the editor’s chair with regret.
“If one had taken the precaution to have a father who had accumulated sufficient wealth,” he wrote once, “to allow his sons the caviare of candour, nothing would be more entertaining than starting a paper.”
In 1906 an opportunity was offered to him of entering Parliament. It was his chance, but it was a fighting chance. After the most strenuous of fights, he was returned as Parliamentary representative for East Tyrone. His majority was only sixteen, and it may be fairly said that only he could have won and held that seat in the Nationalist interest.
In the autumn of 1906 he went with Mr. Hazleton to America on a Home Rule Mission. His oratorical gifts were much appreciated there, and his six months’ tour of the States was a fine experience, if a physically trying one. He liked America, with her love of freedom and her genial, hospitable ways, and always hoped again to “cross the pond.”
I remember a few sayings which he brought back from America which he regarded as typical of American humour—such as “I don’t know where I am going, but I am on my way,” and “We trust in God; all others pay cash.”
In 1908 he translated M. Dubois’ Contemporary Ireland, and wrote an introduction, which established his literary reputation.
At the general election in 1910 my husband increased his majority of sixteen to one of one hundred and eighteen. Mr. Shane Leslie, who gave him valuable help in this election, wrote thus—
“Kettle was the most delightful of platform speakers, and his witticisms and lyrical turns of speech made the election one long intellectual treat. He could turn over weighty questions of economics or of international policy with an ease that struck home to the peasant mind.... At one spot, I remember, he was greeted by a poverty-stricken populace, who had improvised a mountain band and crude home-made torches of turf and paraffin. Kettle immediately said: ‘Friends, you have met us with God’s two best gifts to man—fire and music.’ It was as instantaneous as graceful.” Having had such a hard fight, he loved his constituency as if it were a human thing. The issues fought in East Tyrone, as in all northern constituencies, were not the issues raised in ordinary Nationalist politics. In the North, religion is the predominant colour; it is the Catholic Green against the Protestant Orange. I say guardedly, predominant; of course there is the great issue—Home Rule v. Unionism. But the conspicuous place religion took struck a Dubliner as something quite extraordinary. I remember one amusing incident of the election, which my husband often cited as typical. Our motor-car broke down, and while repairs were in progress a small boy was an interested spectator. When all was in order again and we were about to start, the boy looked wistfully at us—at least as wistfully as a northern boy can: they are not demonstrative except on the Twelfth of July. My husband interpreting the look, invited him for a drive. He accepted, and as my husband set him down after his spin the boy lifted his cap and said: “Thank you, Mr. Kettle, I am much obliged. To hell With the Pope!” and walked sedately away. It was surely a spirited and quaint declaration of independence and incorruptibility.
Another incident, too, stands out. The night the poll was declared there was wild enthusiasm in Tyrone. As Mr. Leslie says, “there was a green rash.” My husband had promised that if he won, he would address a meeting at Cookstown. To get there it was necessary to pass through an Orange hamlet; as feeling was high and the hour late, it was deemed imprudent for us to go, but my husband insisted. We were about to start in a motor when one supporter, who had done his best to detain us, said very lugubriously: “Well, you have a terrible road before you.” “What’s the matter with it?” questioned the chauffeur anxiously. He was a Dublin man and quite ignorant of local politics. “Is it full of hills?” “No,” replied the other in a tone of grave warning; “full of Protestants.”
My husband’s opponent in this last election was Mr. Saunderson, who based his claims chiefly on the fact that he was the son of the late Colonel Saunderson. “Mr. Saunderson,” said my husband, “has protested so often that he is the son of Colonel Saunderson, that I, for my part, am inclined to believe him”—a touch of ridicule that went home with an Irish audience.
He was impatient of bigotry and narrowness and any attempt to stir up in Ulster the ashes of old hatreds and animosities. Once appealing to Ulstermen to forego their enthusiasm for William of Orange, he said with effect: “Why let us quarrel over a dead Dutchman?” His famous reply to Kipling, who by his doggerel tried to fan the flames of civil war, is worth quoting—
“The poet, for a coin,
Hands to the gabbling rout
A bucketful of Boyne
To put the sunrise out.”
In Parliament, he was an instant success. He was a born orator and spoke with all the intensity that passionate conviction lends. In his book on Irish Orators, he wrote: “Without knowledge, sincerity, and a hearty spiritual commitment to public causes, the crown of oratory, such as it is, is not to be won.” He had those requisites abundantly. In this book he gives a definition of an orator than which nothing could be finer: “The sound and rumour of great multitudes, passions hot as ginger in the mouth, torches, tumultuous comings and goings, and, riding through the whirlwind of it all, a personality, with something about him of the prophet, something of the actor, a touch of the charlatan, crying out not so much with his own voice as with that of the multitude, establishing with a gesture, refuting with a glance, stirring ecstasies of hatred and affection—is not that a common, and far from fantastic, conception of the orator?”
An appreciation of him containing reminiscences of two speeches in the House may not be deemed amiss here: “Wit and humour, denunciation and appeal came from him not merely fluently but always with effect. Tall and slight, with his soft boyish face and luminous eyes, he soon startled and then compelled the attention of the House by his peculiar irresistible sparkle and his luminous argument. Two pictures of him in that period survive. The first was on the occasion of the second reading of one of the numerous Women’s Suffrage Bills. ‘Mr. Speaker,’ he said in his rich Dublin accent and almost drawling intonation, ‘they say that if we admit women here as members, the House will lose in mental power.’ He flung a finger round the packed benches: ‘Mr. Speaker,’ he continued, ‘it is impossible.’ The House roared with laughter. ‘They tell me also that the House will suffer in morals. Mr. Speaker, I don’t believe that is possible either.’ The applause rang out again at this double hit.... I remember him again in the House on a hot night in June. A dull debate on Foreign Affairs was in progress. The recent travels of Mr. Roosevelt through Egypt and his lecture to England at the Guildhall reception were under discussion. Kettle let loose upon the famous Teddy the barbed irony of his wit. I recall only one of his biting phrases: ‘This new Tartarin of Tarascon who has come from America to shoot lions and lecture Empires.”
Another distinguished critic writing of him says: “His darting phrases made straight for the heart of unintelligence—sometimes also, no doubt, for the heart of intelligence. When he sat in Parliament he summed up the frailty of Mr. Balfour in yielding to the Tariff Reformers in the phrase: ‘They have nailed their leader to the mast.’”
He could be caustic to a degree. “I don’t mind loquacity,” he once remarked, “so long as it is not Belloc-quacity.”
“Mr. Long,” he said another time, “knows a sentence should have a beginning, but he quite forgets it should also have an end.”
In a flashing epigram he once summed up the difference between the two great English Parties: “When in office, the Liberals forget their principles and the Tories remember their friends.” Asked once to define a Jingo, he replied: “A Jingo is a man who pays for one seat in a tram-car and occupies two.”
This was, I think, the happiest period of his
