RANDOLPH THE RECKLESS AT REST.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1202, 15 March 1895, Page 30

RANDOLPH THE RECKLESS AT REST.

CALAMITOUS CLOSE OF A CHEQUERED CAREER. REGRETS AND REMINISCENCES. From Our Special Correspondent. London, January 26. The long struggle of Lord Randolph Churchill with the King of Terrors ended at dawn yesterday-to the infinite relief of those who loved him best. There had been several false alarms, and the family had stood round the bedside waitingwaiting— waiting. But just when the doctors were expecting the feeble fluttering pulse to cease, it flickered up, and the danger was oyer for another twenty-four hours. In the end, the diagnosis of Dr Keith, who had been poor Randy*s personal medical attendant for a couple of years past, proved absolutely accurate. “ By employing every resource of science, his life may possibly be prolonged a month,” declared the physician on Christmas Eve, and on January 24th the patient died. "Whatever may have been Lord .Randolph’s sins/of commission and omission, I feel sure his terrible sufferings during the last eighteen months have wiped them out, and that he is now at rest. We do not punish one another twice for wrong-doing; why, then, should we suspect an all-merci-ful God of such terrible severity? The obituary notices are not very pleasant reading. If ever a man had ten talents given him and squandered them, that man is the deceased statesman. But how much hereditary eccentricity not to use a stronger word —and the misdoiiigs 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 the many friends

who loved him loyally and long, despite frequent ill-treatment, was fond of applying Addison’s lines to Lord Randolph j n all thy humours, whether grave or mellow, Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow, Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about . thee Thero is no living with thee or without thee. TUB BEGINNING. In the following extracts from the obituary notieee in to-day’s papers I propose to deal with personal reminiscences only and not to repeat what can be found in “ Men of the Time.” Lady Randolph Churchill has the credit of arousing her husband’s political ambition. Few remember that he sat silent in the Commons as M.P. for Woodstock for four years, and it was not till he had been twitted with being a silent member that his voice broke forth. It is perhaps not generally known that Lord Randolph Ghurchill’s first great speech was made in Dublin during the Viceroyalty of bis father. He was invited, at the opening meeting of the Trinity College Historical Society in November, 1877, to propose that the Auditor’s address be printed at the expense of the society. All the Dublin savants were congregated on the platform, while a noisy undergraduate audience filled the hall. Lord Randolph spoke at first with considerable nervousness. He ' was constantly pulling forward his shirt sleeves and producing his pocket-handkerl- - 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. It was also very characteristic. The subject of the address of the Auditor was "The Relationship between Philosophy and Politics.” "Philosophy,” said Lord Randolph, with a • slight* approach .to a grimace, "is such a comprehensive word. Although I am in Trinity College, with a very highly*educated audience before me, I may say that there were in the ancient world three principal systems of philosophy. There was the Stoic, a most disagreeable school—-(laughter)—there was the Platonist, a very unintelligible school, and there was the school of the Epicureans, which was a very attractive school. (Laughter). Perhaps with the last branch, if I may trench on anything so controversial, I may be permitted to say that there is a connection, an intimate connection, between the philosophy of the Epicurean school and what is known as Tory, politics. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) To let things ■ alone as much as we can, to accustom -; ourselves to look mbre at the bright side, to legislate rather for the moment than for the dim and distant future, generously leaving that task to posterity —in fact, what has been described by a great man the .other day as making all classes comfortable —that is the maxim,, as I understand it, of Conservative politics.”

