THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

3

The interest and excitement of setting-up a house, of walking about

it from room to room and from floor to floor, or sitting at one's

own dinner table and watching one's wife control conversation with a

pretty, timid resolution, of taking a place among the secure and

free people of our world, passed almost insensibly into the interest

and excitement of my Parliamentary candidature for the Kinghamstead

Division, that shapeless chunk of agricultural midland between the

Great Western and the North Western railways. I was going to "take

hold" at last, the Kinghamstead Division was my appointed handle. I

was to find my place in the rather indistinctly sketched

constructions that were implicit in the minds of all our circle.

The precise place I had to fill and the precise functions I had to

discharge were not as yet very clear, but all that, we felt sure,

would become plain as things developed.

A few brief months of vague activities of "nursing" gave place to

the excitements of the contest that followed the return of Mr.

Camphell-Bannerman to power in 1905. So far as the Kinghamstead

Division was concerned it was a depressed and tepid battle. I went

about the constituency making three speeches that were soon

threadbare, and an odd little collection of people worked for me;

two solicitors, a cheap photographer, a democratic parson, a number

of dissenting ministers, the Mayor of Kinghamstead, a Mrs. Bulger,

the widow of an old Chartist who had grown rich through electric

traction patents, Sir Roderick Newton, a Jew who had bought

Calersham Castle, and old Sir Graham Rivers, that sturdy old

soldier, were among my chief supporters. We had headquarters in

each town and village, mostly there were empty shops we leased

temporarily, and there at least a sort of fuss and a coming and

going were maintained. The rest of the population stared in a state

of suspended judgment as we went about the business. The country

was supposed to be in a state of intellectual conflict and

deliberate decision, in history it will no doubt figure as a

momentous conflict. Yet except for an occasional flare of bill-

sticking or a bill in a window or a placard-plastered motor-car or

an argumentative group of people outside a public-house or a

sluggish movement towards the schoolroom or village hall, there was

scarcely a sign that a great empire was revising its destinies. Now

and then one saw a canvasser on a doorstep. For the most part

people went about their business with an entirely irresponsible

confidence in the stability of the universe. At times one felt a

little absurd with one's flutter of colours and one's air of saving

the country.

My opponent was a quite undistinguished Major-General who relied

upon his advocacy of Protection, and was particularly anxious we

should avoid "personalities" and fight the constituency in a

gentlemanly spirit. He was always writing me notes, apologising for

excesses on the part of his supporters, or pointing out the

undesirability of some course taken by mine.

My speeches had been planned upon broad lines, but they lost touch

with these as the polling approached. To begin with I made a real

attempt to put what was in my mind before the people I was to supply

with a political voice. I spoke of the greatness of our empire and

its destinies, of the splendid projects and possibilities of life

and order that lay before the world, of all that a resolute and

constructive effort might do at the present time. "We are building

a state," I said, "secure and splendid, we are in the dawn of the

great age of mankind." Sometimes that would get a solitary "'Ear!

'ear!" Then having created, as I imagined, a fine atmosphere, I

turned upon the history of the last Conservative administration and

brought it into contrast with the wide occasions of the age;

discussed its failure to control the grasping financiers in South

Africa, its failure to release public education from sectarian

squabbles, its misconduct of the Boer War, its waste of the world's

resources…

It soon became manifest that my opening and my general spaciousness

of method bored my audiences a good deal. The richer and wider my

phrases the thinner sounded my voice in these non-resonating

gatherings. Even the platform supporters grewrestive

unconsciously, and stirred and coughed. They did not recognise

themselves as mankind. Building an empire, preparing a fresh stage

in the history of humanity, had no appeal for them. They were

mostly everyday, toiling people, full of small personal solicitudes,

and they came to my meetings, I think, very largely as a relaxation.

This stuff was not relaxing. They did not think politics was a

great constructive process, they thought it was a kind of dog-fight.

They wanted fun, they wanted spice, they wanted hits, they wanted

also a chance to say "'Ear', 'ear!" in an intelligent and honourable

manner and clap their hands and drum with their feet. The great

constructive process in history gives so little scope for clapping

and drumming and saying "'Ear, 'ear!" One might as well think of

hounding on the solar system.

So after one or two attempts to lift my audiences to the level of

the issues involved, I began to adapt myself to them. I cut down my

review of our imperial outlook and destinies more and more, and

developed a series of hits and anecdotes and-what shall I call

them?-"crudifications" of the issue. My helper's congratulated me

on the rapid improvement of my platform style. I ceased to speak of

the late Prime Minister with the respect I bore him, and began to

fall in with the popular caricature of him as an artful rabbit-

witted person intent only on keeping his leadership, in spite of the

vigorous attempts of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain to oust him therefrom.

I ceased to qualify my statement that Protection would make food

dearer for the agricultural labourer. I began to speak of Mr.

Alfred Lyttelton as an influence at once insane and diabolical, as a

man inspired by a passionate desire to substitute manacled but still

criminal Chinese for honest British labourers throughout the world.

And when it came to the mention of our own kindly leader, of Mr.

John Burns or any one else of any prominence at all on our side I

fell more and more into the intonation of one who mentions the high

gods. And I had my reward in brighter meetings and readier and

readier applause.

