People From London

"Lord Randolph Churchill may be best described as the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of modern politics. The secret of his rapid success is very simple—he has always known exactly what time of day it is. As for the public at large, there are, he saw, only two sure ways of bringing down the House. One is to appeal to the higher moral sentiments, the other to use a great many "big, big D’s." His lordship went in for the big D’s, and his platform performances are dictated by a constant desire to meet a demand to "give it ’em hot, Randy.""

"I am not going to be dragged at the tail of the Conservative Party. My policy is very similar to that of Randolph Churchill."

"What you call my "self-renunciation" is merely an effort to deal with an abnormal, and very difficult, state of things. It arises from the peculiarities of Churchill. Beach having absolutely refused to lead, Churchill is the only possible leader in the Commons, as his ability is unquestionable. But he is wholly out of sympathy with the rest of the Cabinet: and being besides of a wayward and headstrong disposition, he is far from mitigating his resistance by the method of it. As his office of Leader of the House gives him a claim to be heard on every question, the machine is moving along with the utmost friction both in home and foreign affairs. My self-renunciation is only an attempt—a vain attempt—to pour oil upon the creaking and groaning machine. Like you, I am penetrated with a sense of the danger which the collapse of our Government would bring about, otherwise I should not have undertaken, or should have quickly abandoned, the task of leading an orchestra in which the first fiddle plays one tune, and everybody else, including myself, wishes to play another."

"As to the projects of R. C. to take my place, they do not trouble me much. He probably entertains them, and he may possibly succeed. The present course of politics is so distasteful to me, and the position of a peer is really so helpless politically, that I should really welcome a state of things which assured me that the duty of continuing a hopeless struggle was no longer incumbent upon me. But I should hesitate to utter any prophecies about him; the qualities for which he is most conspicuous have not usually kept men for any length of time at the head of affairs."

"It was as a mob-orator that Randolph Churchill excelled; no speaker of our day was for a few years such a popular hero. The effrontery with which he assailed accepted idols, his mastery of a rather coarse but pungent humour, his racy sallies, his use of large-sounding phrases in the Disraelian manner, and the belief that he was the prophet of a new political creed, which was permanently to attach the democracy to the Tory Party, combined to make him the darling of the crowd. I remember asking one of his Birmingham supporters the reason of his amazing popularity. "We like our liquors neat," was the reply, "and Randolph gives 'em us d——d neat.""

"He is a very difficult person to give an impartial and fair account of (laughter), but my own opinion of him, very imperfect as it is, is that if by any process you could cut out of him about half of the qualities he possesses you might make out of the other half a valuable and distinguished public servant (Laughter.)."

"I read industriously almost every word he had ever spoken and learnt by heart large portions of his speeches. I took my politics almost unquestioningly from him. He seemed to me to have possessed in the days of his prime the key alike to popular oratory and political action. Although Lord Randolph Churchill lived and died a loyal Tory, he was in fact during the whole of his political life, and especially during its finest phase after he had left office for ever, a liberal-minded man. He saw no reason why the old glories of Church and State, of King and country, should not be reconciled with modern democracy; or why the masses of working people should not become the chief defenders of those ancient institutions by which their liberties and progress had been achieved. It is this union of past and present, of tradition and progress, this golden chain, never yet broken, because no undue strain is placed upon it, that has constituted the peculiar merit and sovereign quality of English national life."

"In these later years Lord Randolph Churchill was drawn increasingly towards a Collectivist view of domestic politics. Almost every speech which he made from 1889 to 1891 gives evidence of the steady development of his opinions. His interest in the problems of the labouring classes grew warmer and keener as time passed... His answer to a deputation of miners who waited in succession on him and Mr. Gladstone to urge the enforcement of an eight hours’ day in the coal trade was accepted by them as far more favourable to their desires than anything that fell from the Liberal leader."

"I may confess, however, that I do not feel quite like a fish out of water in a legislative assembly where English is spoken. I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my father's house to believe in democracy. "Trust the people." That was his message. I used to see him cheered at meetings and in the streets by crowds of workingmen way back in those aristocratic Victorian days when as Disraeli said "the world was for the few, and for the very few." Therefore I have been in full harmony all my life with the tides which have flowed on both sides of the Atlantic against privilege and monopoly and I have steered confidently towards the Gettysburg ideal of government of the people, by the people, for the people."

