From Behind the Speaker's Chair
VIII.
(VIEWED BY HENRY W. LUCY.)
"OLD MORALITY." ONE of the most interesting books of the forthcoming season will be the "Life of W. H. Smith," a work undertaken by his friend and colleague, Sir Herbert Maxwell. Sir Herbert, who combines the qualities of an excellent Whip with those that go to make up a successful literary man, will doubtless have found himself hampered in his task by the exceptional goodness of the subject of his memoir. I suppose the most depressing work of biography still in print is that which many years ago had considerable vogue under the title "The Dairyman's Daughter." Mr. Disraeli, a keen judge of public taste, desiring at one time to say something pungently deprecatory of Mr. Gladstone, observed that he had no pleasant vices. Mr. Smith more fully and accurately came within this category. It will be impossible even for so attractive a writer as Sir Herbert Maxwell to make his biography as interesting as, for example, that of Becky Sharp.
Lord Salisbury and Mr. W. H. Smith.
Mr. Smith was, in truth, monotonously good. Yet what was meant to be a placid life had its stream unexpectedly turned into turbulent courses. Prosperity made him acquainted with some notable work-fellows, and led him to take a part in making the history of England. It was a strange fate that drew this modest, retiring, gentle-minded bourgeois citizen into being a colleague, first of Mr. Disraeli, and at last the very pivot of an Administration which had the Marquis of Salisbury for its motive power.
I remember more than a dozen years ago, crossing Palace Yard, seeing Lord Salisbury and Mr. W. H. Smith enter the precincts of the House by the archway leading to the Ladies' Gallery. Mr. Smith had at that time, doubtless to his own modest surprise, been nominated First Lord of the Admiralty, the first of a series of uses made of him whenever the Government were in difficulty. "When in doubt play trumps" is a time-honoured maxim, the wisdom of which some players are inclined to dispute. "When in difficulties play W. H. Smith" was a game Mr. Disraeli first led, and was followed up to the last by Lord Salisbury with unfailing success. It was doubtless a mere accident, but I noticed that Lord Salisbury strode along silent, taking no notice of his companion, who walked just half a pace behind him, as if feeling that he had no right to intrude on the meditation, or even the company, of the great patrician by whose side in the Cabinet an inscrutable Providence had led him to take his seat.
This is a trivial incident which only riotous fancy could invest with significance. It often came back to my mind watching Mr. Smith steadily yet surely marching to the first place in the aristocratic Cabinet, progress involuntarily made, impelled not more by sheer capacity than by force of simple, honest, upright character. In course of time it came to pass that the Cabinet of Lord Salisbury could have better withstood the shock of the Premier's withdrawal than of the resignation of plain Mr. Smith.
Though the study of such a character is apparently lacking in dramatic incident, what may be done with it by competent hands has
