His fame would fire you, but his manners freeze; Like or dislike, he does not care a jot; He wants your vote, but your affections not.
Yet human hearts need sun as well as oats; So cold a climate plays the deuce with votes.
But see our hero when the steam is on, And languid Johnny glows to Glorious John; When Hampden"s thought, by Falkland"s muses drest, Lights the pale cheek and swells the generous breast; When the pent heat expands the quickening soul, And foremost in the race the wheels of genius roll."
As the general idea of these chapters has been a concatenation of Links with the Past, I must say a word about Lord Palmerston, who was born in 1784, entered Parliament in 1807, and was still leading the House of Commons when I first attended its debates. A man who, when turned seventy, could speak from the "dusk of a summer evening to the dawn of a summer morning" in defence of his foreign policy, and carry the vindication of it by a majority of 46, was certainly no common performer on the parliamentary stage; and yet Lord Palmerston had very slender claims to the t.i.tle of an orator. His style was not only devoid of ornament and rhetorical device, but it was slipshod and untidy in the last degree. He eked out his sentences with "hum" and "hah;" he cleared his throat, and flourished his pocket-handkerchief, and sucked his orange; he rounded his periods with "you know what I mean" and "all that kind of thing," and seemed actually to revel in an anti-climax--"I think the hon. member"s proposal an outrageous violation of const.i.tutional propriety, a daring departure from traditional policy, and, in short, a great mistake." It taxed all the skill of the reporters" gallery to trim his speeches into decent form; and yet no one was listened to with keener interest, no one was so much dreaded as an opponent, and no one ever approached him in the art of putting a plausible face upon a doubtful policy and making the worse appear the better cause.
Palmerston"s parliamentary success perfectly ill.u.s.trates the judgment of Demosthenes, that "it is not the orator"s language that matters, nor the tone of his voice; but what matters is that he should have the same predilections as the majority, and should entertain the same likes and dislikes as his country." If those are the requisites of public speaking, Palmerston was supreme.
The most conspicuous of all Links with the Past in the matter of Parliamentary Oratory is obviously Mr. Gladstone. Like the younger Pitt, he had a "premature and unnatural dexterity in the combination of words." He was trained under the immediate influence of Canning, who was his father"s friend. When he was sixteen his style was already formed. I quote from the records of the Eton Debating Society for 1826:--
"Thus much, sir, I have said, as conceiving myself bound in fairness not to regard the names under which men have hidden their designs so much as the designs themselves. I am well aware that my prejudices and my predilections have long been enlisted on the side of Toryism--(cheers)--and that in a cause like this I am not likely to be influenced unfairly against men bearing that name and professing to act on the principles which I have always been accustomed to revere. But the good of my country must stand on a higher ground than distinctions like these. In common fairness and in common candour, I feel myself compelled to give my decisive verdict against the conduct of men whose measures I firmly believe to have been hostile to British interests, destructive of British glory, and subversive of the splendid and, I trust, lasting fabric of the British Const.i.tution."
Mr. Gladstone entered Parliament when he was not quite twenty-three, at the General Election of 1832, and it is evident from a perusal of his early speeches in the House of Commons, imperfectly reported in the third person, and from contemporary evidence, that, when due allowance is made for growth and development, his manner of oratory was the same as it was in after-life. He was only too fluent. His style was copious, redundant, and involved, and his speeches were garnished, after the manner of his time, with Horatian and Virgilian tags. His voice was always clear, flexible, and musical, though his utterance was marked by a Lancastrian "burr." His gesture was varied and animated, though not violent. He turned his face and body from side to side, and often wheeled right round to face his own party as he appealed for their cheers.
"Did you ever feel nervous in public speaking?" asked the late Lord Coleridge.
"In opening a subject, often," answered Mr. Gladstone; "in reply, never."
It was a characteristic saying, for, in truth, he was a born debater, never so happy as when coping on the spur of the moment with the arguments and appeals which an opponent had spent perhaps days in elaborating beforehand. Again, in the art of elucidating figures he was unequalled. He was the first Chancellor of the Exchequer who ever made the Budget interesting. "He talked shop," it was said, "like a tenth muse." He could apply all the resources of a glowing rhetoric to the most prosaic questions of cost and profit; could make beer romantic and sugar serious. He could sweep the widest horizon of the financial future, and yet stoop to bestow the minutest attention on the microcosm of penny stamps and the monetary merits of half-farthings. And yet, extraordinary as were these feats of intellectual athletics, Mr.
