BBBHB&nflflBBBHHHRB? i' JItliata, ^tm ^atk FROM THE BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY COLLECTED BY BENNO LOEWY 1854-1919 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY Cornell University Library JN675 1903 .L94 Later peeps at Parliament taken from beh olin 3 1924 030 496 180 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030496180 %' LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT / THE ECLIPSE 1895. LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT TAKEN FROM BEHIND THE SPEAKER'S CHAIR BY HENRY W. LUCY ILLUSTRATED BY F. C. GOULD MCMV LONDON : GEORGE NEWNES, LIMITED, SOUTHAMPTON StBejET, STRAND, W.C. TO THE MEMORY OF SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT A GREAT COMMONER THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED PREFACE The friendly reception that welcomed the appearance of earlier Peeps at Parliament was occasionally varied by criti- cism directed against their point of view. It was complained that the reader, anticipating introduction to scenes in the current Parliament, found himself stranded on a shore passed by at dates going back for ten years. I must plead absence of responsibility for this disappoint- ment. The several notes were avowedly written under the dates given. Their chief value, such as it is, is their touch with contemporary events, recorded as they passed. The advantage of this method of presenting Parliamentary history is strikingly shown in the work of my colleague F. C. G. He has drawn Parliament men as they flitted through the scenes enacted, and described in this and the preceding volume, during the decade dating from 1893. The passage of ten years brings changes to all men. Look- ing over these pages in proof, I confess I am struck by the difference in the personal appearance of old acquaintances who still hold place in the Parliament of to-day. Of course, those still with us have gained in dignity. The sadness comes in when, glancing over the pages, one viii LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT finds how many who commanded attention in the Parlia- ments of the last ten years of the Nineteenth century have answered Adsum to the old lobby cry, " Who goes home ? " To the memory of one of these this little work is in- ''"^'''- H. W. L. Reform Club, April 1905. B %.*' CONTENTS SESSION 1896 I. Deckmber . I'AGK I SESSION 1897 II. January III. February rv. March V. April VI. May VII. June VIII. July IX. August X. February . XI. March XII. April XIII. May XIV. June XV. July XVI. August XVII. September SESSION 1898 12 24 37 52 67 81 87 98 1 1 1 127 142 154 166 181 194 207 XVIII. February XIX. March XX. April SESSION 1899 222 236 248 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT CHAPTER XXI. May XXII. June XXIII. July XXIV. August XXV. January . XXVI. February XXVII. April XXVIII. May XXIX. June XXX. July XXXI. August . XXXII. November XXXIII. February XXXIV. April XXXV. May XXXVI. June XXXVII. July XXXVIII. AUGUST . XXXIX. February XL. March XLI. April XLII. May XLIII. June XLIV. July XLV. August . XLVI. October XL VI I. November XLVIII. December SESSION 1900 SESSION 1901 SESSION 1902 FACE 261 274 287 301 333 345 356 369 380 388 398 410 418 431 444 456 465 473 480 492 S03 514 525 530 536 544 INDEX 551 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Eclipse of 1895 PAGE Frontispiece The Rush from the Lobby 2 "Division!" . . . . 3 The late Sir Robert Peel (after Richard Doyle) . 6 The late Sir Robert Peel 7 Mr. Rochfort Maguire 9 The late Sir George Campbell . 14 " What a Fearful Creature ! " . IS Sir Richard Temple turns his Back on t lie House 17 Waiting for an Opening 19 Trying to Catch the Speaker's Eye 19 Missed ! . . 20 Mr. Courtney's Back Up 21 Mr. Lecky's Maiden Effort 26 Mr. Augustine Birrell's " Obiter Dicta " 27 Lord Morris .... 30 The late Lord Coleridge 30 " I sha'n't Sign the Estimates " 31 "Gerald" 34 A Horrible Discovery . 41 "Who Killed Pamell?" 41 A Terrible Offence 44 Notice to Quit 45 Eviction 45 " Cold, isn't it, Arthur " 50 "Awfully Cold" 51 " Bellowing Contumely" 52 " He steadfastly regarded the Yelling M ob" . 54 xii LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT PAGE 60 64 65 65 67 69 " Dexterously balancing the Hat " . 55 " With Courteous Gesture " . 5^ " Some old Eton Boys" . 5^ " A grand old Eton Boy '' . 59 " Sir Henry James going up to the Lords " 59 Sir George Trevelyan Mr. Joseph Arch Mr. Michael Davitt The Four Quarters of Mr. J. F. X. O'Brien In Westminster Hall . Mr. Rhodes and the Map Enter the Committee ... 7 ' Mr. Parnell Rises ... -73 With Hat tilted over Brow • • 75 An uncomfortable Position . . 76 Sir Henry Edwards and his Statue . ^^ Sir Henry Edwards on a Trial Trip . . 78 Trying on O'Connell's Hat . •79 Lord Randolph Churchill . . 84 Lord Melbourne — 1837. Lord Salisbury — 1897 (two Prime Ministers) .... 86 Old Westminster Hall . . . . . 88 Lord Tweedmouth and the New Rifle 92 Mr. Pitt ... 93 Very like Sir Frank Lockwood . . 93 " Anguished Impotence " . 96 « Crushed Again ! " . 96 Mr. William White . 100 " Where's my Umbrella ? " . . loi Mr. Wilson, the Doorkeeper . . . 102 Mr. Caldwell, M.P. . . 103 Sir Matthew White-Ridley is Funny . 104 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach . 105 The Midnight Telephone ... 106 Substance and Shadow . . .108 Lord Hugh Cecil . . . . .109 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "A Towering Impatience" " One of the Kindest of Men " " A way of Sitting upon People" " A Prisoner in the House of Lords ' Sir H. Campbell-Bannennan Mr. Asquith . Sir Edward Grey Sir Isaac H olden " A Baron of High Degree " The Unexpected Footprint Upright and Stiff-backed The Race for the Leadership . In the Place of Disraeli Sir Richard Webster led Captive " I am not an Agricultural Labourer ' " Bobby," as he might have been Brawler. Beware ! ! . The Fire and Fury The Calm and Philosophical . Time Travels Quickly ! ! The Earl of Halsbury . " Is this Justice ? " . " The Lost Writ " "Placing a Coronet on his Brow" " Nolo Coronari " Sir John Mowbray "After the Interview" The late Sir G. O. Morgan The New Portmanteau Colonel Sir E. Gourley Mr. Talbot Sir John Kennaway " Popping on and off the Woolsack " The Cross Benches Daybreak on Westminster Bridge The late Sir Henry Havelock-AUan xiu PAGE 1 12 112 113 ii6 ii8 I20 122 123 125 128 129 133 136 137 137 138 139 139 140 142 143 144 145 146 148 150 152 153 155 155 156 158 158 160 162 xiv LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT PAGE Serjeant Hemphill . . .163 Mr. Harmon Hodge . . . • • '^4 Mr. Swift MacNeill : " Have you seen Mr. Ward " . 164 " The Head of the Army and Chief of the Fleet " .165 " Strolling in Late " . • 167 " Bracing him up " . . '^7 A " Ballon D'Essai " ... 168 "Ah, yes, I used to sing it, but that was years ago" 170 "The Red Line" . . I7i Cap'en Tommy Bowles, of the Horse Marines I73 " Young Mowbray "' . • I74 " Wrong Again ! " '75 " In Solitary State " . • 176 "Laying" . . . I79 The Whigs take Fright 181 Mr. Jesse CoUings leads the Attack . . . 182 Mr. Labouchere as the Messenger of the Gods . 184 Captain O'Shea . . . . 185 Sir Lewis Mclver . . . 187 Mr. Whi thread . . 188 Joseph addressing his Brethren. An Historical Fragment 1 8g Mr. Caine keeping Mr. Bright advised . . 191 The Friendly Broker . . 191 Storming Down to Downing Street . . 193 A Glowing Glance . 195 The late Lord Playfair . . . ,196 Mr. PlimsoU's Outburst . 198 The Bust of Lord Randolph Churchill . . 201 The ex-Speaker — Scathing Indignation 203 The Lord Chancellor quietly drops in . . . . 203 Sir John Brunner : " No thanks, I don't want any Ironclads to-day" ...... 206 Walking out for the Last Time . . . 207 He took a great Interest in Punch . . 208 " An Attractive Listener " . . . . 209 A little Friendly Advice . . . . 212 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv PAGE 224 225 226 226 227 229 230 233 What ! not remember it ? it was only forty-eight years ago 2 1 3 The Duke of Argyll writes to the Times . . .215 Writing a Post-card .... 217 Facsimile of one of Mr. Gladstone's Post-cards . 219 A Beef-eater, temp. Henry VIII. 222 Inspector Horsley A Cave-Man . Shelved with a Peerage (Baron de Worms) " Who knew not Jemmy " The humble Function of the Football . The Buffer State The late Lord Winchilsea At a Four-mile-an-hour Pace . An early Appearance in the Parliamentary Ring 237 M.P., Olden Time ... . 239 Charles James Fox . . .241 Dr. Johnson watching Parliament 242 Baron "Ferdy" . . 243 A keen Scent for Jobs (Mr. Hanbury) . 246 Lord Althorp (after H.K.B.) . 248 William IV. (after H.K.B.) . 249 Sir Henry James and the Cotton Duties Tribesmen . . 252 Sir Henry Fowler's Charge . . . . 253 The Deceased Wife's Sister . .256 " The Air of a Stolid Man surveying the Capering of a Cage of Monkeys" . . . . .257 Mr. Johnston in Prison . . .259 Beating the Orange Drum . . . 260 "A Pensioner" .... .261 " The Lost Eye-glass " . .264 Lord Herschell — A Sketch in the Lobby .265 Lord Herschell as Lord Chancellor . . 266 On Guard — Sir William Walrond, Chief Conservative Whip 268 The late Mr. T. E. Ellis — Chief Liberal Whip . 269 The Mace of the Jlouse of Commons . .271 " What on Earth is my Name ? " . . 273 xvi LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT PAGE 276 277 280 281 Tom Ellis " Sitting out a Debate " " Mr. Chamberlain takes a Note " " The Chief Secretary's fragile frame " . " Mental and Physical Youth " — Mr. James Lovvther " The Serjeant-at-Arms will go and fetch him " 282 " Enter Mr. Keir Hardie " . . 284 " Exit Mr. Keir Hardie " . . 285 " A Russian Bath in the House of Commons " . . 286 A Parliamentary Benefactor — Mr. Joseph Cowen 288 The O'Donnell Terror . . 289 Making a Pudding . . . . .291 "Born just before Waterloo" — The late Sir John Mowbray 294 " A Hasty Bath " . . . . 297 "Lay Low and said NufSn" — The late Lord Denman . 299 "In the Corner'' ..... 301 Mr. Tommy Bowles — His Corner Seat 302 Mr. Gedge in Possession . . 303 Toujours Gedge ... . . 304 Mr. Hart-Dyke's Bull : " Catching a big Fish on the Top of a Tree " . . . . . . 306 " Oh, it was only you, was it ? " . . . 307 The only Safe Place (from the Ministerial Point of View) 312 A difficult Mount ... . 313 Sir Algernon West 315 " Irish Obstruction ! " . . 318 Fagged . . . . 319 Automatic Gestures — I. Sir William Harcourt . .321 Automatic Gestures — -ll. Sir John Gorst . 322 Automatic Gestures — ill. Lord Salisbury . 323 " Do you know him ? " "No! Do you?" . 326 Talleyrand sleeping in Pitt's Bed . 330 Presiding at a Lecture . . 333 The Pigtail Party . 336 History repeating itself 339 Black Rod . . 341 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xvii PAGE Mr. Hanbury takes the Business in Hand 343 Pursued by the Treasury . . 342 Mr. J. W. Lowther, the Chairman of Ways and Means 345 The Hermit of Blaydon-on-Tyne 347 A Shadow of the Past . 348 The Conspirators of Europe 349 Dies Irse . 353 "The Admiral's Rum" 354 A Cordite Explosion 357 The Cromwell Statue . -359 The Infant Roscius — Mr. W. Redmond 361 The Lord Chancellor wielding the Tea-pot 363 Charles I. and Henrietta Maria . 365 A Welsh Orator, Mr. William Jones, M.P. . 370 Post-Prandial Humour. Lord Ashbourne and Mr. Chauncey Depew . - . . . 373 Lord Londonderry (the new Postmaster-General) 374 "Mabon" . . . 375 The Speaker riding on the Whirlwind . . .378 Sir John Gorst : " I want to make your flesh creep " . 380 The Lay of the last V.-P. . . 381 A flashing Eye . 382 Mr. Lecky struck by a Phenomenon . 383 The Cult of the Primrose . . 384 Mr. Asquith jumps into the Cabinet . 386 Sir Charles Russell, afterwards Lord Russell of Killowen 388 Mr. Matthews, now Lord Llandaff . . 390 Nell G Wynne ... 392 A precious little fat Book . . 394 Fancy Portrait of the Colonel exploding . 397 Master Arthur writing a Letter to the Queen 400 Lord Salisbury and Henry IV. of France 401 " The Real Japan " — Mr. Henry Norman 403 Lord Robert Cecil as a struggling Journalist 405 Sir George Newnes . . 406 On a back Bench — Mr. Chaplin 407 xviii LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT PAGE In the Lions' Den . . 4 ' ' The Raiders— Messrs. Bowles, Hanbury, and Bartley . 412 Got no Work to do — Viscount Cross . . 4^4 A Family Group 416 The Brothers Balfour . . . .416 " To see the King in his Golden Crown " . 418 The Mace accompanied the Speaker . . '420 An Amendment by Mr. Caldwell 421 The Lord Privy Seal . . 423 The Order of Precedence . 425 Cupid as Postboy 427 A Survival . . . 429 " A Shy at a Bishop " . 431 " He was snappish to the Archbishop of York " . 432 Coruscating and Blazing . . 434 The Dismissal of Pam . . . 437 An eloquent Gesture of Despair . . 439 Lobby-sprinting — What it may come to . . . 44 1 A popular Figure — His Majesty John Bull . . 444 The Imperial Nephew . . 446 The Poet Laureate's Fee . 448 Mr. Labouchere sitting on the Civil List . 450 Burrowing Powers — The late Sir Edward Watkin . 452 The Tunnel Terror . . . . -453 The Bishop's Bill — " Dear me ! London's a dreadfully expensive place" ..... . 456 Approaching the Dean and Chapter 458 Wound up and timed . . . . .459 The late Mr. Stansfeld and Mazzini . 460 The late Lord Henry Lennox . . . .461 " Pam " as a Winchester Boy . 463 The Irish Secretary and Questions .... 466 Lord Brougham as a Baron of the Cinque Ports 469 The bold Barons and the Canopy . . . 470 Sir W. Harcourt's Notes . . . 473 " Rehearsing "... . 475 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xix PAGE Sir George Comewall Lewis 479 Carrying Mr. Flavin out . . . . .481 Willie Redmond catches sight of Mr. Chamberlain . 482 Tommy Atkins reverting to Civilian Life 485 The real Great Seal .... . 486 Willie Redmond hugs Mr. Kruger . . . 489 Mr. Thomas Lough ...... 490 Major O'Gorman .... . 493 Mr. Whalley as imagined by Mr. Newdegate . . . 494 Mr. Caldwell at work ...... 497 Mr. Jeffreys, the new Deputy Speaker .... 498 Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Financial Secretary to the Treasury . 499 " Is that Shaw-Lefevre ? " .... 501 The Earl of Derby .... 503 The late Right Hon. W. E. Forster ... 505 Mr. Brodrick reading Lord Kitchener's Despatch 507 The Joy of Swift MacNeill .... 507 Just popping in — " I hope I don't intrude " . .512 Disapproval .... .512 The Lord Chancellor has a Narrow Escape . 515 " A belted Earl thumping the Table " . . 517 "Judas! Judas!" .520 In the Bull-field .522 A fancy Portrait . . 523 Sir William Harcourt as Lord Keeper in the time of Queen Anne ....... 527 The Lord Chancellor as George III. . 527 " Nolo Coronetari " ... . 53° The late Mr. Johnston of Ballykilbeg . . -532 Mr. Speaker taking the Oath . . -537 Mr. Dillon on the Globe . . ■ -539 Sir B. Stone posing a Subject . . . ■ 54' The Vision of the Woolsack . . . . -545 The Cordite Conspiracy — Mr. Brodrick applies the Torch . 548 'v, LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT SESSION 1896 CHAPTER I DECEMBER One night in the last Session of the Rosebery Parlia- ment a breathless messenger brought news to the Serjeant- at-Arms that the bells would not ring. It happened that an important division, on which the fate of the Government depended, was within measurable distance. The House of Commons and its precincts are connected by an elaborate system of electric bells, commanded from the seat of the principal doorkeeper. When a division is called he touches a knob and, lo ! in the smoking-room, dining-room, tea- room, library, along all the corridors, upstairs and downstairs, there throbs the tintinnabulation of the bells. This phenomenon is so familiar, and works with such unerring regularity, that members absolutely depend upon it, absenting themselves from the Chamber with ',, ^ , , , , . • , Dumb Bells. full confidence that, as long as they remam m the building, they cannot miss a division. The only places in the Palace at Westminster frequented by members of the House of Commons the electric bells do not command are the bar and the galleries of the House of Lords. On the few occa- sions when attractive debate is going forward in the other Chamber, drawing a contingent of members of the House LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1896 of Commons, special arrangements are made for announcing a division. A troop of messengers stand in the lobby like hounds in leash. At the signal of a division, they set off at the top of their speed, racing down the corridor, across the central lobby, into the Lord's lobby, and so, breathless, bring the news to Ghent. In an instant all is commotion in the space within the House of Lords allotted to the Commons. The time THE RUSH FROM THE LOBBY. between signalling a division and closing the doors of the House of Commons against would-be participants is, nomin- ally, three minutes. This is jealously marked by a sand- glass which stands on the clerks' table. When it empties, the doors are locked, the Speaker puts the question for the second time, and only those within hearing may vote. Three minutes is a somewhat narrow space of time for the double event of the race of the messengers to the door of the House of Lords and the rally of members at the door of 1896 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT the House of Commons. The always -waiting crowd of strangers in the lobby are on such occasions much astonished to find tearing along — some handicapped by years or undue weight of flesh, most of them out of training and breath — a long string of legislators. From any of the ante - chambers of the House of Commons the race can be comfortably done under the stipulated