FIGHTERS IN THE ELECTION.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6962, 28 November 1900, Page 2

FIGHTERS IN THE ELECTION.

* THE CHIEF OF THE OLD BRIGADE. SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT. (By JULIAN RALPH, in the "Daily Mail.") No cleric or romancer or poet o<f whom I have heard has ever likened West Monmouthshire to that place which has been described as "the bourn from which no traveller returns." Yet West Monvnouth is ripe for the compliment. It is a bleak, bare, smoky and 'foggy region, where, in places, huge jets of furnace flame burst forth and wave long nervous fingers beckoningly to "the passengers in the trains. Over all the bare, bleak, wind-blown, rain-soaked, fog-enveloped earth are deso- ' late, crushed-looking villages, filled with a singular people who mock at their fate by singing. It is a wretched thing to be lonely and hungry and wet, and to have to walk miles in black darkness, carrying your own portmanteau. Bub it is a thousandfold worse to have a whole race, a nation, singing all around you. In fact, it is nearly the most fiendish thing in West Monmouth. Tucked away in tke midst of aJI the sop and fog and smoke, surrounded by railways run at cross purposes, taverns full of dyspeptic and melancholy bagmen and a population which tunes its misery to song, I came upon Sir William Harcourt in the County Hotel at Ebbw Vale, a. name, of course, which is one thing When you read it and quite another thing when you learn to say it. THE GREAT FIGHTER. There was Sir William Harcourt, ex-heavy weight champion of the men that want to be and fighter of these who are ; whom I had never met, but bad read of since I could read at all ; w_o, perhaps, remembers when England had a king, and can surely recall a time when, as he says, it was considered revolutionary, degrading, and all but treasonous to advocate the extension of the suffrage among the people. Even to see the yet vigorous statesman was to forget one was in West Monmouth and to think only of cheery England and) the roots of the majestic race, . on both sides of the Atlantic, whose present might confuses us while its | future staggers our imaginations. i To see and study him and to be with lum had the effect of summoning, for comparison, no noted Englishman of to-day, but, instead, a 'host of memories of the figures that moved in the pictures of Fielding and Smollett, of Richardson, and that were seen or imagined by Washington Irving last of all. For Sir William Harcourt is of an older type "than any of his henchmen or foes, except Lord Salisbury. He is an oldtime English squire belated on the stage, the type of a former-day man of broad acres, lord of a hospitable hall and well-stocked cellar ; out of date with this stirring, goldgreedy century, and out of politics with the departed class of whidkhe is the remnant. HIS. CALMNESS. Being bidden to draw pictures, merely, and to leave the Hamlet of politics out of each of the.a scenes, the reader is warned not to think as a partisan when he reads that- I liked what, I saw of Sir Wil.ram. There was such a calm around him, such, tranquillity, such a sense of rock-like steadfastness a-nd so much dignity, relieved! by ease of manner and kindly humour. I had travelled to s>ae a leader in opposition wbt> should be expeoted to sdiow raaicour, best- and the strain of battle. Instead, I found a philosopher, an easy, kindly, temperrvHJ character, balanced like a £reat steel cantilever bridge. I found him as earnest as man can be, yet all patience ; a maintain among men in his rze, and a mountain in his calnmer?. He is working hard, speaking every nicjht in- the iniddly of ca-r---riage-journe}-s among "those sombre valleys I where the living move under a pall of fog and smoke. But he has ten rooms in the bost hotel, and his son and Ims fanv.lv are around him, caring for him as. our own will care for us oaly if we have made them glad of cm existence long haforehfind. " Th's is my successor," ho says, when his son enters the ror-m. and you do riot feel it a weak pride in the ol'J leader to- admire so genuine and prwmhig' a branch of the Harcourt oak What von do feel "'-« i t-hte' grea-tnets of the modesty /mdl mental balance which permits a ma.-i. Vho, after all, is as much a leader as wbeii he held 1 the title, to admit and discuss the subject of successorship. "You are working \-ery» hard," is saiid to him ; "it is not because you need to do so to gain the election" ( A MILD-EYED PHILOSOPHER, "Dear, no," he raplws; "the normal majc/'ity here is the largest in Great Britain. I am speaking for Wales — for the country. 1 may as well do it from here as from anywhere. This is my pulpit." He rises from his padded armchair and moves about the room — a splendid figure of a man — almost a giant. H« 'has long, slender legs, which support a great heft above the waist— where years filled with comfortable living have given him tht girth of the old-time squire whose humftn gdays are past." His head is proportioned to his torso— ,a great leonine head, with heavy eyebrows and a hint cf the lion's mane in the old-fashion-ed fringe of whiskers under his cheeks and chin. His face ssems to describe his character It is the face- of an easy, philosophic man of great strength and 1 will, not coupled with much of this finesse we call diplomacy. A good conscience and good' digestion are lifelong tenants of his frame. His ©yes are the sole features at variance- with, this summary. They are mild and fireless, and ilhey appear to look far away-— not seeing the things close by or taking alarm at what they note in the distance. There is a cautiousness about him not to . ba expected in that type, of man, but it is a. forced growth and does nct^belong in him You see that in the way he has of say. ing a bold thing at one time and fheri deg mm g o repeat it when it is again, called "It does not look as though t%e Tories would ibe as strong as they were in '95 " 'he says'; " if they must have a new warrant to proceed upon, and do not get as good a one as they had, they wall be in a poor pligiht." r And yet ten minutes later he says, " I am not a man to express an opinion on the future. I prefer to talk about things as the* are." '" J A SENSE OF HUMOUR. As to his own peculiar district, !he says, that it is like 'his hand, high, a* the knuckles and "running off into four valleys foetweeiv tlho fin-gersi If you wanit to go from one valley to the r.?xt; you must climb over a finger >or hiil in order to do so. He speaks highly of 'his constituents, set aflame generations ago with the spirit of liberty and jugtktt tketiwefca aßlaa and! .matt, A tiunfcise^

