In the Berlin Conference days Bismarck described Lord Salisbury as “a lath painted to look like iron.” By the Nineties the sneer had lost point in every particular. To the dullest it was clear that Lord Salisbury had not painted himself or got himself painted; whatever the man might or might not be, he was genuine, incapable himself of pose, and equally incapable of inspiring others to spread a legend concerning himself. It was equally clear (though perhaps only to the more discerning) that he did not “look like iron.” There was not wanting strength of a kind, but it was a flexible and not a rigid strength. The coarsest of all mistakes it is possible to make concerning Lord Salisbury is that of regarding him as an Imperialistic swashbuckler and gambler, ready for all risks in the pursuit of a “spirited foreign policy.” The Victorian Burleigh was, in fact, much like the Burleigh of Elizabeth, decisive enough in some domestic matters, but even excessively cautious in the conduct of foreign affairs. Though he adopted the Disraelian tradition, his methods were the very opposite of Mr. Disraeli’s. That great man really enjoyed having the eyes of all men directed on him in hope or fear. “A daring pilot in extremity,” he seemed actually pleased with waves that went high, and, though he might accept “peace with honour,” gave always the impression of disappointment of a born political artist that it was not reserved to him to play the part of a second Chatham.
LORD SALISBURY.
Lord Salisbury, on the other hand, was in essence as pacific as Mr. Gladstone. In practice he was even more a man of peace, since his caution took the form of guarding against war, while Mr. Gladstone inclined rather to the modern “Pacifist” line of calling war “unthinkable”—and not thinking about it till it came. There were, no doubt, occasions on which Lord Salisbury’s attitude might seem aggressive and even reckless. He was severe to Portugal. He was stern and unbending to the South African Republic. He adopted a high tone towards France over the Fashoda affair. But in such cases he either regarded the risk as small, or considered the matters at stake justified the risk, whatever it might be. In general his policy was one of cautious conciliation, and his main work at the Foreign Office was the removal, so far as might be, of any causes of quarrel between ourselves and Germany. The German Empire he equally feared and admired. France he was inclined to class with Spain among the “dying nations,” and though, like all the men of his school, he rather exaggerated the might of Russia, that Power was considered more from the Asiatic than from the European point of view. Lord Salisbury’s policy towards France and Russia was fluid and opportunist. He had no objection to France taking what she liked of the “light soil” of the Sahara; he was not intolerant of Russian ambitions in Eastern Asia. He was anxious enough not to be on bad terms with anybody. But if either of these Powers had thrown out an obvious challenge Lord Salisbury would no doubt have accepted it. The one challenge he was resolved not to accept was that of Germany, and the history of the later Salisbury administrations on their foreign side is in essence the history of elaborate attempts to buy, as cheaply as possible, a continuance of the sleeping partnership with Prussia. The price was not onerous during Bismarck’s reign. It rose sharply under William II, and Lord Salisbury died in the unhappy certainty that all his attempts to satisfy Germany had failed of their purpose. The failure was no fault of his. He had carried through in Africa—a continent “created,” as he said at the Guildhall banquet of the Diamond Jubilee year, “to be the plague of the Foreign Office”—a network of treaties and compacts not ill-designed to avert the possibility of serious wars arising from the unregulated ambitions of European Powers. But there was more passion than policy in the councils of Berlin, and, to his deep chagrin, Lord Salisbury was fated to see, before his life ended, the first steps taken towards a complete reversal of the course he had consistently followed.
