LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL
VOL I.

[Lord Randolph Churchill Volume I.]
[Contents Volume I.]
[Illustrations To The First Volume]
[Lord Randolph Churchill Volume II.]
[Contents Volume II.]
[Illustrations To The Second Volume]
[Index: ] [A], [B], [C], [D], [E], [F], [G], [H], [I], [J], [K], [L], [M], [N], [O], [P], [Q], [R], [S], [T], [U], [V], [W], [Z]

Lord Randolph Churchill.
1883.

LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

BY
WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL, M.P.
AUTHOR OF
‘THE STORY OF THE MALAKAND FIELD FORCE, 1897’
‘THE RIVER WAR,’ ‘LONDON TO LADYSMITH VIA PRETORIA,’ ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1906
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1906,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1906.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

TO
CHARLES RICHARD JOHN SPENCER-CHURCHILL
DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH
THIS BOOK
IN ALL FAITHFUL FRIENDSHIP
IS INSCRIBED

Deed of Trust Regulating the Papers of the late Lord Randolph Churchill.

I, The Right Honourable Randolph Henry Spencer-Churchill, P.C., M.P., of 50 Grosvenor Square in the County of London by these Presents send Greeting Whereas I am possessed of various Political and State Documents Correspondence and Papers which are now contained in Tin boxes deposited in my name at the Westminster Branch of the London and Westminster Bank Limited and in Tin boxes and Drawers at No. 50 Grosvenor Square aforesaid Now I by These Presents do assign transfer and make over from and after the date of my decease the above mentioned political and State documents correspondence and papers unto George Richard Penn Viscount Curzon M.P., of 23 Upper Brook Street in the said County of London and Ernest William Beckett M.P., of 138 Piccadilly in the said County of London Upon Trust that they the said George Richard Penn Viscount Curzon and Ernest William Beckett shall from and after the date of my decease deal with and use the said Political and State documents correspondence and papers for any purpose which they in their absolute discretion may think well Provided that no such Political or State documents correspondence or paper relating either to the Department of the India Office or the Department of the Foreign Office shall be printed published or used in any way either directly or indirectly without the written consent of Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for either of the said Departments for the time being And I Hereby Declare that these presents are executed by me in triplicate one Copy whereof is deposited with the Right Honourable the Earl of Rosebery K.G., P.C., Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the second Copy is deposited at the Western Branch of the Bank of England, Burlington Gardens in the name of my Solicitor Mr. Theodore Lumley and the third Copy is retained by me

As Witness my hand and seal this eighth day of March One thousand eight hundred and ninety-three.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

IN the spring of 1893 Lord Randolph Churchill, feeling that he had slender expectations of long life, placed all his papers, private and official, under a trust-deed which consigned them at his death to the charge of two of his most intimate political friends, Viscount Curzon (now Earl Howe) and Mr. Ernest Beckett (now Lord Grimthorpe). As he made a practice of preserving almost every letter he received, the number of documents was sufficient to fill eleven considerable tin boxes. Subject to the conditions prescribed in the trust-deed in regard to matters affecting the India Office or the Foreign Office—which have, of course, been strictly observed—these papers were placed in my hands by my father’s literary executors in July 1902, for the purpose of my writing a full account of his life and work. I am deeply sensible of the confidence implied and of the honour conveyed in that commission, and during the three and a half years which have passed since I accepted it, I have diligently laboured—in spite of some political distractions—to discharge it to the best of my ability.

Sir Michael Hicks-Beach (having consulted with the late Lord Salisbury) and Lord Rosebery have expressed the opinion that the story of Lord Randolph Churchill’s life may now be fully told without impropriety towards individuals or the public. Indeed, it is high time to do so. Lord Randolph’s part in national affairs is not to be measured by long years of office. No great legislation stands in his name upon the statute book. He was a Chancellor of the Exchequer without a Budget, a Leader of the House of Commons but for a single session, a victor without the spoils. No tangible or enduring records—unless it be the Burma province—exist of his labours, and the great and decisive force which he exerted upon the history of the Conservative and Unionist party might be imperfectly realised by a later generation, unless it were explained, asserted, and confirmed by the evidence of those who came in contact or collision with his imperious and vivifying personality.

For a thing so commonly attempted, political biography is difficult. The style and ideas of the writer must throughout be subordinated to the necessity of embracing in the text those documentary proofs upon which the story depends. Letters, memoranda, and extracts from speeches, which inevitably and rightly interrupt the sequence of his narrative, must be pieced together upon some consistent and harmonious plan. It is not by the soft touches of a picture, but in hard mosaic or tessellated pavement, that a man’s life and fortunes must be presented in all their reality and romance. I have thought it my duty, so far as possible, to assemble once and for all the whole body of historical evidence required for the understanding of Lord Randolph Churchill’s career. Scarcely anything of material consequence has been omitted, and such omissions as have been necessary are made for others’ sakes and not his own. Scarcely any statement of importance lacks documentary proof. There is nothing more to tell. Wherever practicable I have endeavoured to employ his own words in the narration; and the public is now in a position to pronounce a complete, if not a final, judgment.

I have been fortunate in the abundance of the materials supplied me. In addition to Lord Randolph Churchill’s tin boxes with their ample stores, there was at hand an invaluable series of scrap-books, containing every conceivable newspaper comment and cartoon, collected by his sister, Lady Wimborne, and covering the whole period of his active political life. But most of all I am indebted to those many friends, irrespective of political party, who either by allowing their letters to be printed, or by reading the proof-sheets, have enabled me to compile what may, without presumption, be called an authoritative account. I accept, of course, in the fullest sense, exclusive responsibility for whatever is written here; but to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, first of all, my grateful acknowledgments are due, for not only has he with the greatest care and pains thoroughly revised the whole book, but furnished me, besides, with extensive memoranda in respect of those chapters with the events of which he was specially concerned.

The biographer of an English statesman is often able to conduct his hero prosperously through the recognised educational experiences, and to instal him at an early age in some small office, whence his promotion in due course is assured. It is otherwise with the life of Lord Randolph Churchill. No smooth path of patronage was opened to him. No glittering wheels of royal favour aided and accelerated his journey. Whatever power he acquired was grudgingly conceded and hastily snatched away. Like Disraeli, he had to fight every mile in all his marches. And this account will, I think, be found to explain in almost mechanical detail the steps and the forces by which he rose to the exercise of great personal authority, as well as the converse process by which he declined.

I have naturally been led to deal more fully with his public career than with his private life. With the exception of the first two chapters and the last, this story lies in a period of only ten years—from 1880 to 1890, and not less than half of its compass is concerned with the succession of fierce political crises which disturbed the years 1885 and 1886. The epoch is brief; but so crowded is it with incident and accident, so full of insights and sidelights upon the workings of party and constitutional machinery in modern times, that it deserves the closest examination. And I hope it may be attributed to the author’s failings, and not to the actions and character of Lord Randolph Churchill, if the reader is not attracted by an authentic drama of the House of Commons.

WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL.

Blenheim Palace, Woodstock:
November 1, 1905.

CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST VOLUME

ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE FIRST VOLUME

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

Here eyes do regard you,
In Eternity’s stillness:
Here is all fulness,
Ye brave, to reward you;
Work and despair not."’
—Goethe.

CHAPTER I
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.

The whole region is as rich in history as in charm; for the antiquity of Woodstock is not measured by a thousand years, and Blenheim is heir to all the memories of Woodstock. Here Kings—Saxon, Norman, and Plantagenet—have held their Courts. Ethelred the Unready, Alfred the Great, Queen Eleanor, the Black Prince, loom in vague majesty out of the past. Woodstock was notable before the Norman Conquest. It was already a borough when the Domesday Book was being compiled. The park was walled to keep the foreign wild beasts of Henry I. Fair Rosamond’s Well still bubbles by the lake. From the gatehouse of the old manor the imprisoned Princess Elizabeth watched the years of Mary’s persecution. In the tumults of the Civil Wars Woodstock House was held for King Charles by an intrepid officer through a long and bitter siege and ravaged by the victorious Roundheads at its close. And beyond the most distant of these events, in the dim backward of time, the Roman generals administering the districts east and west of Akeman Street had built their winter villas in that pleasant, temperate retreat; so that Woodstock and its neighbourhood were venerable and famous long before John Churchill, in the early years of the eighteenth century, superimposed upon it the glory of his victories over the French.

1849

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 (of whom more hereafter), 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.

1857
Æt. 8

In his father’s lifetime Lord Blandford lived at Hensington House, an unpretentious building outside the circumference of the Blenheim Park wall and about half a mile from the palace. Here his numerous family were brought up. Their childhood must have been a very happy one, with such a fine and ample place for a playground, many dear playmates and parents who watched over them with unremitting care. The boy grew up with his brother and sisters, as little boys are wont to do; and when his father became, in 1857, seventh Duke of Marlborough, they all moved into the palace at the other end of the great avenue, and this became for many years their home. Randolph was sent to Mr. Tabor’s school at Cheam when he was eight years old. This was very young for one who had so much space and happiness at home; but he seems to have been most kindly treated and to have been quite content. He did not prove exceptionally clever at his letters, though he made steady progress at school. He had an excellent memory, and was fond of reading books of history, biography, and adventure. But much more pronounced than any liking for study were his passion for sport and his love of animals. By the time he was nine years old he rode well, and even at that early age he showed decision and determination in his ways. In those days the telegraph was some miles distant from Blenheim and the telegraph boy used to ride in with his messages upon a ragged, wiry little pony called ‘The Mouse.’ Once he had seen this pony, Lord Randolph wearied his father and family with requests to buy it and never rested till it was his own. After the pony was purchased, he trained it and called it his hunter. The next step was to go hunting.

1860
Æt. 11

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 (afterwards Lord Donoughmore), and the two brothers Gordon (one of whom is now Lord Aberdeen). 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."

‘He was always ready with some surprise in the Sunday texts and exercises for which Mr. Tabor assembled us in big school on Sunday afternoons. I can never open the book of Ecclesiastes without recalling the breathless astonishment with which I heard him recite, with that vehemence he always showed in speech, those eight verses which tell us that "to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." For me Churchill achieved a wonder. No boy, and I should think hardly a man, is likely to have much more than an abstract and somewhat perfunctory interest in the Thirty-nine Articles. But I can never glance at the sombre sentences of the Article on Predestination and Election without the passages ringing with his declamation as he repeated the whole, ore rotundo, without hesitation or the tremor of an eyelash. At that time there was at Cheam one of those holy and blameless boys who come sometimes to sanctify the rough brutalities of schoolboy life. He was Mackworth Dolben, from Finedon, in Northants, where his memory is still kept green. He used once a week to assemble in his cubicle a few of us, with whom he would read the Bible and pray. He had enrolled my brother in the coterie, and through my brother, myself. Churchill was one of the little band; and I can see him now, kneeling down by the bed, with his face in his hands resting on the white coverlet, leading us in fervent prayer.

‘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.

1863
Æt. 14

‘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 (I was little more than eight, and I never saw him after he left Cheam) 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:—

Lord Randolph to his Mother.

Eton College, Windsor, 1863.

I am very sorry I did not write you before, but I wrote one letter to you and I cannot find it anywhere, and I have not had a bit of time since, for I had to bring a hundred lines every day to Mr.—— for cutting my name on the new table in the new schools. Mr.—— is such a horrid man; I had one or two punishments for him yesterday and I put them in his pupil room and somebody must have taken them away for he said he never saw them. He has been rude too; he called me a ‘little blackguard’ the other day just because I was sitting with my legs on the form, and he is always calling the fellows names. I shall never do any good with him, he is so unjust.

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:—

To his Father.

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 (which rather spoilt the fun) 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.

The Princess Alexandra having never seen fireworks before, they were on Monday night instead of on Tuesday night, because she wanted to see them. We did not get home till nearly twelve o’clock. There was no illumination that night. Yesterday morning was a whole holiday without any early school or chapel. We were all mustered in the school-yard about eleven o’clock, and then marched up Windsor into the Castle by Henry the VIIIth’s gate. There we had to stand for a tremendous time without anything coming. (It luckily was fine and not very cold.) At last the first procession came; it was the King of Denmark and all those people. We had a beautiful view of all the people. Then we had to wait about a quarter of an hour, and then came the Princess Royal. She was sitting on our side, and she bowed away as hard as she could go. (I think her neck must have been stiff.) And then came the Prince; he looked extremely gracious. I never saw him put his hat on, and he held it about an inch from his head, and kept bowing, always in the same place. And last of all came the Princess. And then there was such a row, in spite of the Queen’s express commands that there was to be no cheering. I never heard such an awful noise in all my life. I think, if the Queen heard it, she must have had a headache for a long time afterwards. We were not allowed to go into the chapel, or into the courtyard by the chapel. A whole lot of us charged the policemen and soldiers to get in, but it was no use; they managed to keep us back that time. But we had our revenge afterwards. After they had come back we went back into college. Then at three o’clock we all came to see the Princess go away. She did not come till about a quarter past four in the afternoon—the Prince and Princess in an open carriage; and then came the squashing. We all rushed after the carriage. (I was right in the front of the charge; it was a second Balaclava.) Nothing stood before us; the policemen charged in a body, but they were knocked down. There was a chain put across the road, but we broke that; several old genteel ladies tried to stop me, but I snapped my fingers in their face and cried ‘Hurrah!’ and ‘What larks!’ I frightened some of them horribly. There was a wooden palisade put up at the station (it was the Great Western), but we broke it down; and there, to my unspeakable grief, I was bereaved of a portion of my clothing, viz. my hat. Somebody knocked it off. I could not stop to pick it up, I shrieked out a convulsive ‘Oh, my hat!’ and was then borne on. I got right down to the door of the carriage where the Prince of Wales was, wildly shouting ‘Hurrah!’ He bowed to me, I am perfectly certain; but I shrieked louder. I am sure, if the Princess did not possess very strong nerves, she would have been frightened; but all she did was to smile blandly. At last the train moved off while the band played ‘God save the Queen.’ I am sure I wonder there were no accidents, we were all so close to the carriage. There I was, left in the station, ‘hatless.’ I met Lord Churchill there, who told me Lady Churchill was in waiting. I was introduced to lots of soldiers by one of the masters who caught me. And then I began to search for my hat; but it was in vain, for I never saw it again. I was told to get another one, for I had no other to wear. At last I got home, and in the evening we went out again to see the illumination. There was not much to see. I think I have given you a full account of the wedding and the reception.

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.

Considering that mischief and a disposition to argue were the gravest crimes imputed to the boy, the paternal rebukes were frequently rather severe. They followed, if I may judge by old letters, a regular course. First, on receiving the bad report, the father would, with much deliberation, ask his son what he had to say in defence or in excuse. Lord Randolph would reply with a long, carefully-written letter of justification, defending himself with freedom and ingenuity. Next the Duke, now duly in possession of both sides of the case, would take up his largest pen and deliver majestic censure. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he wrote on one occasion, ‘I fear that you yourself are very impatient and resentful of any control; and while you stand upon some fancied right or injury, you fail to perceive what is your duty, and allow both your language and manner a most improper scope.’ The third stage of these estrangements would be a frank letter of submission and promises for future improvement, after which complete forgiveness and the return of sunshine.