reading, shrewd people they are, he says. A bystander remarks that the Tory candidate, Mr .Gardiner, seldom gets a vote of confidence art his meetings, which usually vote dn favour of Sir William. At this Sir William smiles, pleased alike with the 'humour of the situation, and the proof of his popularity. Be has much quiet humour, and is quick to smile at at in others. As a public speaker Sir William- Hareouri is admiraible in many Tvays, that have more real value than if he were a magnetic, soaring and fiery orator. He .has nothing of these qualities. He is a dilm, deliberate, logical ■talker, who speaiks slowly bu-b with a fine voice and great distinctness. It is the kind of speaking iwih'ich gives ithe hearer time to think for himself, and that is a difficult kind requiring solid facts and good reasoning as its bases. He uses no clap-trap, and what he says is what he believes, for there 59 no pretence or;":side " or affectation'anywhere aibout the man. Wherever I went in West Monmouth I heard t/hat he has aged a very great deal in the pist five years, but I thought I saw in his face more sign of the strain^ v of cuppressed concern than of any violent stampede osf 'time jand wren'oh of tfaiilimg health".To analyse a man's charadter more .closely* than this, on top of ha! an hour's study, would ,be to claim the dubious gdift of a fortune-teller. And . yet it did appear that Sir William's Iface suggested possibilities unfuhilled — 'and consciousness of the fact as well. His look and his record disagree in •this particular — that he has ithe face and bearing of ia master. Theretfore, «ome one quality has <been denied him. Whether he does not know how to discipline future op- ' position atnd lets it chafe ban, or whether he is too fond ctf calm and 1 comfort, who caa say? The student strain is strong in his face. Perhaps the olther thing one reads there is not command but counsel — as if he might always lead his partisans 1 by speech and written thought if he could! not command them in gerson.