"Tory Democracy was necessarily a compromise (perilously near a paradox in the eye of a partisan) between widely different forces and ideas: ancient permanent institutions becoming the instruments of far-reaching social reforms: order conjoined with liberty; stability and yet progress; the Tory party and daring legislation! Yet narrow as was the path along which he moved, multitudes began to follow. Illogical and unsymmetrical as the idea might seem—an idea not even novel—it grew vital and true at his touch. At a time when Liberal formulas and Tory inertia seemed alike chill and comfortless, he warmed the heart of England and strangely stirred the imagination of her people."

"From the moment Lord Randolph Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer responsible in large measure for the affairs of the nation, he ceased in vital matters to be a Tory. He adopted with increasing zest the Gladstonian outlook, with the single exception of Irish Home Rule; and in all social and labour questions he was far beyond what the Whig or middle-class Liberal of that epoch could have tolerated."

"I can speak from personal recollection of his performances both in Parliament and in the country. I heard many of the personal attacks upon Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal Government, and, perhaps, scarcely less upon the respectable persons who then led the Conservative party, by means of which he hewed his way to fame. The tomahawk was always in his hand. It is impossible to describe the gleeful ferocity with which he swept off the scalps of friend and foe. Some of these speeches contained the grossest errors of taste, and nearly all were marked by a vein of almost burlesque exaggeration. In later times, however, he led the House of Commons for a few weeks with unquestionable brilliance, and some of his speeches showed a rapidly-growing sense of responsibility and great constructive power. His manner, like his speeches, revelled in contrast, alternating from extreme insolence to sweet reasonableness and an engaging courtesy. Like Disraeli, on whom he clearly modelled himself, he oscillated between the adventurer and the statesman. He spoke with a voice resonant, but not musical, from copious notes, and often committed large portions of his speech to memory. He gesticulated much with his hands; the fierce twirling of his moustache and his protruding eye were favourite themes with the political caricaturist."

"I allude to the inquiry by the House of Lords' Committee into the sweating system. There we have had proof upon proof and witness after witness showing that there are men and women in this country in great numbers who, in order to earn a living, a mere pittance, have positively to labour 20 and even 22 hours a day. (Cries of "Shame.") It is almost incredible; and I say labour of that kind is totally inconsistent with either health or strength. (Cheers.) Now we wish to be a free people, but surely above all things we should try that we should be a strong and a healthy people (hear, hear); and where labour is carried to this excess for the benefit of one person or another I say it is carried to an excess which it is very difficult to justify."

"I say, and I say most earnestly, we ought by law to impose upon our local authorities the duty of re-housing the labouring classes within their jurisdiction where the labouring classes are housed in an insanitary, wretched, or improper manner. (Cheers.) We ought to give to the local authorities powers of compulsory purchase of land and of wretched, miserable dwellings... The ground landlords have to my mind so neglected their duties, they have been content to allow their tenants to be so miserably and wretchedly accommodated, they have been content as a rule, though, of course, there are exceptions, merely to fill their own pockets, and I do not think very much mercy or consideration need to be shown to them; and I think as a rule very few years' purchase would be sufficient to purchase out their rights."

"That state of things discloses this as a rule; it discloses as a general practice high rents, mercilessly exacted, wretched accommodation, total neglect by the ground landlords of their duties to their tenants, and of the general duties of property. (Hear, hear.) I fancy—I say it in warning to the ground landlords in the large towns—that a heavy reckoning is at hand for them from the people if they do not take time by the forelock, and if they do not recognize that property has its duties as well as its rights. (Cheers.)"

"Political power passed very considerably from the landed interest to the manufacturing capitalist interest, and our whole fiscal system was shaped by this latter power to its own advantage, foreign policy being also made to coincide. We are now come, or are coming fast, to a time when labour laws will be made by the labour interest for the advantage of labour. The regulation of all the conditions of labour by the State, controlled and guided by the labour vote, appears to be the ideal aimed at, and I think it extremely probable that a foreign policy which sought to extend by tariff reforms over our colonies and even over other friendly States the area of profitable barter of produce, will strongly commend itself to the mind of the labour interest. Personally I can discern no cause for alarm in this prospect, and I believe that on this point you and I are in perfect agreement. Labour, in this modern movement, has against it the prejudices of property, the resources of capital, and all the numerous forces—social, professional, and journalistic—which those prejudices and resources can influence."