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.’[1] 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.’

Two other fleeting impressions have been preserved.[2] ‘I can just remember young Churchill,’ writes a well-known Eton authority, ‘as a striking, whimsical personality, with full, large, round, astonished eyes and a determined bull-dog type of face. He was addicted to dressing loudly, and I vividly recollect his appearance one day in a daring violet-coloured waistcoat. Botham’s Hotel was in those days a favourite resort for Etonians, in the way of succession to Coningsby’s "Christopher," where the friends entertained each other at sumptuous breakfasts and luncheons. A special feature of this hostelry, as well as a powerful attraction to the younger boys, was a spacious fruit-garden, celebrated for the size and flavour of its strawberries. During a certain summer this Elysian enclosure was so pillaged as to cause the proprietor to complain to the headmaster, Mr. Balston. As a consequence Mr. Austen Leigh was despatched to watch, and, if possible, to catch the offenders in flagrante delicto. That representative of the highest Eton authority very soon flushed a large covey of juvenile depredators. All of them, however, got away, except Randolph Churchill, who jumped as far as he could towards the road with his pursuer close upon him. They both fell together into the ditch, Mr. Austen Leigh uppermost. Lord Randolph, seeing that any further attempt at escape would be useless, crawled out, much scratched and bruised, into the middle of the road, where, incensed at his own discomfiture, he deliberately sat down, crossed his legs, glared at Mr. Leigh, and with all the vehemence of enraged fourteen, exclaimed, "You beast!" How he escaped the birch after this adventure tradition does not relate.’

‘I can recall him at Eton,’ wrote ‘J. S.’ in the Realm of March 1895, ‘but only for one amazing moment. It was a summer evening, just before "lock-up," and the whole wall, the little old wall so fitted for the height of small boys, which separates the public road from the borders of Upper School, was thronged with youths, resting after the labours of the day. Even they felt the charm of the stillness. There was no drumming of heels on the wall, only chatter and occasional laughter. On the other side of the road, gathered at the top of Keate’s Lane, where in those days was an iron bar for the "seat of the scornful," were the "Swells." Between these awe-inspiring aristoi and us urchins indiscriminate on the wall lay the empty road. Down the middle of that road alone, ringing discordant music from a Volunteer’s bugle, marched a boy in jackets. It was Churchill, wending homeward to Frewer’s. As I recall the "Swells" of that time, this progress of a boy in jackets, on his right a long line of his fellows, on his left, for one awful minute, that sublime group at the corner, I feel once more the breathless wonder at audacity so magnificent.’

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 (May 1) 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.

1867
Æt. 18

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.

In 1867 Lord Randolph left Eton in order to obtain some education from a private tutor before going to Oxford. In spite of these precautions his first attempt to pass the entrance examination was unsuccessful; and it was arranged that he should work for six months under the care of an accomplished clergyman, the Rev. Lionel Dawson Damer, who lived at Cheddington, near Aylesbury.

Lord Randolph to his Father.

Cheddington: March, 1867.

I wrote to you in my last that we did not intend to go to Oxford, but we changed our minds and went yesterday. It was a horrid day, snowing and blowing from the East, and dreadfully cold. As we were getting into the train we met Mr.—— to whom you offered the living at Waddesdon. He seemed really a charming man, so very gentlemanlike and quiet. I am sure you would like him very much. He tells me he had at first declined the living, but now, having seen it, he thought that if certain things were done he would accept it, if you had not offered it to anyone else already. He wants to get back into this neighbourhood, and really I should think he would be a capital person from all Mr. Damer says, and from what I saw. I asked Mr. Damer to go and call upon Dr. Scott. I thought he might find out something about me. Dr. Scott told him a different story from what he told you. He said that my papers as a whole gave the Dons the idea that I made tremendous guesses at everything, and that they thought they could not on that let me in. He said nothing about the essay at all. I do not think he is much to be relied on.

We also called upon Dr. Marsham. He was very civil and seemed to be pleased at our calling. He was very glad he said at your taking office, and said he would be able to offer me rooms in October, so I think we did no harm by calling, but that he thought it very civil. I only saw Dalmeny and Donoughmore, everyone else was out.

I think General Peel’s speech very clear and intelligible. I suppose he will be a much greater loss than Lord Carnarvon or Lord Cranborne. How very troublesome the Fenians are! I suppose you have complete information now about it all. I am afraid the Whigs are getting very disagreeable, but I hope their machinations will not succeed. I think Dizzy gave it to Gladstone well.

I am going out with the Harriers to-morrow.

Lord Randolph to his Father.

Cheddington: March, 1867.

I must say I think it very kind of Dr. Marsham letting us know so soon that he can give me a room, for he said nothing about a chance vacancy, so that I expect he has made some other arrangement.

I cannot tell you how delighted I was when you wrote and told me that you had accepted the office of Lord President of the Council. I think it is just the office that you would like best. Do you know who is to be Lord Steward? Do you at all expect a split in the Cabinet? I do hope you will be able to do something now, as it seems perhaps that the Conservatives have been placed in rather a humiliating position. I am so glad you are in the Cabinet; but Mr. Damer and I look forward to a change in the Cabinet policy.

There has been very little to do here. I assisted Mr. Damer at some penny readings the other night in the school here, as he had been thrown over by a clergyman he had asked to come and read. I read ‘Reminiscences of Margot’ and the ‘Ingoldsby Legends.’ They were very much applauded. Mr. Damer and I have got a charming plan, I think you will approve of it. He says that after the 20th of June, which is the Choral Festival at Aylesbury of which he has the management, he will be quite free, and we thought we might make a very pleasant trip abroad for two months, beginning about July to the end of August, if you did not mind. I should have passed the examination for Merton and just come back in time for the October term. Mr. Damer says he would like it very much. But should you mind?

Do you think you would be able to run down here some Saturday afternoon and stay Sunday? I am afraid you will have a tremendous lot to do now. I wish I could be your Secretary.

1868
Æt. 19

The Continental tour commended itself to the Duke, and Lord Randolph was allowed to roam through Switzerland and Italy at his pleasure for two or three months. On his return he matriculated and took up his residence at Merton, under the tutelage of Dr. Creighton, afterwards Bishop of London. It must have been with relief and satisfaction that he exchanged the rough bigotry of school life for the free and generous atmosphere of a famous University. At Eton he had gained neither distinction in games nor profit from studies. He had learned to row and swim, without aspiring to renown; and as for cricket and football, he heartily detested them both. But Oxford opened opportunities of all kinds. Its proximity to Blenheim enabled him to live practically at home. The happy companionship of his family and the sporting possibilities of a landed estate were both within easy and constant reach. His nature responded to the glory and romance of Oxford; and in its cloistered courts, so rich in youth and history, he found a scheme of life more varied, tolerant, and real than any he had ever known.

Meanwhile Lord Randolph had long outgrown ‘The Mouse’; and even while an Eton boy, upon a new and quickly distinguished animal called ‘Pillbox,’ with occasional mounts from his elder sisters, he had begun in his holidays to acquire some glory in the Oxfordshire fields. He is described at sixteen as ‘a very bold and good horseman, who also took the greatest interest in the hunting.’ Aided as he was by the light weight of youth and his native knowledge of the country, few in the hunt could beat him. His love of the art of venery grew into worship. At fifteen the ownership of two beagles, the gift of his father, transported him with delight. They proved the humble forerunners of a pack which is not yet forgotten in Oxfordshire. Within the next two years he became possessed of ‘two or three hounds, kept in some pigsties at the back of the gardens, under the care of a somewhat ragged and disreputable "Boy Jim," whom he called his "whipper-in,"’ and of an old retired keeper—one of the Duke’s pensioners—who, with his wife, discharged the duties of ‘feeder.’ But it was not till he went to Merton, in the autumn of 1867, that he aspired to a higher state and created, in all the serious purpose of nine couple of hounds and the pomp of ‘a whip well mounted and in livery,’ the celebrated ‘Blenheim Harriers.’ September 21, 1867, is the first entry in his hunting-book, thenceforward kept with the utmost regularity throughout the three years of his Oxford life.

‘Remarks.

‘First time of taking out the hounds—rather wild and did not run together.... Found in Margett’s grass field, and ran a ring with a bad scent. Jumped up in the middle of the pack, and ran a straight line across the Hensington Road and Taylor’s Farm, where three of the hounds, getting away quietly (Resolute, Blameless, and Careful), ran into her. Others got wrong. Cheerful not up at the death. Did not find again, but went home at once. Fencer and Blue-cap lame next day. Ground very hard. Scent very bad.—R. H. S. C.’

And so on through many pages of neat, compact handwriting, with which, since these episodes are more diverting in the enterprise than in the chronicle, the reader need not be concerned. The reputation, the popularity, and the fields of the Blenheim Harriers grew steadily. ‘I became,’ wrote Colonel Thomas, ‘very proud of the way in which he hunted his own hounds, as I never knew a more patient persevering Huntsman, with great determination, self-confidence, and quickness in taking any advantage that might occur.’ ‘Killed altogether last season,’ writes Lord Randolph contentfully at the end of February 1868, ‘twenty-nine brace of hares and one fox. Season commencing September 8, 1868.’

The harriers required attention in the summer, and the eye of the Master was never long astray. The pack steadily improved in numbers and quality. Some were bred at the Blenheim kennels, others were purchased. One hound he bought from Lord Granville, who sent an amusing letter with him, explaining that he was called ‘Radical.’ Lord Randolph’s correspondence at this time seems to have been chiefly concerned with these important matters. Here is a specimen letter:—

Lord Randolph Churchill to Mr. Blake, one of
his father’s tenants.

Gloster Hotel, Cowes, Isle of Wight.

Dear Sir,—You were kind enough in the spring to say that if you could overcome Mrs. Blake’s objections you would bring up a puppy for me. I have a very promising litter now by Dexter out of Crazy, that are quite old enough to go out ‘to walk,’ and should be so very much obliged to you if you would take care of one for me. I have altogether seven couple of puppies, and shall have great difficulty in finding walks for all of them. If you will let Mr. Napier know you will take one, he will send you one, and by doing so you will greatly oblige

Yours faithfully,
Randolph S. Churchill.

Lord Randolph soon became one of the best-known and best-liked figures in the county. He was tactful and considerate to the farmers, whose hospitality he enjoyed, and courteous and composed with his field. Many are the stories of merry lunches at farmhouses, of mournful tumbles into muddy brooks, of jaunts and jollities and every varied chance or mischance of the chase over all that pleasant countryside. Whenever the responsibilities of the harriers permitted and a horse was fresh and fit, he hunted besides with the Heythrop, the Bicester and other neighbouring packs.

But the world did not always smile upon him. It is odd how often persons who in private life, and indeed on all other occasions, are the mildest and kindest of men, develop, when engaged in equestrian sport, an unwonted severity and even roughness of manner. Tom Duffield, the Master of the Old Berkshire Hounds, was, like so many good sportsmen, somewhat addicted to the use of firmer language in the hunting-field than the occasion always required. One day, early in the winter of 1868, when Lord Randolph was nearly twenty years old, he had the misfortune to ride too close to the Old Berkshire Hounds and to incur the displeasure of their Master, who rated him in a very violent fashion before the whole company. Lord Randolph was deeply offended. He went home at once; but, as he said nothing at the moment, the incident was for a while forgotten. Towards the end of the season, however, a hunt dinner was held in Oxford, to which Mr. Duffield and many of the Old Berkshire field were bidden, and at which Lord Randolph was called upon to propose the toast of ‘Fox-hunting.’ He described himself as an enthusiast for all forms of sport. Fox-hunting, he said, in his opinion, ranked first among field sports; but he was himself very fond of hare-hunting too. ‘So keen am I that, if I cannot get fox-hunting and cannot get hare-hunting, I like an afternoon with a terrier hunting a rat in a barn; and if I can’t get that,’ he proceeded, looking round with much deliberation, ‘rather than dawdle indoors, I’d go out with Tom Duffield and the Old Berkshire.’ There was a minute of general consternation, which the orator complacently surveyed. Then the company, overcome by the audacity of the speaker, burst into laughter, led by Mr. Duffield himself. The story has become a local classic, and, surviving the worthy sportsman against whom it was directed, is still preserved among the farmers from Banbury to Bicester.

Lord Randolph & his Father Lord Randolph & his Mother.

For three successive seasons (1867-1869), with unimportant intervals occasionally filled by study, Lord Randolph harried the hares of Blenheim and enjoyed himself hugely. His brother, Lord Blandford, to whom he was much attached, was serving in the Blues. His sisters were growing up, and the eldest three were already ‘out.’ He became the autocrat of the family circle, and, like a wise ruler, took an intense interest in all that concerned his subjects. What balls they had been to, whom they had danced with, and all the similar incidents of a girl’s life were the constant objects of his inquiries; and upon all points he expressed his approval or disapproval in the clearest possible terms. Although the Duke might still assert a disciplinary control, there is no doubt that his younger son was from this time forward increasingly petted and beloved by his mother and sisters, to whom in return he showed all the gay and affectionate sides of his nature. ‘He was,’ wrote his mother, ‘the soul of wit and fun and cheerfulness in those happy days.’ He made some good friends at Merton—not many in number, but staunch and true. His Eton acquaintance with Lord Dalmeny (afterwards Lord Rosebery) ripened at Oxford into a life-long friendship. Dalmeny’s rooms in the Canterbury quadrangle of Christ Church were within a stone’s-throw of Merton. The two young men were close companions in the adventures and vicissitudes of undergraduate life and Lord Randolph used often to bring his friend over to Blenheim. Here they met on many occasions Mr. Disraeli, and the great Minister, who loved young people, would talk and joke with them by the hour together. He seems to have been delighted with both. His regrets were undisguised when, ten years later, Lord Rosebery threw himself into the tides of the Midlothian campaign. ‘I remember,’ wrote the Duchess of Marlborough, ‘that he first told me (in 1869) that it rested with Randolph to become a distinguished man. From that time he was ever friendly to him, and he watched with interest his early efforts in Parliament, and always wrote to congratulate me when he approved them.’

