Edward Chamberlain

“ There is a very interesting drawing in coloured crayons by Holbein in the Basel Gallery, [354] which is described as a portrait of Edward VI, and bears considerable likeness to the various paintings and drawings in England. The face, however, is decidedly longer and more oval 168in shape than in the Windsor drawings; but much of the delicate modelling of the flesh has vanished during the passage of time, so that it is difficult to speak with absolute certainty as to the likeness. Most probably the attribution is the correct one. ”

“ Then he questioned him of what had betided him and he told him, whereat he admired and returned to companionship with him; but the youth ceased to have regard for him and gave him nor solde nor ration as was his wont, neither discovered to him aught of his secrets. When the tutor saw that there was no profit from him he returned to the king, the ravisher of the slave-girl, and recounted to him what the Chamberlain had done and counselled him to slay that official and egged him on to recover the damsel, promising to give his friend a poison-draught and return. ”

“ House of Commons, Monday, July 6.—All heads were bared when the Prime Minister rose to move adjournment of House in sign of sorrow at the passing away of a great Parliament man. To vast majority of present House Joseph Chamberlain is a tradition. His personal presence, its commanding force, its varied and invariable attraction are unknown. Since his final re-election by faithful Birmingham, where, like the Shunamite woman, he dwelt among his own people loving and loved, he only once entered the House. ”

“ Towards the end of 1869 he accompanied the Duke of Edinburgh, by Queen Victoria's wish, on his visit to India. He was promoted lieutenant-general on 1 May 1872, G.C.S.I. on 24 May 1873, and G.C.B. on 29 May 1875. Chamberlain returned to India in February 1876, to take command of the Madras army. When it was decided, in August 1878, to send a British mission to Kabul, he consented to go as envoy, being personally known to Shere Ali ”

“ And he said to the youth, "In whatsoever stead thou seest the damsel, speak not a syllable, but acquaint me with her place and thou shalt owe her deliverance to none save to me." The youth thanked him and went with the old woman in such fashion as the Chamberlain bade him. She fared on with him till they entered the city, and walked all about it; after which she went up to the palace of the king and fell to saying, "O fortune's favourites, look on a youth whom the devils take twice in the day and pray to be preserved from such affliction!" ”

“ Chamberlain was no doubt a marvel of demagogic art. He could say supremely well what the average man felt a difficulty in putting into words. He was intensely sensitive to changes in public feeling, and extraordinarily clever in just anticipating them. He had a great knack of condensing into one sharp and memorable phrase the idea he wanted to sink deep into the public mind. But he was not an orator in the sense that John Bright was, and he lacked the capacity of Lord Randolph Churchill, in his best days, of whipping a popular audience into yelling, laughing, almost hysterical sympathy. ”

“ He enter'd afterwards into the Service of the late King; who being sensible of his Merit, raised him to the greatest Dignities of his Court, and married him to one of the Daughters that he had by the Countess of Cosel. The Great Chamberlain, who has the Looks and Behaviour of a Man of Quality, thinks and acts too like a Nobleman. Few Persons surpass him in Politeness and Learning: He is perfect Master of several Languages, and of every thing that forms the Minister and the General. ”

“ Chamberlain’s apprenticeship in public speaking was served in the Birmingham and Edgbaston Debating Society. He became in 1869 a member of the city council, and in 1870 of the first school board. Politics appealed to him from the first. An intimate friend has asserted that, at the outset, it was uncertain whether foreign policy would make him a tory, or home affairs a radical; and at the election of 1859 he canvassed on behalf of the opponent of John Bright, because he was opposed to Bright’s pacificism. But very soon the impulse of social reform drove him to radicalism. ”

“ Chamberlain is a distinctly ready man. Whatever gifts he has, are always at his command. He is like the shopman who puts all his goods in the window. The goods are not very fine nor very good, but they are showy and cheap, and, above all things, take the eye. Mr. Chamberlain in his day has been a poor attendant in Parliament—a friend of his used to tell him, when he was supposed to have the reversion of the Liberal leadership, that his inability to remain for hours in succession in the House of Commons would always stand in the way of his being the leader of that assembly. ”

