If he wanted to do so, he could quote
freely and intimately from Browning, or Matthew Arnold. The latter was,
I think, specially liked by him. But here again, any idea of his liking
to prove himself a person of culture or learning cannot be entertained
for a moment. He was much too sure of himself and much too sure of his
own aims to want to be regarded as a man of cultivation. He liked what
he liked, and he talked about what he liked. There was no "showing off."
Again, there was not the slightest touch of snobbishness in Mr.
Chamberlain. I don't think he was even amused by people expecting him,
because he was not a man of great family or known as a great merchant
prince, to be socially a kind of wild man to whom it must seem strange
to eat a good dinner every day of his life "complete with the best of
wines and cigars,"--in fact, to live exactly like men who had inherited
their money, not made it. In truth, though the fact was unknown to the
public and it never occurred to Mr. Chamberlain to talk about it, he was
not a self-made man, but the son of a rich father. He belonged to a very
old City family, for Mr, Chamberlain was not a Birmingham man, but a
Londoner, through and through.
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