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Ebook has 2405 lines and 334066 words, and 49 pages

THE FIRST VOLUME

EARLY YEARS

.....PAGE

Blenheim--Woodstock--Birth and parentage--Childhood--Cheam--Eton--The family borough--Merton--The Blenheim harriers--Life at Oxford--Cowes 1873--Miss Jerome--The Woodstock election--Marriage.....1

MEMBER FOR WOODSTOCK

The Parliament of 1874--A maiden speech--A social quarrel--Ireland--At the Little Lodge--FitzGibbon and Howth--The Historical Society--Irish politics--Butt and Parnell--The beginnings of obstruction--An unguarded speech--Irish education--The Eastern question--Correspondence with Sir Charles Dilke--The County Government Bill--The Irish Famine Fund--Ministerial embarrassments--Lord Beaconsfield's letter to the Duke of Marlborough--The General Election of 1880--Mr. Gladstone's triumph.....58

THE FOURTH PARTY

Position of parties--Tory depression--Bradlaugh--The origin of the Fourth Party--The four friends--The Employers' Liability Bill--Fourth Party tactics--Differences with leaders--Sir Stafford Northcote--Activities of the Fourth Party--The Fourth Party and Lord Beaconsfield--Lord Salisbury at Woodstock--Correspondence with Wolff--Joyous days.....119

IRELAND UNDER STORM PAGE Outbreak of the storm--The Parnell movement--Irish speeches--The Compensation for Disturbance Bill--The winter of 1880--The Land League--The revolt of the Boers--Coercion--Mr. Forster's misfortunes--The Kilmainham Treaty--The Closure--Lord Beaconsfield gone.....172

ELIJAH'S MANTLE

The war in Egypt--The Conservative leaders--Minor tactics in the House of Commons--Correspondence with Sir Stafford Northcote--The Beaconsfield statue--Lord Randolph's letter to the Times--Party displeasure--Elijah's mantle--The Affirmation Bill--The Primrose League--An Ishmaelite at bay--His father's death--An interlude.....224

TORY DEMOCRACY

A period of crisis--Conditions in the House of Commons--Conservative paralysis--The new champion--Power and popularity of Lord Randolph Churchill--The Tory Democrat--A 'Trilogy' at Edinburgh--The Blackpool speech--The Birmingham candidature--'Peace, Retrenchment and Reform'--Tory democracy and Fair Trade--Tory democracy and the Constitution--The Church of England--The main achievement.....268

THE PARTY MACHINE

A daring enterprise--The Fourth Party: final phase--The National Union and the Central Committee--The conference at Birmingham--The proceedings of the new council--Dispute with Lord Salisbury--Lord Randolph elected chairman--The 'charter' letter--'Notice to quit'--A declaration of war--Close fighting--Lord Randolph resigns--Satisfaction in the House of Commons--Dismay in the Conservative party--Intervention of the provincial leaders--Lord Randolph reinstated--Progress of the conflict.....302

THE REFORM BILL

Embarrassments of the Ministry--'Too late!'--The advent of the Reform Bill--Divisions in the Conservative party--Lord Randolph and reform--The 'mud cabin' argument--Power of Lord Randolph Churchill in the House of Commons--The second vote of censure--The Reform Bill in the Lords--Conflict between the two Houses--The conference of the National Union at Sheffield--Lord Randolph's victory--Agreement with Lord Salisbury--The autumn campaign--Aston riots--The Aston debate--Correspondence with Chamberlain--Differences with Gorst--An Indian voyage.....332

THE FALL OF THE GOVERNMENT

THE 'MINISTRY OF CARETAKERS'

Lord Salisbury's difficulties--The last of the Woodstock elections--The new ministry--A truce at Westminster--A legislative feat--'Maamtrasna' and its consequences--Lord Carnarvon's opinions--The 'empty house' meeting--The Prime Minister's reticence--The Conservative Cabinet and Home Rule--The election campaign--General confusion--The 'unauthorised programme'--Parnell's demand--The lines of battle--Lord Randolph's exertions and activities--A visit to Dublin--'Come over and help us'--Dispute with Lord Hartington--The 'boa-constrictor' speech--The contest in Birmingham--Popularity of the Conservative Government--The poll--Victories of Tory Democracy in the boroughs--The loss of the counties--The Birmingham Election--'Low water-mark'.....423