If Lord Salisbury was neither “painted” nor “like iron,” the third element in the Bismarckian sneer was still more untrue. In the Nineties it was quite impossible to think of the Conservative leader as a “lath.” The slenderness of Lord Robert Cecil had gone the same way as his rather ungainly deportment; the developing statesman had shown how little youth and spareness of figure may have to do with grace; the developed statesman illustrated what the author of Eothen calls the majesty of true corpulence. In Lord Robert Cecil great height, slimness, and the scholar’s stoop made rather jarringly noticeable that untidiness which is an abiding Cecilian characteristic; in Lord Salisbury the rounded shoulders rather added to his impressiveness, as suggesting Atlas loads of responsibility, while the very massiveness of the figure cancelled the effect of imperfect valeting. No worse dressed or more majestic figure was ever seen in the House of Lords, which has never been wanting either in shabbiness or in distinction. There are some men of great rank who convey the impression of taking as keen an interest in their kit as that which animates any shop assistant out for his Sunday. There are others who give the air of caring little personally about such matters, but of having an excellent man to look after them. Lord Salisbury suggested a tailor and valet as little interested in clothes as himself. His coats always looked as if they had been made on the Laputan system of tailoring; his trousers bagged like those in the statues of Victorian philanthropists; his hats were shocking; he even looked sometimes as if he might have slept in his clothes. Indeed, though the last man on earth to be a conscious Bohemian, there was a considerable streak of Bohemianism in Lord Salisbury. In his Fleet Street days he had no difficulty in accommodating himself to the ways of a race still carrying on the tradition of George Warrington and Mr. Bludyer. Lord Morley, who sometimes met him in the waiting-room of a review editor, found in him a “gift of silence.” But The Standard had, apparently, a more human atmosphere, and with some of the distinguished writers enlisted under the banner of Mr. Mudford, the future Prime Minister established genial relations. Many years after, a fellow-leader-writer was presented to him at some official garden party. Lord Salisbury, who had a bad memory for names, and was very short-sighted, was saying the usual formal things when the sound of the journalist’s voice suddenly brought a flood of old memories. “Hello, Billy,” he said, shaking hands warmly, “whose turn is it to pay for the beer?”
Lord Salisbury’s shortness of sight is the explanation of the many true stories of his not knowing his own subordinates, and talking to a sporting Peer about military matters under the impression that he was addressing Lord Roberts. This myopia was a very considerable element in his life, and accounts in some degree for a detachment which appeared marvellous to his contemporaries. Not being able to see his audiences, he could not follow their moods, and so tended exclusively to follow his own. Thus no man merited less the title of orator. There was a fine literary quality about his speeches; though he prepared little, and spoke without effort, the fighting discipline of his journalistic days made banality or sloppiness impossible to him. The satire which seldom failed to flavour anything he said was the quite natural emanation of an ironical mind, and sprang from the same source as his dislike of declamation, display, or vulgar rhetorical artifice. It was not what is generally called cynicism; it was rather the protest of a strong, sincere, and unaffected nature against the humbug rarely absent from public life. Bad taste, really bad taste, that is to say—the taste which, to vary the French phrase, leads to artistic crime—was repulsive to him, and this dislike no doubt sometimes led him to what is more ordinarily called bad taste: the merciless mockery of pretensions which most people have agreed to respect. Detesting exaggerated emphasis, he exaggerated his own avoidance of it; he habitually spoke without gesture, generally standing motionless as an automaton, his hands hanging lifelessly at his side. In this position he used, as he called it, to “think aloud,” and his thoughts often sounded strangely both to friends and opponents. For, though Lord Salisbury was a real Tory, the tone of his mind was only in one limited sense conservative. He did want to preserve certain great things, including, of course, the Church, but he had little in common with those who oppose an equally stubborn resistance to all innovation. The doors of his understanding were never closed to the entry of new ideas, so long as such ideas were concrete and definite; what he did vehemently resent was “reform” demanded on loose general grounds. Thus he had no great objection to Parish Councils. True, the old system had worked fairly well, and very cheaply, and nobody could tell exactly how ill and dearly the new system would work. But if due cause were shown, he was not disposed to stand in the way. When, however, the Liberal leaders argued for Parish Councils, not on the ground that they would be more efficient or more economical than the old Vestries, but that they would tend to “brighten village life,” Lord Salisbury’s disgust flamed out in a characteristic piece of irony. “If the enlivenment of village life were the object,” he said, “the object would be much better served by a circus.” Again, he was assuredly not blind to the evils of over-drinking. But he denied altogether that the way to make men sober was to make public-houses fewer and less convenient. There had been much argument in favour of “reducing drinking facilities”; Lord Salisbury contended that drunkenness was no necessary consequence of drinking facilities. “There are a hundred beds at Hatfield,” he said, “but I never feel more inclined to sleep on that account.”
