The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1, Harry Furniss [digital book reader txt] 📗

"Why, ——" (mentioning the name of the hon. Member), was the reply.

"What a horrible-looking scoundrel!" exclaimed the uncrowned king in his most supercilious manner, and then began to talk of something else.

He was a study as fascinating to the artist as to the politician, and no portrait ever drawn by pen or pencil can hand down to future generations the mysterious subtlety in the personality of the all-powerful leader.

He was as puzzling to the Parliamentary artist as he was to the politician: he never appeared just as one expected him. When I first made a sketch of him he had short hair, a well-trimmed moustache, shortly-cut side whiskers, a neat-fitting coat and trousers, and well-shaped boots. He then let his beard and hair grow, and his coat and trousers seemed to grow also—the coat in length and the trousers in width; and his boots grew with the rest—they were ugly and enormous. His hat didn't grow, but it was out of date. Then he would cut his beard and hair again, wear a short coat, a sort of pilot jacket, and eventually a long black coat. So that if a drawing was not published at once it would have been out of date.

Some artists have been flattering enough to take my sketches as references for Parliamentarians, but others depended on photographs, and for years I have seen Mr. Parnell represented with the neatly-trimmed moustache and closely-cut side whiskers. A propos of this, I may mention here how mistakes often become [Pg 180] perpetuated. John Bright, for instance, was generally represented in political sketches with an eye-glass. This was a slip made by an artist in Punch many years ago. But ever after John Bright was represented with an eye-glass—which he never wore, except on one occasion just to see how he liked it.

The effect upon the House when Mr. Parnell rose was always dramatic. He sat there during a debate, seldom, if ever, taking a note, with his hat well over his eyes and his arms crossed, in strong contrast to the restlessness of those around him. When he rose, it seemed an effort to lift his voice, and he spoke in a hesitating, ineffective manner. Neither was there much in what he said, but he was Parnell, and the fact that he said little and said it quietly, that what he said was not prepared in consultation with his Whips or with his Party, that in fact he was playing a game in which his closest friends were not consulted, made his rising interesting from the reporters' gallery to the doorkeepers in the Lobby the other side.

Mr. Parnell seemed to have been very little affected by his continued reverses; and perhaps the only visible effect of his loss of power was that the "uncrowned king" of Ireland changed his top-hat to a plebeian bowler, but he did not change his coat. He was always careless about his dress, and his tall, handsome figure looked somewhat ridiculous when he wore a bowler, black frock coat, and his hair as usual unkempt.

The fall of Parnell was one of the most sensational and certainly the most dramatic incident in the history of Parliament.

Mr. Parnell was politically ruined and the Irish Party smashed beyond recovery in the famous Committee Room No. 15, after the disclosures in the Divorce Court in which Mr. Parnell figured as co-respondent. Mr. Parnell had found the Irish Party without a leader, without a programme, without a future. He had by his individual force made it a power which had to be reckoned with, and which practically controlled Parliament. He had been attacked by the most important paper in the world. He had come out of the affair, in the eyes of many, a hero; he [Pg 181] made his Party stronger than their wildest dreams ever anticipated. But his followers little thought that in hiding from them his tactics he had also hidden the weakness which caused his ultimate downfall. Howbeit the Irish Party, whom he held in a hypnotic trance, agreed to stand by him still. Then, suddenly, Mr. Gladstone made his demand for a sacrifice to Mrs. Grundy. His famous letter, written November 24th, 1894, to Mr. Morley, was the death-warrant to Parnellism, and, as it subsequently proved, to Gladstonianism as well.

There was a strange fascination in watching the mysterious Leader of the Irish Party during the crisis, and I took full advantage of my privilege in the House to do so. I was in and about the House early and late, and probably saw more of Mr. Parnell than anyone else not connected with him. It was just before his exposure that I happened to be in an out-of-the-way passage leading from the House, making a little note in my sketch-book on a corner of the building, when Mr. Parnell walked out. He stood close by, not observing me, and was occupied for a minute in taking letters out of the pocket on the right side of his overcoat: they were unopened. He looked at them singly; now and then he would tap one on the other, as much as to say, "I wonder what is in that?" Then he passed it over with the others and put them all into the pocket on the left side of his overcoat, and strolled off to catch his train to Brighton. That incident, as I subsequently found out, was the cause of much of his trouble; for I was informed, when I mentioned it to a great friend of Mr. Parnell's and of mine—Mr. Richard Power—that about that time he had written him important letters which might have saved him if they had been attended to in time.

