Another element of enjoyment was that I was young--only twenty-six. Youth is an invaluable asset in a first campaign. Youth can canvass all day, and harangue all night. It can traverse immense distances without fatigue, make speeches in the open air without catching cold, sleep anywhere, eat anything, and even drink port with a grocer's label on it, at five in the afternoon. Then again, I had a natural and inborn love of public speaking, and I have known no enjoyment in life equal to that of addressing a great audience which you feel to be actively sympathetic.
Yes, that spring of 1880 was a delightful time. As the condemned highwayman said to the chaplain who was exhorting him to repentance for his life of adventure on the road--"You dog, it was delicious." It was all so new. One emerged (like Herbert Gladstone) from the obscurity of College rooms or from the undistinguished herd of London ball-goers, or from the stables and stubbles of a country home, and became, all in a moment, a Personage. For the first time in one's life one found that people--grown-up, sensible, vote-possessing people--wished to know one's opinions, and gave heed to one's words. For the first time, one had "Colours" of one's own, as if one were a Regiment or a University; for the first time one beheld one's portrait, flattering though perhaps mud-bespattered, on every wall. For the first time one was cheered in the street, and entered the Corn-Exchange amid what the Liberal paper called "thunders of applause," and the opponent's organ whittled down to "cheers."
But canvassing cannot, I think, be reckoned among the pleasures of a candidature. One must be very young indeed to find it even tolerable. A candidate engaged in a house-to-house canvass has always seemed to me (and not least clearly when I was the candidate) to sink beneath the level of humanity. To beg for votes, as if they were alms or broken victuals, is a form of mendicancy which is incompatible with common self-respect, and yet it is a self-abasement which thirty years ago custom imperatively demanded. "If my vote ain't worth calling for, I suppose it ain't worth 'aving" was the formula in which the elector stated his requirement.