1869
Æt. 20

Besides the harriers, Lord Randolph’s greatest amusement at Oxford was chess; and he soon acquired, for an amateur, more than ordinary skill in the game. In conjunction with several friends he founded the University Chess Club; and on the first visit of Mr. Steinitz, the champion chess-player of the world, he conducted one of the boards at the blindfold exhibition. Although his play necessarily lacked the strength derivable from book knowledge and experience, it is described in this, as in other affairs, as being ‘original, daring, and sometimes brilliant.’ His game with Mr. Steinitz has been recorded; so that competent persons may judge of his quality for themselves:—

It is not worth while to dwell on college scrapes, though of these some, at any rate, have been recorded. Thus we learn that Lord Randolph Churchill was fined ten shillings for the offence of smoking in his cap and gown; that he broke the windows of the Randolph hotel; that he was taken into custody by the police, with the rest of a noisy supper party, and charged with being drunk; that, infuriated by such an accusation, which was not sustained in court, he brought an action for perjury against the police witness; that the college authorities appealed to the Duke of Marlborough to stop the legal proceedings; that the Duke of Marlborough replied that, on the contrary, they had his entire concurrence; that learned counsel were brought by both parties from London; but that in the end the summons was dismissed and the officer exonerated of any wilful intention to deceive. We are also told that one day he was sent for by the Warden to be rebuked for some delinquency. It was winter, and the interview began with the Warden standing before the fireplace and the undergraduate in the middle of the room. By the time the next culprit arrived Lord Randolph was explaining his conduct with his back to the fire and the Warden was a somewhat embarrassed listener in a chilly corner. Such are the tales.

Until he was in his twentieth year Lord Randolph’s studies seem to have been fitful. He had, indeed, enjoyed the ordinary education of an English gentleman. He had consumed a vast number of hours at Eton and elsewhere in making those intricate combinations of Latin words and syllables which are perhaps as useful or as harmless a form of mental training as youth can receive. He had—in addition to any acquaintance with classical learning which these exercises may be supposed to impart, and the wide but discursive reading of history and poetry that his tastes had prompted—a peculiar, exact, and intimate knowledge (made effective by an exceptional memory) of the Bible, Gibbon, and ‘Jorrocks.’ From these books—not so ill-assorted as they sound—he could recite in an extraordinary manner whole pages at a time. In the strong, simple, homely words and phrases, sonorous sentences, and veins of rough spontaneous mirth which characterise the style and language of his rhetoric and writings, the influence of these three varied fountains, quaintly, yet not incongruously, intermingled, can be plainly seen.

Although it is much better for the brain, and for the practical purposes of life, to know and understand one book than to have read a hundred, such an educational outfit was no title to academic distinction; and after he had been three years at Merton Lord Randolph determined to work seriously for an honours degree in history and law. He forthwith proceeded to put away his ‘toys,’ as he called them; and the Blenheim Harriers were given up without delay. The county gentlemen and farmers who had followed their fortunes with pleasure, if not with profit, determined to mark their appreciation of the pack and its youthful Master by the customary British ceremony of a dinner. A banquet was accordingly held at the Bear hotel in Woodstock at which Lord Randolph was hospitably entertained and generally praised. He replied to the toast of his health simply and briefly, as one speaking in his own place to his friends and neighbours.

‘Now that the harriers are gone,’ he said, ‘the future seems rather a blank. Perchance, in the course of time and events, I may find myself separated from these scenes of my youth. But you may rest assured that my Oxfordshire home and my Oxfordshire friends will ever be present and dear to my mind; and that, in whatever quarter of the world I may find myself, among whatever people, or pursuing whatever occupation, you, gentlemen, who have asked me here to dinner this evening, the happy hours I have spent among you, the fields and pastures of our well-known and favourite hunting grounds, and, last but not least, the old pack of harriers, will remain amongst those pleasant and gratifying recollections of days that are gone by, upon which I shall at all times delight to dwell.’

After this he began to work in earnest. The time which intervened before the December examinations was all too short to repair the well-spent idleness of previous years. It was fortunate that in these busy months he came under the influence of that good and eminent man Dr. Creighton, who took the greatest interest in him and aided and encouraged his exertions by every means. ‘He was always amenable to expostulation, when wisely administered,’ wrote Bishop Creighton in a letter to Mr. Escott in 1895, ‘and consulted me with freedom on all matters relating to the daily conduct of his life. At first he did not read much, having a habit of going to sleep in his chair after dinner, often for hours, which he only gradually overcame. But from the first I was interested to see his growing appreciation of the value of history, especially on its legal and constitutional side. He would take up a subject and talk about it till he had reached its bottom. As his interest grew he read more....’

The Bishop proceeds to relate an incident which seems to have impressed him. ‘My attention was called to his marked ability for practical politics early in his career. Soon after he came to Merton he deemed it his duty to write a letter in defence of his father, who had been attacked on some question of Woodstock politics. Before sending the note he brought it to me. I was greatly impressed by its dignity and its dexterity—the former as the composition of a son about his father, the latter in the administration of a reproof without leaving a loophole of escape.’ Dr. Creighton advised him not to enter into political controversy at his time of life. Lord Randolph’s answer was: ‘I have thought it over, and decided that point for myself. What I came to ask you was if you saw anything in the letter which you thought unbecoming.’ On this Dr. Creighton admitted, ‘If you are going to send a letter at all, you could not send a better one.’

‘That incident gave me,’ writes the Bishop, ‘a real insight into Churchill’s character, and showed me his capacity for practical politics. He made up his own mind; having well reflected, he chose his ground of attack, and then took every pains about the form of expression. He sought no advice about what he was going to do, but was anxious to do it "as well as possible."’

1870
Æt. 21

Dr. Creighton to the Duchess of Marlborough.

November 14, 1870.

I only wish that greater numbers took the same interest that you and the Duke do in your son’s proceedings at Oxford, and then its results might be greater than they are.

As regards Lord Randolph, I still think that he is wise in going in for examination now rather than in the summer. It is, of course, always difficult to predict the result of an examination; but I think that it would be very improbable, so far as my experience goes, that he should get any lower class than a second: some of his subjects he knows remarkably well—quite up to the standard of a first class—others he is not so much interested in. At present he is quite in earnest with his work, and has vigour and freshness in his treatment of it. He might no doubt, and probably would, be better prepared in six weeks’ time; but the interval of six months would be too long, and would give him temptations to listlessness and idleness which might leave him in a worse position at the end of that time than he is now.

I shall, however, require from him a rigorous account of what he does in examination; and if I think he has not done himself justice, I shall advise him to remove his name before the end, and so put off his examination to the summer. Do not, however, suggest this to him as a possibility. It is bad for anyone to have an alternative before him, and it were better that I judged after the event than that he thought of it during the process. At present I certainly think he will get a second class at least.

Lord Randolph himself was hopeful:—

Lord Randolph to his Mother.

Merton College: Tuesday.

I hope you won’t hope for too much when I tell you that yesterday and to-day I have been doing much better in my examination, which has been chiefly about what I have been reading this term; so I have been able to do it. I am very much afraid Saturday’s work will go against me. A great deal depends on how I do to-morrow morning, which is the last day. There is no more writing work; it is what they call viva voce and that is the hardest. I hope that I will have a little luck and be asked what I know best and then perhaps it will come right, but even if it does the whole thing has been a dreadful scramble and I see now, too late, that I had much better have waited until June. However, I saw Creighton yesterday, and he was all against my scratching, and thinks I shall get through all right. I shall know by three or four o’clock to-morrow and shall telegraph. I am not very sanguine, but shall be dreadfully disappointed.

I shall not be able to come home until Saturday or Monday anyhow, as I must keep my term. Poor little Wasp died yesterday. I am very much distressed, for she was so nice and was the first dog I had you did not object to. I do not think I shall get another, they all seem to die.

Gladstone is safe to be beaten they say to-day. The Conservatives are beginning to pick up a little now, but we shall be in a shocking minority. I think Papa will be glad to get out of it though, and that is the only thing that consoles me. The papers seem to be in a dreadful fright for fear the Queen should send for Lord Granville. How spiteful they are!

Dr. Creighton’s forecast was, however, justified by the result:—

Dr. Creighton to the Duchess of Marlborough,

December 15.

I must own I was sorry when I heard how narrowly Lord Randolph missed the first class: a few more questions answered, and a few omissions in some of his papers, and he would have secured it. He was, I am told by the examiners, the best man who was put in the second class; and the great hardship is, as your Grace observes, that he should be in the same class with so many who are very greatly his inferior in knowledge and ability.

It is rather tantalising to think he came so near; if he had been further off I should have been more content. Still I am glad he went in for examination this time. I think he would only have idled the six months before the next examination.

On the whole I think he has learned a good deal during his time at Oxford, and I do not think he regrets his residence here. I am sorry to lose him.

After leaving Oxford Lord Randolph made (1870) another and much longer tour in Europe. He liked few things better than to prowl about at his leisure from one new place to another, seeing all the sights, the galleries, the monuments, the circuses, and above all the zoological gardens, with eyes that never lost their interest even for the smallest trifles. Through France, Italy, and Austria he rambled light-heartedly; and when, after an absence of nearly a year, he came back to Blenheim he had enlarged his fancy and extended his education in various directions beyond the limits of a University curriculum. Behold him now at twenty-three, a man grown, markedly reserved in his manner to acquaintances, utterly unguarded to his intimate friends, something of a dandy in his dress, an earnest sportsman, an omnivorous reader, moving with a jaunty step through what were in those days the very select circles of fashion and clubland, seeking the pleasures of the Turf and town.

This interlude was soon ended.

1873
Æt. 24

In August of 1873 Lord Randolph went to Cowes upon what proved to him a memorable visit. In honour of the arrival of the Czarewitch and the Czarevna the officers of the cruiser Ariadne, then lying as guard-ship in the Roads, gave a ball, to which all the pleasure-seekers who frequent the Solent at this season of the year made haste to go in boats and launches from the shore and from the pleasure fleet. Here for the first time he met Miss Jerome, an American girl whose singular beauty and gifted vivacity had excited general attention. He was presented to her by a common friend. Waltzing made him giddy, and he detested dancing of all kinds; so that after a formal quadrille they sat and talked. She was living with her mother and eldest sister at Rosetta Cottage, a small house which they had taken for the summer, with a tiny garden facing the sea. Thither the next night, duly bidden, he repaired to dine. The dinner was good, the company gay and attractive, and with the two young ladies chatting and playing duets at the piano the evening passed very pleasantly. She was nineteen, and he scarcely twenty-four; and, if Montaigne is to be believed, this period of extreme youth is Love’s golden moment. That very night Miss Jerome told her laughing and incredulous sister of a presentiment that their new friend was the man she would marry; and Lord Randolph confided to Colonel Edgecumbe, who was of the party, that he admired the two sisters and meant, if he could, to make ‘the dark one’ his wife.

Next day they met again ‘by accident’—so runs the account I have received—and went for a walk. That evening he was once more a guest at Rosetta Cottage. That night—the third of their acquaintance—was a beautiful night, warm and still, with the lights of the yachts shining on the water and the sky bright with stars. After dinner they found themselves alone together in the garden, and—brief court-ship notwithstanding—he proposed and was accepted.

So far as the principals were concerned, everything was thus easily and swiftly settled, and the matter having become so earnest all further meetings were suspended until the Duke of Marlborough and Mr. Jerome, who was in America, had been consulted. Lord Randolph returned to Blenheim shaken by alternating emotions of joy and despondency. He had never been in love before and the force and volume of the tide swept him altogether off his feet. At one moment he could scarcely believe that one so unworthy as he could have been preferred; the next he trembled lest all his hopes should be shattered by circumstances unforeseen. Nor indeed was his anxiety without reason; for many and serious obstacles had yet to be encountered and smoothed away. From Blenheim he wrote to his father.

To his Father.

Blenheim: Wednesday, August 20, 1873.

I must not any longer keep you in ignorance of a very important step I have taken—one which will undoubtedly influence very strongly all my future life.

I met, soon after my arrival at Cowes, a Miss Jeannette Jerome, the daughter of an American lady who has lived for some years in Paris and whose husband lives in New York. I passed most of my time at Cowes in her (Jeannette’s) society, and before leaving asked her if she loved me well enough to marry me; and she told me she did. I do not think that if I were to write pages I could give you any idea of the strength of my feelings and affection and love for her; all I can say is that I love her better than life itself, and that my one hope and dream now is that matters may be so arranged that soon I may be united to her by ties that nothing but death itself could have the power to sever.

I know, of course, that you will be very much surprised, and find it difficult to understand how an attachment so strong could have arisen in so short a space of time; and really I feel it quite impossible for me to give any explanation of it that could appear reasonable to anyone practical and dispassionate. I must, however, ask you to believe it as you could the truest and most real statement that could possibly be made to you, and to believe also that upon a subject so important, and I may say so solemn, I could not write one word that was in the smallest degree exaggerated, or that might not be taken at its fullest meaning.

I hope you won’t feel any annoyance with me for not having consulted you before saying anything to her. I really meant to have done so; but on the night before I was leaving Cowes (Friday) my feelings of sorrow at parting from her were more than I could restrain, and I told her all. I did not say anything to her mother, but I believe that she did after I was gone; for she wrote to me just as I was starting (I did not, after all, leave Cowes till the Monday), and she said in her letter that her mother could not hear of it. That I am at a loss to understand.

I told Mama when I got here and should have written at once to tell you; but I was so wretched and miserable at leaving thus, I was quite incapable of writing quietly.

I now write to tell you of it all, and to ask you whether you will be able to increase my allowance to some extent to put me in the position to ask Mrs. Jerome to let me become her daughter’s future husband. I enclose you her photograph, and will only say about her that she is as nice, as lovable, and amiable and charming in every way as she is beautiful, and that by her education and bringing-up she is in every way qualified to fill any position.

She had an elder sister, and one younger, who is not yet out. Mr. Jerome is a gentleman who is obliged to live in New York to look after his business. I do not know what it is. He is reputed to be very well off, and his daughters, I believe, have very good fortunes, but I do not know any thing for certain. He generally comes over for three or four months every year. Mrs. Jerome has lived in Paris for several years and has educated her daughters there. They go out in Society there and are very well known.

I have told you all I know about them at present. You have always been very good to me, and done as much and more for me always than I had any right to expect; and with any arrangement that you may at any time make for me I shall be perfectly contented and happy. I see before me now a very happy future, almost in one’s grasp. In the last year or so I feel I have lost a great deal of what energy and ambition I possessed, and an idle and comparatively useless life has at times appeared to me to be the pleasantest; but if I were married to her whom I have told you about, if I had a companion, such as she would be, I feel sure, to take an interest in one’s prospects and career, and to encourage me to exertions and to doing something towards making a name for myself, I think that I might become, with the help of Providence, all and perhaps more than you had ever wished and hoped for me. On the other hand, if anything should occur to prevent my fondest hopes and wishes being realised (a possibility which I dare not and cannot bring myself to think of), how dreary and uninteresting would life become to me! No one goes through what I have lately gone through without its leaving a strong impress and bias on their character and future. Time might, of course, partially efface the impression and recollection of feelings so strong as those I have tried to describe to you, but in the interval the best years of one’s life would be going, and one’s energies and hopes would become blunted and deadened.

