t on the bench in the
second row below the gangway, on the Government side of the House. Mr.
Jennings was seated on the bench behind, close to where he had found a
place for me under the Gallery. He carefully arranged the notes for his
speech, and directly the Member who had been addressing the House sat
down, Mr. Jennings jumped to his feet to "catch the Speaker's eye." But
Lord Randolph, who had been very restless all through the speech just
delivered, sprang to his feet. Jennings leant over to him and said
something, but Churchill waved him impatiently away, and the Speaker
called upon Lord Randolph. Jennings sank back with a look of disgust and
chagrin, which changed to astonishment when Lord Randolph fired out that
famous Pigott speech, in which he attacked his late colleagues with a
vituperation and vulgarity he had never before betrayed. His speech
electrified the House and disgusted his friends--none more so than his
faithful Jennings, who left the Chamber directly after his "friend's"
tirade of abuse, returning later in the evening to make a capital
speech, full of feeling and power, in which he finally threw over Lord
Randolph. In the meantime, meeting me, he did not hide the fact that the
incident had determined him to have nothing more to say to Churchill.
And this was the man I once drew a cartoon of in _Punch_ on all fours,
with a coat covering his head (suspiciously like a donkey's head), with
"Little Randy" riding on his back!

[Illustration: LORD RANDOLPH AND LOUIS JENNINGS.]

If Samson's strength vanished with his hair, Lord Randolph's strength
vanished with the growing of his beard. The real reason why Lord
Randolph so strangely transformed himself is not generally known, but it
was for the simplest of all reasons--like that of the gentleman who
committed suicide because he was "tired of buttoning and unbuttoning,"
Lord Randolph was tired of shaving or being shaved; hence the heroic
beard, which has offended certain political purists who think that a man
with an established reputation has no right to alter his established
appearance. Still, if he had not vanished to grow his beard, I doubt if
he would have survived the winter; and probably he discovered that it
was good for any man to escape now and then from what the late Mr. R. L.
Stevenson called "the servile life of cities." Perhaps no one received
such a "sending off," or was more feted, than Lord Randolph Churchill.
Happening to be a guest at m