But those who saw the fallen chief during the sittings in Committee Room No. 15, when, through the letter of Mr. Gladstone to which I have referred, he was denounced, and had to fight with his back to the wall, can never forget his tragic figure during that exciting time. No one knew better than he that the tactics of his lieutenant would be cunning and perhaps treacherous; so this lazy, self-composed man suddenly awoke as [Pg 182] a general who finds himself surprised in the camp, and determines to keep watch himself. Every day he took by right the chair at the meetings. Had he not been present, who knows that it would not have been wrested from him? In the early afternoon I saw him more than once walk with a firm step, with an ashy pale face, his eyes fixed straight in front of him, through the yard, through the Lobby, up the stairs, and into Room 15, accompanied by his secretary, Mr. Campbell. The members of his Party, on their arrival, found him sitting where they had left him the night before. I recollect one morning, as he passed where I was standing, he never moved his head, but I heard him say to Mr. Campbell, "Who's that? what does he want?" in a sharp, nervous manner. He never seemed to recognise anyone, or wish them to recognise him. His one idea was to face the man who wished to fight him in the little ring they had selected in the Committee Room No. 15.

TO ROOM 15.

No outsider but myself heard any portion of that debate, for at the beginning of it the reporters, who were standing round the doors outside to hear what they could, were ordered away; and I was left there, not being a reporter, to finish a rather tedious sketch of the corridor. A policeman was placed at either end of this very long passage, and if anyone had to pass that way he was not allowed to pause for a moment at the door of the room upon which the interest of the political world was centred at the moment. Nearly all the time I was there I only saw the policeman at either end, and one solitary figure seated on the bench outside the door. It was the figure of a woman with a kind, homely-looking face, resting with her head upon her hand. She seemed not to be aware of, or at least not interested in what was going on inside; she simply sighed as Big Ben tolled on toward the hour for the dismissal of the [Pg 183] Leader of the Irish Party. She was the wife of a blind Member of Parliament who was taking part in the proceedings, and her thoughts were evidently more intent upon seeing that her husband was not worn out by that strange, long struggle than in the political significance of the meeting.

It was my good fortune to hear what was perhaps the most interesting of the speeches—John Redmond's defence of his chief—and I never wish to listen to a finer oration. Everyone admits that the Irish are, by nature, good speakers, but they are not always sincere. Here was a combat in which there was no quarter, no gallery, and no reporters. The men spoke from their hearts, and if any orator could have moved an assembly by his power and genius, Mr. Redmond ought to have had a unanimous vote recorded in favour of his chief. I am not a phonograph, nor was I a journalist privileged to record what passed, and have no intention of breaking their trust.

OUTSIDE ROOM 15.

I shall never forget the scene one Wednesday afternoon when Mr. Maurice Healy, brother of "Tim," and one of the Members for Cork, challenged Mr. Parnell to retire and so enable their respective claims to the confidence of the people of Cork to be tested. He tried to drag Mr. Parnell into a newspaper controversy upon this point, but failing to do so repeated in tragic tones his somewhat Hibernian sentiment that Mr. Parnell did not represent the constituency which elected him. Mr. Maurice Healy, a somewhat sickly-looking young man, with a family resemblance to his brother, is much taller than his more famous relative, but lacks the stamina and vivacity of the Member for Longford.

At this moment, when the Irish Party might have been likened to machinery deprived of its principal wheel, it was curious to [Pg 184] notice how energetic Mr. Parnell became. He tried to cover his position by being unusually active in Parliament; he followed the Chief Secretary for Ireland in the debates upon the Land Purchase Bill, to the obvious discomfort of Mr. Morley, and rather delighted the young Conservatives by twitting the faction which had thrown him over. His speeches, however, were laboured, and, as one of the Irish Members remarked to me in the Lobby, it had a curious effect on them to see Mr. Parnell sit down after making an important speech without hearing a single cheer. And whereas for years he had addressed the House with the greatest calmness, his chief characteristic being his "reserve force," he now changed all this, and one Friday night caused quite a sensation in the House in his attack upon Mr. Gladstone, not so much by what he said as by the manner in which he said it. His excitement was visible to all, and he was observed to be positively convulsed with anger. He also remained, contrary to his previous custom, late in the

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