I will not allude to her. I believe and am convinced that she loves me as fully, and as strongly if possible, as I do her; and when two people feel towards each other what we do, it becomes, I know, a great responsibility for anyone to assist in either bringing about or thwarting a union so closely desired by each.

Good-bye. I have written to you all I have done, all I feel, and all I know.

Anxiously wishing for an answer from you,
I remain
Ever your most affectionate son,
Randolph.

The Duke was very seriously disturbed at the news of his son’s intention and declined to commit himself to any expression of approval until he had made searching inquiry into the standing and circumstances of the Jerome family. He deplored the precipitancy with which the decision had been taken. ‘It is not likely,’ he wrote upon August 31, ‘that at present you can look at anything except from your own point of view; but persons from the outside cannot but be struck with the unwisdom of your proceedings, and the uncontrolled state of your feelings, which completely paralyses your judgment.’ His rebuke was supported by his wife, who urged affectionate counsels of caution, patience, and self-restraint, and was pointed by a set of witty and satirical verses from his brother, Lord Blandford, setting forth the unhappy fate of those who marry in haste and repent at leisure.

It will easily be understood how this attitude—most Americans being proud as the devil—raised corresponding objections on the other side. Mr. Jerome was himself in many ways a remarkable personality. He had made and lost and made again considerable fortunes in the enterprise and struggle of American life. He had founded the first two great American racecourses, Jerome Park and Coney Island Jockey Club, and divides with Mr. August Belmont the claim to be the father of the American Turf. He owned and edited the New York Times. A vehement Federalist in the Civil War, he was said to have subscribed nearly half his fortune to the Federal war funds. When in 1862 the war party in New York was discredited by the disasters of the campaign, and riotous mobs attacked the Times office, Mr. Jerome—having purchased a battery of cannon and armed his staff with rifles—beat them off, not without bloodshed. Altogether he was a man of force and versatility. He had at first, indeed, written a conditional assent to his daughter’s engagement, but he withdrew it with promptness as soon as he heard a murmur of opposition. Mrs. Jerome and her daughters retreated to France; and all interviews, and even communications, were forbidden by all the parents. Randolph Churchill, however, knew his own mind in many things, and most especially in this. Such was his vehemence that the Duke was soon persuaded, for the sake of his son’s peace of mind and of his own authority, to acquiesce—at any rate, provisionally—in a formal engagement. But he insisted upon delay. Nothing, he declared, but time could prove an affection so rapidly excited; and with this decision, supported and emphasised by the Jeromes, the lovers had perforce to be content.

The control of parents over grown-up children was in those unregenerate days much more severe than now. Letters were indeed allowed to pass freely between the lovers; but visits were grudged and restricted. Only at intervals of a month, or even six weeks, were they permitted to see each other, and in these circumstances it may be imagined that both pens were busy. In this field the young lady had a great advantage. The placid succession of the duties and amusements of country life—the round of shooting parties, the varying totals of slaughtered hares and pheasants, the mornings on the Woodstock bench, and descriptions of relations and county folk—however vivacious, were inadequate materials to set against days spent in Paris during the autumn of 1873, when the gossip of the world was reviving after the gag of the war, when Bazaine was upon his trial for his life, when Gambetta declaimed in the Assembly, and when the drawing-rooms, even of foreigners, were full of Royalist and Bonapartist whisperings. For the most part his letters were strictly confined to the subject of main importance. They told over and over again, in the forcible, homely English of which he was a natural master, the oldest story in the world. Indeed, but for the contributions of Miss Jerome the correspondence would certainly have lacked variety.

Towards the end of September the Duke committed himself with preciseness to the opinion that one year’s delay was necessary. To this Lord Randolph was far from agreeing and he conceived himself possessed of a lever which might be used to shorten considerably this weary period of waiting.

To Miss Jerome.

Blenheim: Tuesday, September 23.

I cannot tell you what pleasure and happiness your letter gives me; it makes me feel quite a different being, so you really must not threaten me with a long silence. You certainly have great powers of perception, and I cannot but own that there is a good deal of truth in what you say about my being one moment very despairing and another moment very sanguine. I cannot help it; I was made so.

My father has been away for a few days, and yesterday I got a ‘piece’ from him on the subject of his consent. After a good deal of unnecessary rigmarole and verbosity he says:

‘The great question is still unsolved, whether you and the young lady who has gained your affections are, or can be, after a few days’ acquaintance, sufficiently aware of your own minds to venture on the step which is to bind you together for life. What I have now to say is that if I am to believe that your future is really bound up in your marriage with Miss Jerome you must show me the proof of it by bringing it to the test of time. I will say no more to you on this subject for the present, but if this time next year you come and tell me that you are both of the same mind we will receive Miss Jerome as a daughter, and, I need not say, in the affection you could desire for your wife.’

Now these are his words, but I do not mind telling you that it is all humbug about waiting a year. I could, and would, wait a good deal more than a year, but I do not mean to, as it is not the least necessary; for though we have only known each other a short time, I know we both know our own minds well enough, and I wrote a very long and diplomatic letter to my father yesterday, doing what I have never done before, contradicting him and arguing with him and, I hope, persuading him that he has got very wrong and foolish ideas in his head. You see, both he and my mother have set their hearts on my being member for Woodstock. It is a family borough, and for years and years a member of the family has sat for it. The present member is a stranger, though a Conservative, and is so unpopular that he is almost sure to be beaten if he were to stand; and the fact of a Radical sitting for Woodstock is perfectly insupportable to my family. It is for this that they have kept me idle ever since I left Oxford, waiting for a dissolution. Well, as I told you the other day, a dissolution is sure to come almost before the end of the year. I have two courses open to me: either to refuse to stand altogether unless they consent to my being married immediately afterwards; or else—and this is still more Machiavellian and deep—to stand, but at the last moment to threaten to withdraw and leave the Radical to walk over. All tricks are fair in love and war.

These desperate expedients were not, however, necessary. The parents on both sides only wished to be assured that the attachment of their children was no passing caprice, but a sincere and profound affection; and as the weeks grew into months this conviction was irresistibly borne in upon them. In October the Duke was willing to admit that the period of probation might be considerably curtailed. But he still had strong reasons for not wishing the marriage to take place immediately. The dissolution was certainly in the air. By-election after by-election had gone against Mr. Gladstone’s Government. Greenwich, Stroud, Dover, Hull, Exeter, East Staffordshire, and Renfrewshire had renounced their allegiance; Bath had been barely retained, and the Solicitor-General, whose victory at Taunton had been a much-paraded compensation, was threatened with a petition for bribery. It was most important that Woodstock should be held for the Conservatives. No one could possibly have so good a chance as the young cadet born and bred on the soil, who knew half the farmers and local magnates personally, whose excursions with the harriers had made him familiar with all parts of the constituency, and whose gay and stormy attractiveness had won him a host of sworn allies.

Yet he had often in words and in letters expressed a disinclination for public life. It is curious to notice how even in the days of buoyant unconquered youth, moods of depression cast their shadows across his path. Although possessed of unusual nervous energy, his whole life was a struggle against ill-health. Excitement fretted him cruelly. He smoked cigarettes ‘till his tongue was sore’ to soothe himself. Capable upon emergency of prolonged and vehement exertion, of manifold activities and pugnacities, of leaps and heaves beyond the common strength of men, he suffered by reaction fits of utter exhaustion and despondency. Most people grow tired before they are over-tired. But Lord Randolph Churchill was of the temper that gallops till it falls. An instinct warned him of the perils which threatened him in a life of effort. He shrank from it in apprehension. Peace and quiet, sport and friends, agricultural interests—above all a home—offered a woodland path far more alluring than the dusty road to London. The Duke felt, and with reason, that unless Lord Randolph were member for Woodstock before his marriage, not only would the borough be seduced to Radicalism, but that the son in whom all the hopes and ambitions of his later life were centred might never enter Parliament at all.

Lord Randolph was very grateful for the friendly attitude his family had now assumed and was quite prepared to repay concession by patience in one direction and by energy in another:—

To his Father.

Blenheim: Thursday, October (?), 1873.

I write by an early post to acknowledge your letter and to thank you very much for it. It is indeed a most kind letter and I am most grateful to you, as it is all I could have expected. Mama tells me that you got up early in the morning to write it, and indeed I thank you very much indeed for writing to me as you have done, and I only hope you did not tire yourself very much before your long journey.

I go to London to-day and to Paris to-morrow. I enclose you a letter from Hawkins about the registration, which seems to be satisfactory. I am sure you need not fear my doing my very best to get in, and therefore to be some credit to you. I feel that in this you have acted very kindly to me and I feel very grateful to you, although I know there are circumstances now which would have led some people to very different conclusions. I am, however, perfectly confident that ultimately you will never regret for a moment having acted as you have done.

To Miss Jerome.

Blenheim: Monday, October (?), 1873.

I was so happy to see your handwriting again; it is next best thing to seeing you. As you will have seen from my letter of Friday, we have no cause now to be disappointed or to be in bad spirits; everything goes on as favourably as we could expect, and my father does not wish, for a moment, to prevent my seeing you as often as I can, and has promised to give his consent to our marriage when he is sure we are fond of each other. As to the year, I have every right to say that I do not think they will insist on it....

The clouds have all cleared away, and the sky is bluer than I have ever seen it since I first met you at Cowes. It is exactly six weeks to-morrow since we met on board the Ariadne, and I am sure I seem to have lived six years. How I do bless that day, in spite of all the worry and bother that has come since; and I am sure you will not regret it. I have not had a further conversation with my father since I wrote to you, for I think it is best to leave things for the present as they are. Our early golden dreams of being married in December won’t quite become realised, but still it won’t be very long to wait; and I shall be able to see you from time to time, and write as often as I like; in fact, we can be regularly engaged, and all the world may know it....

It is curious what an effect books have on me; I have two old favourites. When I feel very cross and angry I read Gibbon, whose profound philosophy and easy though majestic writing soon quiets me down, and in an hour I feel at peace with all the world. When I feel very low and desponding I read Horace, whose thorough epicureanism, quiet maxims, and beautiful verse are most tranquillising. Of late I have had to have frequent recourse to my two friends, and they have never failed me. I strongly recommend you to read some great works or histories; they pass the time, and prevent you from worrying or thinking too much about the future. Novels, or even travels, are rather unsatisfactory, and do one no good, because they create an unhealthy excitement, which is bad for anyone. I wonder whether you will understand all this, or only think me rather odd.

There are three new elections to come off, owing to death vacancies; and if they go against the Government, as they very probably will, we are sure to have a dissolution, and then I shall become member for Woodstock. But, after all, public life has no great charms for me, as I am naturally very quiet, and hate bother and publicity, which, after all, is full of vanity and vexation of spirit. Still, it will all have greater attractions for me if I think it will please you and that you take an interest in it and will encourage me to keep up to the mark.

I hope your sister is quite well, comforts you, and sticks up for me when you abuse me to her or doubt me.

1874
Æt. 25

A fortnight later he insisted that he should be allowed to visit the Jeromes in the middle of December; and this having been agreed to, the process of counting the days began. But upon the eve of departure an unexpected misfortune intervened. His aunt Lady Portarlington was taken dangerously ill. The family were hurriedly summoned to Emo, and the delightful anticipations of a fortnight in Paris under such circumstances were exchanged for the melancholy reality of nearly a month in Ireland, watching in daily uncertainty a painful and unavailing struggle with death. It is easy to imagine the vexation of such delay and the longings which possessed him to leave the house of mourning. But the family leant on him and, while his presence was of real use and value, he felt bound to wait wearily on from day to day. The course of the illness was varied: once recovery seemed almost certain; but after many relapses the end came in the middle of January. Immediately after the funeral—which was celebrated with much Catholic pomp—Lord Randolph tore himself away, crossed the Irish Channel the same night, and was about to proceed the next evening to France, when another even more imperative call arrested him. Parliament was dissolved.

This event, long looked for, often rumoured, had come at last with the suddenness of surprise. But Woodstock was not unprepared. The Duke of Marlborough had waited impatiently for the first General Election after his brother’s lapse to regain his control over the representation of his borough. When Parliament had been dissolved in July 1865, Lord Alfred Churchill, according to his agreement, did not open his candidature; and Mr. Henry Barnett, the Squire of Glympton Park, a well-known London banker, was put forward as the Conservative candidate and (let it not be overlooked) ducal nominee. A Liberal was found in Mr. Mitchell Henry, afterwards better known as the Home Rule member for Galway; but the Squire carried the election by 24 votes, and, having been again successful in 1868, was the sitting member at the time when another cadet of the great house had ripened to a Parliamentary age.

Mr. Barnett now, as it turned out, very conveniently, expressed an earnest wish to relinquish the toils and responsibilities of public life; and the ancient borough, with an imperturbable solemnity and a conservative reverence for the form in which things should be done, was prompt in sending a regular requisition for Lord Randolph’s services. The electors, according to this document, declared that no one could better champion their cause at this crisis, or more fitly represent their views in the ensuing Parliament. They urged him to stand; and in view of the fact that there happened to be that very afternoon a coursing meeting in the Park which all the local farmers were expected to attend, he had to set off for Blenheim without delay.

The series of letters to Paris was sadly broken into by the contest, and for the most part only telegrams had to fill the gap: but here and there a moment could be snatched.

To Miss Jerome.

Blenheim: Monday.

It was perfectly impossible for me to get any letter off by last night’s post, as I have not had a moment to spare. Since ten this morning I went and saw several people at Woodstock, and had, on the whole, satisfactory answers and assurances of support. It was a most fortunate circumstance that the Annual Coursing Meeting, which my father allows every year in the Park, had been fixed for to-day; all the farmers were there, and as they had a good day’s sport were all in great spirits. I took the chair at their dinner at the Bear hotel, and you cannot imagine how enthusiastic they were for me. They all go as one man. I hear nothing certain as to any opposition; there are no end of rumours, but no one as yet has appeared publicly; I suppose we shall know for certain to-morrow.

I am now off to a part of the borough four miles distant, to see more people, and I have a large meeting of my committee at four in Woodstock. I think I may say that for the present everything is satisfactory. There are 1,071 voters, and I do not think more than 800 will poll; out of these I calculate at least on 460, which will be enough. But this is, of course, mere guess-work; it is all still very uncertain, and I am glad I lost no time in arriving.

Blenheim: Tuesday.

The radical candidate, Mr. Brodrick, arrived this morning; I made his acquaintance, and we shook hands and were very friendly. The contest will be a hard one and the result doubtful; it is impossible to say how the labourers will go. However, I have made a very good start, and have nothing to complain of as yet.

Blenheim: Saturday.

