Constituency : Windsor 1865-6, Middlesex 1867-8, Northampton 1880-1906
Henry was the other victorious Liberal at Windsor.
Henry was the nephew of the former Taunton MP of the same name. His father was a banker. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge where his degree was withheld following accusations of cheating. His family arranged for him to enter the diplomatic service and he held minor posts in various capitals between 1854 and 1864 despite a temperamental unsuitability for the work. When he wrote to Russell in 1864 refusing a posting to Buenos Aires in arrogant terms he was promptly handed his cards.
Henry's election in 1865 was overturned on petition. He returned for Middlesex in a by-election in 1867 but was narrowly defeated in 1868.
In 1867 Henry and a group of friends set up a new theatre company, the Queen's Theatre, Long Acre which lasted for 12 years. One of the actresses, Henrietta Hodson became his mistress for 20 years until her husband's death allowed them to marry in 1887.
In 1869 Henry inherited a large part of his uncle's fortune. This allowed him to pursue a journalistic career while outside Parliament. His lively style gained him a large following particularly after his reports from the Paris siege of 1870. In 1877 he started his own weekly journal Truth , a proto-Private Eye which attracted many libel suits. He appears in the lyrics to Gilbert and Sullivan's His Excellency after a feud with W S Gilbert developed.
Henry's views were not always progressive. He was a strong opponent of female suffrage. He was fiercely anti-Semitic and in 1879 had a physical altercation with Edward Levy-Lawson, proprietor of the Daily Telegraph. He supported the idea of voting papers to expose the illiterate and putting the expenses of the returning officer on the rates even though he thought it would benefit the Tories.
Henry returned to Parliament in 1880 in tandem with Charles Bradlaugh at Northampton. Though in fact an agnostic he ironically referred to himself as "the Christian Member for Northampton". He was an indecorous Radical. Searle describes him as "a lightweight figure who inspired considerable mistrust even within the Liberal ranks".
In 1884 Henry tried to extend laws against cruelty to animals. In 1885 he successfully added the so-called "Labouchere Amendment" to the Criminal Law Amendment Act which allowed for the prosecution of homosexual activity short of sodomy. Historians have debated what Henry's precise motives were but it was later used to prosecute Oscar Wilde who Henry knew and described as an "effeminate phrasemaker" ( ironically Wilde enjoyed Henry's writing ).
Henry was an inveterate political intriguer. He was not happy with the Liberal party as currently constituted and looked to construct an alliance between English radicals and Irish Nationalists to sideline the Whigs. When the Home Rule split occurred in 1886 Henry chose to stick with Gladstone and worked tirelessly for his return to power. He tried to persuade Chamberlain to remain in the fold telling him " there never was such an opportunity to establish a Radical party and to carry all before it ". He assured him that the Radicals " do not love the Irish but hate them and would give them Home Rule on the Glastone or Canada pattern to get rid of them ".In 1887 he wrote despairingly to Harcourt "Parties just now do not hang together by principle. They are gangs greedy of office".
Henry's move to the Cabinet in 1892 was blocked by the queen , the last time a sovereign vetoed an individual minister. She had not appreciated his success in reducing the estimates on royal parks and palaces .Henry wanted the ambassadorship to Washington as a consolation prize but the new Foreign Secretary Lord Rosebery was another personal enemy and wouldn't countenance it. When Rosebery became Prime Minister in 1894 and retreated on Home Rule, Henry proposed an amendment to the Queen's Speech Calling for the abolition of the Lords' veto.
In 1897 Henry was accused of share-rigging i.e talking down companies in Truth in order to reduce share prices for him to purchase. His defense was largely regarded as inadequate.
Also in 1897 he became chairman of the National Liberal Club after the radicals captured the executive.
In 1899 Henry came up with the satirical poem The Brown Man's Burden in mockery of Kipling's romantic imperialism.
When Campbell-Bannerman ignored his claims in 1905 he decided not to contest his seat and retired to Florence.
He died in 1912 aged 80.
No comments:
Post a Comment