Evening Memories

New Zealand Tablet, 12 January 1922, Page 7

Evening Memories

(By William O’Brien.)

CHAPTER I.—MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCES IN “THE . HOUSE” (1883). i By a whimsical coincidence the first acquaintance I w made op the day I took my seat in Parliament in 1883 was that of Joseph Chamberlain. While the House was edifying the ungodly by listening to its prayers as the price of reserved tickets for the day, and next, like a troop of escaped schoolboys, breaking into the footballlike frolics of “question time,” I was left stranded on the cross-bench underneath the Distinguished Strangers’ Gallery where new members are left stewing in limbo until they are invited by the Speaker to advance into the seats of the mighty. Immediately behind was the row of privileged visitors’ seats ‘“under the Clock,” over ' the barrier of which the athletic Archbishop of Cashel one night later vaulted into the sacred enclosure without going through the formality of presenting a Sheriff’s return. My only companion in limbo was Sir Charles Dilke, who was to take his seat on re-election after accepting office in the Gladstone Ministry, Chamberlain, who was to introduce y him, crossed over from the Treasury Bench, while “questions” (and answers) were still hurtling through the air, d‘S' and planted himself between his colleague and myself. “I am glad to see you here, Mr. O’Brien,” he said, cordially extending a hand, and before I could recover from my surprise sufficiently to decide whether shaking the hand of an English Cabinet Minister (even an ostentatiously friendly one) might not be a first surrender to the wiles of the tempter, my hand was held in a , grip that might have been that of one of the vices manufactured by his own eminent firm of Nettlefold. “My name is Chamberlain,” he added, perhaps modestly inferring from my confusion that the explanation was ‘ necessary. _ , ,“You are very kind,” I remarked, blushing with the violence which it still took me some years of wild wars with the whole official world to subdue. “I should have ■jjT thought you English people would have as little welcome for me as for a dynamite bomb.” (It was at the moment when England was horror-stricken by the trials of the ■ Invincibles in Dublin, and when the Chief Secretary had more picturesquely than temperately described the leading articles of my own newspaper as “forming as essential a

part of the machinery of assassination as the daggers and the masks.”) “Not a bit of it,” was his reply. “An Englishman is a fighter and despises any man who isn’t. Ireland will have to send over a good many men like you, if you want to kick John Bull out of his easy chair.” Even in the glow of this friendly greeting in a house of enemies, Chamberlain left me under a first impression of uneasiness, as if in contact with something glittering, sly, even serpent-like. Enormous strength, resolution, masterfulness, a fascination which was not altogether reassuring— these revealed themselves at a glance. In the well-compacted head, the close-set ears, the neck or a Centaur, the nose cocked u!p aloft in defiance of all comers, the clean-shaven jaw as hard as though it had been hammered out in his own steel factory, the eyes sharp as gimlets, to which the eyeglass seemed to add a third penetrating power, the alert, sinuous body and swinging arms which seemed always ready to plant some smashing blow, there was an uncanny suggestion of the guile of the serpent, but still more of the rejoicing vigor of the bruiser, ever keen to meet his man. If the first impression was rather one of ruthlessness than of charm, it was through no lack of friendly prepossession on my part. Chamberlain was then and for some years after, much more than Gladstone, the crescent promise of Parnell and his party. It was his antipathy to —perhaps, also, his gift for candid friendship—that had unhorsed Forster, when the poor man had persuaded himself his policy of “Buckshot” had only to get a further three months’ trial to convert the world to his pathetic faith. In our three-year “fight to a finish” with Lord Spencer and Sir G. Trevelyan, his aid was none the less effective because it took the shape of disheartening our antagonists rather than of openly siding with us. Chamberlain’s famous hint to Parnell: “You can have an Irish Republic, so far as I am concerned, if you will only first help me to dish the Whigs,”* was spoken with the undress freedom of the smoke-room of the House of Commons, but was undoubtedly intended to convey his detachment from all the traditional prejudices of Englishmen in their dealings with Ireland. He was entirely in earnest in his public proposal to make Mr. Healy Chief Secretary. I have in my, possession a letter to his friend, Mr. W. H. Duignan, of Walsall,! which was widely circulated among the Irish leaders at the time, and in which he declared: “I would not hesitate to transfer entirely to an Irish Board altogether independent of English Government influence the consideration and solution” of such organic questions as “the Education question and the Land question and the powers of taxation in Ireland for strictly Irish purposes,” prefacing the proposal with a broad hint that he was only .prevented from going further by the doubt “whether public opinion would a\t present support so great a. change.” This was, indeed, the first “unauthorised programme” which he proposed to launch by a campaign in Ireland early in 1885 under the joint auspices of himself and of Sir Charles Dilke, whom Parnell always regarded as the more considerable political force of the two. Had the Irish,trip been persisted in, the current of events for the succeeding generation might have been changed in a sensational degree, for the better or for the worse. Gladstone might never have been a Home Ruler.' Whether wisely or otherwise, we in United Ireland took the view that the effect would be to pin the fortunes of Ireland to those of Chamberlain, who, however daring he might be as an ally, could only bring us the adherence of a limited band of fanatical Radicals, —such are the foibles of the most celestial politicians ! his instalment as the official British Champion of Ireland might have alienated from her service the far , vaster genius of Gladstone,' already being drawn to us by a thousand subtle currents of semiCeltic' magnetism, but still undecided and uncommitted. The veto of the Nationalists, at all events, involved the instant abandonment of the Irish tour. With characteristic nimbleness, Chamberlain exchanged “the unauthorised programme” which was rejected by Ireland, for the

