When we were driving away, he asked me whether he had said anything very dreadful. I sought to reassure him. 'The best thing I ever heard or ever expect to hear on an English platform,' I said, and I told him what he had said.
At once he took fright. 'It's all that d… d champagne,' he cried, 'but we must see that the phrase doesn't get into The Times so that it can be dexterously contradicted or perhaps smothered. You'll help me, won't you?'
Of course I consented, but assured him that the reporters hadn't taken down the phrase. He laughed, but insisted on making assurance doubly sure, so we drove first to The Times office; and as good luck would have it, I found Arthur Walter there, who, after hearing everything, sent to the composing room for a 'pull' of the report, and to my amusement, the great phrase had been carefully omitted. Next morning I went through all the newspapers: not a single one had thought the truth worth recording. This phrase is still to me the high-water mark of Randolph Churchill's intelligence.
Either a little before or a short time after this occurrence, I was dreadfully disappointed in him. The channel- tunnel scheme had been set on foot and at once I took fire for the idea. A little earlier I had been astonished by the extraordinarily rapid growth both of Antwerp and Hamburg as ports, and I had found out that this was due partly to the fact that freights brought to any British port had to 'break cargo' and be transhipped again because there was no channel tunnel which would have allowed trains to run right through to the continent. I made a special study of the question and came to the conclusion that if a tunnel were running, the port of London would soon be once more the first in the world. I couldn't but believe that English common sense would insist on the enterprise being carried out with the briefest possible delay. And there was big money in the gamble. Accordingly, I went to work with pen and word of mouth to convince the English public of its plain self-interest. In ten minutes' talking I persuaded Lord Randolph Churchill, and encouraged by my warm praise of him as a 'pioneer,' he declared that he would not only vote for the project, but speak for it to boot.
On hearing this I felt sure of victory. To cut a long story short, when the debate came on, a new thought entered Randolph Churchill's brain. With a great deal of humor he pictured an English official, the secretary of state for home affairs, hearing that five thousand French troops had seized the tunnel and were coming through to Dover. Ought he or ought he not to blow them all up?
'For one,' summed up Lord Randolph, 'I prefer security to the doubt.' The whole picture was idiotic. As I had pointed out to Randolph, no French troops would take such a desperate risk; both ends of the tunnel could be raised above water level, so that they could be easily blown to pieces by a mere gunboat. No general would send troops through such a defile, and if he did, ten to one they'd all have to surrender the next day. But the parliamentary triumph was all Randolph cared for and the whole thing gave me the measure of his insularity. But why, after all, should I blame him, when now, forty years later, the channel tunnel scheme has just been vetoed again by five prime ministers considering the whole question in cold blood, now that airplanes have dropped bombs in London and played havoc with the protection given to England by the sea. At the very moment of writing this, too, I find Winston Churchill defending the construction of a channel tunnel with the very arguments I had used to persuade his father a generation ago.
At the moment I was wretchedly disappointed, for I had been fool enough to say that Randolph Churchill would defend the scheme, whereas it was he who damned it altogether. He had made a fool of me and merely grinned when I told him how I had come to grief through believing in his word: from that time on my faith in him was shaken.
He knew more about Ireland, as I have said, than any English member or minister I had come across, and when over the Home Rule Bill of Gladstone he started the slogan, 'Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right,' I was paralyzed with horror, for I understand the demoniac cleverness of the vile appeal and realized some of the evil consequences. I could not but remonstrate with him. 'You are fighting for today,' I said, 'but tomorrow, with or without Gladstone, Irish Home Rule will come into being and you'll look like Mrs. Partington.'
'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof' was his cynical answer. He was always the fighting politician out to win personal victories, careless of the evil seed he flung broadcast, with absolutely no vision of an ideal future. I was forced to see that my hopes of him were ill-founded.
We were both at Wadhurst once, the Murietta's place in Sussex, where Madame de Sainturce dispensed a most gracious hospitality. Sir William Gordon Gumming, I remember, was one of the party, the Sir William who at that time was supposed to be a bosom friend of Prince Edward and gave himself considerable airs because of the royal support. The second day Randolph asked me to come with him to a private room for a talk: he knew that I knew Parnell and Mrs. O'Shea, and he wanted to find out whether it was true that Parnell disguised himself to visit Kitty, and whether that was the explanation of his astonishing changes in appearance. Sometimes Parnell would appear in the House of Commons with a full beard; a week later it was shaved off; now he wore his hair down on his shoulders; next week it was cropped close; and again the top of his head was clean-shaven, as if he had been playing priest.
'What did it all mean?' Randolph wanted to know. I told him the truth as I saw it, that Parnell was one of the strangest human beings I had ever met. He was constantly visiting Mrs. O'Shea in disguise, whether to escape notice or merely because he was superstitious I could never quite determine; thirteen terrified him; he counted the paving stones, and if nine brought him with his right foot to the threshold, he walked in happily; I have known him to walk around for half an hour till a lucky number freed him from fear. To my astonishment, Randolph nodded his head, 'I can understand that.' I could only stare at him in blank wonder.
While we were talking the door opened and Lady Randolph appeared.
Naturally, I got up as she called out, 'Randolph,' but he sat still. In spite of his ominous silence, she came across to him, 'Randolph, I want to talk to you!'
'Don't you see,' he retorted, 'that I've come here to be undisturbed?'
'But I want you,' she repeated tactlessly.
He sprang to his feet. 'Can't I have a moment's peace from you anywhere?' he barked. 'Get out and leave me alone!' At once she turned and walked out of the room.
'You ought not to have done that, for my sake,' I said.
'Why not?' he cried. 'What has it to do with you?'
'Your wife will always hate me,' I replied, 'for having been the witness of her humiliation. You, she may forgive; me, never.'
He laughed like a schoolboy. 'Those are the astonishing things in you,' he said. 'You have an uncanny flair for character and life; but never mind: I'll say you were angry with me for my rudeness and that will make it all right!'
'Say nothing,' I retorted. 'Let us hope that she may forget the incident, though that's not likely. Ever afterwards Lady Randolph missed no opportunity of showing me that she disliked me cordially. I remember some years later how she got into the express train for the south in Paris and coolly annexed an old man's seat. I spent ten minutes explaining who she was and pacifying the old Frenchman, but she scarcely took the trouble to thank me.
She showed her worst side to me almost always and was either imperious or indifferent.
When Lord Randolph became Leader of the House of Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer, his real greatness came to view at once. The most irresponsible and daring of critics, the type of opposition leader whose metier and raison d'etre was constant attack, frivolous or weighty, took on in one day a new character, a strange unexpected dignity. The metempsychosis astonished everyone: he was not only fair-minded but kind; he would listen to and answer the bore or the fool with dignified courtesy! For the first and only time in the history of the House of Commons, he used his cabinet ministers and party leaders as pawns in a game and treated every debate as a new campaign.
Formerly, ministers used to give their names to the Whips and rise to speak when they chose, without reference to the result as they do today. Randolph Churchill altered all that: in the middle of the debate he thought nothing of asking a cabinet minister to speak later or not to speak at all that night, according to the speeches of the opponents. And it was soon clear that Randolph was a most consummate tactician, using all his lieutenants with uncanny understanding. For instance, there was among the Conservatives a large and voluble Jew named Baron de Worms, who delighted in spouting shop-soiled commonplaces. At one moment in a debate Randolph sent Baron de Worms a flattering note, telling him he reckoned on him to reply to the Liberal who was then speaking. De Worms nodded, smiling happily, and when his turn came took the floor with pompous fluency. At once Gladstone began to
