Have you resolution enough to persevere with it? That's the question.' ''You'll see,' I replied. 'Any other advice?'
''Absolute abstention from all alcoholic drink,' he said. 'I'll write you out a regimen, and if you follow it, in a year you will be cured and have no further ill effect.' 'To cut a long story short, I did what he told me to do, but I was young and heedless and did not stop drinking in moderation and soon got reckless.
Damn it, one can't grieve forever. Yet I have had very few symptoms since and before my marriage. The Oxford doctor and a London man said I was quite clear of all weakness and perfectly cured.'
I was thrilled by the story: was there another chapter to it? Was this what Jennings meant when he said that Randolph was doomed? What else did he know or fear? I had just found about Maupassant, had begun to attribute his ghastly fears to syphilis. But then Maupassant had taken little or no care to cure himself, while Randolph asserted that he had done everything he was told to do. I could not but ask, 'Do you think it has injured Randolph's health?'
'I'm sure of it,' Jennings nodded. 'He has fits of excessive irritability and depression which I don't like. In spite of what he told me, I don't think he took much care. He laughed at secondary symptoms, but now I hear he's going for a long holiday to South Africa under Beit's auspices and that may cure him.
At any rate, his fate no longer concerns me.'
A couple more stories and Randolph Churchill's life is told so far as I am concerned. I have already said that I met him in Monte Carlo a good many times in almost successive years. At first he amused me by his childish belief that he could make money gambling at the tables. I told him that at Baden- Baden, Blanc, the proprietor, had only half the odds in his favor and yet had managed to make a great fortune. But he insisted that the power of varying the stake gave the punter an advantage; I was of use to him because I had known Monte Carlo for years, as well as it could be known, croupiers and directors and all. He was childishly self-confident and I found I was wasting my time trying to dissuade him from playing, so I showed him what they call 'Labby's system,' which is a very slow progression if you lose and therefore less dangerous than most systems, which are usually modifications of the silly doubling game which quickly kills or cures, as your maximum stake is limited.
After several meetings at Monte Carlo Randolph became more friendly to me and talked more frankly with me than he had ever done in the days of his success.
One evening after dinner in the Hotel de Paris we had a really serious talk about politics and I found we were poles apart. I pointed out that just as village communities were superseded by nations, so nations now were in process of being superseded by world empires; already two were being formed, Russia and the United States, which must soon dwarf all nations. The question for England was; would she bring about a union with the colonies and become an English confederation of states with an imperial senate drawn from all her colonies, instead of that potty House of Lords? To my astonishment he got angry. 'I know the House of Lords,' he exclaimed, 'and there's a lot of good sense in it and good feeling and I hate your imperial senate of jumped-up grocers from Ballarat and shopkeepers from Sydney!' I found nothing to say: he lived still in feudal times and his brains were an accident.
I then talked to him of socialism and the part it should play in a well ordered community. Randolph would not have socialism at any price, did not really understand the first word of the modem problem. He would not acknowledge that the prosperity of the working classes in France came from the partition of the land of France during the Revolution. 'The comparative prosperity of the French peasants has its drawbacks,' he insisted. 'Look at their narrow, sordid lives!' he cried, 'I prefer England with its wider freedom and one class at least that gets all the best out of life and sets a great example.'
After that evening I took little interest in his possible return to power. His want of education maimed him; he could never be a Mazzini, let alone a Bismarck. As he ate and drank and spoke of the well dressed women that came and went, I understood how 'illiterate' had come to mean 'lewd.' I noticed now too for the first time that he was terribly nervous: his hands twitched; he started and shook at every sudden sound. I could only hope that his trip to South Africa would bring him back to health and strength.
He went out in a Donald Currie liner and contributed articles to an English journal, in which he condemned the food and drink as that of a second class lodging house. He was amply justified but he was bitterly attacked for his well founded criticism. All the mercantile world, whose patriotism is mainly self-interest, and their champions in the press, kept on ridiculing him month in month out till they had seriously damaged his reputation with the many.
Yet the food on board ship was bad everywhere till Ballin with the help of Harris established a Ritz restaurant on the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria and at once lifted all ocean travel into a higher category of comfort. He was the first to make sea life luxurious.
Randolph came back from South Africa bearded like a pard, a grey-haired old man. Others have told how he tried to regain his place and influence in Parliament and his ghastly failure. The House filled to hear him: he got up and after the first few words began to mumble and hesitate and repeat himself incoherently, while frequent emphatic gestures emphasized the grotesqueness of the exhibition. Balfour sat beside him with his head bent forward, buried in his hands. 'Randolph's finished,' was the universal verdict.
'What's happened to him?' everyone was asking. 'Who would have believed it?'
I heard from Beit that Randolph had made money by following his advice and investing in the deep levels; indeed, it is known that when he died he left a great many thousands of pounds to his widow, all derived from this source.
Jennings' words recurred to me again and again: 'Randolph's doomed,' I was soon to learn the reason.
His brother died and at once I announced that I was going to publish in the Fortnightly Review an article on 'The Art of Living' by the late Duke. I showed phrases of it to reporters, and as everyone knew the brains and frankness of the Duke, it was easy to work up a tremendous sensation, for indeed the article was almost too outspoken to be published. My readers will remember that I got the article by publishing, at the Duke's request, a paper written by Lady Colin Campbell, who was the Duke's mistress at the time, and a very pretty mistress, too. I only consented to publish her outpouring on condition that the Duke would write me a perfectly frank paper giving his real views of life and living. He certainly did what I asked: in the paper he declared that women were the only things in life worth winning. 'A good dinner and the good talk of able men is interesting, but without women and the pleasure they give, life would be stale, flat and unprofitable, a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.'
Some years after I had published Lady Colin's paper, the Duke told me that she had insisted on being invited to spend a week at Blenheim by his new wife, formerly the rich Mrs. Hammersley of New York. The Duchess consented at once in all innocence, and in due course Lady Colin appeared and insisted on flaunting her intimacy with the Duke, whom she always called by his Christian name. In huge glee he told me that the devil of a woman would take him for a walk in the morning alone and keep him till they were late for lunch. 'We are such old friends,' she said to the Duchess,
'and I haven't seen him for so long. You must really forgive us: when we are together time flies.'
The Duke said, 'My wife is far from being a fool: indeed, no woman is blind in such a case and Lady Colin'll never get another invitation to Blenheim.'
That was as much as I knew when I got a letter from Randolph, asking me to come to see him in his mother's house in Grosvenor Street, where he was staying at the time. I went all unsuspecting. I had often had similar notes from him in the past. When he came across the room to shake hands with me, I was appalled by his appearance. In a couple of years he had changed out of character, had become an old man instead of a young one. His face was haggard; his hair greyish and very thin on top; his thick beard, also half-grey, changed him completely. He held himself well, which added dignity, but the old boyish smile had gone. 'Sit down, sit down,' he said. 'We must have a talk! You don't know the Duchess of Marlborough, do you?' he began. 'She would like to know you and I think you would be friends. I'm going to bring about a meeting. She's really a remarkable woman and my brother's death has been a dreadful blow to her; she loved him, as good women love us, in spite of our faults. When she read about the article he had written for you and that it was going to be published she was appalled, shocked. She had read the article and hated it, believed it was written under the influence of Lady Colin Campbell, whom she disliked, and she burned the article and the proof you had sent him before my brother-and thought it was done with forever. When she saw the announcement that that hateful article was going to appear, she was beside herself. She sent for her solicitors; they told her nothing could be done. Finally she wired for me and I went to see her. I must tell exactly what I said to this poor, grief-stricken woman. 'We have no power,' I said, 'but it was lucky that you sent for
