Financial necessity led him to write on just about any subject including one memorable article
Financial necessity led him to write on just about any subject, including one memorable article on the dangerous flammability of crinolines (“The British Suttee”).But it was in Salisbury’s political commentaries – especially in his unguarded criticism of Disraeli, which in these early years was often personally bitter – that his wit, and his unwillingness to curb his tongue in the interests of his political career, were most clearly seen. Roberts’ Salisbury is a book worthy to place besides John Morley’s Gladstone and Robert Blake’s Disraeli.One of Roberts’ strengths derives from his preparedness to read through Salisbury’s journalism, the millions of words of articles, books reviews and political reportage with which the young Robert Cecil earned his living during the period when his father’s disapproval of his marriage cast him out of favour with his family, and before he succeeded to his title and estates (an older brother died in 1865, leaving the way clear for him to succeed). For whereas Jenkins’ Gladstone was almost exclusively based on printed materials, Roberts has ranged far and wide over unpublished sources to give the most rounded portrait possible of Salisbury: not only Salisbury’s own papers, but those of many of his contemporaries whose opinions act as a kind of historical control mechanism on those of the central character. Roberts’ publishers are keen to promote the book as a partner for Roy Jenkins’ biography of Gladstone, but the comparison in misjudged. However, this prejudice was quickly overcome, for Roberts’ mastery of his sources, combined with his ability to vary the tone and colour of his very long narrative has resulted in both a fascinating political history and an engaging character study.
“Whatever happens will be for the worse,” he once wrote, “and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible.” This fundamentally was Salisbury’s political credo, and it can make him appear unsympathetically classbound, but also, at the same time, strangely reassuring.Gwendolen Cecil, Salisbury’s daughter, published a four-volume life of her father between 1921 and 1932. He was also an aristocrat fighting a desperate rearguard action against the progressive forces of the new democracy. Salisbury was reticent by temperament and his congenital depressiveness made him a fatalist. Indeed, possibly no leading British political figure of this century or the last displayed by his words or actions less evidence of hypocrisy or cant What you saw was, very largely, what you got.
Nor did Salisbury’s personality and political style stimulate the growth of a cult. No politician could have been further removed from any hint of Dizzy’s flamboyance or exhibitionism; nor, unlike the Grand Old Man, was Salisbury given to public displays of tortured conscience. Salisbury’s periods in office cannot be easily and attractively labelled in the way that, say, Disraeli’s extension of the franchise, the famous “leap in the dark”, can be. Yet both historians and the Conservative party itself, usually anxious to mythologise its past, have largely neglected Salisbury’s enormous contribution to the political history of the 19th century.
In some ways it isn’t difficult to see why. Wilfred Blunt likened his departure to the collapse of the ancient 300-foot campanile of St Mark’s in Venice which occurred a few days after Salisbury delivered up his seals of office.