“unauthorised programme” by which he made history that year-in Scotland. But he only succeeded in recalling the Old , Parliamentary Hand from his yachting tour in the | dreamy company of the poet, Tennyson, to "reassert his creative vitality by setting out upon the Home Rule crusade himself with all his banners spread and with all the multitudinous forces of his genius in full array. We who took the risks of making our choice between the two men found reason to console ourselves for missing in Ireland the speeches of a sparkling rhetorician who was, after all, only an inspired commercial traveller in the English Radical line, when there was produced in the following Session a Home Rule Bill with the thaumaturgic name of Gladstone on the back of it. Chamberlain, I think, never quite forgave Ireland for the spretae injuria formae. I know of no other offence on our part that could account for the change from the fearless Minister who was not to he daunted by any amount of ignorant jabber about daggers and dynamite from extending a hand of welcome to a young Irishman only notable because he was cordially hated, to the cankered Unionist politician who, many years after, when there was a. heaven-sent chance of peace between the two nations, delivered this final obiter dictum to Captain Shawe-Taylor; “The Irish question I regard as I regard my gout. They are both equally detestable and both absolutely incurable.” It must never bo forgotten, however, that if Chamberlain erred in plotting his Irish tour without consulting Gladstone, Gladstone had his scarcely more tactful vengeance •in committing himself to Home Rule without taking his most powerful colleague into his confidence. Nor can we who remember what it was to discern a not altogether unsympathetic eye on the Ministerial Bench, while the hate of an all but unanimous House was hissing in our ears, refuse Chamberlain’s memory the justice of recalling that, even in the crisis of his conflict with Gladstone, he offered to let the Second Reading of the Home Rule Bill of 1886 go through, if it were to be remodelled on the Home Rule of the 'Canadian Provinces. “0 world! thy slippery turns!” A quarter of a century of Irish disappointments ► elapsed, Gladstone and Chamberlain were dead, and the Home Rule Act at long last “inscribed on the Statutebook” by an all-potent Home Rule Ministry offered Ireland essentially a Parliament of the same,type as that of Quebec'--or Saskatchewan, which was rejected when the offer was made by Chamberlaiif, and—ghastlier irony still— never to materialise at all until six pounds of flesh nearest to the heart were first cut from the fair body of Ireland. Did the Chamberlain of that .day under the Clock see so much further than myself over the ocean, of horrors and mutual injustices the two nations were destined to traverse in the same ill-omened ship in which Pitt launched them? I wonder. The only other Englishman who approached me on the cross-bench was Henry Labouchere. He sniggered at the notion that Chamberlain was a man to be scandalised by a sniff of, dynamite. “Joe is a good deal more likely than you to carry a nitro-glycerine cartridge up his sleeve. But it’s only intended to be exploded under the coat-tails of his friends.” Labouchere himself, before I had seen him, we regarded as our trustiest of allies among Englishmen, and that because centuries of naturalisation could not flatten him into an Englishman. The mobility, springiness, and. delicacy of his figure might have suggested the graces of a dancing master, if they did not still better suggest the sprightliness of a French pimi-piuu on the march. And again, it must be owned, there was that in his grimace which needed but a daub of red paint on the cheek, and a pair of baggy white breeches, with his hands in the pockets, to equip him to set a circus in a roar. His - was the clarity of thought, the turn for scintillating epigram of the finest French models, but his was also an incurable addiction to persiflage such as it used to be the English fashion to consider as inseparable from the Frenchman'' as the hair of a scrubbing brush, or the flat rim of ar- his haut-de-jorme. (England has since discovered .with a -T'-' comic amazement that the France of Foch is not quite the France of Beranger’s Lisette.) In the words of a witty . Irish judge, “‘Dabby’ went dam neap being a man of genius.” The fact that friends and foes combined to call him “Dabby”