AT THE INDIA OFFICE

A serener sphere--The Council of India--Lord Randolph in office--Railway development in India--Mr. Moore--The Russian crisis--The Afghan boundary--Correspondence with the Queen--Increase of the British and Native Armies in India--Appointment of Sir Frederick Roberts--The Indian Budget in the House of Commons--Lord Randolph and Lord Salisbury as letter-writers--The Bombay command--Resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill--Correspondence--Lord Salisbury yields--Settlement of the dispute--Conquest and annexation of Burma--The New Year's Proclamation.....474

APPENDICES

.....TO FACE PAGE

'Heard are the voices, Heard are the sages, The worlds and the ages; "Choose well; your choice is Brief and yet endless.

EARLY YEARS

The cumulative labours of Vanbrugh and 'Capability' Brown have succeeded at Blenheim in setting an Italian palace in an English park without apparent incongruity. The combination of these different ideas, each singly attractive, produces a remarkable effect. The palace is severe in its symmetry and completeness. Nothing has been added to the original plan; nothing has been taken away. The approaches are formal; the wings are balanced; four equal towers maintain its corners; and the fantastic ornaments of one side are elaborately matched on the other. Natural simplicity and even confusion are, on the contrary, the characteristic of the park and gardens. Instead of that arrangement of gravel paths, of geometrical flower-beds, and of yews disciplined with grotesque exactness which the character of the house would seem to suggest, there spreads a rich and varied landscape. Green lawns and shining water, banks of laurel and fern, groves of oak and cedar, fountains and islands, are conjoined in artful disarray to offer on every side a promise of rest and shade. And yet there is no violent contrast, no abrupt dividing-line between the wildness and freshness of the garden and the pomp of the architecture.

Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill, commonly called Lord Randolph Churchill, was born in London on February 13, 1849. His father was the eldest son of the sixth Duke of Marlborough by his first wife, Lady Jane Stewart, daughter of George, eighth Earl of Galloway. The Marquess of Blandford, as he then was, had married on July 12, 1843, the Lady Frances Anne Emily Vane , eldest daughter of the third Marquess of Londonderry, by whom he had five sons and six daughters. Of these sons three died in infancy, the elder of the survivors ultimately succeeded to the title, and the younger is the subject of this account.

On an autumn afternoon in 1859 he waylaid Colonel Thomas, the tenant of Woodstock House and an old and valued friend of the family, on his return from a day with the Heythrop hounds, and, riding up to him, persuaded him to ask his father's permission to take him out hunting. This was the beginning of a friendship between these two which lasted through life. To the next meet of the Heythrop they accordingly repaired together. The day was fortunate. Lord Randolph, carried to the front by 'The Mouse,' was in at the death in King's Wood, was presented with brush or pad, went through the ceremony of being 'blooded,' and returned home in great delight, with glowing cheeks well besmeared with fox's blood. From that day he became passionately fond not merely of riding to hounds but of hunting as an art.

A glimpse of his later days at Cheam has been preserved by a schoolboy friend who, early in 1860, under the fostering wing of an elder brother, was entered as the youngest and newest of sixty-two boarders at the school. 'Randolph Churchill,' he writes, 'was then very near, and before he left I think he reached, the headship of the school. He and my brother were "chums," whereby I was brought into closer touch with him than otherwise would have been the case. His good-natured and somewhat magnificent patronage of my shivering novitiate has imprinted on my memory a few incidents characteristic of his personality. At any rate, he must have bulked large in my regard, as I have of him a far more vivid recollection than of any other boy, through the whole six years of my Cheam schooling.