“ Chamberlain's power springs from the concentration of a nature which is singularly free from complexity. The range of his mind is narrow, but up to its horizon the whole is illuminated by the same strong and rather garish light. The absoluteness of his convictions is never shaded or softened by any play of imagination or sympathetic insight. It is not in virtue of any exceptionally fine or attractive quality, either of intellect or of character, that Mr. Chamberlain has become a dominant figure. ”

“ Chamberlain always kept his visionary schemes within the due bounds of seriousness and reason. Though I think he placed no limits to the capacity of the English people to meet and to overcome dangers and difficulties in the world of politics, and always held them, as, indeed, do I, capable to be of heroic mould, he never inflated himself or his countrymen on any subject, but spoke always weightily and with good sense. To take a concrete example, he, no more than Lord Cromer, would have intoxicated his mind with a fantastic idea like that of the Cape to Cairo railway as did Mr. Rhodes. ”

“ In France the office of grand chambrier was early overshadowed by the chamberlains (cubicularii, cambellani, but sometimes also camerarii) , officials in close personal attendance on the king, men at first of low rank, but of great and ever-increasing influence. ”

“ Chamberlain was never easily disconcerted, nor was he ever a touchy, over-sensitive man. In fact, he has been heard to say, I believe, that a man who takes to public life must not be thin-skinned. If he is to give blows, he must be prepared to take blows in return, and whether he takes his punishment fighting or lying down, he must take it smiling, or at least with complacency. ”

“ When he spoke, it was to counsel the Dutch in Cape Colony to warn their kinsmen in the Transvaal against any fatal rashness. Henceforth, though Chamberlain was always ready to interfere if necessary, British policy was mainly directed by the man on the spot. It was the fashion amongst a certain school of radicals to regard Chamberlain as a firebrand, who was only kept in order by the influence of his more moderate colleagues. ”

“ Anyhow, the deputation of distinguished geologists and mineralogists from Paris and Berlin were there in the most magnificent and appropriate dress, for there are no men who like wearing their decorations so much as the men of science—as anybody knows who has ever been to a soiree of the Royal Society. It was a brilliant gathering, but very late, and gradually the Chamberlain—you saw his portrait, too: a man with black eyebrows, serious eyes, and a meaningless sort of smile underneath—the Chamberlain, I say, discovered there was everything there except the Prince himself. ”

“ Chamberlain, the foremost man in the drama of the Transvaal, the originator of the great Colonial movement which has made a united family of the Empire, began life as an advanced Radical. On the principle that extremes meet, he became at last the chief of the Tory Cabinet. That he is well hated as he is well loved, is the natural consequence of his staunchness in friendship as in antagonism. ”

“ Mr. Chamberlain was a guest on the Teutonic at the famous review of the British navy celebrating Queen Victoria's jubilee, where I had the pleasure of again meeting him. He had recently married Miss Endicott, the charming daughter of our secretary of war, and everybody appreciated that it was a British statesman's honeymoon.
He gave me a dinner in London, at which were present a large company, and two subjects came under very acute discussion. There had been a recent marriage in high English society, where there were wonderful pedigree and relationships on both sides, but no money. ”

“ He shrugged. "Well, she asked me where [Pg 229] we got it. I don't see why women always talk those things over." He was looking at her inquiringly.
"Well, I haven't," she said quickly. "Have you?"
He looked out upon the fog. "Told her where we got it, do you mean? No, I just chaffed her. I'd look out, if I were you. She strikes me as damned curious." He stood a moment on the threshold, looking from Flora to the chasm of fog outside, as if he were choosing between two chances. "I think I'll take that ring this morning," he said slowly. ”