Gladstone"s unapproached supremacy as an orator was not really seen until he touched the moral elements involved in some great political issue. Then, indeed, he spoke like a prophet and a man inspired. His whole physical formation seemed to become "fusile" with the fire of his ethical pa.s.sion, and his eloquence flowed like a stream of molten lava, carrying all before it in its irresistible rush, glorious as well as terrible, and fertilizing while it subdued. Mr. Gladstone"s departure from the House of Commons closed a splendid tradition, and Parliamentary Oratory as our fathers understood it may now be reckoned among the lost arts.
XIII.
CONVERSATION.
We have agreed that Parliamentary Oratory, as our fathers understood that phrase, is a lost art. Must Conversation be included in the same category? To answer with positiveness is difficult; but this much may be readily conceded--that a belief in the decadence of conversation is natural to those who have specially cultivated Links with the Past; who grew up in the traditions of Luttrell and Mackintosh, and Lord Alvanley and Samuel Rogers; who have felt Sydney Smith"s irresistible fun, and known the overwhelming fullness of Lord Macaulay. It is not unreasonable even in that later generation which can still recall the frank but high-bred gaiety of the great Lord Derby, the rollicking good-humour and animal spirits of Bishop Wilberforce, the saturnine epigrams of Lord Beaconsfield, the versatility and choice diction of Lord Houghton, the many-sided yet concentrated malice which supplied the stock in trade of Abraham Hayward. More recent losses have been heavier still. Just ten years ago[15] died Mr. Matthew Arnold, who combined in singular harmony the various elements which go to make good conversation--urbanity, liveliness, quick sympathy, keen interest in the world"s works and ways, the happiest choice of words, and a natural and never-failing humour, as genial as it was pungent. It was his characteristic glory that he knew how to be a man of the world without being frivolous, and a man of letters without being pedantic.
Eight years ago[16] I was asked to discuss the Art of Conversation in one of the monthly reviews, and I could then ill.u.s.trate it by such living instances as Lord Granville, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Coleridge, Lord Bowen, Mr. Browning, and Mr. Lowell. Each of those distinguished men had a conversational gift which was peculiarly his own. Each talked like himself, and like no one else; each made his distinct and individual contribution to the social agreeableness of London. If in now endeavouring to recall their characteristic gifts I use words which I have used before, my excuse must be that the contemporary record of a personal impression cannot with advantage be retouched after the lapse of years.
Lord Granville"s most notable quality was a humorous urbanity. As a story-teller he was unsurpa.s.sed. He had been everywhere and had known every one. He was quick to seize a point, and extraordinarily apt in anecdote and ill.u.s.tration. His fine taste appreciated whatever was best in life, in conversation, in literature, even when (as in his selection of the preface to the Sanctus as his favourite piece of English prose) it was gathered from fields in which he had not habitually roamed. A man whose career had been so full of vivid and varied interests must often have felt acutely bored by the trivial round of social conversation. But if he could not rise--who can?--to the apostolic virtue of suffering bores gladly, at any rate he endured their onslaughts as unflinchingly as he stood the gout. A smiling countenance and an unfailing courtesy concealed the torment which was none the less keen because it was unexpressed. He could always feel, or at least could show, a gracious interest in what interested his company, and he possessed in supreme perfection the happy knack of putting those to whom he spoke in good conceit with themselves.
The late Sir Robert Peel was, both mentally and physically, one of the most picturesque figures in society. Alike in his character and in his aspect the Creole blood which he had inherited from his maternal descent triumphed over the robust and serviceable commonplace which was the characteristic quality of the Peels. Lord Beaconsfield described "a still gallant figure, scrupulously attired; a blue frock coat, with a ribboned b.u.t.ton-hole; a well-turned boot; hat a little too hidalgoish, but quite new. There was something respectable and substantial about him, notwithstanding his moustaches and a carriage too debonair for his years." The description, for whomsoever intended, is a lifelike portrait of Sir Robert Peel. His most salient feature as a talker was his lovely voice--deep, flexible, melodious. Mr. Gladstone--no mean judge of such matters--p.r.o.nounced it the finest organ he ever heard in Parliament; but with all due submission to so high an authority, I should have said that it was a voice better adapted to the drawing-room than to the House of Commons. In a large s.p.a.ce a higher note and a clearer tone tell better, but in the close quarters of social intercourse one appreciates the sympathetic qualities of a rich baritone. And Sir Robert"s voice, admirable in itself, was the vehicle of conversation quite worthy of it.