time. But when electric bells fail, the situa- tion becomes serious. With such majorities as the late Government commanded, the accident of half-a-dozen or a dozen of their supporters missing the call might, as it finally did, lead to defeat and dissolution. Happily, on the occasion here recorded, notice of the failure had been duly conveyed to the Serjeant-at-Arms. In order to avoid catastrophe, the police and messengers were specially organised. Each man had his appointed beat. When the signal was given he was to run along it, roaring " Division ! Division ! " pastime, but it succeeded, and the Ministry were for the time saved. When workmen arrived on the scene and traced the accident to its source, it was discovered that the central wire had become disconnected. It was evidently cutting the an accident, but it suggests possibilities which wires, certainly on one occasion were realised. It happened in the earliest days of Irish obstruction. A little band, under the captaincy of Mr. Parnell, fought with their backs to the wall against the united Saxon host. All-night sittings were It was rather an exciting 4 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1896 matters of constant occurrence. About this time the St. Stephen's Club was established, and the Conservative wing cheerfully availed themselves of the opportunity of varying the monotony of long sittings by going across to dine. A special doorway opened from the Club on to the underground passage between the Houses of Parliament and the Metro- politan District Railway Station, a convenience the Committee of the House of Commons, before whom the Company's Bill came, insisted upon as a condition of passing it. The Club dining-room was connected with the House of Com- mons by an electric bell, an extension of the system which called to divisions members within the precincts of the House. A series of experiments demonstrated that the division lobby could be reached in good time if the summons were promptly answered. On a day towards the close of a fighting Session, the Irish members moved an amendment to the passing of the Mutiny Bill. They loudly protested their intention of sitting all night if necessary to delay, if it were not possible to defeat it. In view of this prospect, a good dinner, leisurely eaten at the St. Stephen's Club, promised an agreeable and useful break in the sitting. Just before eight o'clock the Gentlemen of England trooped off to the Club, They were not likely to be wanted for the division till after midnight. If by accident a division were sprung upon the House, the bell would clang here as it did in the Commons' dining-room, and they would bolt off to save the State. Nothing happened. They ate their dinner in peace and quietness, and, strolling back about half-past ten, were met at the lobby door by the desperate Whip, who, in language permitted only to Whips and the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, reproached them with their desertion. They learned to their dismay that soon after eight o'clock the Irish members had permitted the debate to collapse. Ministers, grateful for the deliverance and assured of a majority, made no attempt to prolong it. The bells clanged along the corridors and through all the rooms. The Irish 1896 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 5 members mustered in full force. Ministerialists trickled in in surprisingly small numbers. It was no business of the Liberal Opposition to help the Government on this par- ticular issue. They had gone off comfortably to dinner. The Ministerial Whips had in hand, dining in the House, sufficient to make a quorum. Presently the St. Stephen's contingent would come rushing in, and all would be well. Mr. Hart-Dyke whipped his men into the lobby. The face of Mr. Rowland Winn grew stonier and stonier as he stood at the top of the stairway waiting for the hurried tramp of the diners-out. But Sister Anne saw no one coming, and just managed to get back herself before the doors closed. Ministers had a majority, but it was an exceedingly small one. Investigation revealed the curious fact that the bell wire running along the underground passage between the House and the St. Stephen's Club had been cut. Of course, it was never — at least, hardly ever — known who did it. Richard Doyle, familiarly known as "Dicky," was, at least, once present at a debate in the House of Commons. The occasion was fortunate for posterity, since it p,^^ J^^y^^ chanced upon the night of the maiden speech of in the special the second Sir Robert Peel,^ son of the great °""®'^- Commoner whose last wish it was that he might " leave a name remembered by expression of good-will in those places which are the abode of men whose lot it is to labour and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow." Dicky Doyle, after a fashion still common to his brethren and successors on the Punch staff, was accustomed to illus- trate his private correspondence with pen-and-ink sketches. In a letter dated from 17 Cambridge Terrace, Hyde Park, March 27, 1851, Doyle sent to Lady Duff Gordon a sketch of the then new member for Tamworth, which, by the courtesy of Mr. Fisher Unwin, F.C.G. is reproduced on next page. The letter will be found, with much other interesting matter, in Mistress Janet Ross's Three Generations of Englishwomen. 1 Sir Robert Peel died in 1895. 6 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1896 "Through the kindness of the Speaker," Doyle writes, " I have been permitted every evening almost during the 'Aggression' debates to sit in that part of the House of Commons devoted to the peers and foreign Ministers. Under which of these denominations I passed it is im- possible for me to decide, but we will suppose it was a diplomatic ' poor ' relation from Rome. In this distinguished position I heard the speeches of Sir James Graham with delight, of Mr. Newdegate with drowsiness, of Mr. Drum- mond with shame mingled with indigna- tion, of the new Sir Robert Peel with surprise and contempt. This (the sketch) is what the last-named gentleman is like. How like his father, you will instantly say. His appearance created in the ' House ' what Miss Talbot's did in the fashionable world, according to Bishop Hendren, a ' sensation ' ; and when he THE LATE SIR fQgg ^q gpeak, shouts of ' New member ! ' ROBERT PEEL (AFTER ^ . , , RICHARD DOYLE). Tose from every side, and expectation rose on tiptoe, while interest was visible in every upturned and outstretched countenance, and the buzz of eager excitement prevailed in the ' first assembly of gentlemen in the world.' There he stood, leaning upon a walking-stick, which from its bulk you would have fancied he carried as a weapon of defence, young and rather hand- some, but with a somewhat fierce and, I would say, truculent look about the eyes ; hair brown, plentiful, and curly, shirt collar turned down, and, O shade of his father ! a large pair of moustaches upon his Republican-looking ' mug ' 1 ! ! He has a manly voice and plenty of confidence, and his speech made up by its originality what it wanted in common sense, and was full of prejudice, bigotry, and illiberal Radicalism, while it lacked largeness of view, and was destitute of statesmanship." That is to say, the new member differed entirely from Doyle on the subject under discussion. Whence these remarks which show that, in the matter of political criticism, 1896 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT things did not greatly differ in the Exhibition Year from the manner in which they run to-day. Sir Robert Peel was elected member for Tamworth in 1850, and had not been in the House many months when he made his maiden speech. To the end he sir Robert succeeded in retaining that interest of the Peeiii. House of Commons which the shrewd, if prejudiced, observer in the Distinguished Strangers' Gallery noted forty-four years ago. There was a time when Sir Robert promised to sustain in the political and Parliamentary world the high reputation with which his name was endowed by his illustrious father. He was promptly made a Lord of the Treasury, and in 1861 Lord Palmerston promoted him to the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland. Sir Robert was always original, and he asked to be relieved from this post for a reason Mr. Arthur Balfour and Mr. John Morley will contem- plate with amazed interest. There was not enough for him to do, he said, and he must needs clear out. He sat for Tamworth through an uninterrupted space of thirty years. The wave of Radical enthusiasm that brought Mr. Glad- stone into power in 1880 swept away Sir Robert Peel and many others, whose Liberalism was not sufficiently robust for the crisis. For four years he was out of Parlia- ment. But his heart, untravelled, fondly turned to the scene with which his family traditions and the prime of his own life were closely associated. In 1884 he returned as member for Huntingdon, to find fresh lustre added to the name of Peel. His brother had, in the previous month, been elected Speaker, and the House was already THE LATE SIR ROBERT PEEL. 8 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1896 beginning to recognise in him supreme ability for the post. I have to this day a vivid recollection of the play of Sir Robert's lips and the twinkle in his eye when Sir Erskine May, then still Chief Clerk, brought him up in the usual fashion to introduce him to the Speaker. Sir Robert bowed .with courtly grace, and held out his hand with respectful gesture towards his new acquaintance. One mindful for the decorum of Parliamentary proceedings could not help being thankful when the episode was over. There was something in Sir Robert's face, something in his rolling gait as he approached the Chair, that would not have made it at all astonishing if he had heartily slapped the Speaker on the shoulder, or even playfully poked him in the ribs, and observed, " Halloa, old fellow ! Who'd have thought of finding you here ? Glad to see you ! " That Sir Robert was not to be warned off from the use of colloquialisms by seriousness of surroundings was often proved during the latter portion of his Parliamentary career. On the historic night in the Session of 1878, when the House of Commons was thrown into a state of consternation by a telegram received from Mr. Layard, announcing that the Russians were at the gates of Constantinople, Sir Robert Peel airily lectured the House in general, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright in particular, for " squabbling about little points." A bolder and better remembered flight of humour occurred to him when discussing a vote in Committee of Supply on account of a so-called work of art just added to the national store by the sculptor Boehm. Sir Robert's peculiar pro- nunciation of the word, his dramatic sniffing of the nostrils as he looked round, and his exclamation, " Boehm ? Boehm ? It smells an English name," immensely delighted an after-dinner audience. The last time I saw Sir Robert Peel was at St. Mar- garet's Church, on the occasion of the wedding of his niece, the Speaker's daughter, to Mr. Rochfort Maguire. He came in late and stayed for a while, looking upon the scene from the top of the aisle. His bright face, upright figure, and 1896 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 9 general bearing gave no premonition of the fact that three weeks later, to the very day, St. Margaret's Church would be filled again, partly by the same con- gregation, once more the occasion closely connected with the Peel family history. But now the wedding chimes were hushed ; the funeral bells took up the story, telling how, at that hour, in the parish church where his father had wor- shipped and where he himself had slumbered through long sermons in school-boy days, the second Sir Robert Peel was left to his final rest. Many years ago, on an Atlantic steamer outward bound, I made the acquaintance of a notable A Rancher. . man. It was at the time when, long before South Africa had become Tom Tiddler's ground, cattle ranches were a booming market for the English speculators. My friend, who was, of course, a Colonel, commenced life as a cowboy, and gradually acquired flocks and herds till he became rich beyond the dreams of avarice. He was a man of distinguished appearance, of gentlest manner, and, as I soon learned, of most chivalrous nature. But so deeply ingrained were his cowboy habits, so recently applied the veneer of civilisation, that in the course of conversation — and on some subjects his talk had all the freshness and charm of a little child — he interpolated a prolonged and fearsome oath. " Ex-cuse," he said, when these fits came over him, bowing his head and speaking in gentlest tones. Then he went on talking with his musical drawl till suddenly he stumbled into another pitfall of bad language, coming out again with bowed head, sweet smile, and his long-drawn, plaintive, " Ex-cuse ; kotation." MR. ROCHFORT MAGUIRE. lo LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1896 One thing he told me of his first appearance in civilisa- tion befell him on his first visit to Chicago. Putting up, as became a man of his wealth, at the best hotel in the city, he was struck with the magnificence of the dining saloon, with its rich, soft, thick carpets, its massive chandeliers, its gilt pillars, and its many mirrors. Seeing what he thought was another large room leading out of the one in which he stood at gaze, the Colonel advanced to explore it — and walked right into a mirror, smashing the glass and cutting himself. He had never in his life seen anything of that kind. The delusion was complete, broken only with the shivered glass. I thought of my friend the Colonel the other night at the house of a well-known Amphitryon. It was an evening "In a glass pai'ty. at which Royalty was present in unusual darkly." muster. A brilliant company gathered to meet them, many of the women fair, most of the men bravely attired in Ministerial, Court, naval, or military uniforms. At midnight the room in which a sumptuous supper was spread was crowded. At one table stood a well-known member of the House of Lords, in animated conversation with a group of friends. Bidding them good -night, he turned to leave the room, and strode straight up to a mirror that covered a wall at one end. He halted abruptly as he observed a man walking with rapid pace to meet him. He stood and looked him straight in the face, the other guest regarding him with equal interest. The noble lord, pink of courtesy, slightly bowed and moved a step to the right to let the new-comer enter. By an odd coincidence (not uncommon in these encounters) the stranger took exactly the same direction, and there they stood face to face again. With a smile and another bow, the peer moved smartly to the left. Never shall I forget the look of amazement reflected in his face as, staring into the glass, he discovered that the stranger had once more made a corresponding movement and stood before him. " I beg your pardon," he murmured, in faltering tones. i896 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT ii Whether the sound of his own voice broke the spell, or whether he saw the lips of his vis-d-vis moving and recog- nised his own face, I do not know. The truth flashed upon him, and with rapid step he made for the door in the corner at right angles with the mirror and disappeared. SESSION 1897 CHAPTER II JANUARY Amongst the first work to be done in the new Session that opens this month is the reappointment of the Select strangers in Committee nominated last year to inquire into the House, the circumstances that led up to the raid on the Transvaal. It may be useful, for purposes of reference, to give a list of the members of the Committee as set forth in the columns of the Paris Gil Bias. It runs thus : Sir milord Willam Hardtcourte, Sir H. Campell Bamnermard, Sir Michael Chicks Black, Sir Richard Webster, Lydney Bluxtone, H. Lebouch^re Bigham, Sir Hart-Dyki, and M. Chamtertain. When on Mr. Gladstone's trip to the Kiel Canal the Tantallon Castle touched at Copenhagen, a local paper gave a list of the principal guests, which included Lord Randoll, Lord Welley, Sir Writh Pease, Sir John Leng Baith, and Sir Cuthbert Quiets. Under these disguises fellow-passengers recognised Lord Rendell, Lord Welby, Sir Joseph Pease, Sir John Leng, and (though this was more difficult) Mr. Cuthbert Quilter, M.P. But for picturesque spelling of proper names Paris beats Copenhagen. A notable, unvarying, and unexplained phenomenon of the House of Commons is the failure of men who enter it after 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 13 having established high reputation in India. The matter is the more marvellous since success in such a siroeerge career implies exceptional ability. Three cases BaWour, k.c.b. within recent memory illustrate the rule. Sir George Balfour, who represented Kincardineshire in three Parlia- ments, had a distinguished executive and administrative career in India. Having served in the artillery till he rose to the rank of Major-General, he became President of the Military Finance Commission of India, and was, for a while, chief of the Military Finance Department. In his sixty-third year he began a new life in London, entering upon Imperial politics with the zest of perennial youth. He took to speaking in the House of Commons as a duck takes to water. But no House — not the great Liberal Parliament elected in 1868, the Conservative host under Mr. Disraeli's leadership in the 1874 Parliament, nor the Liberals, back again like a flood in 1880 — would listen to the poor old General. For years he plodded on, his face growing more deeply furrowed, his voice taking on nearer resemblance to a coronach. In lapses of the roar of " 'Vide ! 