“ Whilst his resignation gave him complete liberty of action, matters were not made easier for him by the hesitating attitude of some of his old colleagues, and especially of the prime minister, Mr. Balfour. Moreover, the ministry had become unpopular by reason of the Education Act of 1902, of which Chamberlain strongly disapproved, though he was too loyal to express his views openly. The effect of all this was to make him concentrate more and more upon the one object, of bringing the British people round to his views of tariff reform. ”

“ My Lord Chamberlain is a true man, and would rather lay his head on the block, at his liege's bidding, than carry it in security at the prayer of any other. Sir William has refused to fly; and, my mission ended, I was about to take my leave. ”

“ Chamberlain certainly possesses these qualifications in excess, and, combined with a queer vein of the erratic in his temperament, they almost completely offset the value of his extraordinary erudition, extending into widely varied fields, and of his occasionally really brilliant inspiration. He is, however, always entertaining; which is of itself no mean merit, in view of the fact that most serious writers seem unable to regard themselves as serious unless they are also dull. ”

“ Consequently, when the American Minister to Uruguay and Paraguay arrived at Fairweather Hill, he was received with timbrel and dances and high-sounding cymbals by his hostess, with coy cordiality by the engaging widow, and with a chastened and rapidly diminishing enthusiasm by young Chamberlain, who from the moment of the diplomat's arrival found himself inexplicably but quite definitely occupying the position of cup-bearer at the feast, a service for which he had less and less relish. ”

“ Chamberlain always remained, even when he was in closest co-operation with the Tory leaders. He never lost his first interest in the betterment of the working classes; the sight of preventible misery he hated; and the whole bent of his mind was humanitarian. But, just as a Liberal is not always a democrat, so a democrat is by no means always a Liberal. The idea of Liberalism is giving men freedom to work out their own salvation, with the minimum of State interference with individual liberty ”

“ And when I found out just how much the Lord Chamberlain had to say in the matter—how he arranged the exact length of my train and cut of my bodice, and what I wore in my hair—the whole undertaking, while it grew in consequence, grew also in charm. It was interesting in quite a novel way to come within the operation of these arbitrary requirements connected with the person of royalty. I liked getting ready to go to Court infinitely better than if I had been able to do it quite my own way, and the Lord Chamberlain had had nothing to do with it. ”

“ CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN TO BEVERLEY SANDS
Seminole, North Carolina,
May 29.
SIR:
I can but express my intense indignation, as Professor Chamberlain's only daughter, that you should send a sum of money to my distinguished father to hire his services as a nurseryman. I had supposed that my father was known to the entire intelligent American public as an eminent scientist, to be ranked with such men as Dana and Gray and Alexander von Humboldt.
People of our means and social position in the South do not peddle bulbs. ”

“ Morley, and Lord Herschell from the one side, and by Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan from the other, was an attempt to find a modus vivendi between men who were in fact fundamentally at issue. In this state of things, a provocative letter by Chamberlain in The Baptist merely killed what could never have survived. The resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill (December 1886) had seriously affected Chamberlain’s position. The tory democracy of Churchill attracted him ”

“ Chamberlain. He has nothing of the inspiration, the poetry, the "vision splendid," the "faculty divine," which make the genuine orator. But as a speaker of the second, and perhaps most useful, [Pg 293] class, he has never been surpassed. His speaking was the perfection of clearness. Each argument seemed irresistible, each illustration told. His invective was powerful, his passion seemed genuine, his satire cut like steel and froze like ice. His perception of his hearers' likes and dislikes was intuitive, and was heightened by constant observation. ”

“ Chamberlain, who now talks as though the foundation-stone of the Empire was laid in the suburbs of Birmingham, gave him no aid at all, nor did the active spirits of the Opposition. It seemed as though most of his old colleagues and opponents regarded Forster's strenuous advocacy of Imperial Federation as an attempt on his part to keep his name before the public eye. There was one rising young politician, however, who took a different view of Forster's action, and who not only sympathised with his motives, but threw himself into the cause of which he was the leader. ”