He lingered a little on the homeward journey both in Berlin and Paris.
To his Mother.
British Embassy, Berlin.
Here we are very comfortable. I never travelled with so much circumstance before. The Malets are most kind and anxious to make everything very pleasant. On Monday night the opera, where was represented all Berlin Society en grande tenue; the old Emperor looking very brisk. Yesterday the picture gallery, in which I observed three Blenheim pictures—the Fornarina by Raphael (now called a Sebastian del Piombo), the Andromeda of Rubens and the great Bacchanalia picture by Rubens.... To-night Malet has an immense feast—thirty-six persons. I went this morning to Potsdam to write my name on Prince William, who called on us yesterday and saw Jennie while I was out. Then luncheon with Herbert Bismarck—very pleasant—no one else but Herr von Pothenberg, Prince Bismarck’s chef de cabinet. We talked very freely for a long time, and drank a great deal of beer, champagne, claret, sherry and brandy! H.B. is delightful, so frank and honest.... I have not a doubt that the Chancellor kept away purposely. He is a grincheux old creature, and knows quite well that I will use all my influence, as I have done, to prevent Lord S. from being towed in his wake.... Some correspondents have been to see me, but I have been very snubby to them.
And so back to England, pursued by rumours with which the Times thought it worth while to fill three columns of its foreign telegrams.
CHAPTER XX
CROSS CURRENTS
‘Surely there is no better way to stop the rising of sects and schisms than to reform abuses; to compound the smaller differences; to proceed mildly, and not with sanguinary persecutions; and rather to take off the principal authors, by winning and advancing them, than to enrage by violence and bitterness.’—Bacon.
SIXTEEN months had passed, after Lord Randolph Churchill resigned, before he became involved in a serious and open difference with the Conservative Government. That he was separated from them by sentiment and conviction, not only upon various considerable questions of method, but upon the general character and temper of their policy, has been abundantly explained. But his misgivings were concealed from the public by his consistent defence of the Union, by an unaffected partisanship and by the lively attacks which he made upon the Opposition. It is true that the criticisms upon naval and military administration which had been a necessary feature of his crusade of economy had naturally won him little favour in Ministerial circles, and his open independence of the official leaders could not be welcomed by his party. But the details of departmental administration, though of immense practical importance, do not usually raise, and ought scarcely ever to raise, questions of confidence and loyalty. The efficient conduct of the services and the doctrines of public thrift are—formally, at least—included in the principles of both great political organisations. Except at rare intervals, they lie apart from the ordinary scope of Parliamentary conflict; and their discussion should never seriously divide political associates. But Ireland opened chasms of a very different kind.
When Sir Michael Hicks-Beach recovered his eyesight, Lord Salisbury was anxious for him to rejoin the Government and offered him—no other post being vacant—the Presidency of the Board of Trade. Beach, for whom office had few attractions, who was on many questions in full sympathy with Lord Randolph, and who was always bound to him by firm friendship, was in no hurry to accept. He proposed to Lord Randolph, as they walked down one day to the House together, that he should decline Lord Salisbury’s offer and that they should both sit together and work together for the rest of the Parliament. Lord Randolph would not, however, countenance this generous attempt to relieve the isolation of his position. He urged Sir Michael to join the Government. ‘They need you,’ he said, ‘and besides, I shall like to feel I have one friend there’ (February 1888).
During the whole of 1887 Lord Randolph had regularly supported his late colleagues. Any opinions he had expressed on the Budget and the Land Bill had been of a friendly nature and in the interests of those measures. He had joined in the debates of the House with the same tone and intention as he would have spoken in the Cabinet. No divergence of principle on a dominant issue had yet occurred. The Government had acted—however uninspiringly—in conformity with the main lines of the policy declared at the General Election. It was not until the year 1888 that the question of Irish Local Government and the Suakin operations provoked a definite and notorious disagreement. On both these matters Lord Randolph Churchill had made public declarations of the plainest character in Opposition or as Leader of the House of Commons, and to those pledges he adhered with a truly Quixotic disregard of his personal interests.