'Vide ! 'Vide ! " that greeted his rising, the wail of the General was heard like the far-off cry of a drowning man in a storm at sea. In the end he retired from the struggle, and for a Session or two sat silent in his familiar seat behind the Front Bench. A look of yearning pathos filled his eyes as he watched member after member upstanding, and delivering a speech to which the House more or less attentively listened, whereas him it persistently shouted down. The member for Kirkcaldy was of tougher metal than his colleague of Kincardineshire. He was, moreover, a far abler man. Sir George Campbell was Lieutenant- siroeorge Governor of Bengal during the great famine, campbeii. Quitting India whilst the plague had not been entirely stayed by his energetic and well-directed efforts, the Times threw its hands up in Editorial despair. The question what would become of India when Sir George Campbell had forsaken it seemed at the time appalling. 14 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 THE LATE SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL. When he first took his seat for Kirkcaldy, Sir George was still in the prime of life as time is counted in the political arena. Just turned fifty, he might reasonably count on fifteen, perhaps twenty, years of active life in which on new ground he might repeat, even excel, his triumphs in India. Indian questions he had at his finger ends. In the course of an active life and wide reading he had amassed a store of information on a wider range. Perhaps that was the secret of his Parliamentary failure. He could talk on any subject at any length, and was not indis- posed to oblige. A further peculiar disadvantage was possession of one of the most rasping voices ever heard on land or sea. In the 1886 Parliament the mere sound of Sir George Campbell's voice at the opening sentence of a speech was sufficient to send the merry-hearted Unionist majority into a roar of laughter. The temptation to score off Sir George was great, since nothing pleased the House more than success in that Fearful direction. One afternoon questions, of which due Creatures I notice had been given, were addressed to Mr. Plunket,^ then First Commissioner of Works, with respect to the carving of strange birds and beasts with which the new staircases in Westminster Hall had been ornamented. No one was dreaming of Sir George Campbell. It wasn't his show, but he must needs poke his nose into it. Mr. Plunket had disclaimed authority in the matter. " Who, then," cried Sir George, at the top of his voice " is responsible for these fearful creatures ? " Mr. Plunket returned to the table, and bending a beaming face upon Sir George said, in musical voice that contrasted ' Now Lord Rathmore. 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 15 pleasantly with the rasping of a file, " I am not responsible for fearful creatures in Westminster Hall, or in this House either." In the following Session Sir George accidentally and un- designedly gave a fresh point to this little gibe by a slip of the tongue. Hav- ing, in companionship with Mr. Storey, Mr. Conybeare, and two or three other mem- bers below the gang- way, long withstood the Government in Committeeof Supply, " WHAT A FEARFUL cREATUKE ! " Sir Georgc, in one of twenty -three speeches delivered on a single night, desired to make reference to " the band of us devoted guerillas." In the tornado of his hurried speech he got a little mixed, and presented himself and his coadjutors to the notice of a delighted House as " the band of us devoted gorillas." One of Sir George's minor fads was objection to the device of St. George and the Dragon employed for coins which passed currency in Scotland. St. George sir Qeorge and was all very well for mere Southerners. North the Dragon, of the Tweed, St. Andrew was the saint. In Committee of Supply he returned to this subject, dwelling upon it as if he approached it for the first time. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had replied a score of times to the question, made no sign, and the Chairman of Committees had risen to put the question. Sir George bore down upon him with ungovernable fury, threatening to move to report progress if i6 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 he were thus ignored. Mr. W. H. Smith, still with us at the time, interposed with characteristic eiifort to throw oil on the troubled waters. Sir George, in response, clamoured for a pledge that in any new coinage the familiar device should not be introduced. Hereupon, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, ever a man of peace, suggested, as a compromise, that the die should be cut to represent Sir George and the Dragon. Amid the uproarious laughter that followed, the vote under discussion was hastily put and further discussion by Sir George Campbell necessarily deferred. Still another eminent Indian statesman who found a low level in the House of Commons was Sir Richard Temple. Sir Richard Sir Richard has recently published the Story of Temple, his Life, from which it appears how intimately and directly he was connected with the growth and prosperity of India over a period of twenty-nine years. He was nine years older than Sir George Campbell when he entered the Parliamentary arena. In mental and physical vigour he was at least his equal. Sir Richard's career in India had been one of unchecked advancement — the reward of honest hard work and high administrative capacity. As he himself modestly puts it, he " was fortunate in climbing rapidly up the steps of the ladder in a comparatively short time, and remaining at or near the top for the greater part of my official days." He came to Westminster just as Napoleon went to Spain after his triumphs in Italy and Germany, meaning to possess himself of a new territory as a matter of course. Excluding Irish members from the computation. Sir Richard in one respect beat the record. " In the Commons," he writes, on the day before he took the oath, " I wish to comport myself modestly and quietly." He began by making his maiden speech on the first night of the opening Session of a new Parliament ! Thereafter Sir Richard was one of the most active com- petitors in the game of catching the Speaker's eye. He had an advantage inasmuch as he was always on the spot. It was his boast that, out of the 2 1 1 8 divisions taken in the 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 17 Parliament of 1886-92, he voted in 2072. In respect of the mastery of other questions besides those specially pertain- ing to India, Sir Richard had excep- tional claims to the attention of the House of Commons. But he never succeeded in catching its ear, and after a struggle not less gallant and prolonged than that of Sir George Balfour or Sir George Campbell, he shook the dust of the House from off his feet. Macaulay, another eminent im- migrant from India, after brief ex- The perience, described the reason why. House of Commons as the most peculiar audience in the world. " I should say," he wrote to Whewell sixty-six years ago, " that a man's being a good writer, a good orator at the Bar, a good mob orator, or a good orator in debating clubs, was rather a reason for expecting him to fail than for expecting him to succeed in the House of Commons. A place where Walpole succeeded and Addison failed ; where Dundas succeeded and Burke failed ; where Peel now succeeds and where Mackintosh fails ; where Erskine and Scarlett were dinner- bells ; where Lawrence and Jekyll, the two wittiest men, or nearly so, of their time, were thought bores, is surely a very strange place." In the case of men who have made their mark in India there is not even this attraction of variety. They all prove dinner-bells. One reason for this is that they enter the House too late in life. There are exceedingly few exceptions to the rule that men do not reach supreme position in the House of Commons unless they enter it on the sunny side of thirty. More directly fatal to House of Commons success of C SIR RICHARD TEMPLE TURNS HIS BACK ON THE HOUSE. 1 8 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 Indian ex-Ministers and officials is the absolutely altered conditions of life. Stepping from Government House in one of the Provinces of India on to the floor of the House of Commons, they experience a more striking and not so attractive a transformation as Alice realised when she wandered into Wonderland. For years accustomed to auto- cratic power, his lightest whisper a command, the ex-Satrap finds himself an unconsidered member of a body of men who, unless their demeanour is misleading, would think nothing of tweaking the nose of the ex-Governor of Bombay or digging in the ribs the ex-Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. The lesson is learnt in time. To begin with, it is diffi- cult for a man who, as Sir Richard Temple boasts in his own case, has ruled over millions, to realise that he must compete with borough members and the like in the effort to catch the Speaker's eye. His earliest natural impulse is to clap his hands and order the optic to be brought to him on a charger. By the time the hard lesson is learned spirit is broken, ambition is smothered, old age creeps on, and strong, capable, successful men, who have thrown up high appointments in India in order to serve their country and themselves in a Parliamentary career, find how much sharper than a serpent's tooth is House of Commons' ingratitude. The gentlemen of England who live at home at ease, and, morning after morning, through an important debate Unnamed '" ^^^ House of Commons, glance down the Heroes. report of speeches delivered on the previous night, reck little of tearless dumb tragedies that take place in the historic Chamber and find no record. It is all very well for the man who has worked off his speech, even if the benches should empty at his rising, and the newspapers give the barest summary of his argument. Alas for those who never sing, But die with all their music in them. Through nights of big debates, for one member who i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 19 catches the Speaker's eye there are, at least, twenty who compete in the emprise and lamentably fail. It is no uncommon thing to see a member sit hour after hour, notes of his speech in hand, waiting till successive orators have made an end of speak- ing, eagerly jump up, and be passed over by the Speaker. The House, long inured to misfortune in others, passes it over without sign of emotion. But it is no light thing for the man directly concerned. To begin with, he has presumably spent much time WAITING FOR AN OPENING. in studying the sub- ject of debate and in laborious pre- paration of aspeech. He must be down early to secure a seat. Whilst others go off to chat in the lobby, to smoke on the terrace, to read the papers, or leisurely to dine, he must remain at his post, ready to jump up whenever an opening is made. To take one turn at this and be dis- appointed is hard. To do it all through a night seems unendurable. To repeat TRYING TO CATCH THE SPEAKER'S EYE. 20 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 the experience night after night, and hear the division called with the speech yet unspoken, is sufficient to blight existence. Yet such a fate is by no means uncommon. In some cases a last pang is added by the consciousness that the wife of one's bosom, or the dutiful daughters who believe Pa's oratory would remove mountains of objection, re- gard the shameful scene from the seclusion of the Ladies' Gallery. Disgust and disappoint- ment, born of this evil fate, occasionally find -phe Front expression in pro- Benches. test against the number and length of speeches delivered from either Front Bench. It will be understood in what mood a member, smarting under constant repulse, sees another chance snatched from him by the interposition of a minor Minister or, worse still, by an ex-Under Secretary rising from the Front Opposition Bench, reeling off his speech as a matter of course and right In big debates, where the pressure of oratory is overpowering and time limited, the Whips on either side make up a list in due order of precedence, which they hand to the Speaker. This he is glad enough to avail himself of, whilst not abrogating his right to make such selection as he pleases. Members of the present House of Commons have never heard the old Parliamentary roar of passionate wrath. "•Vide! Sometimes when an unwelcome member to-day 'Vide I "Videi" intcrposes in debate, or another, having been on his legs for an hour, proposes to introduce his seventhly, there is a timid cry of " 'Vide ! 'Vide ! 'Vide ! " The change MISSED ! i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 21 in Parliamentary habit and modes of thought is shown by the fact that the interruption is instantly met by a stern cry of " Order ! Order ! " in which, if the interruption be per- sisted in, the Speaker is sure to join. Not that the audience desire to have more of the eloquence from which they have suffered. But it is not, in these days, the fashion to shout down an obnoxious member. Mr. Courtney remembers when things were quite other- wise. There was a Wednesday afternoon in June, in the Session of 1877, when the Woman's Suffrage Talked out Bill made one of its successive appearances. •■'» °w» b"'- The advocates of the measure — foremost among whom was Mr. Courtney — were flushed with hope of a good division. At a quarter past five, the champion rose to clench the argument in favour of the second reading. Under the standing orders then in force, Wednesday's debate must needs close at a quarter to six. If any member was on his feet when the hand of the clock touched the quarter, the debate v^ould automatically stand adjourned. The House had had enough of debate carried on through a long summer after- noon. Members knew Mr. Courtney's views on the question, and would rather have the division than enjoy opportunity of hearing them formally restated. Accordingly, when he rose there were cries for the division. But Mr. Courtney, though then comparatively new to Parliamentary life, was not to be put down by clamour. Disregarding the interrup- tion, he went on with his remarks. As he continued the storm rose. Mr. Courtney's back was up, and occasion- ally so also was his clenched fist, shaken towards high Heaven in enforcement of his argument. At the end of a quarter of an hour a glass of water was MR. COURTNEYS BACK UP. 22 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 brought by a considerate friend. Amid howls of contumely the orator gulped it down. Evidently refreshed, he began again. Nothing was heard beyond the invocation, " Mr. Speaker," and the chorus, "'Vide! 'Vide! 