'From the nature of the case my recollections are not of the class room. He was in "the first class," as the top form was styled; I was in "the sixth," or lowest. The general muster in the big schoolroom, or the recreations of the playground, were the scenes in which I chiefly saw him; and, of course, whatever of his doings I noticed, are glamoured by the small boy's reverence for the big. I cannot "place" him in either cricket or football; but there are some things with which he is in my memory so closely associated that I cannot even now see their like without recalling him in liveliest imagination. Thus I can never see children playing at "horses" without the instant recollection of the showy four-in-hand which Randolph Churchill "tooled" round the playground, or of which he was an interchangeable part. Besides himself the team and coachman consisted of Curzon, Suirdale , and the two brothers Gordon . The harness with which they were caparisoned belonged, I remember, to the elder Gordon. But in my recollection Randolph Churchill shares with him pre-eminence in the quintette. There was a large magnificence about his Cheam days that impressed me with the idea that, no matter how well another boy might acquit himself, Randolph Churchill would always "go one better."

'I have alluded to his vehemence of speech; but I should be wrong if I were thought to mean violence of language. He always at that time spoke open-mouthed, with a full voice and great rapidity of utterance, as if his thoughts came faster than his words could follow; the impression conveyed being that he was determined to overbear all opposition and gain the mastery of argument.

'Once when I had disfigured an Ovid which I had borrowed from my brother, who came to reproach me in the playground, it was Churchill who convinced me of the enormity of my offence, and it is his eager and animated face that lives in my memory of the little scene. There was, I think, in my boyish mind a distinct, if indefinite, sense of vigour, fluency, masterfulness, and good-nature in his character. Living, as boys do, in the present, I am sure that I had no idea of his after-fame.'

When Lord Randolph was in his fourteenth year he went in due course to Eton, where he was placed in the form known as 'Remove,' and in the house of the Rev. W. A. Carter. A year later he was moved into Mr. Frewer's house, and there continued while at Eton. His career henceforward was chequered, for he had already developed a will of his own and a considerable facility in expressing it. I submit to the reader the first extracts from the many letters which this story will contain:--

Eton College, Windsor, 1863.

There is smallpox in the barracks and half Eton is being vaccinated. They offered to perform on me, but I declined. The Queen came to Windsor from Osborne on Thursday night and rushed off on Friday morning to Balmoral, which struck me as being rather eccentric. There has not been much going on here, though they have had a grand reformation of the rifle corps. They made everybody re-enlist and they had to take a sort of oath and sign their names to a lot of nonsense.

And another:--

Eton College: March 11, 1863.

It was not my fault that my letter did not reach you before, for I gave it to the servant the same day to post, and she forgot all about it. I have written to you about the reception on Saturday; I will now tell you about the fireworks on Monday and the wedding yesterday.

On Monday night we were all ordered to be present in the school-yard at nine o'clock. When we were all there we formed fours and marched up Windsor with a large body of police before us to clear the way. Then we got into the Home Park by the South Western Station, just under the windows of the State Rooms, and there we stood all the time the fireworks were going on. I luckily had the forethought to take my great-coat, or else I do not believe I should have got home, it was so dreadfully cold. The fireworks were very pretty, only there was such an awful lot of rockets and too few catherine-wheels and all that sort of fun.

Believe me ever to remain Your affectionate son, RANDOLPH CHURCHILL.

P.S.--My holidays begin on the 27th of March.

The letters which Lord Randolph received from his father during these Eton years were affectionate and pleasant, and were evidently intended to exert a considerable influence upon his education. Besides ordinary family news and the accounts of sport, of partridges and pheasants, of the health of dogs and ponies, of the exertions of the Heythrop hounds--always industrious, and sometimes successful--there was generally allusion to some more serious or public event, a political opinion, an account of an election at Woodstock, or a few sentences about Mr. Disraeli. Often the Duke would take pains to impart a lesson in conduct under the guise of information. 'Your aunt,' wrote this devout, yet not intolerant, man, 'who is with us now is most unhappy; for I fear she is a Roman Catholic at heart, and does not like to say so. If this be true, it would be much better for her to declare her mind; and then, of course, however we might be grieved, the matter would never be alluded to in conversation.' He encouraged his son always to confide in him; nothing mattered so much as what could not be told; and when it was necessary, as it often was, to reprove some schoolboy misdemeanour--pert speeches to masters, an overbearing manner, the unwarranted fagging of small companions, or the breaking of other people's windows--he never founded his rebukes upon authority; but always upon reason, arguing the matter quite fairly with his son, pointing out to him the consequences of his actions, and appealing to his good sense, his self-respect, and the love and honour in which he held his parents. The care and patience thus displayed were not unrepaid, and both Lord Randolph and his elder brother, throughout lives strongly marked by an attitude of challenge towards men and things, preserved at all times an old-world reverence for their father.