He could talk of art and sport, and politics and books; he had a great memory, varied information, lively interest in the world and its doings, and a full-bodied humour which recalled the social tone of the Eighteenth century.
His vein of personal raillery was rather robust than refined. Nothing has been heard in our time quite like his criticism of Sir Edgar Boehm in the House of Commons, or his joke about Mr. Justice Chitty at the election for Oxford in 1880. But his humour (to quote his own words) "had an English ring," and much must be pardoned to a man who, in this portentous age of reticence and pose, was wholly free from solemnity, and when he heard or saw what was ludicrous was not afraid to laugh at it. Sir Robert Peel was an excellent hand at what our fathers called banter and we call chaff. A prig or a pedant was his favourite b.u.t.t, and the performance was rendered all the more effective by his elaborate a.s.sumption of the _grand seigneur"s_ manner. The victim was dimly conscious that he was being laughed at, but comically uncertain about the best means of reprisal. Sydney Smith described Sir James Mackintosh as "abating and dissolving pompous gentlemen with the most successful ridicule." Whoever performs that process is a social benefactor, and the greatest master of it whom I have ever known was Sir Robert Peel.
The Judges live so entirely in their own narrow and rather technical circle that their social abilities are lost to the world. It is a pity, for several of them are men well fitted by their talents and accomplishments to take a leading part in society. The late Lord Coleridge was pre-eminently a case in point. Personally, I had an almost fanatical admiration for his genius, and in many of the qualities which make an agreeable talker he was unsurpa.s.sed. Every one who ever heard him at the Bar or on the Bench must recall that silvery voice and that perfect elocution which prompted a competent judge of such matters to say: "I should enjoy listening to Coleridge even if he only read out a page of _Bradshaw_." To these gifts were added an immense store of varied knowledge, a genuine enthusiasm for whatever is beautiful in literature or art, an inexhaustible copiousness of anecdote, and a happy knack of exact yet not offensive mimicry. It is always pleasant to see a man in great station, who, in the intercourse of society, is perfectly untrammelled by pomp and form, can make a joke and enjoy it, and is not too cautious to garnish his conversation with personalities or to season it with sarcasm. Perhaps Lord Coleridge"s gibes were a little out of place on "The Royal Bench of British Themis," but at a dinner-table they were delightful, and they derived a double zest from the exquisite precision and finish of the English in which they were conveyed.
Another judge who excelled in conversation was the late Lord Bowen.
Those who knew him intimately would say that he was the best talker in London. In spite of the burden of learning which he carried and his marvellous rapidity and grasp of mind, his social demeanour was quiet and un.o.btrusive almost to the point of affectation. His manner was singularly suave and winning, and his smile resembled that of the much-quoted Chinaman who played but did not understand the game of euchre. This singular gentleness of speech gave a special piquancy to his keen and delicate satire, his readiness in repartee, and his subtle irony. No one ever met Lord Bowen without wishing to meet him again; no one ever made his acquaintance without desiring his friendship. Sir Henry Cunningham"s memoir of him only ill.u.s.trated afresh the impossibility of transplanting to the printed page the rarefied humour of so delicate a spirit. Let me make just one attempt. Of a brother judge he said: "To go to the Court of Appeal with a judgment of ----"s in your favour, is like going to sea on a Friday. It is not necessarily fatal; but _one would rather it had not happened_." Had Bowen been more widely known, the traditions of his table-talk would probably have taken their place with the best recollections of English conversation. His admirers can only regret that gifts so rich and so rare should have been buried in judicial dining-rooms or squandered on the dismal orgies of the Cosmopolitan Club, where dull men sit round a meagre fire, in a large, draughty, and half-lit room, drinking lemon-squash and talking for talking"s sake--the most melancholy of occupations.
The society of London between 1870 and 1890 contained no more striking or interesting figure than that of Robert Browning. No one meeting him for the first time and unfurnished with a clue would have guessed his vocation. He might have been a diplomatist, a statesman, a discoverer, or a man of science. But whatever was his calling, one felt sure that it must be something essentially practical. Of the disordered appearance, the unconventional demeanour, the rapt and mystic air which we a.s.sume to be characteristic of the poet he had absolutely none. And his conversation corresponded to his appearance. It abounded in vigour, in fire, in vivacity. It was genuinely interesting, and often strikingly eloquent, yet all the time it was entirely free from mystery, vagueness, and jargon. It was the crisp, emphatic, and powerful discourse of a man of the world who was incomparably better informed than the ma.s.s of his congeners. Mr. Browning was the readiest, the blithest, and the most forcible of talkers, and when he dealt in criticism the edge of his sword was mercilessly whetted against pretension and vanity. The inflection of his voice, the flash of his eye, the pose of his head, the action of his hand, all lent their special emphasis to the condemnation.