'Vide!'" The roar of human voices filled the Chamber with angry wail. When it seemed dying away Mr. Courtney's lips moved, whereat the blast broke forth with renewed fury. Another glass of water was brought, and drunk amid demoniac shouts. So the moments sped till a quarter to six rang out from the Clock Tower, and Mr. Courtney sat down pale and breathless, secure in the rare triumph of having talked out the Bill whose passage through a second reading he had risen with intent to enforce. That is a scene the like of which members of the House of Commons living under the New Rules will never more look upon. A well-known member of the House of Commons has brought up from the country a story which illustrates the A Night responsibilities of hospitality. His house stand- Alarm. Jng in an isolated position, with the highway skirting the park walls, he became concerned for the safety of many precious portable things collected under his roof Taking advice in an experienced quarter, he was advised that the best thing to do was to have all the doors and windows on the ground -floor connected with electric bells. Any attempt to effect burglarious entry would result, not only in the ringing of the bell in the particular room upon which attempt was made, but in every room and every passage on the ground-floor. Shortly after midnight on what had been a peaceful Sabbath, the household were alarmed by a furious ringing of bells. The householder was up with delighted alacrity. Now he would have them ! On the way downstairs he met several men of the house party, for the most part scantily dressed, but full of ardour for any possible fray. As the bells were still ringing in all the rooms, it was difficult to hit upon the one assailed. The host was assisted by the appearance at one of the doors of an esteemed friend 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 23 with painfully scared look. Explanations following, it ap- peared that the guest, fancying the room was warm, and being accustomed to sleep at home with his window open, unfastened the latch and threw up the window, with the astounding results recorded. In future, guests sleeping on the ground -floor will be warned of what they may expect as the result of too insistent search of fresh night air. CHAPTER III FEBRUARY It is probable that amongst other results the new procedure governing Committee of Supply will settle the vexed question Work-time at of the time of the year through which Parlia- westminster. mcnt should sit It has long been regarded as an unpardonable and unnecessary anomaly that Parliament should be condemned to hard labour in London through the fairest months of the year. Since the birth of organised obstruction in the Parliament of 1874, it has come to pass that members of the House of Commons have been practi- cally debarred from enjoying the delights of the country in its prime. The custom has been to meet the iirst week in February, adjourning somewhere between the third week in August and the last week in September. This arrangement of Parliamentary times and seasons is not consecrated by the dust of ages. It does not go even as far back as the Georgian Era. When George III. was King, Parliament met in November, sat till May or June, and thus earned a recess endowed with the warmth and light of summer time. As we are reminded by recurrence of the anniversary of Gunpowder Plot, the custom of Parlia- ment meeting for a new Session early in November dates back beyond Stuart times. Seven years ago, Sir George Trevelyan made an attempt to induce the House to return to old Conservative customs. He moved a resolution recommend- ing that the Session should open in November, that the 24 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 25 House should adjourn for brief recess at Christmas, and not sit far into June. The proposal was negatived by a bare majority of four in a House of over 350 members. Mr. W. H. Smith, then leading the Commons, was so impressed by this declaration of opinion, that it was resolved to try the experiment. Accordingly, in 1 890, the Session commenced on the 2Sth of November. Parliament sat till the 9th of December, and adjourned till the 22nd of January. It was a rather long Christmas holiday, and it had to be paid for later on, the prorogation not being brought about till the 5 th of August. This was an arrangement fatal to a movement that had commenced with sprightly hope. When members were brought to town in November, they were promised that school should break up on or about Midsummer Day. What actually happened was that the prorogation took place about the date which was, prior to 1874, regarded as customary, the difference being that members had been in harness since November instead of meeting in February. Since that lamentable fiasco, there has been no further talk of winter sessions and summer holidays. Mr. Balfour's scheme of appointing a limited number of nights ji,_ Balfour's for Committee of Supply, backed up at the end p'""- by the Closure, will certainly — assuming good faith on the part of the Ministry — prevent the indefinite dragging out of the Session through August into September.^ In spite of all temptation, turning a deaf ear to the entreaty of powerful interests, Mr. Balfour last year kept faith wtth the House of Commons. The prorogation took place about the middle of August, as he had promised when, early in the Session, he appropriated the time of private members for Committee of Supply. As long as honourable understanding in this direction is observed, so long will the new procedure in the matter of Committee of Supply be adhered to. It admirably serves the larger purpose for which it was designed, discus- sion of the Estimates being made possible last year with a 1 This anticipation has been fully justified. Parliament is now invariably prorogued in the second week in August. 26 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 fulness of time and convenience of opportunity long unknown at Westminster. The General Election of 1895 added to the historic store of the House of Commons one fresh opportunity of Men of testing the problem whether there is insuperable Letters In obstacle to the Parliamentary success of a man ar ameo . ^j^^ j^^^ made his earliest fame in literature. It was a fortunate accident, full of good augury, that Mr. Lecky's much-looked for maiden speech was delivered with- out preparation. He chanced to be in the House when, on the Address, debate arose on the question of extending amnesty to the Fenian prisoners. He was moved by some remarks from Mr. Horace Plunkett, one of those simple, businesslike addresses with which the member for Dublin County occasionally varies the ordinary business of speech- making in the House of Commons. Mr. Lecky, finding himself on his feet for the first time, going through the dread ordeal of speaking in the House of Commons, was manifestly nervous. He wrung his hands with despairing gesture ; his knees, trembling, lent the appearance of a series of deprecatory curtsies towards the Chair. Soon he '"'> recovered his self-possession, and pro- ceeded to the end of a wisely brief speech delivered in a pleasant voice with He doubtless did much better than if, foreseeing the opportunity, he had in the retirement and leisure of his study prepared a more elaborate oration. Another man of letters, not brought in with the present Parliament, though in it he has made his first distinct bid for position as a debater, is Mr. Augustine Birrell. The member for West Fife undoubtedly prepares the good things MR. LECKIE S MAIDEN EFFORT. clear enunciation. i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 27 he distributes through his Parliamentary speeches. But their "Obiter point, and the happily Dicta." natural manner of their delivery, invest them with the charm of the impromptu. The very best style of Parliamentary speaking is that illus- trated by the successes of Lord Salis- bury and Lord Rosebery, where the gift of public speaking is founded upon literary taste and literary training. Mr. Birrell has the combination of these good things. When, as in his case, there is added a strong savour of sprightly, occasionally audacious, humour, success is assured far beyond the measure that awaits the weightier and more distinguished historian of England in the Eighteenth Century. MR. AUGUSTINE BIRRELL S "OBITER DICTA." One of the most elaborate and, by the public, least used underground avenues in the Metropolis connects Palace Yard with the Embankment. It is probable subterranean that of the hundreds of thousands of persons influences, who cross Westminster Bridge in the course of twenty-four hours, not a dozen are aware of the existence of this subter- ranean thoroughfare. As a matter of fact, it is reserved exclusively for members and others proceeding to and from the House of Commons. It is open only whilst the House is sitting, the approach from the Embankment and the exit at the foot of the District Railway steps being locked as soon as the House is up. The passage has a remarkable history, inasmuch as it is the result of the only occasion when a bribe was effectively offered to a Select Committee of the House of Commons. When the promoters of the Metropolitan District Railway came before Parliament for powers to construct the line, they were careful to point out that one of their stations would be conveniently set immediately opposite the Clock- 28 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 tower Entrance to the Houses of Parliament. Also, there would be late trains going westward, which in ordinary circumstances would meet the convenience of members at the close of debate. Finally, the promoters undertook to connect Palace Yard and their railway station by a private subterraneous way. That, of course, may have had no influence upon the decision of the Committee. As a matter of history the Bill passed. There is just now on foot a movement, in which Mr. Loder takes the lead, for extending this privilege of subter- raneous locomotion. Thanks to the activity and Where ' Edmund persistence of Mr. Herbert Gladstone, and the Spenser lived. ^.Q^dial concurrence of Mr. Akers- Douglas on succeeding him at the Board of Works, the long-contemplated improvement of the Parliament Street approach to West- minster Hall and Westminster Abbey will shortly be com- menced. The unsightly block of houses which makes a sort of club-foot at the end of Parliament Street will be swept away, full view being opened of Westminster Abbey. The narrow thoroughfare. King Street, at the back of this block was one time the principal approach to West- minster. There is record of the crushing and trampling to death of a number of people crowding it when Queen Elizabeth, at the head of a cavalcade of her nobles, rode to Westminster to open Parliament in person. To-day the broadened thoroughfare of Parliament Street is not wide enough to hold the throng that gathers on the rare occasions when the Sovereign opens Parliament. Soon it will be further widened by addition of the back street in which Edmund Spenser died for lack of bread. It was in a room of a house in King Street that the author of Faerie Queene received the tardy charity of twenty pieces of silver sent him by Lord Essex. He returned it with bitterly courteous expression of regret that he had " no time to spend them." Mr. Loder discovers in the contemplated improvement of Parliament Street an opportunity of adding to the com- 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 29 fort and convenience of Ministers and officials. He suggests that from somewhere in the neighbourhood of ^ ^j^^ Downing Street a subway may start, landing in Proposal. Palace Yard. As the money in this instance would be forthcoming not from the purse of a railway company, but from the coffers of the State, it is not probable the scheme will meet with the warm approval bestowed upon the passage under Bridge Street. Moreover, objection may reasonably be taken on behalf of the Man in the Street. During Mr. Gladstone's Premiership it was the daily delight of a crowd lining Downing Street, and of another clustered opposite the gates of Palace Yard, to await the coming of the veteran statesman. Had he, enticed by the privacy and shelter of the subway, gone underground, much innocent pleasure and excitement would have been lost. Nor would the public to-day willingly let die the opportunity of seeing Mr. Arthur Balfour, with long, swinging stride, and a pleasant smile on his still boyish face, pass daily through the Session on his way to the House of Commons. In the published letters of the late Archbishop Magee there are several indications, scratched by a ruthlessly sharp pen, of the heartburning that underlies the pa„e„„ ordinary placid appearance of the House of Lords. Peers in I am thoroughly sick of episcopal life in Parlia- " ""*" ' ment," moans Dr. Magee, after he had sat in it for ten years as Bishop of Peterborough. " We are hated by the Peers as a set oi parvenus whom they would gladly rid themselves of if they dare, and only allowed on sufferance to speak now and then on Church questions after a timid and respectful sort." Dr. Magee addressing any body of his fellow-creatures in timid and respectful attitude does not immediately jump with conclusions formed in reminiscence of his ordinary manner. The suggestion shows how deeply he was moved. Differences in custom of debate tend to make Debate in Lords things harder for an undesirable speaker in the and commons. House of Lords than for one similarly esteemed in the House of Commons. 30 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 LORD MORRIS. On big field-nights, such as the second reading of the Home Rule Bill or the Irish Land Bill, the list of speakers on one side, and the order of their appearance, is drawn up by Lord Salisbury, a similar list being pre- pared by the Leader of the party opposite. These lists serve as stone walls against the desire of any Lord of Parliament who may desire to enjoy his birthright by addressing his peers. In the debate on the second reading of the Irish Land Bill, passed by Lord Salis- a„ undelivered bury's Government, an speech. Irish Law Lord ^ who knows the question thoroughly, and whose racy speech is much relished by the House and the public, regarded it as a matter of course that he would be expected to take part in the debate. He was, accordingly, at some pains to prepare a speech pre- sumably full of good things. Inquiring where he was to come in, he was quietly told that he would not be wanted. " So," he says, with a twinkle in his eye and a richer note in his brogue, " I'm saving this speech up for the next Irish Land Bill a Conservative Govern- ment will bring in." It seems natural enough that a clergyman, albeit an archbishop, projected ' The late Lord Morris. THE LATE LORD COLERIDGE. 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 31 into the political arena, should be possessed with that feeling of chilliness in the atmosphere of the House of ^ cheerfni Lords which Dr. Magee indicates in the passage simile, quoted. It affects even lawyers. A short time before his death the first Lord Coleridge, talking to me about the House of Lords, said : " I have had my seat there now for more than a dozen years. But when at this day I rise to speak I have something of the feeling that chilled me at my first essay. Making a set speech in the House of Lords is like getting up in a churchyard and addressing the tombstones." The prospect of Lord Charles Beresford returning to the House of Commons, a happy event not likely to be A Colloquy at '°"S deferred, flutters the Admiralty with pleased the Admiralty, anticipation. As seen from Whitehall, it is doubtful whether Lord Charles, being in Parliament, is better in office or out of it. Out of it he is always cruising round, continually threatening to run down the First Lords' frigate with his saucy gunboat. In office he is not any more tractable. He tells a charming story of what happened to him " when I was at the Admiralty." " One morning," Lord Charles says, "a clerk came in with a wet quill pen, and said : ' Good- morning. Will you sign the Estimates of the year ? ' I said : 'What!' He said: 'Will you sign the Estimates for the year ? ' I said : ' My good man, I have not seen them.' ' Oh, well,' he said, shoving a little astern, 'the other Lords have signed them. It will be very [ sha'n't sign the estimates. 32 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 inconvenient if you don't' 'I'm very sorry,' I said. 'I'm afraid I'm altogether inconvenient in this place. Certainly I sha'n't sign Estimates I've not seen.' ' I must go and tell the First Lord,' said the horrified clerk. I assured him I didn't care a fig whom he told. Being at the time the Coal Lord, I knew the coal was not half enough to supply the fleet as it stood, and the fleet wasn't near enough the strength it ought to be. So I flatly refused to sign, and the Estimates were brought into the House without my signature. The omission was noted and an explanation demanded. 'Really,' said the First Lord, 'it does not matter whether the Junior Lord signs the Estimates or does not.' " Mr. Sydney Gedge has thought out a means of saving public time in the House of Commons, which he will, in the Mr. Qedje course of the coming Session, invite the House has a Plan, to embody in a Standing Order. It is aimed against the practice of a few recalcitrant members insisting upon dividing when their chances of prevailing in the lobby are ludicrously hopeless. This is an opportunity not lost upon obstructionists, who when they tire of talking have only to challenge a division, which secures for them a little wholesome exercise, combined with a waste of ten minutes of public time. Mr. Gedge proposes that the Speaker, or if the House is in Committee, the Chairman, may, after putting the question a second time and finding his opinion challenged, call for a show of hands. He may thereupon declare whether the " ayes " or " noes " have it, his decision to be final. In order to gratify the desire of members to see their names in the division list, Mr. Gedge further proposes that members may write their names, with the word " aye " or " no," on a card provided for the purpose, and deposit it in a box, the votes so signified to be printed in the division list. There is already in existence a Standing Order designed to effect the purpose Mr. Gedge has at heart. In accord- ance with it, the Speaker, or Chairman of Committees, 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 33 regarding a division as frivolously claimed, may direct those clamouring for it to stand up in their places. The Committee clerks are summoned ; the names of members on their feet are ticked off, and are printed with the votes on the following day. Once last Session Mr. Weir succeeded in provoking the Chairman of Committees to put in force the Standing Order. In Committee of Supply he, lamenting the slack attendance of Her Majesty's ships in the neighbourhood of the Hebrides, moved to reduce Mr. Goschen's salary by the sum of ;£'i 500. The Chairman, putting the question, declared the "noes" had it. Mr. Weir insisted on the contrary, and claimed a division. Thereupon, the Chairman directed the " ayes " to stand up. Nine members, including Mr. Caldwell and Dr. Tanner, supported Mr. Weir. It was a significant circumstance that on the next vote Dr. Tanner made a motion at least as frivolous. But the Chairman did not again have recourse to the Standing Order. In the division that followed the minority was eight. Whence it would appear that the challenge for a division was one-ninth more frivolous than the one upon which the Chairman had taken action. The most delightful incident in the evolution of new members of the present Parliament stands to the credit of a member who sits above the gangway on the Hair-curud Opposition benches. Very early after taking oratory, the oath he resolved to make his maiden speech. Impressed with the respect due to the Mother of Parliaments, he con- sidered what he should do in order properly to render it. Discussing with himself various suggestions, he finally resolved that before he rose to catch the Speaker's eye he would have his hair curled. One afternoon, to the astonishment of members in his immediate neighbourhood, he came down oiled and curled like an Assyrian bull. Unfortunately, the delicate attention he had paid to the House was not reciprocated by the Speaker. Up to dinner time, whenever a member taking D 34 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 part in the debate resumed his seat, a curled head was seen flashing up above the gangway, and a voice issuing from below the fringe said, " Mr. Speaker ! " But the owner was persistently ignored. Wearied by reiterated effort and continual disappoint- ment, he went out about the dinner hour to get some refreshment. He was back early in fresh quest of oppor- tunity. But, even in the more favourable circumstances ot lessened attendance and reduced competition, he did not get his chance. New iliembers have a prescriptive right to precedence over all but the giants of debate. On this occasion new members seemed, with one accord, to have agreed to seize the opportunity. It was eleven o'clock before the member above the gangway was called upon, by which time, partly owing to the heat of the atmosphere, partly to extreme mental per- turbation, his hair was almost entirely out of curl. But the attention was well meant, and was much appreciated by members who in the course of the evening possessed themselves of the secret. It was another new member, fresh from Ire- land, who, in the heat of oratory, flashed forth a new and delightfully ex- pressive word. Mr. Gerald Balfour declined to assent to one of the many pro- posals formulated by rival factions below the gang- way opposite. Murnaghan, fixing the Minister with flaming eye, " I can tell the Chief Secretary that his message will be received in Ireland with constirpation." A New Word. "Sir," said Mr. 