These are simple chronicles, and I have tried, so far as possible, to use the actual words in which they have come to me; but it is well to notice how early a strong, masterful character develops. How much can parents really do? One would think that the future lay in their hands. They are at the beginning supreme. They control with authority, from which there is no appeal, all early impressions and actions and every avenue of experience. It would not be strange if they could shape and mould the child according to their fancies. Is it not, on the contrary, wonderful how comparatively powerless they so often are? The tiny child, scarcely out of the cradle, asserts his personality. This schoolboy, pausing unembarrassed on the threshold of life, has made up his mind already. Nothing will change him much. Lord Randolph's letters as a boy are his letters as a man. The same vigour of expression; the same simple, yet direct, language; the same odd, penetrating flashes; the same coolly independent judgments about people and laws, and readiness to criticise both as if it were a right; the same vein of humour and freedom from all affectation; the same knack of giving nicknames, which often stuck and sometimes stung--all are there. His mind, indeed, gained knowledge and experience from instruction; but his essential character, changing hardly at all by contact with the world, unfolded with remorseless and unalterable persistency, as every seed brings forth in its proper season its own peculiar flower.

'He had,' wrote his mother a few months before her death, 'a wonderful faculty for making firm friends, who remained through life devoted to him. He was very constant and decided in his attachments, and outspoken--often imprudently--in his likes or dislikes. He was always pertinacious in his opinions. He never wavered in his plans, and, whether right or wrong, he carried them out. This enabled him to succeed in life, but also often brought him into trouble.... When I look back in sadness to his youth, and remember his ready wit, his warm affection, his bright spirits, and his energy in carrying out any undertaking, I feel how great was the want of foresight and intellect on my part in his training and management; for one of his most endearing qualities was extraordinary affection for his father and me, and his constant interest and pride in his family from his earliest days.... Alas!' she wrote in unmerited self-reproach, 'had I been a clever woman, I must have had more ability to curb and control his impulses, and I should have taught him patience and moderation. Yet at times he had extraordinary good judgment, and it was only on rare occasions that he took the bit between his teeth, and then there was no stopping him.'

Lord Randolph himself seems to have dreamed no dreams at Eton. He lived, with his faithful bull-dog, entirely in the present, obeying with spontaneity the varied impulses of a boisterous yet amiable nature. 'He was,' we are told, 'an easy lower boy to catch, for his whereabouts could be ascertained by his incessant peals of laughter. There was not a boy in the school who laughed so much or whose laughter was so contagious. There was scarcely one who was so frolicsome. His preferred method of descending a staircase was to skate down it with a rush; and if he had to enter the room of another lower boy, he would sooner bound against the door and force it open with his shoulder than go through the stale formality of turning the handle.' He is furthermore described as 'very fond of collisions with "cads"' when there was any event drawing crowds at Eton or Windsor; but 'he would single out antagonists much older or bigger than himself.'

I cannot set down with exactness the time when Lord Randolph's parents began to realise that their son possessed and was, underneath an exuberance of animal spirits, developing character and qualities of an unusual order; but, at any rate, before he left Eton they had begun to hope that some considerable career lay before him. Henceforth they neglected nothing that might stimulate his interest or his ambition. A degree at Oxford in history and law, suitable and extended tours on the Continent, frequent contact with men of affairs, seemed the most obvious steps which were first required in preparation for political life. And meanwhile the family borough of Woodstock was watched by the Duke with a jealous and reflective eye. Its representation had lately caused him for various reasons many heart-burnings.

