27 March: Boreham on John Bright

Purity and Power
On March 27, 1889 there passed away one of the most notable public figures of all time. Thousands of people who had little sympathy with his Quaker tenets and his political doctrines, nevertheless admired the Homeric splendour of the personality of John Bright. As we contemplate his burly figure—bold, resolute, almost defiant—and as we gaze upon his leonine head, crowned, during his later and greater years, with billowing hair of snowy whiteness, he appears like the outstanding peak of a sky-piercing range. Everything about him is massive, majestic, mountainous. In her "Records of a Quaker Family," Mrs. Boyce casually observes that the physical appearance of John Bright stood out in strong and striking contrast against that of most of the young Quakers of his time. The prevailing type, she says, was tall, thin, long-faced, and regular featured. But Bright's robust figure, his strength of chest and limb, his honest face, and resolute carriage reminded one of the stalwart leaders of classical times:

So sturdy Cromwell pushed broad-shouldered on
So burly Luther breasted
Babylon.

His life was in keeping with his looks. The heroic achievements of his illustrious career—his gallant fight for the food of the people; his fearless championship of the slave; his stubborn insistence on the enfranchisement of the cottager; his uncompromising stand for civil and religious liberty; his dauntless struggle on behalf of European peace—tower up before the fancy of the student of his life story like the virgin summits of the Himalayas. His character, as Mr. Gladstone feelingly remarked in the House of Commons, is one which we instinctively regard, not merely with admiration, nor even with gratitude, but with reverential contemplation.

Public Service Born Of Private Sorrow
The Right Hon. Augustine Birrell always felt that the attitude of John Bright's mind was that of a solitary; he seemed to be brooding on thoughts too fast for utterance. "Deep in his heart," says Trevelyan, his biographer, "there lies always something unseen, something reserved and concealed. Although he was a popular hero, and a man so sociable that he never travelled by train but he drew into conversation his chance carriage companions; and although he was always happy and tender and talkative when wife or child or friend was near, yet the presence of an inner life of deep feeling and meditation could be felt as the moving power of all that he did." All through his long life he impressed everybody as a man with a secret, a secret that gladdened his heart, shone in his face, and imparted colour and signficance to all his behaviour.

He was born at Rochdale in Lancashire. He lived there all his life and sleeps in a modest grave on the lawn on front of the Friends' Meeting House there. The great day of his life—the day that gave him to the nation and the world—was the day on which his beautiful young wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, was suddenly snatched from him. The story is one of the most tender idylls in the public life of England. It was in 1841. Bright was in his 30th year. The state of the country was desperate. Hungry and miserable, the people were in an ugly mood. Like starving wolves, they were in danger of throwing reason to the winds and pouncing upon anything or anybody that stood in their path. It was the atmosphere in which revolutions are born. And, whilst the country was in peril, young John Bright, then quite unknown, nursed his private and crushing grief. His friend, Richard Cobden, called upon him. Cobden, seven years his senior, begged the broken-hearted man to turn his eyes from his personal bereavement to the public misery. Why should they not labour together to bring in a better day? Cobden's words rang through Bright's tortured soul like a bugle call. He immediately accepted the challenge. Two years later, he entered Parliament.

Dignity Goes Hand In Hand With Simplicity
In view of the brave record that he has bequeathed to us, it is amusing to reflect that, as a baby, John Bright was so pitifully delicate that he had to be carefully wrapped in cotton wool. His father, as he carried him about the house, often looked at the pinched and puny face of the child, wondering whether he was alive or dead. The poor man never dreamed in those days that his boy would one day stand before the world as the very personification of everything that was sturdy, robust, and virile. Bright appealed to men of all kinds and classes. No two figures in the public life of their time contrasted with each other, in their outlook upon life, more sharply than John Bright and John Morley. Yet no man admired the titanic strength and crystalline simplicity of Bright more than Morley. Bright, Morley says, was the glory of the House of Commons. He ranks him with Hampden, Selden, and Pym. He regards him as the greatest and most finished orator to whom Parliament ever listened, surpassing even Pitt and Fox. When a whisper ran through the lobbies that "Bright was up!" every seat in the House was quickly filled.

He loved all pure and beautiful things. "He never tired," says Trevelyan, "of mountains and streams or of the sound of Milton and the Bible passages." The last photograph ever taken of him represents him with his arm round his little grand-daughter; and the last half-conscious caress of his dying hand rested on the head of his little dog, Fly. Morley confesses that the most pure and impressive piece of religion that he himself ever witnessed was John Bright reading the New Testament to his maidservants shortly after his wife's death, followed by a solemn Quaker silence. He lies, as the last sentence of his biography puts it, not under Gothic arches hung with conquered flags; not among warriors and princes and the statesmen who strove for fame and power; but under the open sky, beside the house of peace where he had worshipped as a child, and within sound of the footsteps of the workmen whom he loved, as they hurry up and down the steep, flagged street. And so he would have wished it.

F W Boreham

Image: John Bright