"It is our business as Tory politicians to uphold the Constitution. If under the Constitution as it now exists, and as we wish to see it preserved, the labour interest finds that it can obtain its objects and secure its own advantage, then that interest will be reconciled to the Constitution, will find faith in it, and will maintain it. But if it should unfortunately occur that the Constitutional party to which you and I belong are deaf to hear and slow to meet the demands of labour, are stubborn in opposition to those demands, and are persistent in the habit of ranging themselves in unreasoning and short-sighted support of all the present rights of property-capital, then the result may be that the labour interest may identify what it will take to be defects in the Constitutional party with the Constitution itself, and in a moment of indiscriminate impulse may use its power to sweep both away. This view of affairs, I submit, is worthy of attention at a time when it is a matter of life or death to the Constitutional party to enlist in the support of the Parliamentary Union of the United Kingdom a majority of the votes of the masses of labour."

"[T]he interest of the Conservative party is undoubtedly to reform the land laws of this country with the view of multiplying the owners of land. (Cheers.) The more we can increase and multiply the owners of land in England the more we strengthen the real and true Conservative party in this country, for it is an undoubted fact that owners of land when once they come into their land develop strong Conservative tendencies."

"My views as to the reforms in the public service, which public safety and economy alike urgently call for, are, I think, well known to you; they have undergone no change, save that I hold them more strongly than ever. You are also, I imagine, not unaware of my desire to meet with all legitimate sympathy and good will the newly-formed but very articulate and well-defined demands of the labouring classes."

"The primary object of all government at the present moment is to maintain the Union, to maintain it not for a session or for a Parliament, but for our time."

"[T]he main principle and the guiding motive of the policy of the Government in the future will be to maintain intact and unimpaired the union of the Unionist party."

"Balfourism acts like a blister on Ireland and the Irish, and has the bad and good effects which such treatment generally produces. A too protracted application of the blister might do much harm."

"To tell the truth I don't know myself what Tory Democracy is. But I believe it is principally opportunism."

"[H]e would say that he doubted whether it was possible for anyone who had not visited India, even Members of Her Majesty's Government, to realize how incredibly strong, and, at the same time, how incredibly slender, our position in India was. It was strong far beyond ordinary human strength so long as we showed ourselves capable of ruling; but it was weaker than the weakest the moment we showed the faintest indications of relaxing our grasp."

"The struggle between England and Russia at the present moment is rather analogous to a celebrated struggle which took place some years ago, and which I can just remember, between two individuals in this country—the great fight between Heenan and Sayers."

"Mr. Chamberlain, a pinchbeck Robespierre."

"‘Trust the people’—I have long tried to make that my motto; but I know, and will not conceal, that there are still a few in our party who have that lesson yet to learn and who have yet to understand that the Tory party of to-day is no longer identified with that small and narrow class which is connected with the ownership of land; but that its great strength can be found, and must be developed, in our large towns as well as in our country districts. Yes, trust the people. You, who are ambitious, and rightly ambitious, of being the guardians of the British Constitution, trust the people, and they will trust you—and they will follow you and join you in the defence of that Constitution against any and every foe. I have no fear of democracy. I do not fear minorities; I do not care for those checks and securities which Mr. Goschen seems to think of such importance. Modern checks and securities are not worth a brass farthing. Give me a fair arrangement of the constituencies, and one part of England will correct and balance the other."

"I consider it to have been my good fortune to have heard and to have read many speeches and many orations of the Prime Minister [William Ewart Gladstone] with regard to Ireland. Many of his most confident predictions, vaticinations, and declarations are fresh in my mind. I have been more than once under what may be called the wand of the magician; and I know of no experience to which I can compare it, except, perhaps, the taking of morphia. The sensations, while the operation is going on, are transcendent; but the recovery is bitter beyond all experience."

"My chief reason for supporting the Church of England I find in the fact that, when compared with other creeds and other sects, it is essentially the Church of religious liberty. Whether in one direction or in another, it is continually possessed by the ambition, not of excluding, but of including, all shades of religious thought, all sorts and conditions of men, and in standing out like a lighthouse over a stormy ocean it marks the entrance to a port where those who are wearied at times with the woes of the world, and troubled often by the trials of existence, may search for and may find that "peace that passeth all understanding". I cannot and will not allow myself to believe that the English people, who are not only naturally religious, but also eminently practical, will ever consent, for the purpose of gratifying sectarian animosities, or for the wretched purpose of pandering to infidel proclivities, to deprive themselves of so abundant a fountain of aid and consolation, or acquiesce in the demolition of a constitution which elevates the life of the nation and consecrates the acts of the State."