I am sure it is not necessary for me to excuse myself for not writing to you; you would not believe what work it is. We had a great meeting last night, which was very successful; we had a good speaker down from London, and I made a speech. How I have been longing for you to have been with me! If we had only been married before this! I think the reception you would have got, would have astonished you. The number of houses I have been into—many of them dirty cottages—the number of unwashed hands I have cordially shaken, you would not believe. My head is in a whirl of voters, committee meetings, and goodness knows what. I am glad it is drawing to an end, as I could not stand it very long; I cannot eat or sleep.

I am now off again, 10 A.M., to see more people.

Blenheim: Sunday.

At last I have a pretty quiet day; but I have been very busy this afternoon, and, in spite of its being Sunday, I have been active among several little odd fellows whom it is important to pick up. How this election is going I really can form no opinion, and the excitement and uncertainty of it make me quite ill. Yesterday I was canvassing all day in Woodstock itself. People that I think know better than anybody, tell me it will be very close. You see, with the ballot one can tell nothing—one can only trust to promises, and I have no doubt a good many will be broken. Our organisation and preparations for Tuesday are very perfect, and the old borough has never been worked in such a way before. You have no idea how this election gets hold of me. One can positively think of nothing else except voters and committees, &c., till one’s brain gets quite addled and in a whirl. I have a presentiment that it will go wrong. I am such a fool to care so much about it. I hate all this excitement.... I saw my opponent to-day in church. He looks awfully harassed. I feel quite sorry for him, as all his friends here are such a dreadfully disreputable lot; and as I have got the three principal hotels in the town, he has nothing except a wretched, low, miserable pot-house to stay in.

Unfortunate Mr. Brodrick! The result of the election in no way belied the quality of his accommodation.

Ever since I met you everything goes well with me—too well; I am getting afraid of a Nemesis. I always hoped I should win the election, but that under the ballot and against a man like Brodrick I should have that crushing, overwhelming majority [of 165 out of 973 voters] never entered into my wildest dreams. It was a great victory—we shall never have a contest again. The last two contests—‘65 and ‘68—were won only by 17 and 21 majorities; so just conceive the blow it is to the other side. You never heard such cheering in all your life. The poll was not declared till eleven, and the hours of suspense were most trying; but when it was known, there was such a burst of cheers that must have made the old Dukes in the vault jump. I addressed a few words to the committee—and so did Blandford—and was immensely cheered; and then they accompanied us, the whole crowd of them, through the town and up to Blenheim, shouting and cheering all the way. Oh, it was a great triumph—and that you were not there to witness it will always be a source of great regret to me....

There is nothing more to be done except to pay the bill, and that I have left to my father.

The Woodstock election being out of the way, the road was cleared for more important matters. The Duke, his political anxieties laid to rest, journeyed to Paris, saw the young lady for himself, and, returning completely converted, withdrew all remaining stipulations for delay. But further difficulties presented themselves. The question of settlements proved delicate and thorny. Mr. Jerome had strong and, it would seem, not unreasonable views, suggested by American usage, about married women’s property and made some propositions which Lord Randolph considered derogatory to him. Although he was to benefit considerably under the arrangement proposed, he refused utterly to agree to any settlement which contained even technical provisions to which he objected; and after an embarrassing discussion went off to prepare determined plans to earn a living ‘in England or out of it,’ as fortune should dictate, for himself and his future wife—‘a course in which,’ so he wrote to his father, ‘I am bound to say she thoroughly agrees with me.’

Face to face with this ultimatum—the first of any importance and not the least successful in Lord Randolph’s forceful career—Mr. Jerome, who after all only wished to make a proper and prudent arrangement, capitulated after twenty-four hours’ consideration. A satisfactory treaty was ratified, and it only remained to fulfil the conditions. The negotiations had already extended over seven months and the ceremony was appointed without further delay. The Duke, though unable to be present himself, sent his blessing in a most cordial letter. ‘Although, my dear Randolph, you have acted in this business with less than usual deliberation, you have adhered to your choice with unwavering constancy and I cannot doubt the truth and force of your affection.’ On April 15, 1874, the marriage was celebrated at the British Embassy in Paris, and after a tour—not too prolonged—upon the Continent, Lord Randolph Churchill returned in triumph with his bride to receive the dutiful laudations of the borough of Woodstock and enjoy the leafy glories of Blenheim in the spring.

CHAPTER II
MEMBER FOR WOODSTOCK

Minutely trace man’s life; year after year,
Through all his days let all his deeds appear,
And then, though some may in that life be strange,
Yet there appears no vast nor sudden change;
The links that bind those various deeds are seen,
And no mysterious void is left between.
Crabbe, The Parting Hour.

A PROFOUND tranquillity brooded over the early years of the Parliament of 1874. Mr. Gladstone was in retirement. A young Irishman, Charles Stewart Parnell, had been beaten at the General Election in his Dublin candidature and did not enter the House of Commons or make a nervous maiden speech till the spring of 1875. Mr. Chamberlain, a new though already formidable English politician, had, as a Radical, vainly attacked Mr. Roebuck, the Liberal member for Sheffield, and was not returned as a representative of Birmingham till 1876. The Irish party was led sedately along the uncongenial paths of constitutional agitation by Mr. Butt; Radicalism was without a spokesman; and the Liberals reposed under the leadership of Lord Hartington and the ascendency of the Whigs. For the first time since the schism of 1846 a Conservative Administration was founded upon a Conservative majority. The fiscal period had closed. All those questions of trade and navigation, of the incidence of taxation and of public economy, which had occupied almost the whole lives of political leaders on both sides, were settled. New strains, new problems, new perils approached—but at a distance; and in the meanwhile the Conservative party, relieved from the necessity of defending untenable positions, freed from controversies which had proved to them so utterly disastrous, received again the confidence of the nation and the substantial gift of power.

The reasons which had induced, or perhaps compelled Mr. Disraeli to refuse to form a Government on the defeat of Mr. Gladstone’s Irish University Bill early in 1873, seemed conclusive at the time. They were certainly vindicated by the subsequent course of events. The Liberal Ministry never recovered its credit. Nonconformist wrath at the Education Act and Radical disdain continued fierce and enduring. Harsh demands for social reforms began to come from Birmingham and grated on the ears of the Whigs. The dissensions in the governing party cast their shadows upon the Cabinet. Vexatious quarrels broke out among Ministers. No reconstruction availed. Not even the return of Mr. Bright to the Administration could revive its falling fortunes: by-elections were adverse and the House of Commons was apathetic. The Government of 1868 had been in its day very powerful. Scarcely any Prime Minister had enjoyed the support of such distinguished colleagues as Mr. Gladstone had commanded in the noonday of his strength. Few Administrations had more punctually and faithfully discharged the pledges under which they had assumed office. The statute-book, the Army, and the finances bore forcible testimony to their reforming zeal. But their usefulness and their welcome were alike exhausted and the nation listened with morose approval to the charges which Mr. Disraeli preferred. ‘For nearly five years,’ he wrote to Lord Grey de Wilton, October 3, 1873, on the eve of the by-election at Bath, ‘the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country. Occasionally they have varied this state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling into mistakes which have been always discreditable and sometimes ruinous.’

Yet it is alleged that a cause much more personal than political precipitated the dissolution. Mr. Gladstone had at the late reconstruction become Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as First Lord of the Treasury. Had he therefore vacated his seat by accepting an office of profit under the Crown? The Opposition was alert; the law officers were as doubtful in their published opinion as the constituency of Greenwich in its temper. The question lay outside the control of the Government and their supporters. If Mr. Gladstone sat and voted when the session opened, he could be sued in the courts for substantial penalties; and none could forecast the decision. On the other hand, the defeat of the Prime Minister, as the culmination of a long series of ill-fated by-elections, would be at once a personal humiliation and a political disaster. It must therefore be reckoned almost a fortunate coincidence that the Estimates both of the Admiralty and the War Office to some degree exceeded the limits within which Mr. Gladstone had hoped to confine them and that the Ministers responsible for those departments should have been reluctant to reduce them. Who shall pronounce upon the motives of men—in what obscure and varying relations they combine or conflict, in what proportion they are mingled? Something of the vanity of a great man irritated by a personal difficulty, something of the weariness that waits on generous effort not acknowledged, something of physical revolt from the interminable wrangles and compromises of a Cabinet, much consideration, let it be said, for the proud dignity of which the British Government should never be divested, induced Mr. Gladstone in the first days of 1874 to advise the dissolution of Parliament.

The Conservatives reaped the advantage of their leader’s self-restraint. A year before they had rejected office. They now appealed for power. Instead of coming hat in hand, a defeated, discredited, and degraded Ministry who had held their places for a few months in order to wind up a session at the contemptuous toleration of a hostile majority, they presented themselves with authority and reserve to the good opinion of the public. The result was decisive. In vain Mr. Gladstone promised the abolition of the income-tax, the diminution of local taxation, and the reduction of burdens upon articles of general consumption. In vain the financial and administrative triumphs of Liberalism were paraded. The elections resulted in a Tory majority of fifty—‘really,’ according to Mr. Gladstone, ‘of much greater strength’; and that strange prophet of Israel who for thirty years had wandered in the wilderness of fiscal heresy, led his astonished or doubtful followers back to the land of place and promise.

Liberal recriminations occupied the morrow of disaster. Mr. Gladstone was blamed for an impulsive and precipitate dissolution. Mr. Chamberlain described his address and its financial allurements as ‘the meanest public document that had ever, in like circumstances, proceeded from the pen of a statesman of the first rank.’[3] Other critics asserted that all would have been well had he waited till after the Budget with its noble surplus, or till the genial weather of the summer-time, or till some period still more remote. Under all ran a current of satire and suggestion about the double office, the Greenwich election, and their influence upon greater decisions. Mr. Gladstone for his part was not backward in rejoinder. ‘Not from anger, but because it is absolutely necessary to party action to learn that all the duties and responsibilities do not rest on the leaders, but that followers have their obligations too,’ he announced his retirement from the Liberal leadership and his determination to secure some interval of private life ‘between Parliament and the grave.’ From this intention not the consternation of his party, nor the appeals of his friends, nor the taunts of his detractors could move him further than to promise a limited and occasional leadership, which in the course of a session was found to mean no leadership at all.

Notwithstanding the risk of being forced to form a future Administration, several eminent men stepped forward to the gap; but the issue quickly narrowed itself to a contest between Mr. Forster and Lord Hartington. Mr. Forster had, it seemed, the advantage in talent and authority and the gift of speech. He may be described as the first of the Liberal-Imperialists and on more than one occasion—notably the Crimean War, the Volunteer movement, and the prosecution of Governor Eyre—he had come into sharp conflict with the Manchester school. Although at heart one of the kindliest and most benevolent of men, his personal independence, a certain Yorkshire roughness of manner and an ill-concealed dislike of doctrinaire Radicalism had made him many enemies; and not even the Ballot Act, which he had carried in the teeth of Conservative opposition, could redeem the mortal offence his Education compromise had caused the Nonconformists. His enemies prevailed; and in the early days of 1875 Lord Hartington was duly installed in the vacant place.

If the Opposition in 1874 were without a leader, the Government they confronted was without a policy. The Conservatives owed their success at the polls to the divisions and exhaustion of their opponents rather than to any action or even to any promises of their own. The new Prime Minister did not allow the violent attacks he had lately made upon the conduct of his predecessors to lead him into any reversal of their measures. The composition of the Cabinet was suited to a policy of ‘honest humdrum.’ With the exceptions of Lord Salisbury and Mr. Gathorne-Hardy, Mr. Disraeli’s old colleagues were regarded as ‘safe’ rather than brilliant; and the one new man who joined them, Mr. Assheton Cross, did not seriously alter the prevailing impression.

At the head of a victorious party, with a substantial majority and an overflowing Exchequer, Mr. Disraeli could afford to be generous and was inclined to be conciliatory. He took occasion on the Address to pay a handsome tribute to Mr. Gladstone’s long public service and personal fame. The Queen’s Speech announced little more than a continuance of the non-contentious part of the programme of the late Liberal Government. The administration of the Irish Viceroy and Lord Northbrook’s policy in India were praised and endorsed. The Chancellors, new and old, consulted together upon the reform of legal procedure. Sir Stafford Northcote bore witness, in terms almost of panegyric, to the accuracy of Mr. Gladstone’s financial anticipations; and Mr. Gathorne-Hardy accepted in their entirety Lord Cardwell’s arrangements for the Army.

In this last instance at least some disappointment was caused to their supporters by the complaisance of the new Ministers. The proposal to make Oxford one of the new territorial military centres had agitated the University ever since the adoption of the Cardwell scheme of Army reform in 1872. In October of that year a memorial, signed by nearly the whole of the teaching staff, had vigorously protested against a plan which it was somewhat fancifully alleged would prove detrimental by example to University discipline and undergraduate morality. Lord Salisbury, as Chancellor, had initiated a debate in the House of Lords in June 1873; and in May Mr. Auberon Herbert had moved in the Commons for a select committee. Mr. Cardwell, however, explained that the site was to be two miles from Oxford, that the number of officers and men to be stationed there was small, and that other University towns contained garrisons; and Mr. Auberon Herbert’s motion was defeated (May 23, 1873) by 134 to 90.

Upon the accession of a Conservative Government and especially of a War Minister who had himself strongly supported Mr. Herbert only a year before, the motion was renewed on May 22 by Mr. Beresford Hope—not unreasonably, as it would seem—with greater expectations of success. Lord Randolph Churchill, who had taken the oath and his seat at the beginning of the session (March 6), seized the opportunity to deliver his maiden speech. Unlike the usual form of such productions, it was prepared at very short notice and was a rather crude debating effort. The Secretary of State, Mr. Gathorne-Hardy, explained that, since the land had been bought and the contractor was at work, he could not now reverse the decision to which his predecessor had come. He was supported by Mr. A. W. Hall, one of the members for Oxford City, who enlarged on the advantages of the place as a military centre, and complained that the University had already succeeded in keeping away the Great Western main line and the railway works.

Lord Randolph spoke from the University point of view. The proposal, he declared, amounted to the turning of an ancient University into something like a modern garrison town, the mingling of learned professors and thoughtful students with ‘roystering soldiers and licentious camp followers.’ If it were adopted, Oxford might take the place of Aldershot. The opinion of the City ought not to override that of the University. The University of Oxford had made the City of Oxford. The City depended for its very existence upon the University; and while it could forget, it could not forgive, that fact. To save 52,000l. the reputation and the future of the University were to be sold. What comparison could be made between the University of Oxford and the Universities of London, Dublin, and Edinburgh? Dublin was full of soldiers ‘from the notorious disaffection and insubordination of the Irish people’; London because it was the Metropolis of the United Kingdom; and Edinburgh because it was the capital of Scotland. But the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were founded before standing armies were known or garrison towns existed. The ablest and the most experienced leaders of the University had boldly said that, if they could prevent it, they would not have Oxford turned into a manufacturing town; they had protested against the town being overrun with railway roughs and navvies; they now objected to its being converted into a military station crowded with disorderly soldiers. Leave their quiet cloisters undisturbed and Oxford would remain the greatest University city in the world.

