MR LABOUCHERE FROM THE NOVELIST'S POINT OF VIEW.

Otago Witness, Issue 2433, 31 October 1900, Page 69

MR LABOUCHERE FROM THE NOVELIST'S POINT OF VIEW.

(JosErH Hatton, in the People.)

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction ; Sometimes fiction is stranger than truth ; occasionally fiction is jour only truth. Considering Mr Henry Labouchere from *he novelist's point of view, he is stranger than fiction. If he were the creation of the story-teller, and not a very real, if eccentric, piece of humanity, his present position, in Parliament and the press, would be considered inconsistent with the Eton fooy, the Cambridge undergraduate, the adventurous traveller, and the scapegrace diplomatist in the first chapters ot his life of curious romance. While I heartily hate his attitude towards the nation in,^ connection ■with the Boer war, I am grieved, for his own sake, that he- has condescended to be led away by shifty companions. From, treating life with, a genial cynicism that made tiie -world an amusing study to him, he has drifted into troubled waters that he surely never dreamed of "in the days of liis youth." . . . What one often, wonders in regard to our pro-Boer pro-foreign citizens is that they should condescend to live in Great Britain. Why don't they go to the Boers or the Dervishes, or to France, or fSian;, or to any other ot those regions they acimire so much beyond their own country '( But who would tolerate our dear, perverse, and unreasonable '"Lab-by" outside Great Britain t He 'would be in continual (physical danger, not thai/ he is a coward, 'but one, morning some clever duellist would pot him, and he Avould be missed by ail Europe — for at least five minutes. After all, what would that matter? "The vast Continents oi Europa and Asia are but corners ot the creation ; the ocean is lout a •drop, and Mount Atlios but a gram in respect of the universe, and the present instant of time .but a' point to the extent of eternity. These things have all of them little changeable and transitory beings, ' and even tne best ol us and the noises c is lout one of them. <Bo Mr .Labouchere snould not begin to take himself seriously. It is very late in the day for such a change. 1 think it Mr 'J-ladstone had not lecognised that there ought not to be such a sentiment as gratitude, probably Mr Labouchere would not have rebelled. Ihe clever, cunning, diplomatic, wonderful old gentleman of Kawarden treated his devoted nenchman ibadly, there can be no doubt tubout it. That, however, is no reason why Mr Laib'ouchere should turn upon the nation and try to rend it, which he can never do, nor flic and a thousand such, for it is new settled (that we are the lost tribes of Israel, and are iuifiiling our destiny, which is more or less to swallow tip the rest of the world, as the serpent of Moses swallowed up that other reptile. Not even the many and .various dragons of China shall prevail against us, nor the Russian bear, nor the screaming eagles of Franca, nor any other kind ot animal or emblem thereof that swims or crawls or flies. Why, therefore, need Labouchere to go on kicking against the. pricks, when (he could lead a pleasant life as of old? I had the honour of Mr Labouchere's acquaintance, I might even say his friendship, years ago, 'before, " in .spite oi all temptations to belong to other nations,"' he remained an Englishman. &ome scribss, 1 observe, are denying his birthright ; but if ■we questioned every Englishman of foreign extraction where snould we be? In those days he was more interested in art than politics, though as a matter of natural perversity he was always more or le&s "agen Ifche Oovernment," even when he had not settled on which side of the House of Commons he would sit when he got there. A chaiining personality then, he would, I fancy, have laughed "at tlfe bare .suggestion that he could have become the cynical and hostile critic of nearly every great imperial idea that has its seed in the grand old days of .Elizabeth and Raleigh. Looking back, one cannot imagine a more genial host at his town house or at Pope s Villa. The hardest things that were said of him at that time in the anecdotes of clubs and drawing rooms had been previously said by himself. He might have been a second Bernal Osborne in the House of Commons. He bid iair for it at one time. If he were a Roman Catholic we might get him to confession, and liave him start afresh even now and renounce his sins political, and periiaps consent to allow that there may be a grain or two of honesty even in the conduct of the Right Hon. Joseph Chamiberlain. But 'we must not expect too much. . . . If with such a basis of character a novelist taking Labouchere as the hero of a romance had allowed him to drift from his moorings and become an ally in a conspiracy against his country, hand-and-glove with such a nondescript as Dr Clark, and used by such a canard-monger as Dr Leyds, we Should feel that the novelist's work was iimi bistic, not to say untrue to life. But whatever one may feel about Labouchere's attitude towards Rhodes, the Imperial pioneer, and Chan'Jberlain, the author of Imperial Federation, he is infinitely beyond his traitorous allies. When you meet him you have only for the nonce to forget his Jatter-day history to be delighted with him, and it is not at all unlikely that he -would surprise you with some patriotic sentiment or other that would set you wondering whether he is not two men in one. Philosophy, you know, credits pretty well every man with being two.