LADY RANDOLPH CHURCHILL'S REMINISCENCES.*

MRS. GEORGE CORNWALLIS-WEST has had, in her own phrase, "delightful and absorbing experiences," and has "met many of the most distinguished people of her generation." "Why," she asks, "should I not record all that I can about them ? " This is purposely different from the apologetic air of most writers of reminiscences, and as boldness generally succeeds, so does Mrs. George West succeed in writing a most entertaining book without giving any one a harder knock, we should think, than he is able to bear, or causing more embarrassment to public characters still living than they are accustomed to. Of course, she has not recorded "all," in spite of the preface ; but she has said a good deal, and the only fault we care to find with such a book is that other authors, less well assured than Mrs. George West is that their words will be read precisely in the spirit in which they are written, may take it as the model or excuse for license in writing about living people. Other authors, no doubt, must look • The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill. By Mrs. George Cornwallis-West With Illustrations. London : Edward Arnold. [15a net.] after themselves. We can say of the writer of this book that she shows herself in her true character of a frank, clever, indefatigable, and generous woman.

The reminiscences take us up to the time when the author ceased to be Lady Randolph Churchill ; the earliest are about Paris. There are glimpses of Compiegne and the gay, only half-responsible life there before the blow of the Franco-German War. We remember reading elsewhere of a habit the Court had at Compiegne of kicking a ball at the lights on the walls in the ballroom till all had been put out. But Lady Randolph Churchill (who was then Miss Jerome) gives us no wilder specimen of that time than the following :— "At the close of the visit there was a grand lottery, in which all tickets were prizes. The Emperor stood near two great urns, from which the numbers were drawn, and as each guest received one he wished him 'Bonne chance.' Some little juggling must have gone on, for my mother and the American Minister, Mr. Washburne, won valuable prizes of Sevres china, whereas the presents for the younger people were less costly. My sister, much to my envy, was given an inkstand shaped like a knotted hand- kerchief, filled with napoleons, upon which the Emperor remarked, 'Mademoiselle, n'oublies pas les Napoleons! ' " The Jeromes left Paris by the last train before the siege. In England Miss Jerome saw many French refugees, and we must quote the following letter written by the Emperor Napoleon III. to the Dim de Persigny, who was working in his warm-hearted, but not over-discreet, way for the restora- tion of the French Monarchy in the person of the Prince Imperial :— " WILIIELIISHOHE, is 7 Janvier, 1871.

MON CURE PERSIONY,—J'ai recu votre lettre du 1 janvier, et je vous remergie des vceux quo vous faites pour un meilleur avenir. Sans vouloir entrer dans la discussion des ides que vous emettez, je veils dirai que rien de bon ne pent sortir de cette confusion qui resulte d'efforts individuels, faits sans discretion et sans autorisa- tion. Je trouve en effet singulier qu'on s'occupo de l'avenir do mon fils sans se preoccuper de uses intentions. Je sais qua vous avez Cent k M. de Bismarck, qui m'a naturellement fait demander si edit etait avec mon autorisation et comma etant d'accord avec moi. Je lui ai fait repondre quo je n'avais entorise persoune s'occuper de mes interets et de ceux de mon fils sans mon con- sentement.—Croyez, mon cher Persigny, mon auntie, NAPOLAON."

