Irish disaffection was invaluable to those who were actually grappling
day by day with the problems of Irish government.


It was probably at Mrs. Jeune's that I first saw Mr. Goschen, and we
rapidly made friends. His was a great position at that time. Independent
of both parties, yet trusted by both; at once disinterested and
sympathetic; a strong Liberal in some respects, an equally strong
Conservative in others--he never spoke without being listened to, and
his support was eagerly courted both by Mr. Gladstone, from whom he had
refused office in 1880, without, however, breaking with the Liberal
party, and by the Conservatives, who instinctively felt him their
property, but were not yet quite clear as to how they were to finally
capture him. That was decided in 1886, when Mr. Goschen voted in the
majority that killed the Home Rule Bill, and more definitely in the
following year when Randolph Churchill resigned the Exchequer in a fit
of pique, thinking himself indispensable, and not at all expecting Lord
Salisbury to accept his resignation. But, in his own historic phrase, he
"forgot Goschen," and Mr. Goschen stepped easily into his shoes and
remained there.

I find from an old diary that the Goschens dined with us in Russell
Square two nights before the historic division on the Home Rule Bill,
and I remember how the talk raged and ranged. Mr. Goschen was an
extremely agreeable talker, and I seem still to hear his husky voice,
with the curious deep notes in it, and to be looking into the large but
short-sighted and spectacled eyes--he refused the Speakership mainly on
the grounds of his sight--of which the veiled look often made what he
said the more racy and unexpected. A letter he wrote me in 1886, after
his defeat at Liverpool, I kept for many years as the best short