"I like religion to be treated seriously," he exclaimed with reference to a theological novel of great renown, "and I don"t want to know what this curate or that curate thought about it. _No, I don"t._" Surely the secret thoughts of many hearts found utterance in that emphatic cry.
Here I must venture to insert a personal reminiscence. Mr. Browning had honoured me with his company at dinner, and an unduly fervent admirer had b.u.t.ton-holed him throughout a long evening, plying him with questions about what he meant by this line, and whom he intended by that character. It was more than flesh and blood could stand, and at last the master extricated himself from the grasp of the disciple, exclaiming with the most airy grace, "But, my dear fellow, this is too bad. _I_ am monopolizing _you_." Now and then, at rather rare intervals, when time and place, and company and surroundings, were altogether suitable, Mr.
Browning would consent to appear in his true character and to delight his hearers by speaking of his art. Then the higher and rarer qualities of his genius came into play. He kindled with responsive fire at a beautiful thought, and burned with contagious enthusiasm over a phrase which struck his fancy. Yet all the while the poetic rapture was underlain by a groundwork of robust sense. Rant, and gush, and affectation were abhorrent to his nature, and even in his grandest flights of fancy he was always intelligible.
The late Mr. Lowell must certainly be reckoned among the famous talkers of his time. During the years that he represented the United States in London his trim sentences, his airy omniscience, his minute and circ.u.mstantial way of laying down literary law, were the inevitable ornaments of serious dinners and cultured tea-tables. My first encounter with Mr. Lowell took place many years before he entered on his diplomatic career. It was in 1872, when I chanced to meet him in a company of tourists at Durham Castle. Though I was a devotee of the _Biglow Papers_, I did not know their distinguished author even by sight; and I was intensely amused by the air of easy mastery, the calm and almost fatherly patronage, with which this cultivated American overrode the indignant showwoman; pointed out, for the general benefit of the admiring tourists, the gaps and lapses in her artistic, architectural, and archaeological knowledge; and made mullion and portcullis, and armour and tapestry the pegs for a series of neat discourses on mediaeval history, domestic decoration, and the science of fortification.
Which things are an allegory. We, as a nation, take this calm a.s.surance of foreigners at its own valuation. We consent to be told that we do not know our own poets, cannot p.r.o.nounce our own language, and have no well-educated women. But after a time this process palls. We question the divine right of the superiority thus imposed on us. We ask on what foundation these high claims rest, and we discover all at once that we have paid a great deal of deference where very little was deserved. By processes such as these I came to find, in years long subsequent to the encounter at Durham, that Mr. Lowell, though an accomplished politician, a brilliant writer, and an admirable after-dinner speaker, was, conversationally considered, an inaccurate man with an accurate manner.
But, after all, inaccuracy is by no means the worst of conversational faults, and when he was in the vein Mr. Lowell could be exceedingly good company. He liked talking, and talked not only much but very well. He had a genuine vein of wit and great dexterity in phrase-making; and on due occasion would produce from the rich stores of his own experience some of the most vivid and striking incidents, both civil and military, of that tremendous struggle for human freedom with which his name and fame must be always and most honourably a.s.sociated.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] April 15 1888
[16] Written in 1897.
XIV.
CONVERSATION--_continued_.
Brave men have lived since as well as before Agamemnon, and those who know the present society of London may not unreasonably ask whether, even granting the heavy losses which I enumerated in my last chapter, the Art of Conversation is really extinct. Are the talkers of to-day in truth so immeasurably inferior to the great men who preceded them?
Before we can answer these questions, even tentatively, we must try to define our idea of good conversation, and this can best be done by rigidly ruling out what is bad. To begin with, all affectation, unreality, and straining aftereffect are intolerable; scarcely less so are rhetoric, declamation, and whatever tends towards speech-making.
