MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
THERE are two sympathetic qualities which, even when one has passed the middle stage of life, serve to keep the heart young and the arteries elastic. The first is curiosity. I like to believe,— although I should find it hard to support my theory either by evidence or by tradition,—that this gift is accorded to mortals by the god Hennes, that Attic Arid, whose lightness of touch was so different from the heavy-handed stratagems of his Roman counter- part. Since the attributes of Hermes,—the twisted wand which Apollo gave him so forgivingly, the traveller's hat with its broad, becoming brim, and the winged sandals clasping his trim ankles and bearing him, like Iris, across the seas and promontories, "skimming," as Homer well observed, "the summits of the peaks,"—all these are the attributes of that rejuvenating quality which we call curiosity. And in truth were I to find that the excitement of curiosity, the young desire to explore new territories and to examine fresh events, were becoming dulled within me, then assuredly I should feel that this long afternoon was waning and that the hour had come to draw the curtains and to pull the rug across my knees. Yet there exists another, and perhaps more reputable, quality which is also an index and a stimulant of vitality. It is the capacity for admiration. I feel a chill pity for those who, whatever be their age, have never experienced those intimations of immortality which come to us when we are able to derive from fellow human beings that glow of emula- tion which should be inspired by the excellence_of their sincerity and strength. Even the most cynical psychologist could not detect in that emotion any fibres cf satisfied self-esteem. And here again, were my capacity for hero worship wholly, to desert me; I should feel that I had been utterly severed from my own adolescence and that the closing colourless ho irs had at last arrived.
* * Many fitting tributes have been paid 'to Eleanor Rathbone. Janus last week wrote of the sincere and universal respect with which she was regarded by her colleagues in the House of Commons. Sir Arthur Salter, in a letter to The Times, spoke of that admirable combination of passion and reason which enhanced her effectiveness. Attention has been drawn to the fact that a year before her death she was able to witness the triumph of the main cause to which she had devoted a life-time of energy ; and that from all sides of the House she received congratulations when provision for Family Allowances, of which for years she had been the protagonist and pioneer, found its place upon the Statute Book. That, indeed, was a long and arduous battle. Her Disinherited Family was published more than twenty-one years ago, and the centre of her life had since then been occupied by that incessant combat. In season and out of season she pleaded, she bullied, and she planned. It was indeed suitable that she should have witnessed her own triumph, and been aware of the general recognition she had won, a year before her sudden exhausted death. It has been pointed out in many quarters that Eleanor Rathbone, to a degree not equalled by other women Members, had abundantly justified the extended franchise. Her contribution to the legislative assembly was a distinctively feminine contribution. By this I do not mean only that she was at first
mainly interested in the improvement of family conditions and in the recognition of the responsible place which women must occupy in the life of the State. I mean that the persistence and the zeal with which she identified herself with her own causes gave a new meaning to, or deprived of all meaning, the facile criticism that "women approach politics from a personal point of view." She taught the House of Commons that such identification, while intense, could be completely selfless. She added objective ardour to'. subjective sympathy.
* * * This fusion of ardour with selflessness had another aspect. She was in fact so absolutely selfless that she seemed at moments to be devoid of all self-consciousness. Even her admirers would feel at times that she lacked a sense of occasion and that her appeals and interruptions were intrusive and ill-timed. There were those— especially those who sat upon the front bench or were charged with administrative responsibilities—who felt that she relied too much
upon the feminine privilege of making herself a nuisance. Again and again have I observed Ministers or Under-Secretaries wince- in terror when they observed that familiar figure advancing towards them along the corridors ; they would make sudden gestures indi- cating that they had left some vital document behind them, swing round on their feet, and scurry back to their rooms ; or equally suddenly they would engage some passing colleague in passionate conversation, placing a confiding but retentive hand upon his startled shoulder, waiting in trepidation until she had passed by. She was too shrewd not to observe these subterfuges and evasions. Benign and yet menacing she would stalk through the lobby, one arm weighted with the heavy satchel which contained the papers on family allowances, another arm dragging an even heavier satchel in which were stored the more recent papers about refugees and displaced persons ; recalcitrant Ministers would quail before the fire of her magnificent eyes. Yet she was aware that her ardour was apt to create a mood of sales resistance. Again and again she would
ask some other Member to approach a given Minister on the ground that she herself had tried his patience too far. Yet although in attack she was as undeviating, as relentless and as pertinacious as a flying-bomb, in the moment of victory she was amazingly con- ciliatory. While the battle was on she displayed all the passion of the fanatic ; when the. enemy yielded, she advanced towards him bearing the olive branch of compromise. * * * *
It was not only the feminine qualities of identification, of fanaticism and of persistence which rendered Eleanor Rathbone so formidable. Her position as an independent Member made her immune to the discipline and even to the conventions of party politics. Her hatred of cruelty in any form was matched by an equally passionate contempt for acts of unfairness which were due to inattention, laziness, lack of precise knowledge, or ordinary easy-going. Her slings were weighted with the pebbles of hard fact and she would hurl these missiles, sometimes rashly, sometimes intemperately, but sometimes with devastating effect. Against one junior Minister, whom she suspected of concealing a weak avoidance of difficult problems behind a veil of official secrecy or in a cloud of affable and misleading frankness, she would direct attacks in which anger at his personal mendacity mingled with an awful pity for his human frailty. He suffered much. She was in fact the perfect Independent in that she assailed untruthfulness, unfairness or hypocrisy whenever she suspected it, and that when her ringing and convulsive tones echoed in the Chamber there was not a man or woman on any bench who did not know that what she said was dictated by no partial affections or animosities but proceeded from an absolute conviction that what had been said was in principle either misleading, or unfair, or wrong. And finally if was her immense, her insatiate industry which, while it served as an example and a reproof to the indolent or irresponsible politician, gave such carrying power to her speeches and questions. Although passionate, she -was never gullible ; all the cranks and the unfortunates of this earth would pour out their stories into her sympathetic ear ; but she would check these stories and verify them from other. sources ; she had no desire to score off her opponents, or those who politely obstructed her, -by producing sham evidence against them ; in her sifting of evidence she displayed an infinite capacity for taking pains.
* * * * From my admiration for Eleanor Rathbone I have derived many benefits. She taught us that the subtleties of the intellect, the easy-going habits of convention, the desire to please, are as nothing compared to the three Absolutes;' that cruelty is evil absolutely, that untruthfulness is evil absolutely, and that cowardice is evil absolutely. The intensity with which she fought these enemies in the end sapped even her vitality. But the memory of her ringing courage and her ardent eyes will not be forgotten. And as, under the gentle guidance of Hermes, she passes across the river of the dead there will be many unknown shades who will raise their mutilated arms to honour one who never forgot them when others tried, to forget.
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