London at the End of the Century:A Book of Gossip
a Beckett, Arthur William
1900
ARCHBISHOP MAGEE AND OTHERS.
Amongst other orators of the past I call to mind Archbishop Magee, who was, I suppose, at the time of his lamented death, one of the finest (if not the finest) speakers that the House of Lords could boast. The last time I heard the prelate address an audience was at a charity dinner in connection with the Artists' Benevolent Fund. His address was a model one. Nothing could have been better than the | |
233 | contrast of light and shade. Now he was causing roars of laughter, now bringing unbidden tears to eyes generally free from such a sign of womanly weakness. He took advantage of his nationality to refer to the well known love of the Irish people for peace, and their equally marked aversion to anything connected with He said that he was a lover of harmony, not only as an ecclesiastic, but as a native of the Emerald Isle. Then he described a beautiful picture that he had seen during the season hanging to the walls of Burlington House. It was a sketch of the calm and silvery Thames. The sun was setting, and the atmosphere spoke eloquently of rest and solitude. |
said his Grace, or rather his Lordship, for he then was only Bishop of Peterborough, | |
Then another admirable speaker was the late Charles , whose orations have since his death been gathered together in a single volume, which is quite worthy of taking its place on the shelf reserved for his novels. never cared for oratory, and preferred to write rather than to talk-at a public meeting. As a conversationalist he was admirable, and was the feature of the Garrick Club when that brilliant crowd of clever men foregathered in the old quarters at , . Sir Edward | |
234 | Bulwer Lytton, afterwards Lord Lytton, and the father of the late His delivery was extremely artificial, and he found considerable difficulty in modulating his voice, no doubt because he suffered from the infirmity of deafness. I remember seeing him at the old Portland Club, in the days when that was situated at the corner of Stafford Place, Oxford Street. As a rule whist was negotiated in silence, but on the occasion to which I refer there had been such extremely bad play on the part of one of the quartette, that at the end of the rubber there was considerable Hot words were spoken that a hundred years earlier might have led to a matutinal visit to Chalk Farm. But Lord Lytton heeded them not. He sat like a statue, unmindful of their utterance. Both Lyndhurst and Brougham learned their speeches by heart before they delivered them, and Lord John Russell was the last of the statesmen who used the old pronunciation for invariably calling the word |