Mimicry is a very dangerous trick, rare in perfection, and contemptible when imperfect. An apt story well told is delicious, but there was sound philosophy in Mr. Pinto"s view that "when a man fell into his anecdotage it was a sign for him to retire from the world." One touch of ill-nature makes the whole world kin, and a spice of malice tickles the intellectual palate; but a conversation which is mainly malicious is entirely dull. Constant joking is a weariness to the flesh; but, on the other hand, a sustained seriousness of discourse is fatally apt to recall the conversation between the Hon. Elijah Pogram and the Three Literary Ladies--"How Pogram got out of his depth instantly, and how the Three L.L."s were never in theirs, is a piece of history not worth recording. Suffice it that, being all four out of their depths and all unable to swim, they splashed up words in all directions, and floundered about famously. On the whole, it was considered to have been the severest mental exercise ever heard in the National Hotel, and the whole company observed that their heads ached with the effort--as well they might."
A talker who monopolizes the conversation is by common consent insufferable, and a man who regulates his choice of topics by reference to what interests not his hearers but himself has yet to learn the alphabet of the art. Conversation is like lawn-tennis, and requires alacrity in return at least as much as vigour in service. A happy phrase, an unexpected collocation of words, a habitual precision in the choice of terms, are rare and shining ornaments of conversation, but they do not for an instant supply the place of lively and interesting matter, and an excessive care for them is apt to tell unfavourably on the substance of discourse.
"I might as well attempt to gather up the foam of the sea as to convey an idea of the extraordinary language in which he clothed his description. There were at least five words in every sentence that must have been very much astonished at the use they were put to, and yet no others apparently could so well have expressed his idea. He talked like a racehorse approaching the winning-post--every muscle in action, and the utmost energy of expression flung out into every burst." This is a contemporary description of Lord Beaconsfield"s conversation in those distant days when, as a young man about town, he was talking and dressing his way into social fame. Though written in admiration, it seems to me to describe the most intolerable performance that could ever have afflicted society. _He talked like a racehorse approaching the winning-post_. Could the wit of man devise a more appalling image?
Mr. Matthew Arnold once said to me: "People think that I can teach them style. What stuff it all is! Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style." This dictum applies, I think, at least as well to conversation as to literature. The one thing needful is to have something to say. The way of saying it may best be left to take care of itself. A young man about town once remarked to me, in the tone of one who utters an accepted truism: "It is so much more interesting to talk about people than things." The sentiment was highly characteristic of the mental calibre and a.s.sociations of the speaker; and certainly the habitual talk--for it is not conversation--of that section of society which calls itself "smart"
seems to touch the lowest depth of spiteful and sordid dullness. But still, when the mischiefs of habitual personality have been admitted to the uttermost, there remains something to be said on the other side. We are not inhabitants of Jupiter or Saturn, but human beings to whom nothing that is human is wholly alien. And if in the pursuit of high abstractions and improving themes we imitate too closely Wordsworth"s avoidance of Personal Talk, our dinner-table will run much risk of becoming as dull as that poet"s own fireside.
Granting, then, that to have something to say which is worth hearing is the substance of good conversation, we must reckon among its accidents and ornaments a manner which knows how to be easy and free without being free-and-easy; a habitual deference to the tastes and even the prejudices of other people; a hearty desire to be, or at least to seem, interested in their concerns; and a constant recollection that even the most patient hearers may sometimes wish to be speakers. Above all else, the agreeable talker cultivates gentleness and delicacy of speech, avoids aggressive and overwhelming displays, and remembers the tortured cry of the neurotic bard:--
"Vociferated logic kills me quite; A noisy man is always in the right-- I twirl my thumbs, fall back into my chair, Fix on the wainscot a distressful stare; And when I hope his blunders all are out, Reply discreetly, "To be sure--no doubt!""
If these, or something like these, are the attributes of good conversation, in whom do we find them best exemplified? Who best understands the Art of Conversation? Who, in a word, are our best talkers? I hope that I shall not be considered ungallant if I say nothing about the part borne in conversation by ladies. Really it is a sacred awe that makes me mute. London is happy in possessing not a few hostesses, excellently accomplished, and not more accomplished than gracious, of whom it is no flattery to say that to know them is a liberal education. But, as Lord Beaconsfield observes in a more than usually grotesque pa.s.sage of _Lothair_, "We must not profane the mysteries of Bona Dea." We will not "peep and botanize" on sacred soil, nor submit our most refined delights to the impertinences of critical a.n.a.lysis.
