It is this mental profundity which is the main thing to remember about
the Duke of Devonshire. To speak of him as if he were merely a man of
character and firmness is to mistake him altogether. The Duke impressed
all who saw him at close quarters. It was only the people who did not
know him who said that he owed his rise to high office solely to his
birth and wealth. I remember Mr. Chamberlain once saying to me, "It's
all nonsense to talk about Hartington being dull and stupid. He is a
very clever man." What made this admission all the more memorable was
that Mr. Chamberlain was at the moment in a condition of something like
exasperation with his colleague's dilatory ways, and his constitutional
unwillingness to tackle a question till it was almost too ripe; you
simply could not hurry him. One of the difficult things about the Duke
was that he never realised the full greatness of his position in
politics, how much people depended on his lead, and how anxious they
were to find out what he thought and then fellow him without demur. But
the more they wanted to get a lead out of him, the more he seemed
determined to avoid if he possibly could the responsibility they had
asked him to assume, and partly because of a certain lethargy of his
mind, and partly because he never could be made to believe that anybody
could really want to lean upon and follow somebody else, he often
appeared to be utterly stubborn.
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