One goes on from phase to phase in these things.

"After all," I told myself, "if one wants to get to Westminster one

must follow the road that leads there," but I found the road

nevertheless rather unexpectedly distasteful. "When one gets

there," I said, "then it is one begins."

But I would lie awake at nights with that sore throat and headache

and fatigue which come from speaking in ill-ventilated rooms, and

wondering how far it was possible to educate a whole people to great

political ideals. Why should political work always rot down to

personalities and personal appeals in this way? Life is, I suppose,

to begin with and end with a matter of personalities, from

personalities all our broader interests arise and to personalities

they return. All our social and political effort, all of it, is

like trying to make a crowd of people fall into formation. The

broader lines appear, but then come a rush and excitement and

irrelevancy, and forthwith the incipient order has vanished and the

marshals must begin the work over again!

My memory of all that time is essentially confusion. There was a

frightful lot of tiresome locomotion in it; for the Kinghamstead

Division is extensive, abounding in ill-graded and badly metalled

cross-roads and vicious little hills, and singularly unpleasing to

the eye in a muddy winter. It is sufficiently near to London to

have undergone the same process of ill-regulated expansion that made

Bromstead the place it is. Several of its overgrown villages have

developed strings of factories and sidings along the railway lines,

and there is an abundance of petty villas. There seemed to be no

place at which one could take hold of more than this or that element

of the population. Now we met in a meeting-house, now in a Masonic

Hall or Drill Hall; I also did a certain amount of open-air speaking

in the dinner hour outside gas-works and groups of factories. Some

special sort of people was, as it were, secreted in response to each

special appeal. One said things carefully adjusted to the

distinctive limitations of each gathering. Jokes of an incredible

silliness and shallowness drifted about us. Our advisers made us

declare that if we were elected we would live in the district, and

one hasty agent had bills printed, "If Mr. Remington is elected he

will live here." The enemy obtained a number of these bills and

stuck them on outhouses, pigstyes, dog-kennels; you cannot imagine

how irksome the repetition of that jest became. The vast drifting

indifference in between my meetings impressed me more and more. I

realised the vagueness of my own plans as I had never done before I

brought them to the test of this experience. I was perplexed by the

riddle of just how far I was, in any sense of the word, taking hold

at all, how far I wasn't myself flowing into an accepted groove.

Margaret was troubled by no such doubts. She was clear I had to go

into Parliament on the side of Liberalism and the light, as against

the late Government and darkness. Essential to the memory of my

first contest, is the memory of her clear bright face, very resolute

and grave, helping me consciously, steadfastly, with all her

strength. Her quiet confidence, while I was so dissatisfied, worked

curiously towards the alienation of my sympathies. I felt she had

no business to be so sure of me. I had moments of vivid resentment

at being thus marched towards Parliament.

I seemed now always to be discovering alien forces of character in

her. Her way of taking life diverged from me more and more. She

sounded amazing, independent notes. She bought some particularly

costly furs for the campaign that roused enthusiasm whenever she

appeared. She also made me a birthday present in November of a

heavily fur-trimmed coat and this she would make me remove as I went

on to the platform, and hold over her arm until I was ready to

resume it. It was fearfully heavy for her and she liked it to be

heavy for her. That act of servitude was in essence a towering

self-assertion. I would glance sideways while some chairman

floundered through his introduction and see the clear blue eye with

which she regarded the audience, which existed so far as she was

concerned merely to return me to Parliament. It was a friendly eye,

provided they were not silly or troublesome. But it kindled a

little at the hint of a hostile question. After we had come so far

and taken so much trouble!

She constituted herself the dragoman of our political travels. In

hotels she was serenely resolute for the quietest and the best, she

rejected all their proposals for meals and substituted a severely

nourishing dietary of her own, and even in private houses she

astonished me by her tranquil insistence upon special comforts and

sustenance. I can see her face now as it would confront a hostess,

a little intent, but sweetly resolute and assured.

Since our marriage she had read a number of political memoirs, and

she had been particularly impressed by the career of Mrs. Gladstone.

I don't think it occurred to her to compare and contrast my quality

with that of Mrs. Gladstone's husband. I suspect her of a

deliberate intention of achieving parallel results by parallel

methods. I was to be Gladstonised. Gladstone it appeared used to

lubricate his speeches with a mixture-if my memory serves me right-

of egg beaten up in sherry, and Margaret was very anxious I should

take a leaf from that celebrated book. She wanted, I know, to hold

the glass in her hand while I was speaking.

But here I was firm. "No," I said, very decisively, "simply I won't

stand that. It's a matter of conscience. I shouldn't feel-

democratic. I'll take my chance of the common water in the carafe

on the chairman's table."

"I DO wish you wouldn't," she said, distressed.

It was absurd to feel irritated; it was so admirable of her, a

little childish, infinitely womanly and devoted and fine-and I see

now how pathetic. But I could not afford to succumb to her. I

wanted to follow my own leading, to see things clearly, and this

reassuring pose of a high destiny, of an almost terribly efficient

pursuit of a fixed end when as a matter of fact I had a very

doubtful end and an aim as yet by no means fixed, was all too

seductive for dalliance…