THE FIVE TEARS OF THE FOURTH PARTY. “Tay Pay” is at his best in the six . columns of personal recollections of Lord ./ Randolph in the Sun. Referring to the /. days of the Fourth Party before His Lordship had become , the first of Mr Parnell’s “gutter sparrows/’ and when he joined obstructive forces with "my honourable / friend, the member for Cavan” (Mr Biggar),, Mr O’Connor says the terrible young freelance turned poor Sir Stafford Northcote’s hair grey. But even in these five years he more than once gave evidence of that constitutional weakness of physique which has ended in the tragic prematureness of his disappearance. He often came down to the House looking ghastly and visibly nervous; and one day I remember how a titter passed through the House as he audibly and unbashfully called on Sir Henry Drummond Wolff to bring him some brandy and water. The cause of this excess of nervousness was the fact that Mr Gladstone—after a short vacation to cure himself of the effects of a cold—had returned to the House of Commons —sunburnt, lively, in a short tweed coat, and with an air of ■ . provoking juvenility and readiness to meet all comers—a sudden and portentous reappearance, the disturbing effect of which on his nerves Lord Randolph avowed in his speech, as well as by his stage directions to Sir Henry Drummond Wolff. But at this time he was very unlike the Lord Randolph of later years. - . , V. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. He 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 then always very carefully dressed and bejewelled after a fashion American rather than English—he might have been taken, be it said without offence, (for the typical young spark that serves behind a fashionable haberdasher’s counter. But lie looked very young. His face was clean-shaven—save for a small moustache ; , he was boyish in expression and in figure; and, indeed, looked quite as young as he was—he was just above 30 —except in com- . plexion. As long as X have known, 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 light grey 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 fea- / tures, the short, unimpressive nose and the I obtruding eyes, and a certain boyish impur. dence 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. . RANDOLPH THE ARISTOOBAT. Lord Randolph was a thorough aristocrat

of the old school, and liked to pose as such. When asked to meet his colleague, W. H. Smith, at a friend’s house he said, " Dine with that sometliinged bookseller ? I Certainly not.” Similarly when a worldfamous Oriental scholar was hunting in the library at Blenheim for some book he couldn’t find, and asked the help of Lord Randolph, the latter hardly looked up from his lounging chair, “There is the bell,” lie ejaculated angrily pointing. This Was abominably ill-bred, but Randy : was ilhbred at times—Very. Lord Randolph was the least snobbish of men—a good deal of the personal popularity which he enjoyed Whs dtie to liis 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 eoilld flatter and tickle them —but lie had a Certain scorn of the bourgeoisie, and of the solid add though uninspired qualities which they represented. To them probably he had the same feeling as one can imagine in the reckless freebooters of the Southern Main of the sixteenth century towards the good apprentice that stopped at home, and gathered fortune by measuring goods in Gheapside, or taking pledges in Lombard street. When Mr Bradlaugh was reported to have broke down —strong and arrogant as was. his nature —because Mr Labouchere quietly collected some hundreds of pounds to pay his law costs in one of his numerous actions, Lord Randolph’s somewhat cynical comment was “ D——d middle-class sentiment.” Similarly, it was he who gave to Mr Richard Cross, now Lord Cross, and Mr W. H. Smith, the epithet of “ Marshall and Snelgrove,” which used to be repeated with great gusto amongst young men of the Tory party who detested their elders. Finally,‘it was Lord Randolph who invented the epitaph of the men who led the party in these days by designating them with the scornful epithet of "The Old Gang.” TUe I>Ay ob TkiuMfU. ; ■ Of the great days when Lord Randolph was Chancellor, and seemed to have snuffed out Lord Salisbury, “ Tay Pay” writes: — But he 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 politician—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, he ate recklessly, and, above all things, he Smoked recklessly. A cigarette was scarcely ever out of his mouth; and the constitution which was asked to bear all this strain; on addition' to the, labours and anxieties of public office, was weak from the start, and was, therefore, quite unequal, to the bUrden. The "Marshall And Snelgrove” bodies, though they had hot the power to control, and would ultimately have been ready to servilely submit to this daring and masterful young man, were in a position as colleagues with a vote and a sympathetic chief, to irritate, to hinder and to thwart the innovator who wanted to transform Toryism into a democratic and modern creed.

