The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Beresford
"To hell with Lord Char-less," says he.
"Come," says I, "let me show ye the way to paste bills, ye omadhaun."
"And what do ye know about pasting bills?"
"Haven't I been a billposter all me life, then?" says I. "Here, let me
get at it, and I'll shew ye the right way to paste the bills of
Longbottom, the Friend of the People."
He handed me his long hairy brush, and a pailful of a horrible stinking
compound, and I pasted up a bill the way I was born to it.
"Sure," says he, "ye can paste bills with anny man that God ever put
two legs under. 'Tis clear ye're a grand bill-poster," says he.
"Didn't I tell ye?" says I.
And with that I caught him a lick with the full brush across the face,
so that the hairs flicked all round his head, and with a loud cry he
turned and fled away. Armed with the pail and the brush, away I
started after him, but my foot caught in the lap of the long coat I had
on, and down I came, and knocked my nose on the ground, so that it bled
all over me, and I had to go back to the inn. I took the rest of the
placards, and the pail and the brush, and drove home, arriving very
late. My brother Bill was in bed and sound asleep. Without waking
him, I pasted the whole of his room with bills, "Vote for Longbottom,
{135} the Friend of the People." I pasted them on the walls, and on
the door, and on his bed, and on his towels, and on his trousers, and
on the floor. Then I went to bed.
In the morning he awakened me, wearing a pale and solemn countenance.
"Charlie," said he, "there's some bold men among the enemy."
"What do you mean?" said I.
"They are great boys," says he. "Why, one of them got into my room
last night."
"Impossible," said I.
"Come and see," said he. "When I woke this morning I thought I had
gone mad."
Upon the eve of the election, a man whom I knew to be a Fenian, came up
to me and said, "I shall vote for ye, Lord Char-less. I don't agree
with your politics, but I shall vote for ye."
"And why would you?" I said. "You that's a Fenian, you should be
voting for Mr. Longbottom, the Friend of the People, like an honest
man."
"Not at all," says he. "When ye go to the market to buy a horse, or a
cow, or a pig, what is it ye look for in 'um? Blood," says he. "An'
it's the same in an iliction. Ye are well-bred, annyway," says he,
"but as for this Mr. Longwhat's-'is-name, he's cross-bred."
When I was holding a meeting, one of the audience kept interrupting me;
so I invited him to come up on the platform and have it out.
"Now what is it, ye old blackguard," I said. "Speak out."
"Lord Char-less," says he, "ye're no man."
"We'll see about that," says I. "Why do you say so?"
"Lord Char-less," he said solemnly, "I remimber the time one of your
family stood for th' county of Waterford, I was up to the knees in
blood and whisky for a month, and at this iliction, begob, devil a drop
of eyther have I seen."
The old man referred to the election of 1826, in which {136} Lord
George Beresford was beaten by Lord Stewart de Decies, an event which
was partially instrumental in bringing about the emancipation of the
Roman Catholics in 1829.
I have always preferred a hostile political meeting to a peaceable
assembly; nor have I ever failed to hold a hostile audience except upon
one occasion, during the York election. I had sent a speaker to occupy
the attention of an audience, largely composed of my own countrymen,
till I came, and by the time I arrived he had succeeded in irritating
them beyond the power of pacification.
But one can hardly save oneself from one's friends. During the
Waterford election I came one evening to Youghal and went to the hotel.
I was peacefully smoking outside the inn, when a party of the boys came
along, hooting me, and presently they began to throw stones. When I
advanced upon them they ran away and were lost in the darkness. As I
turned to go back to the hotel, a large missile caught me behind the
ear, knocking me over.
Next morning I related the incident to one of my most enthusiastic
supporters in the place.
"'Tis a disgrace," said I, "throwing stones in the dark. And as for
that boy who made a good shot, if I could get hold of him I would
scatter his features."
"Ye would not," said he.
"And why wouldn't I?" said I.
"Because," says he, "it was myself that threw that brick. An' didn't I
get ye grand!" says he. "But ye're not hurted. Sure ye're not hurted,
or I wudn't have told ye annything about it."
It wasn't disloyalty on his part. It was simply that he couldn't
resist what he considered a joke.
The result of the polling was: Beresford, 1767; Esmonde, 1390;
Longbottom, 446.
A salient characteristic of the Irish race is that they will not endure
condescension towards them. They admire resolution and determination,
and will submit to the sternest discipline if it is enforced upon them
by a man who understands {137} them and whom they respect. Conversely,
they will yield nothing to weakness, and will return any assumption of
superiority with hatred and contempt. Hence it is that the English
have so often failed in their dealings with the Irish. In spite of the
violence the Irish often exhibit in politics, their pride of race and
pride in one another remain their notable characteristics.
I recently overheard a remark which illustrates the Irish master
sentiment. During the debates upon the Home Rule Bill which took place
in the House of Commons in 1912, one of his Majesty's Ministers, having
made a long and an eloquent speech in support of that measure,
punctuated by enthusiastic cheers by the Nationalist members, had it
knocked to smithereens by Sir Edward Carson. Afterwards, I heard one
Nationalist member say to another, "Wasn't that grand, now, to see the
Irishman knocking spots out of the Saxon!" Yet it was the Saxon who
was fighting for the Nationalist cause, which the Irishman, Sir Edward
Carson, was strenuously opposing.
