A Candid Portrait.

Here it is appropriate to continue the sketch—one would not call it altogether an appreciation—of the young Liberal crusader in Joseph Evison's “Political Portraits,” the little book of 1892. “Mr. Reeves” (says “Quiz”) “was born clever and under such a lucky star that his natural cleverness has been polished, or at least sharpened, in the schools. Moreover, he is the possessor of that great political pearl beyond price—the power of facile expression. In his disposition and conversation are no undue proportions of the saccharine that cloys. So equipped, to what political height may he not rise? He has alrèady risen—in political life—with a certain startling rapidity. It seems but yesterday since he was a profoundly nervous, blushing and distressing selfconscious parliamentary neophyte, who coyly disburdened himself of shrinking little sarcasms in the House and blushed to find them heard. So may the briefless but ambitious barrister, whose down is not all come upon him, practice small, meek jocosities in presence of an unoccupied woolsack. But we have changed all that, and now when the Hon. W. P. Reeves bursts eloquence upon the House it is with a sarcasm meteor-like in its brilliance and the self-confidence of a hoary leader of men. We tremble, we reiterate, to think to what altitudes—political altitudes—he may soar before he stops.

“Had England agreed with Mr. Reeves, or had Mr. Reeves agreed with England, he might have stayed there. Staying there, it is more likely that his peculiar bent of mind would have drawn him into the vortex of politics, and that the associations and circumstances among which he then dwelt would have made him a Conservative—a fine old crusted Tory of Tories. In time, for with his talents he must have made his mark, he might have even assumed the mantle which Benjamin Disraeli, the erstwhile red-hot Radical, left behind him when he went to—to somewhere where mantles are not needed. Who knows but, had Mr. Reeves remained in England, that fifty years hence the English people might have been decorating his statue with flowers—buttercups and daisies and other floral emblems of innocence. It was not to be, however, and so, instead of the good old English gentleman, one of the olden time, drinking port and swearing fealty to Church and State, we have the fiery Radical, the red-hot Socialist, the perspiring dreamer of very magnificent but perfectly Utopian dreams! Of course we ask the pardon of Mr. Reeves for presuming to draw any comparison between him and Earl Beaconsfield. We were, however, pressed for an analogy.”

The keenly critical “Quiz” went on to say that “as far as fluency and quickness of repartee went there was probably no one in the House, except Mr. R. W. J. Reeves, who can touch W. P. But their methods, if not their names, are utterly different. The repartee of 'Dick' Reeves redounds with fun and geniality, while that of his Ministerial namesake is redolent of sulphur and vinegar. Mr. W. P. Reeves does not shine so brilliantly in his longer essays, being too anxious to sacrifice solidity to effect. So anxious—some might say—to maintain the reputation of an infant phenomenon. Of his genuine cleverness, his capacity for hard and sustained intellectual toil none can have the slightest doubt. In all that regards education he is head and shoulders above his fellow Ministers. He has the brain to conceive, the energy and knowledge necessary to carry out difficult affairs, and he has some pluck. But he has no tact, and he does not inspire affection or even personal enthusiasm. Those most closely associated with him in politics admire his head, but do not praise his heart. It may be that the knowledge of this fact has had a malign influence upon him and has—as in the case of many another able man—made him bitter. His sole idea of politics seems to be that they are a war of tongues, and that he who can say the nastiest thing in the nastiest manner must inevitably win. Time, however, working on material so plastic, cannot fail to mellow and round the clever young man. As he mellows, as he gets more real experience of men and affairs, he will inevitably see the folly of many of the wild political doctrines he now appears to believe in.”

That Mr. Reeves mellowed in time we know, though he did not repent of the “wild political doctrines” that Mr. Evison scarified. The things that seemed so wild and revolutionary to some people in 1892 are mild and commonplace indeed in 1934.