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 35 I have happed upon a rare pamphlet whose well-thumbed condition testifies to the interest it has excited. A Short History of Prime Ministers in Great Britain is ^ Fearful its title, the imprint showing that it was " done warning, by H. Haines, at Mr. Francklin's, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, 1733." The history, much condensed, is designed to show how fatal for a nation's welfare is the delegation of kingly rule to the hands of a single man. The anonymous writer goes as far back as the time of William the Conqueror with his favourite Minister, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and passing through succeeding reigns, shows how A'Beckett, Hubert de Burgh, Mortimer, Somerset, Buckingham, and others placed in supreme power by the personal affection of the Sovereign, brought their country to the verge of ruin. The gem of the work is reserved for the end, where the author, summarising the history of Prime Ministers, shows how fearsome was their fate. Here is his list made out in the fashion of a butcher's weekly account for meat : — DY'D by the Halter . Ditto by the Axe Ditto by Sturdy Beggars . Ditto untimely by private Hands Ditto in Imprisonment Ditto in Exile Ditto Penitent Saved by Sacrificing their Master 3 10 3 2 4 4 I 4 Sum Total of Prime Ministers 31 Like Captain Bunsby's remarks, the bearing of the pamphleteer's observations lies in the application thereof Only one reference is made to current politics. " It would scarce have been safe," he writes, " I am sure it would not have been prudent, thus to entertain the Publick with the dismal Consequences, that have hitherto followed, upon vesting all Power in One Man. But at a Time like This, when it is the joy of all good Men to see that there is no one Prime Minister at the Helm ; but that several equally 36 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 able, equally virtuous, and great Men jointly draw on the well-ballanced Machine of State, which therefore cannot, as I pray it may not, totter." The wicked slyness of the pamphleteer is realised when we recall the fact that at the time he launched his artfully prepared dart, Sir Robert Walpole was first Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, had held the position for twelve years, and seemed likely, as indeed the event proved, to retain it for nine years longer. CHAPTER IV MARCH In this, its third Session, it becomes more than ever clear that the Fourteenth Parliament of Queen Victoria will not vary the level of respectable commonplace p^^^^ prevalent in the House of Commons in recent s*«"- times. As far as individuality is concerned, the Parliament of 1874-80 marks the high tide. That was the assembly that provided a platform on which were played the high jinks of Major O'Gorman, Mr. Biggar, Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell, Dr. Kenealy, Sir John Astley, Mr, Tom Connelly, Mr. David Davies, Mr. Delahunty, with his one-pound notes ; Mr. M'Carthy Downing, Mr. PlimsoU, and his famous achieve- ment of standing on one leg and shaking his fist at the Speaker ; Sir John Elphinstone, Mr. David M'lver, honest John Martin, the Chevalier O'Clery, J. P. Ronayne, one of the wittiest of Irishmen ; Dr. O'Leary, Captain Stackpoole, Mr, Smollett, great-grand-nephew of the novelist and historian, who effectively reproduced in the House the manners of Humphrey Clinker ; Mr. Whalley, with his grave suspicion of Mr. Newdegate, whom he once accused of being a Jesuit in disguise ; Mr. Newdegate, with his funereal voice, his solemn manner, and his pocket-handkerchief of the hue of the Scarlet Lady whose existence disturbed his hours sleeping or waking — all these lived in the Parliament of 1874-80. All, all are gone, and there is none to take their place. I see I have omitted the Admiral from the list, which 37 38 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 proves its abundant fulness. Yet, perhaps, of all the charac- The ters in that memorable Parliament, the Admiral Admiral, ^as the most subtly humoristic. His proper style was Sir William Edmonstone, Bart., C.B., member for Stirlingshire. In the House he was never known by any other name than " the Admiral." Through the long Sessions of the '74 Parliament there was no more constant attendant than he, seated midway on the bench immediately behind Her Majesty's Ministers. Strangers in the gallery, attracted by certain growlings suggestive of limited allowance of rum in the forecastle, grew familiar with the spare figure, surmounted by a small head, from which the hand of Time had gently but firmly plucked the greater part of the hair. They knew and liked the thin, resolute face, with frail vestiges of whiskers, the mouth marked with lines telling of threescore years and ten. In February 1874 the Admiral came in with a crowd of new members, absolutely an unknown man. Circum- stances had not been favourable to the development of that political acumen later developed in remarkable degree. Afloat or ashore, he had served his Queen and his country full fifty years. It was not by any fault of his that the only time he smelt gunpowder fiercely fired was when, as a lad of sixteen, a midshipman on the Sybille, he came across some pirates in the Archipelago. Since then he was present at many desperate actions, chiefly taking place in the House of Commons. He saw right honourable pirates on the Front Bench opposite again and again attempt to board the Treasury Bench, he standing by and cheering whilst the bold Ben Dizzy beat them off". There were many things misty to his mind. One he could not comprehend was the perversity that led a member of the House, in whatsoever quarter he might be seated, to challenge a decision on the part of even a subordinate member of the Administration. Sir William Harcourt used to take great delight in " drawing " the Admiral. This was not a difficult thing to accomplish. Express in plain terms the conviction that the Government 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 39 had blundered ; say that a particular Minister had done something he ought not to have done, or left undone that which he should have done. Thereupon the House, wickedly watching for the consequence, beheld the Admiral, hitherto quiescent, begin to move as a river-boat rocks when caught in the swell of a passing steamer. He tossed petulantly from side to side, thrust one hand deep in his trouser pocket, brushed with the other his scanty locks, as he rested his elbow on the back of the bench. Finally, seizing a copy of the Orders of the Day, his lips angrily pursed, his brow black as thunder, he began furiously to fan himself. If the attack proceeded, he indulged in a series of tumultuous coughs ; at first eloquently expostulatory, then indignantly denunciatory, finally hopelessly despairing. Early in the career of the Parnellites the Admiral devoted much attention to them. For him, as for his esteemed leaders, they proved too much. During the Session of 1877, when organised obstruction was in full play, the Admiral was known to cough himself hoarse, and in a single night to use up, in the process of fanning himself, five copies of the Orders abstracted from unconscious members sitting near him. Mr. Parnell went on as had been his wont. Mr. Biggar took no note of the frantic semaphore signals made in his direction. Mr. O'Donnell blankly regarded the irate old gentleman with the added aggravation of an eye-glass. In the course of time the Admiral accepted the Parnell- ites with the sort of pained resignation with which a man submits to untoward climatic phenomena. When one of them rose to speak, the gallant old salt, with a low groan, turned his face to the wall. Only an occasional tremor of the nervously folded Orders showed he was listening and in pain. The Admiral passed away with the Disraelian Parliament, and his type we shall never see more at Westminster. When the election of 1880 put Mr. Gladstone in power, the Parnellites, to the dismay and openly expressed disgust of the Conservative nobility and gentry, resolved to stay 40 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 where they had been quartered when Parliament was The Irish dissolved. They were in full exercise of their Quarter, right ; and, accordingly, country squires, sons of peers, University men, and wealthy manufacturers crossing over to the Opposition benches had to grin and bear the company of Mr. Biggar, Mr. O'Donnell, Mr. Finnigan, and the rest. There was no pride about Lord Randolph Churchill, and, when he established himself in the leadership of the Fourth Party, he found the contiguity of the Parnellites highly convenient. He and they were joined in the yoke of common enmity to Mr. Gladstone and all his works. In those days, the Irish Nationalist member was in the House of Commons regarded in a light difficult for a younger generation to realise. He was a sort of political leper, with whom no man would associate. Quite a sensation was created when, from time to time. Lord Randolph Churchill was seen to turn round and converse with Mr. Healy or Mr. O'Donnell, who usually sat immediately behind his corner post. All that is changed now. Old members have even grown accustomed to Irish members being referred to by A Cuckoo in a Ministers and ex-Ministers as "my hon. and Dove's Nest, learned friend." (Note. — Nearly all Irish Nationalist members have been called to the Bar.) Never- theless when, in the first week parties settled down in the House of Commons elected in 1892, Mr. Willie Redmond was discovered seated on the fourth bench above the gang- way on the Opposition side, something like a shudder ran through the Conservative host. That is the quarter of the House where, when the Conservatives are in Opposition, the flower of the Squirearchy blooms. To indicate its precise bearing, it suffices to say that the bench Mr. Redmond marked for his own was the very one frequented by Sir Walter Barttelot when his side were in Opposition. For Redmond Minor, above all Irish members, to plant himself out there was a procedure relieved only from the charge of effi-ontery by suspicion of a joke. There was no i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 41 use trying to forestall him selves together, taking turn and turn about to be early at the House with design to secure all the seats on this bench. At whatever hour they arrived, they found on the seat next but one to that sacred to the memory of Sir Walter Barttelot a hat they recognised as hailing from East Clare. The owner was always in his place at prayer-time to establish the claim he had thus pegged out. But men, like eels, grow accustomed by use to all extremes of adversity. Patriot squires banded them- WHO KILLED PARNELL?' tion, recalls the company A HORRIBLE DISCOVERY. After a while Mr. W. Redmond endeared himself to his im- mediate circle of neighbours by loudly interrupting Mr. Glad- stone when he spoke on Irish matters, and by, from time to time, making bland inquiry addressed across the gangway to Mr. Tim Healy : "Who killed Parnell ? " A very old member of the House, who sits in this quarter when the Conserva- a Bootless tives are in Opposi- Errand, of another Irish member of 42 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 eccentric habits. This was Mr. X., who, some thirty years ago, represented a borough constituency. He made his fortune at the auctioneer's rostrum, and when he took to pontics, he shrewdly threw in his lot with what in later times have been called "the gentlemen of England." The Conservatives were then in power, and X., as a faithful follower of Lord Derby, a moneyed man withal, sat on the fourth bench behind Ministers. He had acquired an odd habit of slipping off his boots as a preliminary to going to sleep over an argument. The sight, occasionally something more, of a pair of stockinged feet greatly irritated his neighbours. They dropped many hints of their preference for boots. But, more especially in hot weather, X. never failed to kick off his boots as a pre- liminary to settling down to close attention to debate. One night he was in this condition when a division was challenged. A happy thought struck an honourable and long-suffering member who sat near him. Taking the brogues gingerly between finger and thumb, he passed out behind the Speaker's Chair, hiding the things under one of the benches at the back of the Chair. X., thoroughly comfortable about the feet, slept on whilst the question was put, and did not even awake when the Speaker called " Ayes to the right, noes to the left." The bustle of the parting hosts at length aroused him. The House was evidently dividing. He had not the slightest idea what it was about. It was of small consequence, as the Whip would show him into which lobby he should walk. Easy on that score, he felt for his boots, and, lo ! they were not. He got down on his knees, peered all alonig under the bench, but, like the Spanish Fleet, they were not yet in sight. The House was now nearly empty. The Speaker was regarding his movements with grave attention. The Whips at the doorway were impatiently signalling. There was only one thing to be done, and X. did it. He went forth and voted in his stockinged feet. The old member recalls yet another story about X. 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 43 When he came forward in the Conservative interest, the Lord Lieutenant of the day did everything that ^ oratefui one in his position might do discreetly to assist Politician the candidate. When X. won the seat, and called to pay his respects at the Viceregal Lodge, His Excellency jocularly remarked that the new member owed much to him, and that he really deserved some reward. X. was delighted. Touch- ing the Lord Lieutenant lightly in the ribs, he whispered in his ear — " Certainly, my lord. I won't forget. There's a neat little bracelet in gold at the disposal of her ladyship." It was not without some difficulty that the alarmed Lord Lieutenant succeeded in averting the consequences of his little joke. The British public, long familiar with Sir John Tenniel's weekly cartoon in Punch, are not aware that this master in black and white at the outset of his career „, . . sir John worked in colours. Nearly half a century ago Tenniei-s he entered into competition for engagement to ^"' *** artoon. contribute to the frescoes on the walls of the then new Houses of Parliament. He was selected, together with Mr. Maclise, Mr. Herbert, Mr. Horsley, and Mr. Dyce, who have since all achieved the position of R.A. In this respect, and in one other much more satisfactory. Sir John Tenniel stands in a position of splendid isolation. Very shortly after the frescoes were completed, the paintings began to disappear. As early as 1863, nine years after the completion of the work in the upper Waiting- Hall, the Fine Arts Commission reported the paintings to be partially disappearing. Since then decay has spread, till, at the present day, some of the panels are blank save for suspicion of a smudge to be detected under a strong light. The one exception to the common lot is Tenniel's fresco of " St. Cecilia," to be found on the staircase leading down from the Committee-room corridor to the central lobby. For some years patient and well-directed effort has been made to restore the other frescoes, but without effect. " St. 44 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 Cecilia," on the contrary, having been dusted and cleaned with bread, was found to be in a fair state of preservation. It has lately received two coats of a paraffin wax solution invented by Professor Church, and all that is now wanted is a fairly good light in which it might be seen. The secret of this rare triumph is found, as in the case of other and older Masters, in the preparation and manipula- tion of colours. When the stripling Tenniel came to his work in 1849 it occurred to him that the best way to confront the peculiar difficulties of the case was to paint very thinly without impasto. In fact, he hardly did more than stain with his colours the white ground of the wall. Yet this is the one that has lasted, whilst Mr. Herbert's fresco, Mr. Horsley's, and the rest, handled with fuller grip, certainly with more colour, have vanished, leaving scarce a tone of colour behind. There is, Professor Church says, no parallel to this case of a pure fresco which, for nearly half a century, has successfully resisted the in- fluence of the London atmos- phere, more especially as it is developed in contiguity to the Thames. Considering how keen is the interest excited by Parlia- mentary proceed- The strangers' ingS, how high Qallery. political feeling occasionally runs, it is remarkable how rare are the interruptions to debate by strangers indulging even in an ejaculation. The most common outbreak from the Strangers' Gallery takes . . _ Some village Hampden on a visit to town, making his way to the Strangers' Gallery of A TERRIBLE OFFENCE. the form of clapping hands. 