Sir William Harcourt, who followed, complimented the new member upon the ability of his speech. He professed himself greatly shocked that one who bore a name so inseparably associated with the glories of the British Army should have permitted himself to speak of ‘roystering soldiers,’ or that one who was elected to the House by a majority all of whom did not belong to the upper classes, should have spoken of ‘railway roughs.’ The Lord Mayor of Dublin, who spoke later, complained of what he described as an unfounded slander upon his constituents conveyed in the suggestion that a large army was stationed in Dublin for the purpose of keeping down a disloyal and disaffected population; and another member, a graduate of Trinity College, protested against the sneers at Dublin University which he said Lord Randolph’s speech had contained. The motion was rejected by 170 to 91; and it is fair to say that none of the evils anticipated have yet occurred. The barracks have proved too far from Oxford to interfere practically with its life, though their presence is a convenience to University candidates for the Army, and the officers form a valuable addition to academic society.

Although it had chanced that Lord Randolph’s first speech was against the Government, Mr. Disraeli hastened to write a friendly account of it to the Duchess of Marlborough:—

2 Whitehall Gardens, S.W.: May 23, 1874.

Dear Duchess,—You will be pleased to hear that Lord R. last night made a very successful début in the House of Commons. He said some imprudent things, which was of no consequence in the maiden speech of a young man, but he spoke with fire and fluency; and showed energy of thought and character, with evidence of resource.

With self-control and assiduity he may obtain a position worthy of his name, and mount. He replied to the new Conservative member for Oxford City, who also is a man of promise. I am going to Hughenden this morning, and am very busy, or I would have tried to have told you all this in person.

Yours sincerely,
D.

1875
Æt. 26

But the course of the session and of the years that followed offered few opportunities to young members for winning Parliamentary distinction. The waters of politics flowed smoothly and even sluggishly. The Public Worship Regulation Bill brought Mr. Gladstone promptly from his retirement with six resolutions and much moving eloquence. During its passage political leaders were thrown into novel combinations and discords and the ordinary lines of party cleavage altogether disappeared. The House of Commons, with an unconscious disregard of its own rules, wrangled over the debates in the House of Lords. The Prime Minister described the Secretary of State for India as a ‘master of gibes and flouts and jeers.’ Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury on the one hand confronted Sir William Harcourt and Mr. Disraeli on the other. But with this exception the sessions were dull and formal. Now and then an incident or a scene, like Mr. Plimsoll’s outburst or Mr. Biggar’s four-hour speech, excited a momentary interest or irritation. The purchase of the Suez Canal shares or the Royal Titles Bill or an academic debate upon Home Rule produced from time to time interesting discussions. The mild dissipation of Mr. Gladstone’s surplus by his successor at the Treasury provoked a spurt of censure; but the temperature of public life continued low and its pulse languid.

Even in a period of political activity there is small scope for the supporter of a Government. The Whips do not want speeches, but votes. The Ministers regard an oration in their praise or defence as only one degree less tiresome than an attack. The earnest party man becomes a silent drudge, tramping at intervals through lobbies to record his vote and wondering why he came to Westminster at all. Ambitious youth diverges into criticism and even hostility, or seeks an outlet for its energies elsewhere. Lord Randolph took scarcely any part in the Parliament of 1874. During its first three years he did not occupy more than an hour and a half of its time or attention. If he spoke at all, it was usually on matters connected with Woodstock. A question here and there, a few uncontroversial words during the debates on the Public Worship Regulation Bill, a sharp little impromptu speech on a motion for the release of Irish State prisoners in protest against an unkind comparison drawn by Mr. O’Connor Power between the soldiers who had become Fenians and the conduct of the first Duke of Marlborough in deserting William of Orange—these are almost the only references to his existence that ‘Hansard’ contains.

At the end of May 1875 Sir Charles Dilke moved for a return of the unreformed Corporations of England, making special reference to the circumstances and behaviour of the excessively unreformed borough of Woodstock. He attacked its self-elected corporation, which gave no account of its dealings with its property and contributed apparently only a small proportion to public purposes. He denounced its Mayor—the landlord of a small public-house, let to him at an absurdly low rate by the Corporation—who, having been summoned and convicted under pressure from the inhabitants for permitting drinking on his premises after hours, had said: ‘I have always had a great respect for the police, but I shall never have again.’ This cruel indictment brought Lord Randolph to the rescue in an amusing speech, in which he exhibited such unexpected debating powers that it was alleged, and I dare say not without some truth, that he did not hear Sir Charles Dilke’s speech for the first time in the House of Commons. He explained that the Foresters had met at the King’s Arms and that ‘their business had been so important as to last beyond closing time.’ The application for the summons, he said, had been delayed because the police had been kept busy by the Shipton-on-Cherwell railway accident; the fines imposed had been trifling, and the Mayor had really said, ‘I have always thought highly of the police of Woodstock, and shall henceforth think more highly of them than ever’—a version of his remarks which, it must be admitted, would seem to have indicated a very high degree of civic virtue. Lord Randolph then justified the expenditure of the Corporation, and deprecated ‘the vivisection of an unfortunate Mayor and the persecution of a few poor Aldermen.’ ‘The great beauty of this speech,’ said Sir William Harcourt, in reply, ‘was that the noble lord, having admitted all the most damaging facts against himself, persuaded the House that they were of no importance whatever.’ But at any rate Lord Randolph was successful in saving his constituents from inquiry, and the debate ended amid much good-humour on all sides. Indeed, when Sir Charles Dilke renewed his motion in the following year, there was quite a considerable attendance of members who had laughed at the first dispute and wanted to hear another sparring match.

For the first year after Lord Randolph’s marriage he and Lady Randolph lived in a small house in Curzon Street and indulged in all the gaieties and festivities of the London season, which in those days was much fuller and more prolonged than it is now. Balls and parties at great houses long since closed; Newmarket, Ascot, Goodwood, Cowes, and Trouville; filled the lives of a young couple in merry succession. Little else was thought of but enjoyment; and though the member for Woodstock liked discussing politics and took an intelligent interest in affairs, his attendances at the House were fitful and fleeting. The winter at Blenheim was occupied in hunting with the Heythrop Hounds and varied by occasional visits to Paris, where Lady Randolph’s family was living. There he mixed in French society and met politicians and writers, and it was at this time that he formed a friendship with M. de Breteuil, which, like most of his intimate friendships, lasted the rest of his life. It was also during these days that he cultivated a taste for French novels, which ended by making him a fair French scholar, with that comprehensive, peculiar, and correct knowledge of the subtleties and idioms of the language which is often to be noticed in his letters.

Lady Randolph Churchill

In the spring of 1875 Lord and Lady Randolph installed themselves in a larger house in Charles Street, where they continued their gay life on a somewhat more generous scale than their income warranted. Fortified by an excellent French cook, they entertained with discrimination. The Prince of Wales, who had from the beginning shown them much kindness, dined sometimes with them. Lord Randolph’s college friend, Lord Rosebery, was a frequent visitor. One night Mr. Disraeli was among their guests, and an anecdote of his visit may be preserved. ‘I think,’ said Lord Randolph, discussing with his wife their party after it had broken up, ‘that Dizzy enjoyed himself. But how flowery and exaggerated is his language! When I asked him if he would have any more wine, he replied: "My dear Randolph, I have sipped your excellent champagne; I have drunk your good claret; I have tasted your delicious port—I will have no more"!’ ‘Well,’ said Lady Randolph, laughing, ‘he sat next to me, and I particularly remarked that he drank nothing but a little weak brandy-and-water.’ In August 1875, Lord Randolph went with his wife to America to spend ten bustling days at the Philadelphia Exhibition; and in the United States, as in Paris, he made the acquaintance of many politicians and persons of public note.

Thus for two years his days were filled with social amusements and domestic happiness.

‘...All the world looked kind
(As it will look sometimes with the first stare
Which youth would not act ill to keep in mind).’[4]

1876
Æt. 27

He was embarrassed chiefly by the necessity, which time imposed, of having to select from a superfluity of pleasures. The House of Commons was but one among various diversions. His occasional attendances contributed an element of seriousness to his life, good in itself, attractive by contrast, that provided, moreover, a justification (very soothing to the conscience) for not engaging in more laborious work. But for the recurring ailments to which his delicate constitution was subject and the want of money which so often teases a young married couple, his horizon had been without a cloud, his career without a care. But in the year 1876 an event happened which altered, darkened, and strengthened his whole life and character. Engaging in his brother’s quarrels with fierce and reckless partisanship, Lord Randolph incurred the deep displeasure of a great personage. The fashionable world no longer smiled. Powerful enemies were anxious to humiliate him. His own sensitiveness and pride magnified every coldness into an affront. London became odious to him. The breach was not repaired for more than eight years, and in the interval a nature originally genial and gay contracted a stern and bitter quality, a harsh contempt for what is called ‘Society,’ and an abiding antagonism to rank and authority. If this misfortune produced in Lord Randolph characteristics which afterwards hindered or injured his public work, it was also his spur. Without it he might have wasted a dozen years in the frivolous and expensive pursuits of the silly world of fashion; without it he would probably never have developed popular sympathies or the courage to champion democratic causes.

When Mr. Disraeli formed his Government, he had asked the Duke of Marlborough to go to Ireland as Viceroy. But the Duke, whose income could ill support such pretended magnificence, and who was quite content at Blenheim, declined. In 1876 the Prime Minister renewed his offer, and urged the special argument that if the Duke took his younger son with him the resentment in London would the sooner blow over in Lord Randolph’s absence. Thus urged, the Duke reluctantly consented. Blenheim was handed over to housekeepers and agents and its household was bodily transported to the Viceregal Lodge. His father hoped that Lord Randolph could become the regular private secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant; but various difficulties interposed, and in the end it was decided that the appointment must be unofficial and unpaid. It was certain that his acceptance of ‘an office of profit’ would involve the expense of another election at Woodstock. It was uncertain whether, even after being re-elected, that particular post could be held jointly with a seat in the House of Commons.

Sir Michael Hicks-Beach (Chief Secretary
to the Lord-Lieutenant) to the Duke of Marlborough

Chief Secretary’s Lodge, Phœnix Park: Tuesday.

My dear Lord Duke,—The Irish Lord Chancellor is very doubtful whether the office of Private Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant is, or is not, a ‘new office.’ I believe it appears from old almanacks that Lord-Lieutenants had private secretaries before the date of the Act, as one would naturally suppose. But in one case a Bishop appears to have held the appointment; and the Lord Chancellor thinks that since that time there may have been such changes made, either in the duties of the office or in the mode in which its holder is paid, as technically to make it a ‘new office.’ This, however, is to a great extent a question of fact; and I have therefore asked Sir Bernard Burke, who is the authority here upon such things, to look into the point and let me have his views in the shape of a memorandum, which I will forward to you.

Please let me know whether you have quite settled to come over on Monday night, 11th, reaching Dublin on Tuesday morning; as I must, in that event, summon a Privy Council for Tuesday. And I hope you have got the ‘Queen’s letter’ and your patent, or will have them by that time.

Your Grace’s very truly,
M. E. Hicks-Beach.

And again:—

Rockingham, Boyle: November 28, 1876.

My dear Lord Duke,—I fear you will think my letters a decided nuisance; but it is not my fault if I have to convey unpleasant intelligence.

At my request Lord Chancellor Ball has given me the enclosed opinion as to Lord Randolph’s position. You will see that it does not in so many words touch the question whether Lord Randolph, if re-elected, could hold the office of your private secretary together with a seat in Parliament; but it rather implies that he could. I will, however, on my return to Dublin on Friday next, ask the Lord Chancellor to look into this point also.

I am bound to say that I attach great importance to any view which the Lord Chancellor may take on such a subject. Perhaps the only lawyer in Ireland whose opinion on it might be more valuable is, oddly enough, Mr. Butt. But his opinion could only be formally taken, and it would be hardly wise to do this.

Believe me
Your Grace’s very sincerely,
M. E. Hicks-Beach.

1877
Æt. 28

The state entry of the new Viceroy was conducted with its usual ceremony on December 11, 1876. Lord Randolph, who with his wife and child followed in the procession, made, amid the bustle and discomfort of this day, a life-long friend. Mr. FitzGibbon filled in 1877 the peculiar office of ‘Law Adviser’ at the Castle. The proper duty of the ‘Adviser’ was to answer legal questions put by justices of the peace all over Ireland, but he had also to give advice and opinions to all and sundry at the Castle, in the constabulary, lunacy, valuation, and a dozen other of the queerly-conceived and oddly-entangled departments through which the Government of Ireland is administered. ‘After the Duke’s public entry,’ writes Lord Justice FitzGibbon, ‘the legal maid-of-all-work attended with the rest of the officials in the throne room, to be presented. When I had made my bow I went back to my "files." Presently the door opened, and Kaye, the Assistant Under-Secretary, came in with a young man whom he introduced as "the Lord-Lieutenant’s son," who "wanted to ask the Law Adviser a question." So he left us. A footman had jibbed—I suppose he did not like the look of Dublin Castle—and Lord Randolph wanted to know whether he could "sack" him without paying his fare back to London. He wanted to do this "as a lesson." I told him that, whatever the law was, the Lord-Lieutenant’s son couldn’t do it; and so began an acquaintance which ripened soon into a friendship that, full though it was of almost constant anxiety and apprehension, is one of the dearest memories of my life. How it grew so fast I can hardly tell. I suppose electricity came in somewhere....’

Five minutes’ walk from the Viceregal Lodge, on the road to the Phœnix Park, there stands, amid clustering trees, a little, long, low, white house with a green verandah and a tiny lawn and garden. This is the ‘Little Lodge’ and the appointed abode of the private secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant. By a friendly arrangement with that gentleman Lord Randolph was permitted to occupy it; and here, for the next four years, his life was mainly lived. He studied reflectively the jerky course of administration at the Castle. He played chess with Steinitz, who was living in Dublin at this time; he explored Donegal in pursuit of snipe; he fished the lakes and streams of Ireland, wandering about where fancy took him; but wherever he went, and for whatever purpose, he interested himself in the people and studied the questions of the country. Disdaining the Ward Stag-hounds as not true sport, he hunted earnestly each winter with the Meath and Kildare. Often on a summer’s afternoon he would repair to Howth, where the east coast cliffs rise up into bold headlands which would not be unworthy of the Atlantic waves. Here in good company he would make the ‘periplus,’ as he called it—or, in other words, sail round ‘Ireland’s Eye’—in the 16-foot boat of FitzGibbon’s mate, Frank Lynch (the ‘Admiral’ of his letters), catch lobsters, and cook and eat them on the rocks of the island. In the evenings he played half-crown whist in Trinity College or at the University Club or dined and argued with FitzGibbon and his friends. ‘He was,’ writes FitzGibbon, ‘always on the move. He had the reputation of an "enfant terrible." Before long he had been in Donegal, in Connemara, and all over the place—"Hail fellow, well met" with everybody except the aristocrats and the old Tories; for he showed symptoms of independence of view and of likings for the company of "the Boys," which led to some friction with the staunch Conservatives and strong Protestants who regarded themselves as the salt of the earth.’

