speech was naturally ineffective. At the very beginning he made an unfortunate slip, which, trivial as it was—and it is by no means unfrequently the case that a "trifle light as air" makes an impression, favourable or unfavourable, far beyond what might seem to be its proper importance—at once marred the effect of what he was about to urge. For, at the beginning of his speech, he unluckily addressed the assembled peers as "My brethren!"—or, as he pronounced it, "My brathren"—instead of "My Lords"; and, hastily as he corrected himself, the scarcely suppressed titter which ran through the House was alike disconcerting to the speaker and injurious to the effect of his words. A stranger was seated next to me, who was burning with enthusiasm for the Irish Church, and expected a powerful defence of its position from its eminent Archbishop. But the prelate's somewhat lachrymose appeal seemed to him quite below the importance of the occasion; and, with a sigh of deep disappointment, he leaned back with the murmur, "Oh dear! he's as heavy as lead and as dull as ditch-water!"
(Photo: S. A. Walker, 230, Regent Street, W.)
LORD DERBY (14th EARL).