"How many more of England's heroes—how many more of England's best and bravest—are to be sacrificed to the Moloch of Mid Lothian?"

"The Prime Minister [William Ewart Gladstone] is the greatest living master of the art of personal advertisement."

"For the purposes of recreation he has selected the felling of trees, and we may usefully remark that his amusements, like his politics, are essentially destructive. (Laughter.) Every afternoon the whole world is invited to assist at the crashing fall of some beech or elm or oak—the forest laments in order that Mr. Gladstone may perspire."

"If political parties and political leaders, not only Parliamentary, but local, should be so utterly lost to every feeling and dictate of honour and courage as to hand over coldly, and for the sake of purchasing a short and illusory Parliamentary tranquility, the lives and liberties of the loyalists of Ireland to their hereditary and most bitter foes, make no doubt on this point: Ulster will not be a consenting party; Ulster at the proper moment will resort to the supreme arbitrament of force; Ulster will fight; Ulster will be right; Ulster will emerge from the struggle victorious, because all that Ulster represents to us Britons will command the sympathy and support of an enormous section of our British community, and also, I feel certain, will attract the admiration and the approval of free and civilized nations."

"For the sake of this fifth message of peace to Ireland, this farrago of superlative nonsense, the vexatious and costly machinery of a general election is to be put in motion, all business other than what may be connected with political agitation is to be impeded and suspended; trade and commercial enterprise, now suffering sadly from protracted bad times, and which political stability can alone re-invigorate, are to be further harassed and handicapped; all useful and desired reforms are to be indefinitely postponed; the British Constitution is to be torn up; the Liberal party shivered into fragments. And why? For this reason and no other. To gratify the ambition of an old man in a hurry."

"Politics is not a science of the past; politics is the science of the future. You must use the past as a lever with which to manufacture the future. Politics is not a science, it is not a profession which consists in standing still; it is in this country essentially a science and a profession of progress."

"For Nature is a cunning nurse. She gives us lollipops all the way, and when the lollipop of hope and the lollipop of achievement are done, she gently inserts in our toothless gums the lollipop of remembrance. And with that pleasant vanity we are soothed to sleep."

"At the word I turned hastily to another column and found the news that had stirred him. And even in the midst of world-shaking events it stirred me too. For a brief moment I forgot the war and was back in that cheerful world where we used to be happy, where we greeted the rising sun with light hearts and saw its setting without fear. In that cheerful world I can hardly recall a time when a big man with a black beard was not my King ... I owe more undiluted happiness to him than to any man that ever lived. For he was the genial tyrant in a world that was all sunshine."

"It is not ponderable things alone that are found in gardens, but the great wonder of life, the peace of nature, the influences of sunsets and seasons and of all the tangible things to which we can give no name, not because they are small, but because they are outside the compass of our speech. In the great legend of the Fall the spiritual disaster of Man is symbolised by his exclusion from a garden, and the moral tragedy of modern industrialism is only the repetition of that ancient fable. Man lost his garden, and with it that tranquillity of soul that is found in gardens."

"It is not that we cannot think. It is that we are afraid to think. It is so much easier to go with the tide than against it, to shout with the crowd than to stand lonely and suspect in the midst of it. Even some of us who try to escape this hypnotism of the flock do not succeed in thinking independently. We only succeed in getting into other flocks."

"Within the context of revolutionary discourse, ideas which do not truly challenge consensual conceits become commodified within the consensual. ... Anything that can be removed from radical discourse will become incorporated and thereby nullified within the consensual narrative. Revolution and its leaders can all too easily become commodity: Che the poster, Sartre ‘le maitre de’. It is in this manner that revolutionary ideas are consumed as product within a construct of moderation calculatedly designed to render them impotent."

"Friendship's an abstract of this noble flame, 'Tis love refined and purged from all its dross, The next to angel's love, if not the same, As strong as passion is, though not so gross: It antedates a glad eternity And is an heaven in epitome."