{138}
CHAPTER XVI
MEMBER FOR WATERFORD, AND COMMANDER, ROYAL NAVY
I shall never forget my first impressions, when, in 1874, I entered
Parliament. There was a discussion upon a matter of Local Government.
I listened to the speeches made on both sides of the House, each
speaker taking a different point of view, and I became more and more
doubtful concerning the solution of the problem in hand. At last a
Radical member, whose name I forget, drew all the yarns into one rope,
making what appeared to me to be a clear, concise and reasonable
proposal.
Sitting among my friends, several of whom had been at school with me, I
said:
"That is the only man who has solved the difficulty, and if he divides
I shall vote with him."
My innocent remark was received with a volley of expostulations. I was
told that I had only just joined political life, and that I did not
understand it; that the Radical speaker's plan was excellent, but that
the other side could not be allowed to take the credit of producing a
good scheme, because it would do our side harm in the country; that the
scheme would be thrown out for the time, in order that our side might
be able later on to bring in the same scheme and reap the credit of it,
and so forth.
"Well," I said, "if this kind of tactics is required in politics, it is
no place for me. I had better go back to sea."
Whereupon I was told that I should shake down to political methods when
I had been a year or two in the {139} House. But I have spent years in
politics and I have never shaken down to political methods. A thing is
either right or wrong. I have never scrupled to vote against my own
party when I thought they were in the wrong.
Upon one occasion, someone told Disraeli that I was intending to vote
against the party. He put his arm on my shoulder, and said in his
orotund, deliberate enunciation:
"My boy, don't you know that it's your first duty to vote with your
party? If everyone voted according to his convictions, there would be
no party system. And without a party system the Government could not
be carried on, as you will discover in time."
I have also discovered that when politicians think only of issues as
affecting themselves and not as affecting the State, party politics
fall to a very low level, and those who believe in great national and
Imperial ideas are regarded as freaks and faddists.
Disraeli was very friendly both to my brother Waterford and myself.
Upon the first occasion of a division in which I took part, he walked
through the lobby with his arm on my shoulder, rather to the surprise
of the old members.
"Who the devil is that young man to whom Dizzy is talking?" I heard
them murmur.
I sat immediately behind Disraeli; and one night, Lord Barrington, a
great friend of his, hurried into the House, and squeezing himself in
between me and the next man, leaned over and said to Disraeli in a
whisper:
"Poor Whyte-Melville has been killed!"
Disraeli turned slowly round, fitting his glass into his eye.
"Dear, dear," said he deliberately; "and pray, how did _that_ happen?"
"Killed in the hunting-field!"
"How very dramatic!" said Disraeli solemnly.
We stayed at Sandringham, and went for long walks together, during
which Disraeli talked and laughed with the greatest enjoyment. But I
remember how, in the pauses of {140} the conversation, he would stand
still, and, glass in eye, dreamily surveying the landscape, would make
some such observation as "The air is balmy ... and serene!" or "The
foliage is stunted ... but productive!" with the most weighty and
measured emphasis, as though these were prophetic utterances. I was
quite bewildered; for I did not then know whether he were serious, or
were indulging a recondite wit. He was a visionary, dwelling much in a
world of his own; and I know now that he was perfectly natural and
serious on these occasions.
He and his wife were devotedly attached to each other. Having taken
Lady Beaconsfield in to dinner one evening, I noticed some red marks
upon her arm and her napkin. She was wearing red roses, and at first I
thought some petals had fallen from them. Then I saw that she was
wearing a bandage on her arm, and that blood was oozing from under it.
I told her that her arm was bleeding.
"Please don't say a word, Lord Charles," she said hastily, "it would
distress Dizzy so much." And she furtively twisted her napkin about
her arm. Lord Beaconsfield, who was sitting opposite to us, stuck his
glass in his eye and stared across the table--I was afraid for a moment
that he had overheard what his wife had said. Poor lady, she died
shortly afterwards.
When I entered Parliament in 1874 it was still the day of the great
orators: of Disraeli, Gladstone, Bright, David Plunkett, O'Connor
Power; whose like, perhaps, we shall not see again. There was a
tradition of eloquence in the House of Commons of that time; members
declined to listen to a bore; and debate was conducted almost entirely
by the two Front Benches. It was in my first Parliament that Disraeli
touched the zenith of his extraordinary and splendid career; during
which he formulated the principles of a national policy, a part of
which himself carried into execution, but whose complete fulfilment
remains to be achieved. Disraeli established a tradition; and like all
those who have a great ideal--whether right or wrong is {141} not here
the question--he still lives in the minds of men, and his name still
carries inspiration. His great rival, who wore him down at last,
bequeathed no such national inheritance.
It was in this my first Parliament that Mr. Parnell emerged as the
leader of the Irish party. He was a cold, unapproachable person; he
kept his party under the most rigid control, with a tight hold upon the