Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
reappeared, and flung himself into the agitation against Turkey with a
zeal which in his prime he had never excelled, if, indeed, he had
equalled it. On Christmas Day, 1876, he wrote in his diary--"The most
solemn I have known for long; I see that eastward sky of storm and of
underlight!" When Parliament met in February, 1877, he was ready with
all his unequalled resources of eloquence, argumentation, and
inconvenient enquiry, to drive home his great indictment against the
Turkish Government and its champion, Disraeli, who had now become Lord
Beaconsfield. For three arduous years he sustained the strife with a
versatility, a courage, and a resourcefulness, which raised the
enthusiasm of his followers to the highest pitch, and filled his
antagonists with a rage akin to frenzy. I well remember that in July,
1878, just after Lord Beaconsfield's triumphant return from Berlin, a
lady asked me as a special favour to dine with her: "Because I have got
the Gladstones coming, and everyone declines to meet him." Strange, but
true.
1878 was perhaps the most critical year of the Eastern question. Russia
and Turkey were at death-grips, and Lord Beaconsfield seemed determined
to commit this country to a war in defence of the Mahomedan Power, which
for centuries has persecuted the worshippers of Christ in the East of
Europe. By frustrating the sinister design Gladstone saved England from
the indelible disgrace of a second Crimea. But it was not only in
Eastern Europe that he played the hero's part. In Africa, and India, and
wherever British arms were exercised and British honour was involved, he
dealt his resounding blows at that odious system of bluster and swagger
and might against right, on which the Prime Minister and his colleagues
bestowed the tawdry nickname of Imperialism. In his own phrase he
devoted himself to "counterworking the purpose of Lord Beaconsfield,"
and all that was ardent and enthusiastic and adventurous in Liberalism
flocked to his standard.
"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven."
One could not stand aloof--the call to arms was too imperious. We saw
our Leader contending single-handed with "the obscene empires of Mammon
and Belial," and we longed to be at his side in the thick of the fight.
To a man born and circumstanced as I was the call came with peculiar
power. I had the love of Freedom in my blood. I had been trained to
believe in and to serve the Liberal cause. I was incessantly reminded of
the verse, which, sixty years before, Moore had addressed to my uncle,
Lord John Russell,
"Like the boughs of that laurel, by Delphi's decree
Set apart for the Fane and its service divine,
So the branches that spring from the old Russell tree
Are by Liberty claimed for the use of her shrine."
In 1841 that same uncle wrote thus to his eldest brother: "Whatever may
be said about other families, I do not think ours ought to retire from
active exertion. In all times of popular movement, the Russells have
been on the 'forward' side. At the Reformation, the first Earl of
Bedford; in Charles the First's days, Francis, the Great Earl; in
Charles the Second's, William, Lord Russell; in later times, Francis,
Duke of Bedford; our father; you; and lastly myself in the Reform Bill."
These hereditary appeals were strong, but there were influences which
were stronger. A kind of romantic and religious glamour, such as one had
never before connected with politics, seemed to surround this attack on
the strongholds of Anti-Christ. The campaign became a crusade.
Towards the end of 1879 I accepted an invitation to contest "the Borough
and Hundreds of Aylesbury" at the next General Election. The "Borough"
was a compact and attractive-looking town, and the "Hundreds" which
surrounded it covered an area nearly coextensive with the present
division of Mid Bucks. Close by was Hampden House, unaltered since the
day when four thousand freeholders of Buckinghamshire rode up to
Westminster to defend their impeached member, John Hampden. All around
were those beech-clad recesses of the Chiltern Hills, in which,
according to Lord Beaconsfield, the Great Rebellion was hatched. I do
not vouch for that fact, but I can affirm that thirty years ago those
recesses sheltered some of the stoutest Liberals whom I have ever known.
The town and its surroundings were, for parliamentary purposes, a
Borough, and, as all householders in Boroughs had been enfranchised by
the Reform Act of 1867, the Agricultural Labourers of the district were
already voters.
It happens that Agricultural Labourers are the class of voters with
which I am most familiar; and an intimate acquaintance with these men
has taught me increasingly to admire their staunchness, their
shrewdness, and their racy humour. Two or three of the old sayings come
back to memory as I write. "More pigs and less parsons" must have been a
survival from the days of Tithe. "The Black Recruiting Sergeant" was a
nickname for a canvassing Incumbent. "I tell you how it is with a
State-Parson," cried a Village Hampden: "if you take away his book, he
can't preach. If you take away his gown he mayn't preach. If you take
away his screw, he'll be d--d if he'll preach." A Radical M.P. suddenly
deserted his constituency and took a peerage, and this was the verdict
of the Village Green: "Mister So-and-so says he's going to the House of
Lords to 'leaven it with Liberal principles.' Bosh! Mr. So-and-so can't
no more leaven the House of Lords than you can sweeten a cartload of
muck with a pot of marmalade."
