subtle mind. I would sit on the Liberal benches and watch him, and
listen to his urbane voice, fascinated by him. Did he really care?
Did anything matter to him? And if it really mattered nothing, why
did he trouble to serve the narrowness and passion of his side? Or
did he see far beyond my scope, so that this petty iniquity was
justified by greater, remoter ends of which I had no intimation?
They accused him of nepotism. His friends and family were certainly
well cared for. In private life he was full of an affectionate
intimacy; he pleased by being charmed and pleased. One might think
at times there was no more of him than a clever man happily
circumstanced, and finding an interest and occupation in politics.
And then came a glimpse of thought, of imagination, like the sight
of a soaring eagle through a staircase skylight. Oh, beyond
question he was great! No other contemporary politician had his
quality. In no man have I perceived so sympathetically the great
contrast between warm, personal things and the white dream of
statecraft. Except that he had it seemed no hot passions, but only
interests and fine affections and indolences, he paralleled the
conflict of my life. He saw and thought widely and deeply; but at
times it seemed to me his greatness stood over and behind the
reality of his life, like some splendid servant, thinking his own
thoughts, who waits behind a lesser master's chair…
8
Of course, when Evesham talked of this ideal of the organised state
becoming so finely true to practicability and so clearly stated as
to have the compelling conviction of physical science, he spoke
quite after my heart. Had he really embodied the attempt to realise
that, I could have done no more than follow him blindly. But
neither he nor I embodied that, and there lies the gist of my story.
And when it came to a study of others among the leading Tories and
Imperialists the doubt increased, until with some at last it was
possible to question whether they had any imaginative conception of
constructive statecraft at all; whether they didn't opaquely accept
the world for what it was, and set themselves single-mindedly to
make a place for themselves and cut a figure in it.
There were some very fine personalities among them: there were the
great peers who had administered Egypt, India, South Africa,
Framboya-Cromer, Kitchener, Curzon, Milner, Gane, for example. So
far as that easier task of holding sword and scales had gone, they
had shown the finest qualities, but they had returned to the
perplexing and exacting problem of the home country, a little
glorious, a little too simply bold. They wanted to arm and they
wanted to educate, but the habit of immediate necessity made them
far more eager to arm than to educate, and their experience of
heterogeneous controls made them overrate the need for obedience in
a homogeneous country. They didn't understand raw men, ill-trained
men, uncertain minds, and intelligent women; and these are the
things that matter in England… There were also the great
business adventurers, from Cranber to Cossington (who was now Lord
Paddockhurst). My mind remained unsettled, and went up and down the
scale between a belief in their far-sighted purpose and the
perception of crude vanities, coarse ambitions, vulgar
competitiveness, and a mere habitual persistence in the pursuit of
gain. For a time I saw a good deal of Cossington-I wish I had kept
a diary of his talk and gestures, to mark how he could vary from day
to day between a POSEUR, a smart tradesman, and a very bold and
wide-thinking political schemer. He had a vanity of sweeping
actions, motor car pounces, Napoleonic rushes, that led to violent
ineffectual changes in the policy of his papers, and a haunting
pursuit by parallel columns in the liberal press that never abashed
him in the slightest degree. By an accident I plumbed the folly in
him-but I feel I never plumbed his wisdom. I remember him one day
after a lunch at the Barhams' saying suddenly, out of profound
meditation over the end of a cigar, one of those sentences that seem
to light the whole interior being of a man. "Some day," he said
softly, rather to himself than to me, and A PROPOS of nothing-"some
day I will raise the country."
"Why not?" I said, after a pause, and leant across him for the
little silver spirit-lamp, to light my cigarette…
Then the Tories had for another section the ancient creations, and
again there were the financial peers, men accustomed to reserve, and
their big lawyers, accustomed to-well, qualified statement. And
below the giant personalities of the party were the young bloods,
young, adventurous men of the type of Lord Tarvrille, who had seen
service in South Africa, who had travelled and hunted; explorers,
keen motorists, interested in aviation, active in army organisation.