ought to have been sufficient to explain to him why Gladstone refused to take him more seriously than he took himself, when the refusal to him of high office in the Ministry of 1893 once for all banished this exquisitely (in the French sense) malicious scoffer to his cloister of Theleme in his Florentine villa. But by an Irishman, at least, his instinctive siding with the underdog, his wholly sincere tenderness for human weakness and pain, his chafing under the eternal mystery of the world’s misery, will not be forgotten, while the circumstance that it was his wit that disabled him in, a dull Puritan world for greatness will be readily condoned. No cloud of winter showers ever drove him from the Irish cause. In years when the mention of Home Rule at a London dinner-table would have been nothing less than a shocking solecism in “Society,” Labouchere performed the miracle of making Truth a tremendous financial success as a fashionable Gazette, while it weekly preached the most extreme views of the Parnellites with an effrontery which took away the breath of the fine ladies and choleric club snobs who took it in. Everything was forgiven to a style that cut like a diamond and a bondiablerie that never lost its knack of amusing. Not that he was not able to mock at the funny side of Irish affairs, as well as at the pomposity of their English critics. One night a youthful colleague of ours, by whose grave England is now ready, enough to drop a tear, was addressing the Saxon in one of youth’s fine frenzies, theatrically thrusting his fingers through his chestnut hair while he roared out the prophecy that “the Cossacks of Russia would yet stable their horses in the House of Commons.” The Saxon, most of "hom had profusely dined, were expressing their alarm at the prospect with yells of laughter. Labouchere sidled up to me with the pained remark: “What sort of young man is this new Mr. you’ve sent over to us? It isn’t that he’s against law and order—we’re all against law and order but, but you know, he’s such a blawsted awss!” To himself every audacity was permitted by a House which is never ungrateful to those who brighten its boredom. I remember his once diversifying a speech on the Budget by turning to an Under Secretary, who combined a large general grocery trade with statesmanship and addressing to him the unexpected query: “If you add this tuppence m the pound, I ask my right hon. friend what will he bo able to do me a good sound tea for?” It was peradventuro some obscure suggestion of atavism that made him end his days among foreigners less foreign than those who would have forgiven him any disqualification for office but a pretty wit. Many years later, I found the British Colony in Florence in high dudgeon at Dabby’s resolute refusals of cards to his own nationals for his fairy fetes at the Villa Margherita. The conjecture may not be altogether a wild one that his bones rest more at home in the cemetery where San Miniato looks down over the all-golden sunsets towards Pisa, than if respectably tucked way in some post-mortem dwelling-place of the British Philistines. My maiden speech came off a few days afterwards under every condition that could for ever blight the ambition of a newcomer with any respect for English opinion. I he occasion arose quite unexpectedly in the debate. The air was black with the revelations in Dublin at the trials of the band of desperadoes, styling themselves the Invincibles, who had murdered the Chief Secretary and the Under Secretary in the Phoenix Park. The principal villain of the piece was a member of the Dublin Corporation, James Carey, who had added to the infamy of his bloody part m the conspiracy the still deeper damnation of turning informer upon his younger dupes in a paroxysm of terror for his own vile carcase. It was in a. crisis of hungry anti-Irish fury such as this, I was called upon to answer the charge, just then disclosed by the evidence in Dublin, that I had been a sponsor of ..this atrocious villain in his candidature for the Corporation. To the speechless horror of my listeners I acknowledged that I had published a. letter of recommendation in Carey’s favor in United Ireland, and that, in the same circumstances, I should feel it a duty to do it again. The prosaic truth was that I had never in my life seen Carey, nor so much as heard of his existence until he became ft' Labor candidate for the ward of which I was a burgess, in days when a Labor