In considering the Art of Conversation I obey a natural instinct when I think first of Mr. Charles Villiers, M.P. His venerable age alone would ent.i.tle him to this pre-eminence, for he was born in 1802, and was for seventy years one of the best talkers in London. Born of a family which combined high rank with intellectual distinction, his parentage was a pa.s.sport to all that was best in social and political life. It argues no political bias to maintain that in the first quarter of the nineteenth century Toryism afforded its neophytes no educational opportunities equal to those which a young Whig enjoyed at Bowood and Panshanger and Holland House. There the best traditions of the previous century were constantly reinforced by accessions of fresh intellect. The charmed circle was indeed essentially, but it was not exclusively, aristocratic; genius held the key, and there was a _carriere ouverte aux talents_.
Thus it came to pa.s.s that the society of Lord Lansdowne and Lord Holland and Lord Melbourne was also the society of Brougham and Mackintosh, and Macaulay and Sydney Smith. It presented every variety of accomplishment and experience and social charm, and offered to a man beginning life the best conceivable education in the art of making oneself agreeable. For that art Mr. Villiers had a natural genius, and his lifelong a.s.sociation with the Whigs superadded a technical training in it. But this, though much, was by no means all. I hold it to be an axiom that a man who is only a member of society can never be so agreeable as one who is something else as well. And Mr. Villiers, though "a man about town," a story-teller, and a diner-out of high renown, has had seventy years"
experience of practical business and Parliamentary life. Thus the resources of his knowledge have been perpetually enlarged, and, learning much, he has forgotten nothing. The stores of his memory are full of treasures new and old. He has taken part in the making of history, and can estimate the great men of the present day by a comparison with the political immortals.
That this comparison is not always favourable to some exalted reputations of the present hour is indeed sufficiently notorious to all who have the pleasure of Mr. Villiers"s acquaintance; and nowhere is his mastery of the art of conversation more conspicuous than in his knack of implying dislike and insinuating contempt without crude abuse or noisy denunciation. He has a delicate sense of fun, a keen eye for incongruities and absurdities, and that genuine cynicism which springs, not from the poor desire to be thought worldly-wise, but from a lifelong acquaintance with the foibles of political men. To these gifts must be added a voice which age has not robbed of its sympathetic qualities, a style of diction and a habit of p.r.o.nunciation which belong to the eighteenth century, and that formal yet facile courtesy which no one less than eighty years old seems capable of even imitating.
I have instanced Mr. Villiers as an eminent talker. I now turn to an eminent man who talks--Mr. Gladstone.[17] An absurd story has long been current among credulous people with rampant prejudices that Mr.
Gladstone was habitually uncivil to the Queen. Now, it happens that Mr.
Gladstone is the most courteous of mankind. His courtesy is one of his most engaging gifts, and accounts in no small degree for his power of attracting the regard of young men and undistinguished people generally.
To all such he is polite to the point of deference, yet never condescending. His manners to all alike--young and old, rich and poor--are the ceremonious manners of the old school, and his demeanour towards ladies is a model of chivalrous propriety. It would therefore have been to the last degree improbable that he should make a departure from his usual habits in the case of a lady who was also his Sovereign.
And, as a matter of fact, the story is so ridiculously wide of the mark that it deserves mention only because, in itself false, it is founded on a truth. "I," said the Duke of Wellington on a memorable occasion, "have no small talk, and Peel has no manners." Mr. Gladstone has manners but no small talk. He is so consumed by zeal for great subjects that he leaves out of account the possibility that they may not interest other people. He pays to every one, and not least to ladies, the compliment of a.s.suming that they are on his own intellectual level, engrossed in the subjects which engross him, and furnished with at least as much information as will enable them to follow and to understand him. Hence the genesis of that absurd story about his demeanour to the Queen.
"He speaks to Me as if I was a public meeting," is a complaint which is said to have proceeded from ill.u.s.trious lips. That most successful of all courtiers, the astute Lord Beaconsfield, used to engage her Majesty in conversation about water-colour drawing and the third-cousinships of German princes. Mr. Gladstone harangues her about the polity of the Hitt.i.tes, or the harmony between the Athanasian Creed and Homer. The Queen, perplexed and uncomfortable, tries to make a digression--addresses a remark to a daughter or proffers biscuit to a begging terrier. Mr. Gladstone restrains himself with an effort till the Princess has answered or the dog has sat down, and then promptly resumes: "I was about to say--" Meanwhile the flood has gathered force by delay, and when it bursts forth again it carries all before it.