Later Miss Jerome returned to Paris, and was present at the trial of the unhappy Marshal Bazaine at Versailles. No wonder the following incident remains with her vividly :— "Bazaine sat impassive even while Maitre Lachaud, his advocate, making a curious defence at one moment pointed with a dramatic gesture to the accused, exclaiming, Mai:, regardez-le done! Cs n'est pas ion traitre, c'est um imbecile ! '" The story of Miss Jerome's marriage to Lord Randolph Churchill has been admirably told by Mr. Winston Churchill, and Mrs. George West throughout this book refuses to trespass on her son's territory even in matters which most concern herself. We could wish there were much more about Lord Randolph Churchill, but what there is is most informing, or perhaps we should rather say confirmatory of Mr. Winston Churchill's picture. In a letter to Miss Jerome during their engagement Lord Randolph rebukes her for misusing the word "prorogue." Here surely, even in a love. letter, is seen very clearly what Stevenson in Weir of Hermiston has called "the schoolmaster which lives in every man" :— ". . . Hang is petit Fenelon . . . little idiot! What do I care for him—He may be a very good authority about his own beastly language but I cannot for a moment submit to him about English Whether you use the word prorogation as a French or an English one I don't know. In the former case, as the word is a Latin one and as there can be no doubt as to its meaning, I apprehend you are wrong, but still would not attempt to lay down the law to you on the meaning of any French word. If you use it as an English word you are undoubtedly not only using an inaccurate expression, but a meaningless and unintelligible one. To prorogue, means to suspend something for a definite time to be resumed again in exactly the same state, condition, and circum- stances. Therefore to talk about proroguing the Marshal's powers, would mean that they were to be suspended for a certain time and then resumed again exactly as before. Parliament is prorogued, L'Assemblee is prorogued ; that does not in the least mean that the powers of either are lengthened or increased in any way but that they are temporarily suspended. Whatever words the French papers may use, I have never seen any English paper use the word in any other sense, and in any other sense it cannot possibly be used."

And in a further letter he ends :— " I am looking forward particularly to utterly suppressing mil crushing is petit Pension. We must really tho' drop this argu- ment when I am with you, as it is likely to become a heated one, I fear. We will therefore 'prorogue' it."

Here is surely an authentic little revelation of Lord Randolph's ferocious directness of thought and action :—

"Thought-reading was the fashionable amusement of the moment, and one evening Lady de Clifford, a very pretty and attractive woman, insisted on making Randolph, who was reading peacefully in a corner, join in the game. Having duly blindfolded him, she led him into the middle of the room and made various passes with her hands, saying, 'Don't resist any thought which conies into your head ; do exactly what you feel like doing. I am willing you.' Without a moment's hesitation Randolph threw his arms round the lady, and embraced her before the whole company. To her cries and indignant remonstrances he merely replied. You told me to do what I felt like doing—so I did.'"

True, too, is this comment on Disraeli :—

"He was very fond of dragging in French words, a language he spoke with a weird accent. I remember once his saying to me, speaking of a prominent politician of the day, Sir —, a great friend of ours : I think him very gross, like an episeer ' (epicier) at which pronunciation I could hardly keep from laughing."

Lady Randolph Churchill was fond of practical jokes, but not in the heavy sense which rightly makes them a proverbial nuisance; she always took part in them in such a way that one sees her, in effect, satirising something or somebody, or tasting and enjoying the real salt of life. Her observant humour comes out when she joins a party of tourists looking at the Blenheim pictures and overhears one say, "My, what poppy eyes these Churchills have got! or when she laughs again in her book over the memory of the eloquent Phila- delphian (surely a spiritual descendant of Elijah Pogram) who exclaimed : "Not know Cyrus B. Choate ! Why, he is one of our most magnificent humans !" And of course she remembers the culmination of one of her hunting accidents much better than the accident itself, for incidentally we see in the episode a revelation of the genuine Randolph Churchill :— "Luckily I fell clear, but it looked as if I must be crushed underneath [the horse], and Randolph, coming up at that moment, thought I was killed. A few seconds later, however, seeing me all right, in the excitement of the moment, he seized my flask and emptied it. For many days it was a standing joke against him that I had had the fall and he the whisky !"

In 1878 Lord Randolph wrote to his wife of a dinner-party at Sir Charles Dilke's : "Harcourt was very amusing. You need not be afraid of these Radicals, they have no influence on me farther than I like to go, but I bate the Government." The extraordinary verve and audacity of Lord Randolph's speeches were, it appears, the reflex of a preceding period of nervous- ness; but his wife's experience was indeed happy in com- parison with the vicarious sufferings of some of those whose relations make speeches :— " Randolph, even after years of practice and experience, was always nervous before a speech until he actually stood up. This subject reminds me of a painful sight I once saw at a big political meeting. A young Member of Parliament with more acres than brains, who sat for a family pocket-borough, was making his yearly address to his constituents. Shutting his eyes tight and clenching his hands, he began in a high falsetto voice : 'Brothers and sisters, Conservatives !' and for thirty minutes he recited, or rather gabbled, the speech he had learned by heart, while his wife, with her eyes riveted on him, and with tears pouring down her cheeks from nervousness, unconsciously, with trembling lips, repeated the words he was uttering."