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 45 the House of Commons, listening entranced to an impassioned speech, gives vent to his feelings in the ordinary way by clapping his hands. That is what is usually done in similar circum- stances at meetings in the country he is accustomed to attend. Why it should be different in the House of Commons he does not at the moment realise. Full opportunity for think- ing the matter over is invariably provided, he being summarily led forth NOTICE TO QUIT. ^^^^W by the attendant and conducted ^^^^R~^ to the door of the outer lobby. ^^K^m The funniest disorderly in- ^^^^^k terruption to debate I ever ^^^^^^k heard in the House . „ , . ^^^■H^HH Voice from ^^^^^^^B of Commons passed the Press ^^Ht undetected by the "°"^'^- ^^^^^H authorities. At the time, some ^^^^^P years back, there was still in the ^^^P^H Press Gallery a very old member. M ^m fB He had, in fact, been in the m ^m I^L^ gallery so long, had heard so W ^^L 1^^^ many speeches, seen so many ^^* ^C^ processions of members coming EVICTION. ^"'^ going, that familiarity justified its proverbial conse- quence of breeding contempt. Perhaps of all members of 46 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 the House, the one J. had the most rooted dislike for was Mr. Gladstone, This was partly based on political grounds, J. being from birth and associations a high old Tory of the Church-and-State kind. The objection was possibly nurtured by the fact that Mr. Gladstone was a voluminous speaker, whom it was necessary to report fully, and when, towards midnight, a man got a ten-minute or quarter-of-an-hour " turn " of the orator, it meant unduly prolonged labour. Next to Mr. Gladstone, J. mostly disliked his own mis- guided countrymen, the Irish Nationalist members. As it was not always necessary to report what they said, he had the opportunity of listening, and was accustomed to growl out a commentary upon their speeches. One night, after dinner, Mr. Sexton introduced into his discourse a statement that particularly irritated J. " No, no," he cried, in audible voice, shaking his head reprovingly at the member for Sligo. Standing in his accustomed place below the gangway, at the other end of the House, Mr. Sexton distinctly heard the contradiction. "An honourable member above the gangway," he observed, " says, ' No, no.' " Members in the quarter addressed protested that they had not spoken, but Mr. Sexton had heard the contradiction, and in an aside of some length demonstrated its ineptitude. J. was remarkably silent for the rest of his turn. It was not he, but a venerable and esteemed colleague on the same paper, who, at the end of a quarter of an hour's " turn," during which reporters to right and left of him had been taking verbatim note of an important speech by Mr. Gladstone, was accustomed to bend over to his neighbour and in a hoarse whisper inquire, " What line is he taking ? " The other day I saw treasured in a private library what is perhaps the earliest collection of Parliamentary speeches. They were delivered by Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, father of the more famous Francis Lord Verulam, and were spoken in successive Parlia- 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 47 ments. The addresses are written out on parchment that has withstood the wear and tear of more than . , , An ancient three centuries. Half-way down one of the Parliamentary speeches is a break marked by this note : •'"*=*'«''• " Hereafter ffolloweth that I intended to have saide if I had not byn countermaunded." Here is consolatory suggestion for Parliament men in a reign that has lasted longer than Queen Elizabeth's. In Mr. Courtney's case, mentioned on an earlier page (when on a Wednesday afternoon he talked out a Woman's Rights Bill he had risen to support), had he been aware of the precedent, and disposed to follow it, he might have averted calamity to the measure in which he took such generous interest. Had he been content to discontinue his prepared speech at the point where interruption grew boisterous he might, on the next morning, have pasted in a book of pleasant refer- ence whatever measure of report the newspapers gave. Then, with the prefatory note, " Hereafter foUoweth what I intended to have said if I had not been countermanded," might appear at length the precious apothegms whose delivery was checked by the noise of inconsiderate persons wearying to get home. In the recently published Life of Philip Duke of Wharton there leaps to light a record usefully illustrating the standard of morality in those " good old " Parliamentary nucai times, whose lapse we occasionally hear deplored. Duplicity. When Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, was arraigned on a charge of treasonable conspiracy against good King George, Wharton espoused his cause and undertook the task of defending him before the House of Lords. When the indictment had proceeded a certain length, the Bishop's friends became anxious to know whether all had been alleged, or whether the representatives of the Crown had any cards up their sleeve. Wharton undertook to find out. He called upon Sir Robert Walpole, at the Prime Minister's residence in Chelsea, and protested his poignant regret at having hitherto adopted a line of conduct distasteful to the 48 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 King and hurtful to his faithful Minister. By way of atone- ment he now offered to join in the denunciation of Atterbury, and begged the Premier to coach him up on the subject of the Bishop's guilt. Walpole, delighted to secure so important a recruit on the Ministerial side, told him everything. Next day the Duke appeared in his place in the House of Lords, and with a thorough knowledge of the strong and weak points of the prosecution upon which the Premier had dilated for his instruction, he delivered a powerful speech in favour of the Bishop ! It is happily impossible to parallel this achievement from modern Parliamentary records. The nearest approach to it, Lord Eicho in f^"" fcmovcd from its slippery footing, was Lord two Pieces. Elcho's doublc dealing with the Derby Day. In the Session of 1890 he, in a speech that disclosed a real humorist, moved the adjournment of the House over the Derby Day. Two years later, in a discourse equally witty and not less convincing, he seconded an amendment by Sir Wilfrid Lawson traversing the proposal that the House should make holiday on account of the race on Epsom Downs. That is obviously a very different thing from the deliberate turpitude of the Georgian Duke. It marks the higher standard of morality which governs Parliamentary life of to-day that the House of Commons was vaguely shocked, being only partially reassured by suspicion that it was all a joke. There may be no connection between the events, but it is certain that on the following day, the House having resolved to sit in spite of the Derby, no quorum was forthcoming, and within three weeks Parliament was dissolved. No unalterable rule orders the location of a Cabinet Council. Through the Parliamentary Session it not in- cabinet frequently happens that a consultation of Cabinet Councils. Ministers is summoned upon some news of the moment, and meets in the room of the First Lord of the 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 49 Treasury. It is not formally called a Cabinet Council, nor is it so recorded, with the list of Ministers present, in the papers of the next day. But it is really the same thing, and occasionally leads to exceptionally important conclusions. In the ordinary course of events, Cabinet Councils are held in a large room on the first floor of the official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury in Downing Street. It was from this room that on a historic occasion, whilst awaiting a critical message from Constantinople, Mr. Glad- stone's colleagues in his second Administration adjourned to the scanty walled-garden at the back of No. 10 Downing Street. A Government clerk chancing, in the rare leisure of a day's work, to look out of the window, happed upon the scene and sketched it, showing Lord Granville seated at a small table playing chess with a colleague, whilst the momentous message still tarried on the wires. The room in which the Cabinet Council sit is plainly furnished, something after the style of the dining-room in a well-to-do boarding-house in the neighbourhood of Russell Square. One notes the double windows, a precaution not necessary to exclude sound from without, for though in the heart of London, Downing Street is, back and front, one of its quietest dwelling-places. Possibly the device was adopted as final precaution against the escape of sounds from within. There lingers round the Chamber a tradition of the Cabinets of 1868-74 which took much wear and tear out of the Council-room. There was, at that epoch, a ^he veiiow hideous yellow blind attached to one of the window-wind. windows. In the course of some remarks on the Irish Education Bill, which led to the Ministerial crisis of 1873, Mr. Gladstone, restlessly walking to and fro, tugged at the blind as he passed it, displacing the cord. The blind stuck fast half-way down on a painful slant. Mr. Disraeli, coming into power on the crest of the wave of the General Election of 1874, found the stranded yellow blind in precisely the position it had been left by Mr. Gladstone's undesigned effort. One of the weekly illustrated papers published in E so LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 July 1874 a sketch of the new Cabinet Council, which incidentally preserves the condition of the wrecked window- blind. The daily newspapers are not backward in providing on the following morning outline sketches of events taking place within the jealously-guarded portals of the Cabinet Council. On the whole, having regard to accuracy, it is better to await the later appearance of letters and diaries, either of dead -and -gone Cabinet Ministers or of men intimately connected with Ministerial circles. Horace Walpole gives a charming account of a Cabinet Council of two, held under the presidency of Pitt. The Premier, a cabinet who during Council of Two. the term of his office lived in Downing Street, was in bed with the gout, and had sum- moned to conference his colleague the Duke of Newcastle. It was a bitterly cold day, and Pitt, according to his custom, having no fire in his room, had bed- clothes piled upon him mountains high. This was all very well for the Premier, but rather hard on the Duke, who, as Walpole says, " was, as usual, afraid of catching cold." He first sat down on Mrs. Pitt's bed as the warmest place, then drew himself up into it as it got colder. The lecture continued a considerable time, and the Duke at length fairly lodged himself under Mrs. Pitt's bed-clothes. " A person from whom I had the story," Walpole writes, " suddenly going in, saw the two Ministers in bed at two ends of the room, while Pitt's long nose and black beard, unshaven for days, added to the grotesque character of the scene." The well-regulated mind refuses to contemplate an "COLD, isn't it, ARTHUR.' i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT SI analogous scene in Downing Street of to-day. The boldest imagination could not frame a picture calling up before the mind's eye Mr. Arthur Balfour in bed on one side of a room, whilst there peeped forth from beneath the coverlet of a couch at the other end of the chamber the spirituel countenance of the Lord Chancellor. Horace Walpole, who knew his Plato, might, had By Earlier ^e chanCcd Bedsides, to think of it, have recalled an earlier bedside confabulation. It will be found in the Protagoras, giving an account of the visit of Socrates, accompanied by his friend Hippocrates, to the house of Callias, with intent to make the acquaintance of three famous sophists, Protagoras of Abdera, Hippias of Elis, and Prodicus of Ceos. Socrates relates how he found Prodicus lying in his bed-chamber, rolled up in heaps of blankets, his disciples planting themselves on neighbouring beds whilst they talked. So great was the crowd, Socrates could not get in, and from the thronged portal listened to the resonant voice of Prodicus laying down the law. ' AWFULLY COLD. CHAPTER V APRIL Those familiar with Mr. Gladstone's position in the House of Commons during the last five years of his long life there, find it difficult to realise a state of things that „ „, . ^ , ^ Mr. Gladstone s earlier existed. The closing period was pretty last Years in equally divided be- *»"= '=°°"»«'"''- tween the Opposition side and the Treasury Bench. In either case, with one memorable ex- ception — when, amid the tumult of the scene that accom- panied the closure of Com- mittee on the Home Rule Bill, Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett (shortly after knighted) sat on the Front Opposition Bench with hands on knees bellowing con- r^ tumely at the veteran statesman ''^ — he was treated in both camps with reverent respect. Possibly members felt that the end was not far off, that a career as memorable for its length as for greater achievements must soon close. Perhaps Mr. Gladstone was himself mellowed by advancing years and the deference paid to him. However it be, his appearance at the table, so far from being, as was once the case, the 52 'BELLOWING CONTUMELY. 