Member was a more astonishing portent on the benches of the Dublin Corporation than he would be now in a Prime Minister’s seat, and I said my word of good, cheer for him as well as for a good many more in United Ireland with no more suspicion that the ward politician had carried a knife in the Phoenix Park than that he had written a great epic poem. But what were base actualities like these to a House who could see nothing but red blood wherever they turned their eyes in Ireland, and who, indeed, quite honestly and fanatically believed that some fresh disclosure in Dublin by the informer might any day bring about the exit of Parnell and his pestilent Party through the trapdoor of a gallows? A friendly Minister (this time not Chamberlain) actually conveyed to two of us a short time afterwards an intimation that no obstacle would be placed in the way of our flight to the Continent in view of further revelations impending—a hint which was hailed by his ungrateful beneficiaries with a roar of laughter, in our little coemculum in the lower smoke-room. The wise men had discovered as a truth too clear to be argued against that the Phoenix Park murders which felled Parnell into the dust, bleeding and all but out of his wits, just as he had vanquished Forster and converted Gladstone, were in reality a piece of deep-drawn devilry of his own contrivance I But was ever maiden speech made under less cheerful auspices? To my horror-stricken audience, at least; for to the Irish member of those days there was always a fierce joy in stirring up the wrath and horror of the ignorant, cruel, and self-righteous mob who were capable of imagining against the representatives of a nation the abominable injustices they scarcely dared give voice to except in animal growls? For ourselves, the more the heathen raged, the better was the day’s work for Ireland. The blameless Scottish baronet (Sir Herbert Maxwell) who replied to me did so with a comic solemnity -which almost rendered him speechless—the solemnity of a respectable father of a family who had just heard me ayow in cold blood that I had murdered my grandmother and had buried the remains in the back garden. Few have had the experience of a more Unanimously “bad press” than I had the opportunity pf perusing the next day upon every note of brutality, hatred, and contempt. Then also commenced a scries of anonymous threatening, letters which continued for many months to come from a variety of worthy English lunatics, menacing me in terms of irrelevant obscenity with every penality from a horsewhipping to bloody murder. The most considerable success of the writers was their ingenuity in leaving their letters unstamped and compelling my greenhorn self to pay double postage on them. Even this little comfort, however, was soon cut off from them by the excellent postmaster in the Lobby who used to hold up a packet of the unstamped missives to me with a grin, as he remarked: “They are only some more of those cracked threatening letters, Mr. O’Brien,” and cast into the waste-paper basket a mass of sanguinary literature which in the hands of a practised Dublin Castle official would have sufficed for the indictment of a nation. There were compensations, however. As, for instance, Parnell’s smiling compliment: “My dear O’Brien, you plunged into the lions’ den like a Daniel!” and it was the verdict of one who had fought the beasts at Ephesus himself with an icy intrepidity in which he had no rival. Another was more touching still. The next day, as I. was crossing the street from Palace Yard to Whitehall, a gigantic Irish policeman, a townsman of my own, stopped the tremendous tide of traffic to let me pass, and drawing himself up to his magnificent height with a grand salute growled out “God bless you!” to the bewilderment of the double line of drivers he had held up, who were doubtless puzzling to know who the personage was to whom they were compelled to do public homage, and had they known, would have willingly united in lynching. It is a small matter, and yet it is of the essence of a mystic strength in the Irish cause which the wrath of all the lawgivers of England and the guns of all her armies can never cope withal. ■ fTo ho contiuned^