JOHN BRIGHT, ORATOR AND STATESMAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3097, 23 July 1913, Page 75

JOHN BRIGHT, ORATOR AND STATESMAN.

(By T. P.)

In reading over the very excellent biography of John Bright which has fust been published by Mr G. M. Trevelyan, one of the most gifted of the younger generation of English historians, I find that there is a very clear explanation of why I. as well as everybody else, found it a little difficult to understand John Bright altogether. Like so many of his countrymen, there was an exterior manner which might well lead to an entire misapprehension of the inner man. In one of the reviews written of this book, I find him described as outspoken. prosperous, and just a little complacent. This is putting it rather harshly ; but there is some truth in it, and it especially is true as io the impression he conveyed to those who met him hut casually. His outspokenness, indeed might very well have given offence; there are many stories even in this volume; there arc many others which still circulate in political gossip, in which Bright figures as using language that must have almost blistered those to whom it was addressed. One of his sisters, writing of him to a relative, says: “Thou must not mind all the faults that John finds with thee, a.s he makes no scruple to say the worst he can to our faces.” You find plenty of that spirit in his encounters as recorded in this volume. What a strange colloquy, for instance, that was between him and Disraeli, after Bright had uttered that immortal passage, “The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land : you may almost hear the beating of his wings.” In the first place I ought to mention as an extraordinary instance of how little the orator is able to appreciate his own work —I have known speakers who sat down, after a brilliant effort which everybody praised, think thev had made a ghastly failure—that Bright did not himself appreciate the dazzling splendour of that mighty utterance. His own account of it, is almost stunning in its want of realisation. “The passage,” he said to his sister, "came to mo very simply and naturally. I was lying awake in bed in the morning, thinking of my speed! and of all the calamities which the war had brought about, when suddenly the idea, without being sought for by me, flashed upon my mind. I did not think

anything more about it except that it was true, and I was surprised at the effect which it produced on the House of Commons.” “Surprised at the effect which it produced on the House of Commons!” Was there ever such an extraordinary example of how little an orator can judge himself? But, at the interview with Disraeli which followed. Bright and Disraeli found themselves in Bellamy’s, "where members then dined, and this is what happened : Dizzy came and sat down beside me, and ho said; “Bright, I would give all that I ever had to have made that speech you made just now.” And I just said to him: “Well, you might have made it if you had been honest.” I do not stop to ask whether Bright’s judgment of Disraeli’s career was right or wrong; but suppose it was right, what a strange man Bright was to have said it—and said it at that particular moment. If Bright were the ordinary man, ho would after such a speech be in one of those moments of rapt emotion which can follow a great speech, and which can only be prepared to the intoxicating hour of first love, or to the vision of the opiated dreamer; and he would have been too softened to be capable of feeling any of the ordinary resentments or harshnesses of life. But no; he thought Disraeli dishonest and he could not help saying so. It was not emotional rudeness, though it was rude; but what a strange picture it is of essential and unconquerable hardness and severity. It enables these who did rot know Bright personally to understand the feeling of awe and perhaps terror which he could inspire in those with whom he came in contact if he did not happen to approve of their personality or of their actions. And I must not end here; for I turn the film again, and we see another John Bright, quite different from the tremendous orator and the harsh critic. He is m the silence of his bedroom, writing his journal for the day, and in the nudity cf his soul; and this is his comment on his own dazzling and almost unparalleled triumph; he recounts first the compliments he had received from many of his followmembers; and this is his comment: —“I have thought about this very much ; how much there is food for vanity and selflove, and how a foolish pride may bo created by it.” This is a wondrous r saying, and it is at the same time a key to Bright’s innermost personality. This proud, self-confident, harsh man, as he appeared to be and often was, had in him an essential store of modesty and of spiritual asceticism which could belong only to a very fine and also to a modest and gentle nature. —A Dual Personality.— What, then, was the real Bright ? The only answer must be vague and apparently self-contradictory. Perhaps the best thing one can say is that' there were two John Brights; there are few human beings, indeed, in which apparently contradictory elements are not so commingled as to make them in reality not one simple hut several complex personalities; one of the reasons why our judgments of meai should be so cautious and so indulgent. And this brings me to what I think is the most necessary fact to remember in forming any estimate of this extraordinary man. And that is to remember that there was, with all bis sociability, accessibility, and simplicity, an inner shrine in him which nobody ever was able entirely to see or realise/ He was a sociable man—one must always remember that —so sociable that even when he was travelling in a train he insisted on getting into conversation with whomsoever ho might find at his side. He was a very frank man—sometimes, as has been seen, painfully frank; he said right out what" he thought, whether in public or in private. You will see that when he came courting the beautiful soul who became his wife, and who, like himself, belonged to the Quaker community, his own sisters were a little nervous as to the effect he would produce on the very gentle and self-restrained people whom lie was to meet. Here is a passage which gives a very delightful picture of Bright’s entrance into this home, and suggests that nervous apprehension of his reception to which I have alluded. I should say that Elizabeth Priostman was the name of the young lady whom Bright was seeking in marriage: Elizabeth Priestman was reared in a home where intellectual activity existed side by side with a strict form of Quakerism ; where the utmost refinement of manner was combined with the warmest popular sympathies, and where the strongest opinions were urged in the gentlest tones. When brought into contact with such a family John Bright’s hluntness and directness of speech stood out in marked contrast, but his manly honesty and uprightness were at once recognised, and it soon became evident that he would win tiie prize which he had come to seek. Read between the lines of this carefullyworded account, and you can understand what I have suggested as to the impression, not altogether attractive, which Bright made on people who did not know him well, and especially who could penetrate into that inner sanctuary, where there was so much tenderness and softness. Mr Trevelvan gives us a few words, a very fine picture of that innermost John Bright, in these words: Deep in Bright’s heart there lies always something unseen, something reserved and solitary. Although he was a popular hero and a man so sociable that he never travelled by train but he drew Into conversation his chance carriage companions, though he was always happy and tender and talkative when wife or child or friend were near, and was formidable not through his silence but through his savings—yet the presence of an inner life of deep feel in;/ and meditation could be fell as the moving power in all he did. He never tired of the sight of mountain or stream, or of the sound of Milton and o? the Bible passage.;.