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 53 occasion for jeers and angry interruptions, was the signal for the gathering of a great congregation, drinking in with delight the flow of stately eloquence. In these sunnier circumstances Mr. Gladstone's mind may have reverted to earlier times when he suffered from quite other manners. There was one night in the „,^ ^, . . ° other Times, sprmgtime of the Session of 1878, when, as the other Marquis of Salisbury, speaking in the Lords in '"''""^'■*- January of this year, candidly admitted, Lord Beaconsfield and his Ministry were engaged in " putting their money on the wrong horse." (It was, of course, the money of the British taxpayer. But precision is often fatal to epigram.) The Jingo fever was at its height. Mr. Gladstone was carrying round the Fiery Cross, rousing popular enthusiasm that, in due time, swept the Conservative Government out of Downing Street. In the House of Commons, passion raged with rare turbulence. On the particular night referred to, Mr. Gladstone was returning to his seat, having voted against the Government on a side issue. Some of the gentlemen of England, per- ceiving his approach through the glass door of the " Aye " lobby, began to howl. The noise brought others to the spot, and there arose, echoing round the wondering and, at the moment, empty House of Commons, a yell of execration. Mr. Gladstone, startled at the sudden outburst, looked up, and saw a crowd of faces pressed against the glass door, mouths open, eyes gleaming with uncontrollable hate. He walked close up and steadfastly regarded the yelling mob. Then, without a word, he turned and pursued his way into the House. This temper displayed in the High Court of Parliament was a reflex of the passion that filled the music-halls and similar places of public resort outside. A few xheMobout days later a crowd assembled before Mr. Glad- of doors, stone's private house and, or ever the police could be mustered, smashed his windows. Amongst his voluminous correspondence Mr. Gladstone probably preserves a roughly written scrawl enclosing a, 54 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 post-office order for £z : los., that being the sum at which, according to the newspapers, the damage to his house-front was assessed. The writer said he was a working man ; that he, his wife and family were so ashamed at reading how the great statesman's windows had been broken by a mob calling themselves British working men, that they had scraped 'HE STEADFASTLY REGARDED THE YELLING MOB.' together money to repair the damage, and enclosed it herewith. When, after the General Election of 1880, Mr. Gladstone returned to power, master of a mighty majority, the personal A Point of animosity displayed towards him in Conservative Order. circles was, if possible, increased. It found many channels during the long course of the Bradlaugh controversy. Overworked, sometimes broken down in health, irritated with the constant dribbling of personal animosity calculated to wear away any stone, the Premier, by occasional outbreaks of temper, gave the enemy fresh cause to blaspheme. i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT SS There was a well-remembered scene when the Land Bill of 1 88 1 was in Committee. The House had been cleared for a division. The bell clanged through all the corridors. Members who had not been present to listen to the argu- ments made up for the remissness by crowding in to vote. Suddenly, to the astonishment of every one, to the consterna- tion of Dr. Playfair — under that style Chairman of Com- mittees at the time — the Prime Minister was discovered standing at the table commencing a speech. In the circum- stances of the moment that is a breach of order upon which it would seem impossible for the newest member to stumble. That the Leader of the House, a Parliamentarian of fifty years' experience, should thus fly in the face of the Standing Orders at first took away the breath of the Opposition. When regained, they used it to indulge in an angry roar, drowning the opening sentences of the Premier's remarks. Nevertheless, he stood at the table, waiting till the tumult should subside. It is one of the quaint rules of debate in the Commons that when the House has been cleared for a division a member desiring to raise any point of order may speak, but he must needs do it seated with his hat on. Dr. Playfair rising to enforce this rule, Mr. Glad- stone's Parliamentary instinct auto- matically asserted itself and he resumed his seat. " Put on your hat ! " shouted the Premier's friends. Over Mr. Gladstone's sternly set angry face there flashed for a moment an amused smile. He gently shook his head. He knew, what the House had forgotten, that he never brought his hat on to the Treasury Bench. At this critical moment it was hung on a peg in his room behind the Speaker's Chair. When this difficulty dawned upon his colleagues, hats were proffered from various sides. The nearest at hand was that DEXTEROUSLY BALANCING THE HAT." 56 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 of Sir Farrer Herschell, then Solicitor- General. Mr. Glad- stone took it, and tried to put it on. But it was one of his unlucky days. A new and fearsome difficulty presented itself. The hat was not nearly large enough. As the scene grew in tumult and time was precious, the Premier, dexterously balancing the hat on the crown of his head, said what he had to say, and the scene closed. Perhaps Mr. Gladstone, in the better times that dawned at the close of his Parliamentary life, never thought of these Forgiving and things. He had a gift of forgetting personal Forgetting, affront, which stood him in good stead in the changing aspects of his political life. In this very Parliament of 1880-S, when Coercion Bills were passed, all-night sittings were as common as Wednesday afternoons, and Irish members were suspended in batches, the Premier was personally the object of that savage vituperation which, after the epoch of Committee Room No. 15, the Irish members turned upon each other. " A vain old gentleman," Mr. Biggar once called him across the floor of the House. That was a mild adjura- tion compared with some of the personal abuse directed at him. In the Home Rule Parliament, I have several times heard Mr. Gladstone courteously allude to an Irish mem- ber still with us as " my hon. friend." He never dropped the phrase, ac- companied with friendly look and courteous gesture, but there flashed on my mind the memory of this same member standing below the gangway, shaking his clenched fist at the author of the Irish Land Bill, roaring at him in that vocal form Mr. O'Connell was once per- mitted to call " beastly bellowing." Mr. Bright, subjected to the same experience, threw up his long-time advocacy of the Irish Nationalist cause, and 'WITH COURTEOUS GESTURE. 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 57 became one of its most powerful enemies. Mr. Gladstone never, in any individual case, betrayed the slightest evidence of recollection of what had been. He had not only forgiven, but had apparently overcome the even greater difficulty of forgetting. Now that Mr. Gladstone has withdrawn from the scene he so long graced, the last echo of the old personal resent- ment has died away. This state of things The Eton found pretty testimony in the movement which B"^*- marked the opening of the Session for placing a bust of him in the Upper School at Eton. Etonians of all shades of politics are found both in the Lords and Commons. Lord Rosebery, representing the Peers, Mr. Arthur Balfour, the former Eton boy who leads the Commons, joined hands in carrying into effect the happy thought. Twenty years ago — fifteen years ago — no member of Parliament with reputation for ordinary sanity would have conceived such an idea. Had he got over that initial diffi- culty and promulgated his scheme, he would have been promptly hustled on one side. This Session subscriptions poured in, old Etonians, Liberals, Conservatives, whatever they be, each, all, proud of the boy whose name is entered in the school-books of Eton, in the month of September 1821. To Mr. Seale-Hayne, another Etonian, first occurred the idea of gathering together a school of old Eton boys to do honour to Mr. Gladstone. Six years ago this An Eton very month, on the 22nd of April 1891, the Dinner, member for the Ashburton division of Devon entertained old Etonians at his town house in Upper Belgrave Street. It was a notable gathering. With a single exception all the old Eton boys present were members of one or other House of Parliament. The exception was Mr. Frank Burnand, who, as Editor of Punch, may be said to represent the universe. In addition to the guest of the evening, then Leader of the Opposition, full of fire and zeal for the Home Rule Bill, was Lord Kimberley, who has this Session resumed his 58 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT leadership of the House of Lords, and Lord Coleridge, then Lord Chief Justice, now gone to another place. Of commoners there were Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, Mr. Beaufoy, Mr. Leveson-Gower, Mr. Foljambe, Sir Arthur Hayter, Mr. Charles Parker, Mr. Harry Lawson, Mr. Milnes-Gaskell, and Mr. Bernard Coleridge. All these, members of the House of Commons at that time, have since retired from "SOME OLD ETON BOYS." the Parliamentary scene. Mr. Stuart Rendel has become a peer ; Sir Hussey Vivian, after a brief sojourn in the House of Lords, died ; Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen is now Lord Brabourne. Lord Kensington, also translated to the peers, died the other day. Sir R. Welby, of the Treasury, declining the title Lord Cut-em-down suggested on his being raised to the peerage, sits in the House of Peers as Lord Welby. Lord Monkswell is still happily to the fore. Of the sixteen members of the House of Commons who 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT S9 then sat round Mr. Scale -Hayne's hospitable board only four retain seats in the present House — Earl Compton, Mr. Herbert Glad- stone, Mr. Labouchere, and the host himself. The gaps on the two front benches of the House of Commons sir George g^ow wider year by year. Treveiyan. Familiar faces seen there through many Parliaments look forth no more. Sometimes, as in the case of Lord Hartington, Lord James of Hereford, Lord Tweedmouth, and a score of other old House of Commons men, it is the House of Lords that draws to it- self the life- blood of the Commons, and never shows surprise when it finds how dully it beats in the new veins. Occasionally the impulse to with- drawal from the arena comes from a sense of overpowering weariness after long strife. The scholar re- asserts himself over the politician, and the longing for the library becomes irresistible. Commonest of all, it is Death that with the abhorred shears cuts the thin-spun thread. Happily, in the case of Sir George Treveiyan, his withdrawal from the scene in which he has for thirty years been an attractive and, for the greater part of the time, a prominent figure, is due ' A GRAND OLD ETON BOY. "SIR HENRY JAMES GOING UP TO THE LORDS." 6o LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 chiefly to renewed hunger after literary work. In common with his contemporaries, he is not so young as he was. Beyond most of them he has toiled in the public service. He is good for years of work to come, and has earned a right to choose the field in which he shall chant his Angelas. The House of Commons— a large numerical section of which has not always been just, not to say generous, in its bearing towards the brilliant scholar- politician — is now united in its protestation that the loss, irreparable in its way, is all its own. For his own peace of mind and pleasure Sir George Trevelyan has undeniably taken a wise decision in clos- ing his Parliamentary career. The admission is made the more ungrudgingly since the world looks forward to share his pleasure in the results of his fresh literary labours. His score of accomplished work, legislative and adminis- trative, far exceeds ^ j,,^., ^^^^ the average. There with a .V , Conscience. IS, nevertheless, a feeling among his friends and admirers that he did not, in his final achievement of Parliamentary position, justify the hopes his start excited. That may be said with fuller freedom since the reasons for it are all to Sir George's credit. The simple truth is he was too highly strung, too sensitive, too chivalrously honest, for the rough and tumble work of the House of Commons. This is the explanation of the occasional apparent indecision which excited the venomous criticism of meaner men. Early in his Ministerial career, when it seemed he had all the world before him where to choose, he, for conscience' sake, took a step that seemed to wreck his voyage. When, in 1868, Mr. Gladstone came in on the wave of a great SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN. 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 6i majority, his shrewd eye discovered the capacity of the Competition Wallah, and he made him Civil Lord of the Admiralty. Two years later, Mr, Forster's Education Bill embodying the principle of payment of State money in support of denominational schools, Mr. Trevelyan resigned. Of course he personally, or in any practical Ministerial relation, had no responsibility in the matter. He might have stuck to his ship in the Admiralty yard and let Mr. Forster adopt the compromise forced upon him by political exigencies. It is quite conceivable that, respecting his views, Mr. Gladstone would not have insisted upon his vote in the pending division. To Mr. Trevelyan niceties of this kind were naughti- nesses. As a student of Parliamentary history, with a knowledge of men, he must have felt that the most disastrous thing a junior Minister can do is to resign on a question of Cabinet policy. Not only is such a course inconvenient to his leaders ; it undesignedly smites them with reproof. It is made to appear that what First Lords and Secretaries of State can stomach is too strong meat for the tender moral constitution of a Civil Lord of the Admiralty. There is nothing a veteran Premier dislikes more than a Junior Lord or an Under Secretary with a tendency to resign for con- science' sake. Sir George Trevelyan had another more memorable and finally fatal attack of the same disease at the epoch of Home Rule. He never recovered from the j^e unpardon- tossing about he then experienced. First he aWesin. wouldn't have Home Rule, and abandoned place and power rather than support his old leader and revered friend. That was a hard thing to do. But, as we have seen, it was not a new thing. Harder still, bitterest pill of political life, Sir George, being convinced, upon reflection and fuller considera- tion, that Mr. Gladstone was right on the Home Rule ques- tion and he wrong, unhesitatingly avowed his error and went back to the fold. That is in politics the unpardonable sin. A man may be forgiven for crossing over the way, leaving his early 62 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 friends and ranging himself in the camp of the adversary. But before he goes back again, under whatever pressure of honest conviction, a man would do well to consider the advantages of the alternative course of tying a millstone round his neck and dropping into the sea. Sir George Trevelyan's courage has through all his life been equal to his convictions. This quality was shown in The Terror another way, when on the morrow of the murder in Dublin, of Lord Frederick Cavendish in Phoenix Park he accepted the proffered post of danger. Lord-Lieutenants and their Chief Secretaries of to-day know little of the daily and hourly existence of their predecessors in office fifteen years ago. Something, it is true, has since been realised upon disclosure of the systematic sneaking after Mr. Forster with murderous intent. Through their term of office Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan never drove through the streets without an armed escort, whilst protecting police- men followed them like shadows, not only in Dublin but in London. From the window of his bedroom at the Viceregal Lodge, Lord Spencer, looking across the Park, could see the spot where Lord Frederick Cavendish was done to death. He had, indeed, been an actual witness of the murder on the fateful Saturday, regarding it with mild interest under the impression that it was some boys larking. A gruesome story is told in the Chief Secretary's lodge, pleasantly set amongst the woods, fronted by the gracious A Welcome beauty of the Wicklow hills. Ten days after the Home. new Chief Secretary had taken up his residence at the lodge. Lady Trevelyan, looking round the drawing- room with housewifely care, observed something lying under the sofa. Calling a servant to have it removed, it turned out to be the blood-stained, dust-begrimed, knife-pierced coat of poor Frederick Cavendish. After the murder he was carried home. The coat, taken off and thrust under the sofa, escaped the notice of the diligent Irish housemaids. A ghastly home-coming this for a new tenant ! 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 63 It was bad enough for Sir George to face the physical dangers and insuperable difficulties of his position in Ireland. But his place on the Treasury Bench in the House of Commons was scarcely less worrying. "'' "" ' It is a favourite episode with old romancists how a night of terror whitens a man's hair. In May 1882, when Sir George Trevelyan became Chief Secretary for Ireland, no thread of silver shone in his abundant hair. When, two years and a half later, having lived through the time of terror, he resigned the office, he was a grey-haired man. He never complained of the storm and stress, but inevitably it must have told upon his strength. It is worry that saps the strength. Sir George Trevelyan, who, though a little tired, came out of the stand-up fight in Ireland with a brave heart and unshaken resolution, never got over the snapping of old ties, the breaking up of ancient friendships, that, as it happened, befell him alternately in two political camps. As every student of Parliamentary history knows, it is primarily and largely due to Sir George Trevelyan's far- sighted pluck that the agricultural labourer and , „ , , , , , , , . Mr. Arch, M.P. the small county householder to-day have their Parliamentary vote. His introduction of the Household Franchise (Counties) Bill in the early days of the Parliament of 1874 was notable for two things beyond the favourable impression made upon the House by the young member's brilliant speech. Mr. Burt, who has since won his way to the closest esteem of the most critical assembly in the world, took occasion to deliver his maiden speech. The other event shows how far we have travelled on the Liberal highway during the last quarter of a century. Mr. Forster, supporting the Bill, referred to Mr. Arch, then in the forefront of his crusade, as " that eminent man." The Squirearchy filled the House with roars of derisive laughter. That was nothing to the storm of angry indignation that burst forth when burly Mr. Forster went on to express a wish, " in the interests alike of Parliament and the country, that Mr. Arch had a seat in this House," If he had sug- 64 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 gested Beelzebub as member for Birmingham, the outcry could not have been greater. To-day, Mr. Arch represents a division of his county, to which he has been thrice elected in as many Parliaments. He has been, at Sandringham, the honoured guest of his colleague on a Royal Commission, the Prince of Wales. Since the present Session opened, good Conservatives have freely joined in a subscription set on foot to soothe the arch-agitator's closing years with the anodyne of an annuity. The altered status of the Irish member in these degenerate days is shown in the marked reduc- "in prison tion of the proportion who often." have been in prison. Ten years ago an Irish member rarely addressed the House of Commons without incident- ally referring to a time " when I was in gaol." As sure as this remark was "^^-^ dropped by one member, other of his MR. JOSEPH ARCH. colleagues seized the opportunity of reminding their constituents, and readers of the Nationalist newspapers, how they, too, had won this mark of distinction, a sort of Victoria Cross in Irish political warfare in Coercion days. Mr. W. O'Brien earned and long enjoyed exceptional distinction in connection with his historic trousers. So uniform among his compatriots was the level of merit in the matter of imprisonment that it was necessary for a man emulous of exceptional fame to do something quite out of the way in a familiarly trodden pathway to glory. Amongst Irish members sitting in the Parliament of to- day Mr. Davitt holds the second place in the roll of prison- martyrs. Mr. Dillon and his contemporaries in prison life had quite amateurish experience compared with the rigour 1 897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 65 MR. MICHAEL DAVITT. of penal servitude through which Mr. Davitt passed in the .