Lady Randolph Churchill helped her husband famously in all his elections, and once fought and won Woodstock while he was absent. Afterwards Sir Henry James wrote of this :— "Everybody is praising you very much. But my gratification is slightly impaired by feeling I must introduce a new Corrupt Practices Act. Tandems must be put down, and certainly some alteration—a correspondent informs me—must be made in the means of ascent and descent therefrom; then arch looks have to be scheduled, and nothing must be said 'from my heart.' The graceful wave of a pocket-handkerchief will have to be dealt with in committee. Still, I am very glad."

At least once Lady Randolph's wit had to be set in the balance temporarily by her husband against her splendid services. The political world was wondering whether Lord Flartington (the late Duke of Devonshire) would respond to lord Randolph's invitation to forsake Gladstone and join the Liberal Unionists. Lady Randolph, happening to meet Lord _Hartington at dinner, asked him :—

" I have not yet decided ; but when I do, I suppose I shall be thought either a man or a mouse.'—' Or a rat,' said I. Lord Hartington laughed, as the French say,'d'un sire jaune.' Very pleased with what I considered my bon-mot, I repeated it to Raudolph, who, to my discomfiture, gave me a severe lecture on the iniquity of ill-timed jests. "Those are the sort of remarks which upset a coach,' he said."

The most remarkable passage in the book perhaps is that describing the manner in which Lord Randolph Churchill announced to his wife his resignation of the Chancellorship of the Exchequer :—

"Although the recipient of many confidences, so little did I realise the grave step Randolph was contemplating, that I was at that moment occupied with the details of a reception we were going to give at the Foreign Office, which was to be lent to us for the oecasion. Already the cards had been printed. The night before his resignation we went to the play with Sir Henry Wolff. Questioning Randolph as to the list of guests for the party, I remember being puzzled at his saying ' Oh ! I shouldn't worry about it if I were you; it probably will never take place.' I could get no explanation of his meaning, and shortly after the first act he left us ostensibly to go to the club, but in reality to go to The Times office and give them the letter he had written at Windsor Castle three nights before. In it he resigned all he had worked for for years, and, if he had but known it, signed his political death-warrant. When I came down to breakfast, the fatal paper in my hand, I found him calm and smiling. Quite a surprise for you,' he said. He went into no explanation, and I felt too utterly crushed and miserable to ask for any, or even to remonstrate. Mr. Moore (the permanent Under-Secretary at the Treasury), who was devoted to Randolph, rushed in, pale and anxious, and with a faltering voice said to me, 'He has thrown himself from the top of the ladder, and will never reach it again!' Alas ! he proved too true a prophet."

Nearly all the rather disconnected remarks and incidents which Lady Randolph Churchill has preserved have a value above triviality. Thus we see the man of political experience dethroning the man of impulse when the late Lord Salisbury says, in irony no doubt, that no one is really strong who cannot be vindictive. Again, take this memory of Bismarck, which may account for the famous Bismarckian callousness :— "Speaking of the country and the long walks he took daily, Bismarck said he loved Nature, but that the amount of life he saw awed him, and it took a great deal of faith to believe that an • All-seeing Eye' could notice every living atom when one realized what that meant. ' Have you ever sat on the grass and examined it closely ? There is enough life in one square yard to appal you,' he said."

The reader must go to the book for a multitude of things as interesting as those we have quoted. It has been the destiny of Mrs. George Cornwallis-West to live in the public eye ; but this book will increase, even in those who are most familiar with her achievements, a sense of the unflagging energy, the zest for action, of the woman who, as Mr. Cecil Rhodes told her, suggests her own character in having "a good square face."