Haying thus given faithfully the outer and the inner John Bright, let me dwell on the inner man as the one that is really important. And here it -will be seen that he was a man of extraordinary sweetness and tenderness of feeling. With all his fierce hatred of systems, and sometimes even of the embodiment of these systems in individuals—the sight of a bishop in his gaiters and apron seemed to have produced in him an open expression of repulsion—the man was at bottom indulgent, charitable, and tender-hearted. I know no love story more idyllic than his marriage to that gentle Quaker girl, with whose home he was at such variance —not in spirit, but in manner. Their marriage happiness was but brief vision ; it lasted little more than a year or so; every stage of it is marked by some outburst of profound and pure emotion and of perfect devotion, which could only come from a man capable of the intensest, truest, most unselfish affection. He took her, when, she was already dying, to Leamington, in tho hope that the pure air of that healthy town might do her some good; and this--is' how he wrote, many years afterwards, of that terrible and trying time, when he. had to ait through night and day at the side of a loved woman slowly dying: There is net a period if my life to which I turn with mots satisfaction than that I spent at Leamington. It seems that I could have been content for ever almost to have cared for that dear sweet being whose very presence made me happy. And she bore her sufferings and the gradual sinking lo the grave with such a gentle temper and could smile on us as she passed for ever from our sight. And tho sorrow never left him: nor the memory of the fleeting joys of the brief life; 43 years afterwards he went on a visit to the scenes where he had passed his honeymoon, and was as profoundly touched as if the wound had been inflicted but the day before. There wa4 tremendous love in a man capable of 'citings so profound and so enduring. —Bright and Gladstone.— There is one other passage T must quote —though it also has been frequently quoted already —which brings out that very soft side of Bright which I have dwelt on. That is the account of hi.s ladt communication to Gladstone. I saw from afar, and yet not altogether far enough not to see some of it, the relation between the two old men at that terrible moment when, after so many years of the closest personal and political association, they found themselves compelled to part company. I remember once seeing them together behind the Speaker’s Chair when they were finishing a conversation. There was nothing to show what they felt, but I could not help imagining that the interview must have berm rather painful. I was with Mr Gladstone when it began to be whispered in London that the old Tribune was approaching the end, and I told Mr Gladstone the news. He said nothing at the moment I can recall, but some minutes after he came to ms again and asked me if the news were given on good authority. Evidently it had produced a deep impression on him, though, he was composed, as ho always was in his later years. The information must have come to him soon after, when he received tho tragic and touching message which Bright’s eldest son sent to him. This is the message: My father is sinking, and the end cannot be far off. He sent for me last night when he became aware o£ his condition .... and lie wished me to write to you and tell you that “ho could not forget your unvarying kindness to him and the many services you have rendered to the country.” He was very weak and did not seem able to say any move; and I saw the tears running down his cheek. Thus could the great, strong, even grim man display now and then the tremendous emotion that lay behind the massive calm of his exterior. —T.P’s. Weekly.