A CAPITAL BLUNDER. Then it was that Lord ; Randolph made the mistake to which I have already alluded—he under-rated the wretched mediocrities who opposed/him, and when their opportunity came, they quickly turned and rent him.. How the opportunity came, the secret memoirs must reveal in the future; but what happened was something like this. Irritated by this dense opposition—at odds with his chief—overburdened by work and an always infirm temper and irritable nerves, and, above all things, perhaps, misled by the unbroken success of all his previous coups de main, and by his enormous position in the country and in the House of Commons —acting under all these impulses lie determined to try conclusions with Lord Salisbury, and to compel his chief to submit or to go. But when this fatal moment in his life came he was importuned by his friends not to make a mistake, and at one moment it seemed as if he were going to yield%o their better and cooler judgment, i At all events, i was told shortly after the resignation by one of his intimates, personal and political, of that time —the late Mr Jennings—that before he went down to see the Queen at Windsor he promised that he would not resign. But with a nature so impulsive and headstrong as Lord Randolph’s, such a promise was not to be relied upon; a word—a good or bad dinner ; per r haps a cigarette, was sufficient to upset the mental and physical balance. Whatever the cause, Lord Randolph wrote his resignation; and/ as the Queen with curious femininity afterwards complained,—making it, indeed, a great point—the rebel against all authority and all traditions wrote the resignation on the Queen’s own notepaper. A SWIFT DESCENT. Ah, me! How little are any of us able to see the consequences —final and farreaching—of our actions. A slight turn one way or the other—this road chosen instead of that-—this impulse resisted or yielded to ; and the whole course of our lives is changed irrevocably to our latest breath and until the world has ceased to be. Lord Randolph Churchill, when lie wrote liis brief note, little knew what he was doing—could not have looked down that black vista of unbroken disaster into which he was about to enter —disaster unbroken,. abysmal, even horrible; with every hope - Masted, every attempt at rescue baffled; with first the living death of broken nerves, lost powers, paralysed brain and, finally, the death-chamber in Gfrosvenor square —at an age when, instead of being' shattered, broken and beaten, fie ought .to be in the very prime of his

intellect and the zenith of fi fp gl'pty. - And to think that that Calvary mountain V/hi'Clr he has had to climb with bleeding feet and aching heart these seven long years, was begun and rendered inevitable in that moment in which, with the happy and hitherto successful audacity of a boy, he penned that little letter to the Queen ! it IS tStJCMMfi AND BAI/M Lord Randolph Went rapidly down hill when he - left the world of polities and took to racing, but It Was not till after the ill-fated trip to Mashofialand that the House and the country discovered he'had changed: Tay Fay ” says ‘---instead of the boyish, clean-shafen, thin face With which we Were all familiar we saw A bearded man, with a thousand Wrinkles about the tell-tale and wearied e)ve&, ahcl a look of premature and almost unnatural old age. One was almost reminded of that terrible picture of transformation of il She” in Mr Rider Haggard’s well-known fbiilaflee; Everybody looked forward with the keenest expectation to tile Speech with which Lord Randolph wa§ to signalise hie re-entry after years of silence and sdirW period of absence into the political arena. The gallaries 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 Randolph came against him. Before he CotiM rise there was a preliminary skirmish which lasted for two hours, and during all that period this Unhappy mall had to Sit With hiS notes in his trembling hands—with his pale and heavily-lined face, aiid With liis weakened and nervous ffarile, it torture tp suspense, dread of failure, certain of weakness. It was said at the time that, like other men in similar moments of terrible Parliamentary strain, he had wrought his 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 to work; atid there Was rtotliilig left but the trembling flesh and the tihglihg nerves of a broken Mam Let Me dismiss the sCeile' itS rapidly as I can; It is one of my Most painful and tragic recollections in the 15 years of tragic and painful experiences I have gone through in the House of CoMmons. The speech was portentously long • it was very dullbut above all things, it was terribly deliveredr Everybody could see the tremble of the long, delicate, wellshaped 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 his 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 listener 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 resurrection.