Aylesbury returned two Members to Parliament, and its political history
had been chequered. When first I came to know it, the two members were
Mr. Samuel George Smith and Sir Nathaniel de Rothschild (afterwards Lord
Rothschild). Mr. Smith was a Tory. Sir Nathaniel professed to be a
Liberal; but, as his Liberalism was of the sort which had doggedly
supported Lord Beaconsfield all through the Eastern Question, the more
enthusiastic spirits in the constituency felt that they were wholly
unrepresented. It was they who invited me to stand. From the first, Sir
Nathaniel made it known that he would not support or coalesce with me;
and perhaps, considering the dissimilarity of our politics, it was just
as well. So there were three candidates, fighting independently for two
seats; there was no Corrupt Practices Act in those days; and the
situation was neatly summarized by a tradesman of the town. "Our three
candidates are Mr. S. G. Smith, head of 'Smith, Payne & Co.;' Sir
Nathaniel de Rothschild, head of 'N. M. Rothschild & Sons,' and Mr.
George Russell, who, we understand, has the Duke of Bedford behind him.
So we are looking forward to a very interesting contest." That word
_interesting_ was well chosen.
Now began the most vivid and enjoyable portion of my life. Everything
conspired to make it pleasant. In the first place, I believed absolutely
in my cause. I was not, as Sydney Smith said, "stricken by the palsy of
candour." There were no doubts or questionings or ambiguities in my
mind. My creed with regard both to foreign and to domestic politics was
clear, positive, and deliberate. I was received with the most
extraordinary kindness and enthusiasm by people who really longed to
have a hand in the dethronement of Lord Beaconsfield, and who believed
in their politics as part of their religion.
After my first speech in the Corn Exchange of Aylesbury I was severely
reprehended because I had called Lord Beaconsfield a "Jew." If I had
known better, I should have said "a Semite" or "an Israelite," or--his
own phrase--"a Mosaic Arab," and all would have been well. I had and
have close friends among the Jews, so my use of the offending word was
not dictated by racial or social prejudice. But it expressed a strong
conviction. I held then, and I hold now, that it was a heavy misfortune
for England that, during the Eastern Question, her Prime Minister was
one of the Ancient Race. The spiritual affinity between Judaism and
Mahomedanism, founded on a common denial of the Christian Creed, could
not be without its influence on a statesman whose deepest convictions,
from first to last, were with the religion of his forefathers. In 1876
Mr. Gladstone wrote--"Some new lights about Disraeli's Judaic feeling,
in which he is both consistent and conscientious, have come in upon me."
And similar "lights" dictated my action and my language at the crisis of
1879-1880.
Another element of enjoyment was that I was young--only twenty-six.
Youth is an invaluable asset in a first campaign. Youth can canvass all
day, and harangue all night. It can traverse immense distances without
fatigue, make speeches in the open air without catching cold, sleep
anywhere, eat anything, and even drink port with a grocer's label on it,
at five in the afternoon. Then again, I had a natural and inborn love of
public speaking, and I have known no enjoyment in life equal to that of
addressing a great audience which you feel to be actively sympathetic.
Yes, that spring of 1880 was a delightful time. As the condemned
highwayman said to the chaplain who was exhorting him to repentance for
his life of adventure on the road--"You dog, it was delicious." It was
all so new. One emerged (like Herbert Gladstone) from the obscurity of
College rooms or from the undistinguished herd of London ball-goers, or
from the stables and stubbles of a country home, and became, all in a
moment, a Personage. For the first time in one's life one found that
people--grown-up, sensible, vote-possessing people--wished to know one's
opinions, and gave heed to one's words. For the first time, one had
"Colours" of one's own, as if one were a Regiment or a University; for
the first time one beheld one's portrait, flattering though perhaps
mud-bespattered, on every wall. For the first time one was cheered in
the street, and entered the Corn-Exchange amid what the Liberal paper
called "thunders of applause," and the opponent's organ whittled down to
"cheers."
But canvassing cannot, I think, be reckoned among the pleasures of a
candidature. One must be very young indeed to find it even tolerable. A
candidate engaged in a house-to-house canvass has always seemed to me
(and not least clearly when I was the candidate) to sink beneath the
level of humanity. To beg for votes, as if they were alms or broken
victuals, is a form of mendicancy which is incompatible with common
self-respect, and yet it is a self-abasement which thirty years ago
custom imperatively demanded. "If my vote ain't worth calling for, I
suppose it ain't worth 'aving" was the formula in which the elector
stated his requirement.
To trudge, weary and footsore, dusty and deliquescent, from door to
door; to ask, with damnable iteration, if Mr. So-and-so is at home, and
to meet the invariable rejoinder, "No, he isn't," not seldom running on
with--"And, if he was, he wouldn't see you;" to find oneself (being
Blue) in a Red quarter, where the very children hoot at you, and
inebriate matrons shout personalities from upper windows--all this is
detestable enough. But to find the voter at home and unfriendly is an
experience which plunges the candidate lower still. A curious tradition
of privileged insolence, which runs through all English history from the
days when great men kept Jesters and the Universities had their _Terrae
Filii_, asserts itself, by immemorial usage, at an election. People who
would be perfectly civil if one called on them in the ordinary way, and
even rapturously grateful if they could sell one six boxes of lucifers
or a pound of toffee, permit themselves a freedom of speech to the
suppliant candidate, which tests the fibre of his manhood. If he loses