CHAPTER XIII

THE LATE VISCOUNT GOSCHEN-A VERY INDIVIDUAL ANGLO-GERMAN ENGLISHMAN

"A VIOLENT moderate man."

Such was the late Lord Goschen's description of himself. But he was not, in truth, violent, and not moderate. Otherwise the description is accurate.

Not violent, I should say, but contentious. Not moderate, but an opportunist, when he was not too stubborn. The epithets, one set or the other, have no particular value. A man is not to be summed up in an adjective; least of all a man whose life was public, who was everywhere to be met, who spoke in Parliament and talked without stint in private; who was long a Minister of the Crown, a man of business, of affairs, of very varied and substantial gifts. Character and achievement are what you judge by, in such a life as his. So judged, he stands rather high, if not quite so high as his invincible confidence in himself would put him.

To take the man of business first. I always thought his best eulogy came from the City. That is where the brains of finance are to be found. I have often asked, and I have always had the same answer. The great bankers and merchants of the City of London thought Mr. Goschen, as he then was, a first-rate Chancellor of the Exchequer, and did not think Mr. Gladstone first-rate. As for his conversion of Consols, reducing the rate of interest first to 2 per cent

and then to 2, the manner of the operation was reckoned masterly. Whether the result of it and the effect on public credit can be deemed favourable is another question. But it embedded his name in financial history, since reduced Consols have ever since been known as "Goschens." He went out of business rather early, his fortune seeming to him sufficient, and thenceforward devoted himself in one way or another to politics.

My acquaintance with Mr. Goschen stretched over a long period but was never in the least intimate. I used to meet him at dinners or at houses in the country. It happened sometimes after dinner, when the ladies had gone, that I found myself next Mr. Goschen, by no choice of his or mine. He was a man to be respected and was respected; and to be liked if you were built that way. But his idea of conversation was to plunge at once into argument. With me he often chose an American topic; thinking, apparently, that on American topics I needed enlightenment, as perhaps I did, and that it was his mission to enlighten me, which did not logically follow. Still, I thought it very good of him to try. His mental attitude was not unlike that of the late Empress Frederick, when, as I have elsewhere related, Her Royal Highness-then Crown Princesswas good enough to set forth at length her views on things American for my benefit and instruction.

None the less, there was a certain pleasure in listening to Mr. Goschen. He knew as much of America as most Englishmen of his time knew ; perhaps more. But whether he knew much or little, listening to him was an exercise of the mind. He understood logic. Grant him his premise, and he led you step by step irresistibly to his conclusion. I used sometimes

to wonder where he got his premises. The office he held brought him into no relation with the Government of the United States. In the English newspapers, at that time, the American news was meagre and trivial. No doubt Mr. Goschen's firm in the City had correspondents in New York, but information from that source would relate chiefly to the money market. Mr. Goschen, nevertheless, ranged over a wide American field. I must do him the justice to say that though he dogmatized he liked to be answered. He liked you, as the English generally do, to stand up to him, if only for the pleasure of bowling you over. Once I happened to say I agreed with him. Instantly he retorted:

"No, that is not what I want. Even if you agree with me you know the other side of the case, and that is what I wish to hear."

Again it might be that he wanted a statement of the other side in order to demolish it. No matter. His was the attitude of a man who desired to get at the truth, and, if he did not think the truth attainable otherwise, then controversially. His desire to get it somehow was laudable. It remained laudable even if by and by you came to see, or to believe, that he thought the true home of truth not at the bottom of a well but in his own head. A good many people think the same of their heads. Said Mr. Goschen once :

"Well, the truth must be somewhere, and truth is not a matter of opinion but of fact."

"Mr. Ruskin said the same thing of art," I answered, well knowing he did not regard Mr. Ruskin as an oracle, and eliciting the retort I hoped for :

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Why do you quote Ruskin to me and what has art to do with the question we are discussing?"

There you saw the man's habit of mind. He fastened upon his subject. Nothing could divert him from it. No illustration, no analogy, was to the point. He kept as rigidly to the proposition he had laid down as Euclid to his geometrical demonstrations. Early in life he-I mean Mr. Goschen, not Euclidwrote a book on The Theory of the Foreign Exchanges. Exchange, that is, in the financial sense of the word. I have never read it, and am quite sure I should not understand it if I did. But I have been told that from beginning to end it is a chain of inseparable links. He writes on this abstruse subject with mathematical precision. I should be very much surprised if he did not.

The one impossible subject was Free Trade and Protection. He had in the highest degree the intellectual arrogance of the confirmed Free Trader. He knew perfectly well that the whole world, England excepted, was Protectionist, yet he could not discuss it unless in a tone which implied contempt for the Protectionist. Yet he did his best to be polite, in the beginning.

"I suppose you, like all intelligent Americans, must deplore the Protectionist policy of your Govern

ment."

"No, I am a Protectionist, and if you make belief in Free Trade-your kind of Free Trade-a test of intelligence in the United States, there are not more than half a dozen intelligent Americans, and they are college professors."

He was a man to attract attention anywhere. Tall, strongly built, the shoulders powerful, a little rounded and with a just perceptible stoop, his head bent, as often happens to men who have a weight of brains to carry. The features were largely moulded,

and he had such a look of the Jew in him that he thought it desirable to deny that he was of Jewish descent. Hebraic he was not, but Teutonic. His abrupt manner showed that. Plainly a personage; but more impressive than sympathetic. His shortsightedness took from his appearance and put him at a disadvantage. The steadfast gaze was lacking. He peered out upon the world. But he bore this misfortune, as he bore other things, with a philosophy which strove to master an impatient temper, and sometimes succeeded. In a country house known as South Hill Park, where I sometimes met him, was an oak staircase, the oak steps polished and uncarpeted; treacherous even to good eyes. Goschen clung to the hand-rail as we went down, and at the bottom said:

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Every time I descend these stairs safely it strengthens my firm belief in an overruling and beneficent Providence."

Not without reason was he grateful, but a spice of danger was welcome in a house of peaceful beauty, where attractions of many kinds abounded; Lord and Lady Haversham being two.

As a speaker Lord Goschen had two physical defects. He was extremely near-sighted and his voice was harsh. An orator-which he never was, though a good debater-needs to be able to watch the faces of those to whom he is talking. If he cannot do that, he cannot judge of the effect he is producing; the expression of the features being far more significant than applause or audible dissent. As he could not see these expressions, he could not vary his speech to suit the mood of his audience, as all great orators do, since oratory is an appeal, and by no means a spoken essay. His voice was so