"Essential honour must be in a friend, Not such as every breath fans to and fro; But born within, is its own judge and end, And dares not sin, though sure that none should know. Where friendship's spoke, honesty's understood; For none can be a friend that is not good."

"I did but see him and he disappeared, I did but pluck the rose-bud and it fell, A sorrow unforeseen and scarcely feared, For ill can mortals their afflictions spell."

"I've always been a religious person, and I try to think that every disappointment might just be a blessing in disguise. … I pray every day. In the mornings and, before I go to bed. I think it's important to pray not just when things are going bad."

"I have a better understanding of my body now. … Everyone wants to feel fresh in the game – there’s no better feeling – so I just make sure I’m doing the right things and trying to tick every box: , massage, eating the right things. … I think I’ve managed [to adopt veganism] successfully. … I don’t find anything hard to give up, as such, because I know the feeling scoring goals gives me. … I just want to try to play as long as I can. So I do the stuff that will give me the best opportunity to perform and score goals."

"The question of uniformity of weight is most desirable, but there are other matters that also demand attention. So far as weights are concerned, if a lad at 8st 8lb has proved himself best at that weight and is willing to dispute the premiership with any other boxer in the world, he is as much entitled to call himself champion of the world at 8st 8lb as is the equally unbeatable champion who is 2lb heavier. But yet we cannot afford to have too many classes for recognised world’s championship titles, and the eight divisions suggested by the ‘Sporting Life’ seem ample to meet all requirements. Let the weights be decided later, however. I agree that the present vast number of boxers makes it necessary that a couple of extra classes added to the six at present acknowledged, but for these extra classes there should be a distinctive nomenclature. To call a man light-heavy-weight conveys the meaning, but it is a paradoxical term at best.One very important rule that should be established and rigorously enforced is the elimination of all 'win, lose or draw’ demands of title holders. A boxer holding the title should be compelled to defend it against a bona-fide challenger, who has genuine backing within a period of three to six months after the challenge has been issued. Should the holder decline to meet his rival, then the title should pass forfeit to the challenger provided the latter signifies his intention to defend it against all legitimate claimants.It is probable—and it would be good for the sport—that a series of belts representing the various championships should follow; the belts to be held by the title holders during their tenure; these belts, of course, to pass from one title holder to his successor, with the exception that when one holder has successfully defended it for certain number years, or against a certain number of challengers, the belt should become his permanent property, and a new one obtained for his successor. It would good idea to launch these belts into the sport by way a tournament, conducted in manner similar to wrestling tournament be held the Alhambra, but in boxing tournament it might difficult to gather tho best men in the world. Still, it would be a most excellent idea if i it could carried out, and should like see it.""

"I was the baby of a large family, and as a youngster fresh to an infant school my mother tried to break me of lefthandedness. I always held my knife in the left hand and fork in the right. One day at dinner my mother said, ' You're not a boy; you must be girl to eat your food like that. We shall have to call you Peggy.' My elder brothers, always glad to take it out of me, carried that name to school, where the other boys seized upon it, and it has stuck to me through a life-time, though it is years since anybody was curious enough to ask how I got it."

"Hawkes's English version [of the Hong lou meng] is not a perfect translation, to be sure, but in terms of accuracy, of style, of suppleness of language, of felicity of expression, and, above all, of imaginativeness and creativity, it is unrivalled by any other version, whether English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish. If, as many translation theorists believe, every age has to translate anew the classics for itself, of all the versions of the Hong lou meng in the five major European languages mentioned, Hawkes's is the best qualified to be considered the version for our age. In a word, it is a version which Cao Xueqin would have been proud and delighted to acknowledge as the truly worthy companion to his masterpiece."

"Hawkes brought to bear such a wide range of rhetorical skills, such penetrating insight into character, such finely honed dialogue, such superbly crafted versification; but more than anything, such a profound sense of humanity, such fun and exhilaration, such melancholy and wisdom. In it he succeeds in grasping to the full, and yet at the same time transcending, the sheer Chineseness of the work, making it into a real novel for reading, revealing it as a true masterpiece of world literature."

"You take well-warranted and judicious liberties to make things clear to your readers, & this is excellent, but not something we are allowed to do. And your dialogue is alive and in character, your verse easy and elegant. Some of those bloody poems studded with classical allusions and double meanings are untranslatable in full, but at least you convey the flavour & give readers an idea of what the poetizing game was like."