Woodstock possessed a Parliamentary history of such curious distinction that perhaps no other seat in England could rival the interest of its chequered fortunes. From the earliest beginnings of popular representation to the Reform Bill of 1832, it had returned, with some intermission, two members to the House of Commons; and among these William Lenthall, the famous Speaker, was its representative in the Long Parliament; William Eden, afterwards the first Lord Auckland and Governor-General of India, sat for it in the Parliament of 1774; Charles Abbot, also Speaker, in 1802; Sir John Gladstone, father of the famous Prime Minister, in 1820; and the great philanthropist, better known as the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, from 1826 to 1830. Down to the time of Queen Anne the members for Woodstock had most often been drawn from the old families of the neighbourhood; but after the delivery of the Manor of New Woodstock to John, first Duke of Marlborough, and the building of Blenheim, the seat practically became the property of the Churchills and its representatives were uniformly the nominees of the reigning Duke. This dominion, though always maintained, was not seldom challenged; and the bitter and unscrupulous contests which were fought when some Indian nabob or other wealthy champion made an effort to wrest the borough from the great local influences under whose shadow it reposed were an almost incredible source of profit to the electors.

In April 1844 Lord Randolph's father, then Marquess of Blandford, was elected member. Although always a staunch Conservative, he immediately developed progressive tendencies in social and economic questions and became a steady supporter of Free Trade measures. This speedily brought him into collision with the Duke, whose interest in the Corn Laws was by no means theoretical; and since he remained altogether unyielding, he was forced in April 1845 to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds and to retire from Parliament. The vacancy was filled by Viscount Loftus, a trusty Protectionist; and on his becoming Marquess of Ely, in December, Lord Alfred Churchill was brought forward without opposition in his stead. The question of the Corn Laws having been swept into the past by the decisions of Parliament in 1846, domestic differences were once more composed, and at the General Election of 1847 Lord Blandford was again elected, and continued to sit for the borough at the General Elections of July 1852 and March 1857, until in July 1857 he succeeded as seventh Duke of Marlborough.

Lord Alfred Churchill, his brother, now became again the member for Woodstock. For two years all had been smooth and satisfactory; but after the General Election of 1859, and during the year 1860, Lord Alfred began to manifest an increasing sympathy with the Whigs and Liberals, and finally became ranged with the supporters of Lord Palmerston. His vote in favour of Mr. Gladstone's famous Budget of 1860 was the first definite step and it instantly drew a strong protest from the Duke, who seems to have been less an admirer--after succeeding to great position and estate--both of political independence and of Free Trade measures. Lord Alfred explained that he considered his vote perfectly consistent with his character as a Conservative. 'I really should like to know,' replied his brother severely, 'by what change of terms a measure can be called "Conservative" which substitutes direct for indirect taxation, which has been prepared by Mr. Cobden, proposed by Mr. Gladstone, and is the avowed policy of a Liberal Government.' The correspondence was not on either side so couched as to repair the differences which had opened between the brothers, and Lord Alfred's subsequent conduct produced a complete estrangement. The Duke, a stalwart Churchman, had long been warmly interested in the question of Church Rates. They were to him a pet and special subject and he had publicly expressed on various occasions a high Tory view. Lord Alfred now began to give Church Rates his careful attention, and, as the result of his studies, he proceeded to introduce into the House of Commons a Bill dealing with the whole subject in an extremely Liberal--not to say Radical--spirit. He expounded his plan with elaboration in a letter and forwarded it with his Bill to his brother as a suggested 'compromise' greatly to be desired in the public interest. This was decisive. The Duke replied that he understood an affront was intended, and that he hoped, whatever line of politics Lord Alfred might pursue in the future, he would not consider it necessary to consult him upon it. Through the medium of various persons it was presently arranged that, as no one could force Lord Alfred to retire, he should be free to act as he pleased till the General Election; and that at the election, as the Duke would once more be the master of the situation, another candidate should be brought forward. There the matter rested, to the extreme dissatisfaction of both parties. So embittered were the relations between the brothers that, when the departing Lord Alfred was entertained by his constituents in Woodstock in 1864, the Duke would not attend the dinner, but sent Lord Randolph in his place; and this schoolboy of fifteen, with impressive gravity and unfaltering utterance, delivered--or, rather, recited--the necessary speeches, and so made, under rather a lowering sky, his first embarkation upon the uncertain waters of party politics.

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