FitzGibbon’s Christmas parties at Howth—an institution justly celebrated since, but misunderstood by many, as a gathering of notable men—had begun in the bivouac of six close friends in a half-finished house on Innocents’ Day, 1875. The number grew as the years passed by. Lord Randolph came first in 1877 and was accepted as its youngest member into a circle which included David Plunket, Edward Gibson, Baillie-Gage, Webb-Williamson, Professor Mahaffy, Morris Gibson, Father James Healy, Dr. Nedley, and other wise and merry Irishmen. The nights were consumed with whist, chaff, and tobacco; and the intervening days spent in climbing the Hill of Howth or listening to the ‘words of wisdom from Morris’ which became one of the constant features of the entertainment. These parties were always a great delight to Lord Randolph and during the rest of his life nothing, which could by any effort be thrust aside, was ever allowed to stand in the way of his visit.

Lord Randolph had not been very long in Dublin when he was invited to move a resolution at the annual meeting of the Historical Society of Trinity College. This was a function of no little importance. The Historical Society may be said to correspond to the Oxford Union and members of the one are honorary members of the other. But it is the custom of the Irish body to inaugurate the session of each year with special ceremony. The President of the year, the Auditor, as he is called, presents and reads an address which he has himself prepared, and this then forms the subject of the speeches, in which various resolutions are moved. A distinguished company assembles. The platform is occupied by the leading figures of the Irish Church, Bench and Bar, and the body of the great dining-hall is filled to overflowing with keen-witted and usually uproarious undergraduates. Before this audience—the most critical outside the House of Commons he had yet ventured to address—Lord Randolph was now called.

The Auditor of the year, Mr. C. A. O’Connor, had chosen for his address ‘The Relation of Philosophy to Politics,’ a subject not inappropriate in a University that, as it proudly asserts, had ‘nurtured the philosophic mind of Burke and cradled the patriotism of Grattan.’ The first resolution, of which the Attorney-General had charge, was one of thanks to the Auditor, and Lord Randolph was required to propose the second: ‘That the Auditor’s address be printed and preserved in the archives of the society.’ He began by suitable acknowledgments of the honour of the invitation and in praise of the address. The Auditor, he said, had deprecated the slenderness of the connection between politics and philosophy at the present day and looked forward to a time when politics would be subservient to philosophy. Well, but philosophy was a very comprehensive word, and one would like to know to what system of philosophy the Auditor referred. There had been in the ancient world three principal schools of philosophy: there was the school of the Stoics—a most disagreeable school; the school of the Platonists—a most unintelligible school; and the school of the Epicureans—a most attractive school.

‘Perhaps,’ he continued, ‘I may be permitted to think that there is a connection, almost an intimate connection, between the philosophy of the Epicurean school and what is known as Conservative politics. To let things alone as much as we can; to accustom ourselves to look always at the brightest side; to legislate rather for the moment than for the dim and distant future, gratefully leaving that job to posterity, and thus making all classes comfortable—these are, as I understand them, the maxims of what we know as Conservative politics.’ He went on to speak of Ireland in 1877 and to praise ‘New Ireland,’ a book by Mr. A. M. Sullivan, then lately published, which had excited much attention. All this and more, delivered with much grace and humour, made a most favourable impression on the assembly. The newspapers in their articles and accounts the next day were flattering to the orator and the confidence, which his Irish friends were beginning to feel in his abilities, was sensibly increased.

Before Lord Randolph had been many months in Ireland he began to form strong opinions of his own on Irish questions and to take a keen interest in politics. He was soon in touch with all classes and parties. He watched Irish administration from the inside, and heard what was said about it out-of-doors. All the official circle were quite ready to impart their information to the son of the Lord-Lieutenant. At Howth and in FitzGibbon’s company he met all that was best in the Dublin world. He became an active member of the Dublin University Club and a frequent guest at the Fellows’ Table in Trinity College. His relations in Ireland, the Londonderrys and Portarlingtons, impressed him with the high Tory view. He became very friendly with Mr. Butt, who with Father Healy often dined at the Little Lodge and laboured genially to convert Lady Randolph to Home Rule. Indeed, he saw a good deal more of Nationalist politicians than his elders thought prudent or proper. The fruits of this varied education were not long concealed by its green leaves.

A sentence at the end of a speech which he made during the session of 1877 on some small matter of Irish administration reveals the general current of his mind. He expressed his regret for having said—in his maiden speech three years before—that Dublin was ‘a seditious capital.’ ‘I have since learned to know Ireland better.’ It was time indeed that some Englishman should ‘learn to know Ireland better.’ Under a glassy surface forces were gathering for a violent upheaval. Mr. Butt’s leadership of the Irish party gave no pleasure to his countrymen. He had united the various sections of Irish members in a policy of conciliatory agitation for Home Rule. He had, indeed, invented the name ‘Home Rule’—since become the very war-cry of prejudice—to soothe and reassure British minds likely to be offended by the word ‘Repeal.’ His authority was now to be seized by a young man of very different temper.

Parnell was a squire, reared upon the land, with all those qualities of pride, mettle, and strength which often spring from the hereditary ownership of land. Butt was a lawyer, and his world was a world of words—fine words, good words, wise words—woven together in happy combinations, adroitly conceived, attractively presented; but only words. Butt cherished and honoured the House of Commons. Its great traditions warmed his heart. He was proud to be a member of the most ancient and illustrious representative assembly in the world. He was fitted by his gifts to adorn it. Parnell cared nothing for the House of Commons, except to hate it as a British institution. He disliked speeches. He despised rhetoric. Butt trusted in argument; Parnell in force. Butt was a constitutionalist and a man of peace and order; Parnell was the very spirit of revolution, the instrument of hatred, the agent of relentless war.

The conduct of English parties did not strengthen the position of Mr. Butt. They listened to his arguments with great good-humour, and voted against him when he had quite finished. He was regarded as an exemplary politician and his Parliamentary methods were considered most respectable. Ministers paid him many compliments. They and their followers and their Liberal opponents contributed cogent and interesting speeches to the Home Rule debates which he inaugurated year after year. Mr. Disraeli in particular made a very brilliant and witty speech upon the subject in 1874. But they conceded him nothing. No British Government could have desired a more temperate, courteous, or reasonable opponent. Never were courtesy and reason more poorly served. The Irish legislation for which Mr. Butt pressed was neglected by the Government and disdained by the House. Session after session proved barren. At every meeting of Parliament Mr. Butt was ready with his programme. At every prorogation he departed empty-handed. The debates on Wednesday afternoons were so largely occupied with his proposals that the Cabinet and the Conservative party were wearied with perpetual Irish discussions. ‘What am I to say to this?’ asked the Law Officer, on one of these occasions, of the Prime Minister. ‘Speak,’ replied Disraeli, ‘for fourteen minutes and say nothing’—a modest request well within the compass of a semi-legal, semi-political functionary. This was typical of the attitude of power towards Irish affairs.

In the session of 1876 nine Bills dealing with land, education, rating, electoral reform, Parliamentary reform, judicial and municipal reform—all burning Irish questions—were introduced by the Irish party. Few were considered. All, except two of minor importance, were cast out. The claims of Ireland upon Parliament were real and urgent. The Chief Secretary pressed upon the Cabinet earnestly, but in vain, the necessity for land legislation. Neither the Parliamentary force nor time could be found. Mr. Butt introduced a Land Bill of his own—very tame by comparison with subsequent enactments. It was rejected by 290 votes to 56. Nearly thirty measures dealing with the land question alone, brought forward by Irish members between 1870 and 1880, perished in the wilderness.

It should not be inferred that no Irish Bills were carried by the Government. Indeed, some of the measures passed during this Parliament are still the law on the matters to which they relate. But the Chief Secretary was the youngest member of the Cabinet, and the Irish Tories in the House, led by Mr. Kavanagh, being more numerous and even more powerful than in our own time, were able to make anyone who displayed a liking for change sensible of their severe displeasure. On one occasion indeed, when Sir Michael Hicks-Beach had extended Government support to the ‘Municipal Privileges Bill’ and to a Bill for assimilating the Irish municipal franchise to the English, they lost no time in sending a round-robin to the head of the Government requesting him to dismiss the delinquent Minister. Disraeli returned a suitable reply to this; but the Chief Secretary was forced to refuse the concessions he had desired to make. And although from year to year he succeeded in passing a series of Bills dealing with such subjects as Licensing, Public Health, Lunacy, Jury Qualifications, Prisons, County Courts, and Intermediate Education, he could not free Irish Parliamentary action from discredit in Irish eyes.

Mr. Butt was patient; he believed in patience; he counselled patience to his followers. The majority of them were willing to accept his views. He was opposed to ‘a policy of exasperation.’ He thought that reason would prevail and that violence of any kind would estrange ‘our best friends in England.’ He believed, not without foundation, that to injure a representative institution was to strike democracy at its heart. ‘Gentlemen first, patriots afterwards’ was the motto of his followers. And in return they received that form of respect which, being devoid of the element of fear, is closely akin to contempt. Had the Government of Mr. Disraeli been gifted with foresight beyond the scope of ordinary British Administrations they would by timely concessions, by some few substantial gifts, have vindicated constitutional agitation. But they went their way, living from hand to mouth and from week to week, meeting their daily troubles with such expedients as came to hand. ‘If pure advocacy—able, earnest, courteous—could have won the Irish cause,’ writes Parnell’s biographer, ‘Mr. Butt would have succeeded. It could not, and he failed hopelessly.’[5] A new leader with new weapons was at hand.

Judged by all the available standards, Mr. Butt’s position as leader of the Irish party at the beginning of 1877 was secure. He was the most brilliant Irishman in Parliament. He had defended, at much personal sacrifice and with immense ability, the Fenian prisoners of the ‘sixties. He was the founder of the Home Rule League and apparently its perennial president. The whole Irish party in the House of Commons was at his back. Whatever of Parliamentary prestige can be enjoyed without executive power supported him. Moreover, in all the personal relations of life he had great advantages. He was genial, tolerant, and kindly, with a smile and a handshake for all, and generous to a fault with his personal friends. Parnell had nothing to offer. He was almost unknown and, even so, distrusted as a landlord. He was a young man with a forbidding manner and almost inarticulate. In a nation preternaturally eloquent he could scarcely jerk out his most familiar thoughts. No conflict could well have appeared more unequal in conditions or more contrarily decisive in result than the duel between these two men.

Obstruction was an ugly novelty to the Parliament of 1874. Some ominous improprieties had marked the resistance to the Irish Church Bill, the Ballot Bill, and the Bill for the Abolition of Purchase in the Army, during Mr. Gladstone’s Administration; but no serious deadlock had arisen. Suddenly the House of Commons awoke to the fact that half-a-dozen of its members were persistently and deliberately engaged in paralysing its business. The procedure of those days offered a virgin field. No closure terminated the debate. No Supply rule regulated financial business. No restriction was imposed upon the right of members to move to adjourn the debate or the House or to report progress in Committee. The minority was restrained only by custom and awe. It now appeared that a few members were resolved to destroy conventions which had been consecrated by centuries of observance.

The mutineers were so few in number that they excited almost as much surprise as irritation. Public reprobation, newspaper abuse, Parliamentary disgust, were directed upon them in vain. The leaders of the Opposition vied in terms of condemnation with Her Majesty’s Ministers. The Irish party was shocked and silent. Nothing availed against men whose only object was to inflict an outrage upon Parliament, and who gauged their success by the indignation and sorrow they created. At length, during one weary sitting, in an evil hour for his own authority, Mr. Butt was persuaded to denounce the obstructives and to declare, amid resounding English cheers, his deep detestation of their tactics. But the censure which was so general in England awoke its counter-cry across St. George’s Channel. The measure of British hatred and contempt became the measure of Irish sympathy and partisanship. ‘Parliamentarianism,’ writes Mr. Barry O’Brien drolly, ‘was apparently becoming a respectable thing. It might be possible to touch it without being contaminated.’ The Fenian organisations, long disdainful of Mr. Butt’s constitutional methods and confronted at every session with their utter futility, turned with interest to the new man who moved with unconcerned deliberation into the centre of the stage and dealt with others as though it was his birthright to command and theirs to serve him. Delicate and subterranean negotiations followed with secret societies who were reluctant to compromise the purity of their revolutionary creeds by any paltering with half-measures or pseudo-constitutional agitation. Sympathetic acquiescence—if not, indeed, actual co-operation—was at length almost unconsciously conceded. In two years Mr. Butt was broken. The Home Rule Confederation cast him off; his friends sorrowfully but unhesitatingly deposed him; his followers enlisted with the conqueror. Mr. Butt’s end was melancholy. Hunted and harassed by debt and illness, worn with prolonged exertions and mortified by supersession and defeat, he lived only to see his authority exercised by another and the land for which he had laboured, not unfaithfully, darkened by famine and smouldering with revolt. He died early in May 1879 and the usurper strode forward to encounter many adventures and a still more tragic fate.

Lord Randolph Churchill was a silent, though not unmoved, spectator of the early stages of this drama in the House of Commons, and in the autumn, at the dinner of the Woodstock Agricultural and Horticultural Show (September 18), he expressed his opinion upon them with unguarded freedom, much to the astonishment and displeasure of his family. This speech is the first which reveals the perfectly independent movement of his mind and the shrewd insight which guided it. He could not vote for Home Rule, he said, because without the Irish members more than one-third of the life and soul of the House of Commons would be lost. ‘Who is it, but the Irish, whose eloquence so often commands our admiration, whose irresistible humour compels our laughter, whose fiery outbursts provoke our passions?’ Banish them, and the House of Commons, composed only of Englishmen and Scotsmen, would sink to the condition of a vestry. ‘I have no hesitation in saying that it is inattention to Irish legislation that has produced obstruction. There are great and crying Irish questions which the Government have not attended to, do not seem to be inclined to attend to, and perhaps do not intend to attend to—the question of intermediate and higher education, and the question of the assimilation of the municipal and Parliamentary electoral privileges to English privileges—and as long as these matters are neglected, so long will the Government have to deal with obstruction from Ireland.’ Truths, he said, were always unpalatable, and he who spoke them very seldom got much thanks; but that did not render them less true. England had years of wrong, years of crime, years of tyranny, years of oppression, years of general misgovernment, to make amends for in Ireland. The Act of Union was passed, and in the passing of it all the arsenal of political corruption and chicanery was exhausted, to inaugurate a series of remedial and healing measures; and if that Act had not been productive of these effects, it would be entitled to be unequivocally condemned by history, and would, perhaps, be repealed by posterity. It was for these reasons that he should propose no extreme measures against Irish members, believing as he did that the cure for obstruction lay not in threats, not in hard words, but in conciliatory legislation.

