Beview of Eevi'>ws, 1/12 J 13. 



lOl I 



NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE MONTH. 



" LABBY." 



HENRY LABOUCHERE. 



L. 



Life of henry Labouchere. By A 



Thorold. (Constable. i8/- net.) 



This life-story of Henry Labouchere 

 at first strikes one forcibly as being 

 rather a history of the politics and dip- 

 lomacy of his period than as a personal 

 history, for even to the end we seem 

 scarcely to get one bit nearer to the man 

 himself. There is no home life in it ; 

 his wife is just mentioned, and if it 

 were not for the story of the dog pro- 

 bably we should not have heard of the 

 daughter. " Never," he says to a corres- 

 pondent, " become the slave of a dog." 

 Then, paradoxically, he goes on to show 

 that it cannot be helped, when that dog 

 belongs to your daughter and it has to 

 accompany her on journeys, to be fed 

 at stations, and all its wants attended 

 to, whether you like it or no. 



Close the book, however, and you will 

 find that you have a distinct and vivid 



perception of one of the best marked 

 and best known independent personali- 

 ties which have occupied the public 

 stage in England. No doubt this 

 largely arises from the character of the 

 man himself — witty, cynical, cool, un- 

 impassioned, and sarcastic ; a man who 

 was so keenly conscious of the absurd 

 side of things that he rarely took even 

 himself seriously. It is most likely that 

 only his very own ever had a chance of 

 seeing anything in him to love. One 

 thing we do gather — the intense appre- 

 ciation which the nephew has of the 

 uncle without being blind to his faults. 

 It is rather as if Mr. Thorold were so 

 afraid of showing partiality that his im- 

 pulse is to lay stress upon " Labby's " 

 disagreeable rather than his agreeable 

 qualities. In the preface he says: — 

 " Mr. Labouchere was a terribly sincere 

 person, partly from pride, partly from 

 indolence. He said what everyone 

 thought but did not dare to say, and 

 with the complete absence of those con- 

 ventional superstructures which imprison 

 most of us. Moreover, he was French 

 by birth, French in his method of for- 

 mation of opinion, in his outlook on 

 life, in the peculiar quality of his wit." 



In his personal outlook on things, Mr. 

 Labouchere was non-religious, not anti- 

 religious, for he fully recognised the 

 utility of religious belief in other 

 people ; and it is not surprising, there- 

 fore, that such a man was constitution- 

 ally suspicious of strong feelings or en- 

 thusiasm of any kind. " I do not mind," 

 he said, " Mr. Gladstone alwavs having: 

 an ace up his sleeve, but I do object to 

 his always saying that Providence put 

 it there." 



Ideals, he held, were only entitled to 

 respect when translated into material 

 currency. " How much £ s. d. does he 

 believe in what he says?" he would ask 

 concerning some fervid prophet. And 

 if convinced that the requisite material- 

 isation had occurred, he would accept 

 the prophet as one more strange and 



