CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCIII, Issue 10596, 4 March 1895, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

The English mail received here last evening brought full particulars of the calamitous close of

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL;

poor Eandolph Churchill’s chequered career. The obituary notices are not very pleasant reading. If ever a man had ten talents given him and squandered them all, that man was the deceased statesman. But how much hereditary eccentricity—not to use a stronger term—and the misdoings of his ancestors were responsible for this fact, it would be hard to say. Probably a good deal. From the very dawning of his political star he was erratic and unstable as quicksilver. One of tho many friends who loved him loyally and long, despite frequent ill-treatment, was fond of applying Addison’s lines to Lord Eandolph:— In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow, Thou'rfc such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow. Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee. There is no living with thee or without thee. Lady Eandolph Churchill has the credit of' arousing her husband’s political ambition. He sat silent in the House of Commons as member for Woodstock for four years, and it was not until he was twitted with being a silent member that his voice broke forth. His first groat spsechwas made in Dublin during the Vice-royalty of hie father. He was invited, at the opening meeting of the Trinity College Historical Society in November, 1877, to propose that tho Auditor’s address should be printed at the expense of the society. All the Dublin savants were congregated on tho platform, while a noisy undergraduate audience filled the hall. Lord Eandolph spoke at first with considerable nervousness. Ho was constantly pulling forward his shirt sleeves and producing his pocket-hand-kerchief. A somewhat awkward pause was-;

emphasised by a voice which called out, “ Take your handkerchief again,” a counsel which Lord Randolph accepted amid a burst of boisterous laughter. Gradually, however, he attained self-possession, and delivered a speech undoubtedly one of the most brilliant ever heard within the walls of Trinity College.

THE MAN.

Mr T. P. O’Connor has compiled for the Sun one of

the best of the numerous budgets of personal recollections of Lord Randolph that have been given to the public. It is far too lengthy for reproduction here—running into six columns of closely printed matter—but one or two extracts must find a place. Lord Randolph, we are told, was never an imposing figure physically. He was rather below the middle height; he had a very light physique; and though he had a certain distinction of look, and was always very carefully dressed and bejewelled—after a fashion American rather than English—he might have been taken for the typical young spark that serves behind a fashionable haberdasher’s counter. He always had the same complexion—a dull yellow, that seemed to speak of internal trouble and of constitutionally weak physique. His eyes also were always a curious and rather startling feature of his face. They were what are called in America “ pop-eyes,” that is to say, were obtruding; and being light gray blue, rather glassy and somewhat expressionless, they increased the impression of delicacy and uncertainty of health. Altogether the small face —with that twisted moustache, the delicate features, the short, unimpressive nose and the obtruding eyes, and a certain boyish impudence of expression impudence that in later years yielded place to the tragic revelation of broken and thwarted purpose—gave point to the malign invention *of the caricaturists, who likened him to the typical pug. Lord Randolph was the least snobbish of men. A good deal of the personal popularity which he enjoyed was due to his thoroughly democratic absence of airs and of respect for social distinctions. But he was like most patricians who have become democrats. He might like the multitude —he certainly could flatter and tickle them—but he had a certain scorn of the bourgeoisie, and cf the solid and respectable, though uninspired qualities which they represented. To them probably he had the same feeling as one can imagine in the rfickless freebooters of the Southern Main of the sixteenth century towards the good apprentice that stopped at home and gathered fortune by measuring goods in Cheapside, or taking pledges in Lombard Street.

HIS GREAT TEAR.