It is probable, indeed, that what he chiefly hated in Liberalism was that tendency to unreality which is, perhaps, its special danger. Lord Salisbury did not see a great many things, but what he did see he saw clearly, and he was specially free from the dangers of self-deception. Thus he did not see that there was an Irish question; but he did see quite clearly what Mr. Gladstone would not let himself see, that there was no English enthusiasm for Home Rule. He did not see that political arrangements wanted readjusting in correspondence with the immense material and intellectual revolution in England; but he did see quite clearly that the English people on the whole preferred a squiredom to a plutocracy, and were not in the least concerned when the House of Lords disposed of various pet projects of hasty reformers. When Liberals talked about the voice of the people and the aspirations of the masses, Lord Salisbury did not think of the people or the masses; he thought of a single working-man he had actually seen and spoken to, and, judging the rest from him, was at least secured against the worst hallucinations. When some proposal (say Local Veto) was extolled as a boon to the working-classes, Lord Salisbury again saw in his mind’s eye a quite ordinary bricklayer or carpenter in a village tavern, and in the strength of that vision declined to believe that England would rise against him as one man if the Lords threw out Local Veto on his suggestion. Proceeding on these lines, he developed an infallible pose for political imposture and pretence, and a massive disregard of merely noisy agitation. No man ever paid less attention to the transient manifestations of what is called public opinion. He was utterly unmoved by the thunders of the Press and the organised outcry of the platform. When a great procession marched past Arlington Street to Hyde Park to denounce him, he could ask his footman (quite sincerely) “What all that noise was about?” The petulant threats of a disappointed faction, the interested uproar of sects and cliques, made no impression on his colossal phlegm. But he recognised at once what he called “the firm, deliberate, and sustained conviction” of the majority of the nation. “It is no courage—it is no dignity—to withstand the real opinion of the nation,” so he said in 1868, after leading a most determined opposition to the Irish Church Bill. “All that you are doing thereby is to delay an inevitable issue—for all history teaches us that no nation was ever thus induced to revoke its own decision—and to invoke besides a period of disturbance, discontent, and possibly worse than discontent.” Thus, while he understood when to fight, he also understood when to yield, and his concessions, when he decided to make them, came with grace and spontaneity. The sword of the House of Lords was often raised to kill; it was sometimes used to salute; it was never shaken in unavailing menace.
The peculiar strength and sagacity of Lord Salisbury as a domestic statesman are best illustrated, not by what happened during his life, but by what followed his death. For it was the chief part of his success that nothing particularly happened at home while he was in chief control. The real history of the time is foreign, colonial, social, and technological history. In English political history we are mainly in the region of negatives. Lord Salisbury did not solve the Irish political problem; he only stifled down an Irish agitation. He did not solve the English social problem; he only avoided unnecessary troubling of the waters. He did not make his party the instrument of any great positive work for England; he only kept it together as the guarantee of stable administration. But the magnitude of even this negative success was seen by the sharp contrast of what followed. Within a year of his retirement the Conservative Party was shattered; within a decade everything he had striven to avoid had come to pass; Home Rule was again a living issue; the lists were set for a real battle between the House of Commons and the House of Lords; the division of England into “classes and masses” was almost complete; the Church was marked down for what he would have considered a sacrilegious mutilation. English Toryism in the true sense died with Lord Salisbury. The thing that succeeded had no convenient name, but its character may be best indicated by saying that what was specially English was not specially Tory, and what was specially Tory was not specially English. But, while the inspiration and effective control of the party passed to men without interest in Church or land, and with a cosmopolitan (or at least most loosely Imperialist) rather than an English or even British point of view, many true Tories remained. These must have recognised, when Lord Salisbury had gone, the true value of much that had been taken for granted while he was alive. He originated little; he delayed much that was good as well as much that was ill; he belonged emphatically to that class of great men who must be praised rather for what they avoided than for what they accomplished. But that he was a truly great man, and not a merely dexterous one, was now clear to those who witnessed the disaster wrought by a deficiency of character combined with an excess of ideas and tactical subtlety. Had Lord Salisbury been succeeded by another in precisely his own image, the political and social convulsions of the new century would, doubtless, not have been altogether avoided. For there were forces at work that compelled large changes. But that they would have come about in gentler fashion is hardly doubtful. For Lord Salisbury knew as few men did the difference between variable “public opinion” and the real temper of a nation, between the ditch that can be filled up or drained and the river which can only be canalised, and he would assuredly have avoided that constitutional struggle which, degenerating into mere anarchism, became the prolific parent of so many ills from which the country suffers to-day. It was a misfortune for more than Conservatism that his massive wisdom, his shrewd judgment, his cool scepticism, his contempt of mere ideas, his horror of extremes, his hatred of any kind of cant and self-illusion, his distrust of zeal and prejudice against the needless enlargement of issues were not at the service of the Conservative Party at a time when it needed above all things sane and strong control.