This speech attracted attention in various quarters. Mr. Parnell, who spoke three days later in Paisley, alluded to it at some length and declared that if the Government would pass certain measures dealing with the questions mentioned, they would not be disturbed next session by Irish obstruction. The Morning Post expressed its displeasure in a leading article. ‘This is the language of Mr. Parnell and his colleagues, and it is the argument on which the Home Rule movement as well as the Obstructionist movement is based.’ As to Lord Randolph’s remarks about the Union—‘It is no exaggeration to say that neither Mr. Parnell nor Mr. Butt could have used stronger language in support of their respective lines of action. But it is not an Irish Rome [sic] Ruler or an Irish Obstructive who has used it. It is the Conservative representative of an English borough and the son of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.’ But it was Sir Michael Hicks-Beach who read Lord Randolph with the greatest surprise. He lost no time in writing a remonstrance to the Duke of Marlborough.

The Duke of Marlborough to Sir Michael
Hicks-Beach.

Guisachan: September 25, 1877.

My dear Beach,—The only excuse I can find for Randolph is that he must either be mad or have been singularly affected with local champagne or claret. I can only say that the sentiments he has indulged in are purely his own; and, more than this, I was as much amazed as you in reading them, and had no conception that he entertained such opinions. The conjuncture is most unfortunate and ill-timed; but at the same time it must be remembered that though my son, and occupying by leave P. Bernard’s house, he is not in any way officially connected with me, and the assumption therefore that he represented my opinions would be both unwarranted and unfair. I quite appreciate your consideration in making no allusion to his remarks, and perhaps, unless it should be absolutely required, the less notice drawn to them the better. Should you, however, feel it to be necessary to correct misapprehensions consequent on his speech, I conceive you are perfectly entitled to do so. I can only repeat that I am extremely annoyed at the folly of his utterance, which I believe on reflection he will regret himself. Perhaps, if I might suggest, a letter from yourself to him in your official position and responsible for Irish business in Parliament might be the best way of dealing with the occurrence.

Yours very sincerely,
Marlborough.

These chronicles do not record the explanations or rebukes which must have followed; but Lord Randolph by no means withdrew or modified what he had said, and is found writing a few days later to the Morning Post in a most impenitent mood:—

Junior Carlton Club: September 22.

Sir,—In your article of this morning on my speech at Woodstock you say: ‘But what is even more faulty in Lord Randolph Churchill’s speech is the assertion, which he indirectly makes, that the Act of Union had not been productive of those remedial measures which, as he rightly contends, are the only justification of the means by which it was passed.’ Owing to an omission in the report of my remarks you have unintentionally misrepresented me. I said that the Act of Union was intended to inaugurate, and had inaugurated, a series of healing and remedial measures, and I intimated that perseverance in a course of conciliatory legislation for Ireland might be a sure cure for obstruction, and a still further defence of the methods used to pass the Act of Union.

Again, you say I not only extenuated the conduct of the obstructionists, but justified it. Nothing that I said at Woodstock admits of this construction. I never even discussed the conduct of the obstructionists; I merely discussed the remedies for obstruction which had been proposed by many public men and by a great portion of the English press. Surely you would not have said that Liberal members, in advocating the Irish Land Act and the Irish Church Act, were extenuating and justifying the Fenian movement.

You remark, further, that what I called ‘unpalatable plain truths’ were certainly unpalatable, but were not true. Yet the misgovernment of Ireland before the Act of Union, and the methods used to pass that Act, are now matters of history. These were two of my ‘plain truths’; and the third, that the great questions on which Irish feeling is most deeply interested have been neglected during the last four years, is in my opinion equally undeniable. You accuse me of forgetting the Judicature Act, the improved position of the National school teachers, the grant of 10,000l. towards the Irish fisheries. I do not for a moment forget them, but would think it a mockery to say much of them to a people hungering for moderate progressive reform, such as we have had in this country, of their political, municipal, and educational institutions.

It was because I hope that these questions may be settled by the Conservative party, and not by the Liberal party or the Home Rule party, that I made the remarks on which you have animadverted; little dreaming, however, that the utterances of so obscure an individual as myself, in the quiet rural locality of Woodstock, would attract the attention of any portion of the Metropolitan press. As, however, they have attracted your comments, I am confident that you will, with your usual love of fair play, insert this attempt of mine at explanation.

I remain, your obedient servant,
RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL.

As the differences between Butt and Parnell widened and developed into the supremacy of the latter, Lord Randolph seems to have been more amenable to his father’s influence; for in 1879 he voted against a resolution for the assimilation of Irish to English privileges, and explained that, although the theoretic argument was overwhelming, the immediate extension of the franchise in Ireland would destroy the moderate and constitutional Home Rulers and secure the ascendency of the more lawless and embittered classes.

During the winter of 1877 Lord Randolph devoted himself, with the assistance of a young Dublin graduate, to the study of Irish intermediate education. He took the question up deliberately, as the first step in public life and a lesson in political work. He spared no pains. He sounded every well of information. He consulted every shade of Irish opinion. He questioned a host of Irish pedagogues and wrote to all the headmasters of the English public schools. An evidence of his activities is provided by a letter from him to the Freeman’s Journal, published on the last day of the year, on the extinction of the Irish diocesan schools. These had been set up by Queen Elizabeth under the Act of 1570. They were ‘diocesan’ only because the diocese was a more convenient division than a county and were not meant to be under Church control. The masters were to be appointed by the Lord-Lieutenant and the endowment was in the form of a charge on the property of the Church. But the system had only been partially established and the Irish Church Act of 1869 had, by a strange blunder, treated the schools as Church property, and, as amended in 1872, it allowed the masters to compound like incumbents, a proportion of the commutation money accruing to the ‘Church Surplus.’ Money had therefore actually been diverted from education and Lord Randolph was intent on reclaiming an equivalent sum for intermediate instruction.

1878
Æt. 29

But the main purpose of his labours was to draw up a pamphlet taking the form of a letter to his friend Sir J. Bernard Burke, Ulster King-at-Arms—who, it appears, had first interested him in this question—and dealing completely with Irish intermediate education. This letter was finished in the beginning of 1878, was published in Dublin, and sold at 6d. It showed, on the evidence of various Royal Commissions, that intermediate education in Ireland was positively declining, yet that a system of intermediate education had existed since the days of Elizabeth, in the shape of Royal Free Schools, the Diocesan Grammar Schools, and the Erasmus Smith Schools, which only required rearrangement and development. It proposed to extend the system of Royal Free Schools and to provide more money out of the Church surplus. The religious difficulty was to be surmounted by appointing lay Catholic masters in Catholic districts and Protestant masters in Protestant districts, with a conscience clause, control by local boards (chiefly lay) and a scholarship system, so as to enable the religious minority in any district to get education elsewhere. This plan, admirable in itself, would probably have been found to underrate the religious difficulty and especially the reluctance of the Roman Catholic Church, evinced in every country, to tolerate education that it does not absolutely control.

Lord Randolph’s early efforts in the cause of Irish education were not confined to Ireland or to pamphleteering. From the day when he took it up to the close of his life, he never ceased his endeavours to promote progress and reform and to satisfy real wants and aspirations in that department. In the session of 1878, with a perseverance and persistence which disgusted the Irish Tories, he brought forward a motion (June 4) for a Select Committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the condition and management of the endowed schools of Ireland, with instructions to report ‘how far those endowments are at present promoting, or are applicable to the promotion of, intermediate education in that country, without distinction of class or religion.’ In support of this he delivered a considerable speech, moderate and argumentative in tone and crowded with figures and quotations, to prove the many abuses and anomalies of the Irish education system and the urgent need of co-ordination and reform.

He had induced Mr. Chamberlain, with whom he was already on friendly terms, to second the motion; and the case unfolded in these two speeches was sufficiently strong to impress the Government and the House. The Irish Nationalists were profuse in their expressions of pleasure that English members should display so keen an interest in an Irish question. The O’Conor Don expressed his deep obligation and that of all the members connected with Ireland, to Lord Randolph for the manner in which he had introduced the motion. The Government, through its Chief Secretary, Mr. Lowther (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach having by this time been transferred to the Colonial Office), offered, in lieu of a select Committee, a small Commission specially appointed to inquire into the condition, management, and revenues of the schools; and this being thought generally acceptable, the motion was withdrawn. The Commission was duly appointed, Lord Rosse being Chairman and Mr. FitzGibbon and Lord Randolph both among its members. It laboured zealously and Lord Randolph travelled all over Ireland—north, west, and south—collecting information and examining schools. In what manner its researches issued ultimately, but not until 1885, in an Act of Parliament will presently be related.

The session of 1878 was dominated by the Eastern Question. The Russian armies were at the gates of Constantinople. The British fleet lay at Besika Bay. The early months of the year were passed under the shadow of imminent war. Resignations broke the Cabinet circle; patriotic choruses resounded in the streets; the Reserves were called out, native Indian troops were brought to Malta, and a vote of credit of six millions was granted by the House of Commons. The course of British diplomacy and action in Lord Beaconsfield’s hands was tortuous and dramatic. Absolutely supreme in the Cabinet after Lord Derby’s withdrawal, the Prime Minister led an enthusiastic party and a puzzled nation through the Salisbury-Schouvaloff secret agreement and the Anglo-Turkish Convention to the Congress of Berlin, to the acquisition of Cyprus, to ‘Peace with Honour’ and the Knightsbridge banquet. It is not my purpose to comment on this or to compare it with that other note which now began again to resound with ever-growing vehemence and intensity through the land, until it broke in a storm of passionate appeal and triumphant eloquence from Midlothian. Never in their life-long conflict were Mr. Gladstone and his great antagonist so fiercely opposed. Their differences cut down to the roots of thought. In policy, in principle, in feeling, in aspiration, they clashed together at every point, large or small, of political method or morality, and behind them all Britain was divided into two furious camps. On both sides their colleagues in Parliament faded into insignificance. On both sides their followers in the country were whole-hearted in their allegiance. The Conservative majorities in the House of Commons were tremendous and inflexible on every issue. The great newspapers, the powers of fashion and clubland, the pledged partisans in the constituencies, had never before found a leader so much to their temper as Lord Beaconsfield. Outside Parliament, with its baffled and divided Opposition and triumphant Ministry, the Liberal electors hung upon Mr. Gladstone’s words as though he were, as he often seemed, inspired. And while the imposing array of Toryism marched proudly and confidently forward, enormous multitudes gathered eagerly and not less confidently to encounter them.

It is perhaps only in these great stirrings of the national mind that a man may discover to which of the main groupings of political opinion he naturally belongs. In all this conflict Lord Randolph Churchill took no public part. An occasional sarcasm used at some small function, an unadvertised abstention from some important division, might have revealed his personal inclinations. But he did nothing to attract public notice and it is only from his private letters that we may learn how decided were his sympathies and by what circumstances he was prevented from action which might easily have altered his whole career.

Parliament met in January 1878, amid conditions of the keenest excitement and of grave crisis, and the Government forthwith demanded their vote of credit for six millions to make special naval and military preparations. Having listened to Ministerial explanations Mr. Forster moved a reasoned amendment amounting to a flat refusal.[6] After a debate extending over a week, disturbed by the wildest reports from the East, Mr. Forster was glad to withdraw his amendment, and, upon the motion to go into Committee the Government, obtained a majority of more than three to one (295 to 96).

Lord Randolph Churchill to Sir Charles Dilke.

St. James’s Club, Piccadilly: February 7, 1878.

My dear Sir Charles Dilke,—As I suppose this debate will come to a close with an enormous and disproportionate majority for the Government, and as I think the Opposition have made their stand on unfortunate ground, and that another fight might yet be fought with far greater chances of commanding sympathy in the country, I want to know whether, if an Address to the Crown, praying Her Majesty to use her influence at the Conference in favour of the widest possible freedom to Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Thessaly, and Epirus, and in favour of totally and finally putting an end to direct Turkish Government in these provinces, was moved by me from the Tory side of the House, it would be supported by the Liberal party. I think I could almost make sure of a strong Home Rule vote on this. I think some Conservatives would support it. If Northcote does not give some very clear information as to what is going to be the policy of the Government, I think a motion of this sort should be made on the Report. The real cry for the country is—not sympathy with Russia, still less with Turkey, but complete freedom for the Slav and Hellenic nationalities.

I am off to Ireland to-night. I don’t care enough for the Government to vote for them.... I shall see Butt in Dublin and shall sound him on what I have written to you. My address is Phœnix Park, Dublin.

Yours truly,
Randolph S. Churchill.

And the next day:—

The Castle, Dublin: February 8, 1878.

Many thanks for your two letters. As you say, while everything is in such an uncertain state nothing can be done. The Government have too great an advantage; but I think if we are led into taking any decisive steps hostile to Russia a great effort should be made for an authoritative declaration that the ultimate aim and object of any move on our part is the complete freedom and independence of the Slav nationality, as opposed to any reconstruction of the Turkish Empire. This, I am sure, should be the line for the Liberal party and not the ‘Peace-at-any-price’ cry, which it is evident the country will not have. In this I shall be ready to co-operate heartily as far as my poor efforts can be any good. It is just possible that if any movement of this kind be made, it would be better to originate it from the Conservative side of the House. I regret to see so much excitement getting up among the masses. It is dangerous material for Beaconsfield to work on. Will you think me very foolish or visionary if I say I look for a Republican form of government for Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Herzegovina as far more to be preferred to setting up some Russian or German Prince as a puppet under the name of a constitutional monarchy? Perhaps if these ideas seem at all to your liking, and if you think they will command the support of the Liberal party, you would advise me what would be the most favourable moment for bringing them forward. I shall have some conversation with Butt, and have great hope of securing a solid Irish vote on any proposition which might seem to favour the principle of self-government for nationalities.

A few days later, he telegraphed to Sir Charles Dilke:—

Careysville, Fermoy.

I shall be in London Monday morning. Am not ambitious of taking any prominent part, unless it might contribute to the advantage of ideas which we have in common, that a motion should be made from my side of the House. I leave it absolutely to your judgment.

Churchill.

On this, Sir Charles Dilke wrote to Lord Granville, who replied:—

18 Carlton House Terrace.

My dear Dilke,—Such a motion as Lord Randolph Churchill proposes, supported by a certain number of Conservatives, might be well worth consideration, but I doubt his getting any Conservative support, and a contingent of Home Rulers would hardly justify us for making another attack on Plevna just now, with the probable alternative of a crushing defeat or withdrawal in the face of the enemy. I gather that you are doubtful. What did Hartington think?

Yours sincerely,
Granville.

Meanwhile Lord Randolph wrote again:—

Lord Randolph Churchill to Sir Charles Dilke.