As a politician and as a leader in the House of Commons, Lord Randolph

was as weak as he was strong. The delicacy of his constitution and the irritability of his nerves had been increased by his methods of life. A poli-tician-even the strongest—ought to live the life of a prize-fighter in training for a big fight. There are few politicians who do not exercise the severest control of their passions and appetites who do not ultimately go down in the struggle for supremacy, which requires hands as steady, nerves as unfailing and eyes as fixed as the struggle between opposing spears. But poor Lord Randolph was deficient in all forms of self-control. He spent recklessly, he gambled at times recklessly, be ate recklessly, and, above all things, he smoked recklessly. A cigarette was scarcely aver out of his mouth; and the constitution .which was asked to bear all this strain, in addition to the labours and , anxieties of public office, was weak from the start, and was, therefore, quite unequal to the burden. “ The ideal life/’ he once said, “ is to stay in bed during the day reading and dosing, to dine in slippers and dressing-gown in the evening, and as soon as convenient thereafter go back to bed.” But much of all this was only a pose. Lord Randolph did not exactly scorn delights—amphitryonic or other—but he was quite as capable as other public men of living laborious days. Besides his innate quickness to seize points o£ controversy nnd. appreciate the significance of facte, he had acquired a strong, if spasmodic, faculty of industry, and ho had none of that incapacity for detail which was the weakness of his great exemplar, • Lord Beaconsfield. He was only at the India Office seven months, but he managed in that time to leave behind him a distinct impression for the diligence, decision and grip which go to make a great administrator. In his first fortnight at the Treasury he had, according to Mr Charles Morley in the Westminster Review, completely won over the leading officials, who, as good Liberals, must doubtless have started with some prejudices against him. The greatest virtue in a Minister (at any rate in the eyes of the permanent officials) is receptivity. Lord Randolph absorbed their ideas very quickly, and they wore rejoiced at his effective way' of putting things. All this was the more creditable to him because his previous stock of mathematical and financial information was small. . There is a legend that after his first day or two at the Treasury he sent for his private secretary to find out what decimal points meant. An ex-official of long and varied experience was asked the other day who was the best Minister, from the permanent official’s point of view, of the last half-century. The answer, of course, was “Mr Gladstonebut “nest to Mr Gladstone, Lord Randolph. Churchill.”

Lord Randolph went rapidly down hill when he left the world of polities.

THE DECLINE AND BALL.

but it was not until after that ill-fated trip to Mashonaland that Parliament and the country discovered that he had changed. Instead, to again quote Mr O’Connor, of the boyish, cleanshaven, thin face with which we were all familiar we saw a bearded man, with a thousand wrinkles about the tell-tale and wearied eyes, and a look of premature and almost unnatural old age. One was almost reminded of that terrible picture of transformation of “ She" in Mr Eider Haggard’s well-known romance. Everybody looked forward with the keenest expectation to the speech with which Lord Eandolph was to signalise his re-entry after years of silence and some period of absence into the political arena • The galleries were all filled. The Prince of Wales had come down specially. The House was-crowded, curious; on the whole tender and sympathetic. But here again the evil star of Lord Eandolph came against him. Before he could rise there was a preliminary skirmish which lasted for two hours, and during all that period this unhappy man had to sit with his notes in his trembling hands, with his pale and heavily-lined face, and with his weakened and nervous frame, a torture to suspense, dread of failure, certain of . weakness.

like other men in similar moments o$ terrible parliamentary strain, he hfctj wrought hia frame to the demands of the? occasion by one of those potions that give temporary strength and brilliancy, and that when that terrible two hours were over, the potion had ceased toworkj and there was nothing left but the trembling flesh and the tingling nerves of $ broken man. The speech was portentously long; it was'very dull; but above all things it was terribly delivered. Everybody could see the tremble of the long, delicate, well-shaped hands; several times Lord Randolph had to stop and place one of his hands over his heart—that region to which the dreadfully sudden death of a brother a short time before had directed hie own saddened and affrighted thoughts—and above all things, the voice had lost all its old resonance and power. Indeed, it was evident to even a non-medical listens* that the process of nervous deterioration had already- begun; for the indistinctness of the utterance could only be explained! by partial paralysis of the organs of speech* In short, everybody knew that Lord Randolph Churchill was dead past all resurrect tion. )