'"No one but your husband could have polled so many Gladstonian
votes. London is dead against the Prime Minister."'

Mr. Chamberlain wrote of his deep regret and sympathy that the one
Ministerialist seat which he had earnestly hoped would be kept should
have gone. He pointed out that the falling off in this case was less
than in other London polls; but the reactionary period would continue
while Mr. Gladstone was in politics. If he retired, Mr. Chamberlain
thought the party would recover in a year or two.

There is a warm letter from Mr. Joseph Cowen of Newcastle, who wrote:

'Chelsea has been going Tory for some time past, and only you would
have kept it Liberal at the last election.... If you had not been
one of the bravest men that ever lived, you would have been driven
away long ago. I admire your courage and sincerely sympathize with
your misfortunes.... I always believed you would achieve the highest
position in English statesmanship, and I don't despair of your doing
so still.'

For a final word in this chapter of discouragement may be given a letter
from Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, who wrote from a detached position, having
been prevented by illness from standing both in 1885 and 1886:

'What a delightful leader of a party is the G.O.M.! It is an
interesting subject of speculation, though, thank God, it is one of
speculation only, what might happen to this country if, like the old
Red Indian in Hawthorne's novel, he lived to be 300 years old.... My
own opinions about setting up a Parliament in Dublin are quite
unchanged, but I look on the G.O.M. as the great obstacle to any