« .. ... solitude of his cell, brood- Mr. Davitt. . ing over and hatching the Land League scheme. Proud of his servitude, Mr. Davitt is not at all unready to discourse upon it. Early this Session, in debate on Sir Matthew White Ridley's release of the dyna- mitards, he told again how he was made a beast of burden ; how, with a rope slung over his armless shoulder, he dragged about the stony causeways of Dartmoor a truck containing soil or rubbish. Surely one of the most notable scenes the House of Commons ever presented — an ex-convict telling, without bitterness, of the indignities he suffered for what he held to be his country's good, and a crowded House listening attentive, not quite free from sense of shame. In the matters of having stood in the dock on charge of conspiracy against the Crown, and having sat in a ..Britherto prison cell awaiting further the Corp.- developments, the senior member for Cork City stands apart. It is James Francis Xavier O'Brien's distinction, unique among living citizens of this Empire, that, having been convicted of crimen Imsce majestatis, he was, in accord- ance with the statute of the good old days of Edward III., ordered to be hanged, THE FOUR QUARTERS OF drawu, and quartered. MR. J. F. X. O'BRIEN. ^ 1_ j n/r r\l-D ■ r I never heard Mr. O Bnen, one of the most modest as he is the mildest-mannered man in the r 66 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 House, allude to this incident in his early life. It is rather a favourite topic with his colleagues, who, in some subtle sense, feel reflected upon them the glory that surrounds their colleague. There is a well -authenticated story of a funeral in Glasgow, attended by a person, unknown to the undertaker, who assumed certain airs of importance that piqued curiosity as to his identity. The undertaker, having long mutely suffered his obtrusiveness, stopped him as he was about to enter the first mourning carriage, and asked him who he was. " Man," he said, indignation flashing in his eyes, " I'm brither to the corp." In respect of the many-initialled member for Cork City, the other Irish members are, politically, brothers to what almost became " a corp," and are inclined to assert themselves accordingly. As for Mr. O'Brien, he is in personal appearance the very last man a casual observer would associate with a tragic episode. It is true that a curiously long neck and a trick of bending his head forward might, to the morbidly imagina- tive mind, suggest reminiscences of preparing to meet his doom on the block. But that is an idle fancy. Mr. J. F. X. O'Brien is one of the most respected members of the Irish Party, with a rare gift of silence. It is a charming trait in his character that, on being released from the penal servitude to which his capital sentence was commuted, he, instead of going about the country posing as a martyr, set up in business in Dublin in the wine and tea trade. CHAPTER VI MAY It is a striking coincidence in two careers passed on severed continents that, after a lapse of a hundred years, they should _ _ . , ^ find a com- Two Trials at Westminster, mon Stage in a Parliamentary inquiry at Westminster. The South African Committee, which actually, if not ostensibly, sat to try Cecil Rhodes, were located in a room off Westminster Hall. Warren Hastings, impeached before the House of Lords on charges of high crimes and misdemeanours, alleged to have been committed dur- ing his Governor-General- ship in India, had much more space allotted to the splendid scene of which he was the chief figure. The stage on which Warren Hastings loomed large was, Macaulay writes, " the great hall of William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration 67 AFRICA COM/W/TTEE IN WESTMINSTER HALL. 68 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which has half-redeemed his fame." The proceedings in connection with the investigation of the charges against the man who, in some respects, with limited opportunities, is the Warren Hastings of Africa, were strictly business-like. Here were no "peers robed in gold, scarlet, and ermine, marshalled by the herald under Garter King at Arms." No tall lines of Grenadiers guarded the way to Westminster Hall. No need to keep the streets clear by troops of jangling cavalry. The ultimate extreme in the other direction was reached. Too often the hearing of causes cdebres in London police-courts and in the High Courts of Justice are closely akin to first nights at the Lyceum. Celebrities of both sexes flock to the scene, eager for the new excitement. It was thus when Dr. Jameson made his first appearance at Bow Street Police Court. Possibly profiting by experience then gained, the South African Committee resolved to exclude the general public. There being no appeal from this decision, there was no blocking of the approaches to the Committee-room. During the most exciting phases of the inquiry, the pigeons in Palace Yard placidly pursued their quest for stray grain. Within the chamber there prevailed a business air of studious simplicity. When Warren Hastings was tried in West- minster Hall, the grey old walls were hung with scarlet. For all decoration, the bare walls of the South Africa Committee-room were hung with a gigantic map of Africa. A little more than two years ago I chanced to be a guest at Groote Schuur, Mr. Cecil Rhodes's much-loved Dutch Painting the house On the outskirts of Cape Town, which did Map red. not long survive the temporary downfall of its master, accomplishing in some way an act of suttee. Musing over a map of Africa, with its patches of green 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 69 rounding off Portuguese territory, its orange indicating German possession, its mauve marking where the French flag flies, its yellow colouring the Congo Free State under the Protectorate of Belgium, its wedge of light green thrust into Cape Colony showing where the Boers stand, its great splashes of red, England's mark on the map — Mr. Rhodes, placing a finger on Cape Town and moving it with rapid sweep to MR. RHODES AND THE MAP. the extreme north of the continent, said, " I want to paint the map red from here to there." In the great map on the wall of the Committee-room the work thus far accomplished prominently shows. Mr. Rhodes, as he sat waiting the arrival of his judges on the opening day of the inquiry, frequently rested his eyes with proud content on the map. He may, as he admitted in reply to one of Sir William Harcourt's questions, have been ■' morally culpable." But there was Rhodesia. It is curious, observing further points of resemblance between the two great State trials, to note how circumstances vary after the lapse of a century. There were peers at both. 70 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 But whilst, when Warren Hastings was tried, their lordships Prince and arrived robed in gold and ermine, marshalled by Peers In Mufti, the heralds under Garter King at Arms, when Mr. Cecil Rhodes was examined, noble lords dropped in in ordinary morning dress, thankful to find room to sit with humbler folk. " Last of all," writes Macaulay, in his famous description already quoted, " came the Prince of Wales, con- spicuous by his fine person and noble bearing." The Prince of Wales was present on the opening days of the proceedings before the South African Committee. But he drove down in his private brougham, walked in unannounced, unattended, and, like the rest of the community, was kept waiting three-quarters of an hour whilst the Committee, deliberating in a private room, considered how they should dispose of three or four ladies who, in calm defiance of prohibition, had secured entrance to the Committee-room and, dressed all in their best, beamingly awaited the commencement of business. The procession of the Committee, headed by Sir William Harcourt, marching to seat themselves at the table, brushed past the Heir-Apparent without the courtly acknowledgment of his presence, perhaps never before omitted. It was a small matter, but strikingly indicative of the marble-like austerity of the proceedings, devoid from first to last of the pomp and circumstance attendant upon the scene Macaulay delighted to paint. There is another parallel of modern times to be found in Warren Hastings's Parliamentary experience and that of a Warren famous man belonging to the end of this century. charie8"ltewart J"^* twenty-five years after Hastings stood at parneii. the bar in Westminster Hall upon charges which, if proved, might have cost him his life, certainly his liberty, he again appeared on the Parliamentary scene. In the year 1 8 1 3 the Charter of the East India Company came up for renewal. It was decided to examine witnesses at the bar of the House of Commons, and Warren Hastings, who since his acquittal had lived in retirement, was summoned to attend. The object of the bitter resentment of yester-year ENTER THK COMMITTEE. i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 73 presenting himself in obedience to the summons, the Commons received him with acclamation. When, after giving his evidence, he retired, members rose en masse, bared their heads, and remained standing till his figure disappeared through the doorway. Seventy-six years later, as far as I know with no parallel instance in the meanwhile, a similar honour was done to another man. None present in the parneii's House of Commons on a night in the early Apogee, spring of 1889 will forget one of the most dramatic scenes ever witnessed on this stage of illimitable possibilities. The House had been engaged for five nights in debate on an amendment to the Address challenging the Irish policy of the Government. Mr. Parnell, engaged in attendance on the Commission associated with his name, had been long absent from his place below the gangway. It was rumoured that he was coming to-day. The town still throbbed with excitement of the news from Madrid. On the previous Monday Pigott, the mainstay of the charges against Mr. Parnell, breaking down under the masterly cross-examination of Sir Charles Russell, fled. On this 1st of March came news that he had finished his career with a pistol- shot. The incident served to intensify the sympathy with the man against whom Pigott had plotted. The sitting wore on towards midnight, and still Parnell did not come. It was so much his usual manner to avoid anything like fulfilment of expectation, to stay away when he was expected, to turn up when no one was looking for him, that members came to the conclusion he would not be seen. MR. PARNELL RISES. 74 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 Suddenly, just after eleven o'clock, a sharp ringing cheer from the Irish members drew all eyes in the direction of their camp. There was Mr. Parnell, standing in the modest place he affected, half-way down the second bench below the gangway. He had entered quietly, unnoticed. Mr. Asquith, who was at the moment on his legs, having made an end of speaking, the Irish Leader proposed to continue the debate. His followers, growing in excitement, leaped up, waving their hats. English members below and above the gangway followed their example. Mr. Gladstone, turning round and observing Parnell in his place, rose to his feet, an example instantly followed by all but one of his colleagues on the Front Bench. Thus, for some moments, they stood, as if they were in presence of Royalty. Whereas it was only the uncrowned King of Ireland who had returned to his seat in the House of Commons, after triumphant passage through a terrible ordeal. This particular parallel with the Parliamentary history of Warren Hastings is carried out in a minute and interesting A Solitary particular. It was not every one who in the Figure. House of Commous of more than sixty years ago rose to their feet to do honour to the great pro-Consul. One or two of the managers of the impeachment were present. Macaulay writes : " They sat in the same seats they had occupied when they had been thanked for the services rendered in Westminster Hall. These gentlemen were not disposed to admit that they had employed several of the best years of their lives in persecuting an innocent man. They accordingly kept their seats, and pulled their hats over their brows." At the time when Parnell returned to his Parliamentary duties, whilst echo of Pigott's pistol-shot still sounded through the streets of London, Mr Gladstone's colleagues, seceding from his leadership on the question of Home Rule, had not taken the final step of going over to the Tory camp. As ex-Ministers they still claimed the right of places on the Front Opposition Bench. Thus it came to pass that 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 75 when Mr. Gladstone and his Home Rule colleagues rose to do honour to the man who, in conjunction with his cause, had cost the Liberal Party so much, and was in the near future to cost them every- thing, one figure remained stubbornly seated at the gang- way end of the bench, with hat tilted over his brow. It was Lord Hartington. One short year later, Mr. Parnell, sitting in the very place whence he m Nadir. ^ "'l had risen to front that memorable scene, sadly recalled it. Once the arbiter between the two great parties with hat tilted over brow. in English politics, he was now disgraced and impotent. Twelve months earlier the autocratic leader of a united party, to-day there were none to do him reverence. It was characteristic of the stern, unbending nature of the man that during the brief time he remained in the House after his fall he took a course specially calculated to mark its abyssmal depths. The large majority of his former following who had broken away from him after the scuffle in Committee-room No. 15, retained their old places on the benches below the gangway. Parnell and the faithful few who stood by him might conveniently have found a place, as the Redmondites have since done, on the bench behind. To retire would be to admit the power of " gutter sparrows " to depose the eagle. There was a certain place on the second bench below the gangway where he had sat whilst he enjoyed Sultanic honours amongst the Irish members. There was nothing changed in him. Only they were faithless. So, night after night, he took his old seat in the centre 76 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 of the camp of the enemy — bitterest of all enemies, the estranged friend. With Mr. Tim Healy on one side and AN UNCOMFORTABLE POSITION. Mr. Sexton on the other, he sat by the hour in haughty silence, ignoring their existence as utterly as if they had been stocks and stones. Sir Henry Edwards, who did not live long enough to see this year's daffodils — daffodils, That come before the swallow dares — was type of a Parliament man almost extinct. It is thirty years next month since he entered the House of Commons An Old-style ^^ member for Weymouth. He was just in time Member, to witness Mr. Disraeli's historic gyrations on the platform of Parliamentary reform. He remained member for Weymouth till another Reform Bill swept the little borough into the limbo where linger the ghosts of Gatton and Old Sarum. There were just under seventeen hundred voters on the register. Every man of them knew the warm pressure of Henry Edwards's hand. Not a poor wife in the circle that had not benefited by his blankets. i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT T7 As for the children, some for the first time in their little lives, as they munched his cake and sucked his " goodies," realised how kind a phenomenon a father might he. Unlike other members whose connection with a constitu- ency is peremptorily severed, Henry Edwards to the last kept up his friendly relations with Weymouth. As surely SIR HENRY EDWARDS AND HIS STATUE. as the name of Calais was seared on the heart of Queen Mary, so, if search were made, Weymouth would be found written on the heart of Henry Edwards. As regularly as Christmas came round the aged poor of the disfranchised borough banqueted upon his bounty. Weymouth was not ungrateful, setting up his statue in her most public place. Edmund Yates, a very old friend, was the originator of the fable that the principal contributor to the statue fund was Henry Edwards himself 78 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 " A good, kind man," Yates used to say, " not letting his left hand know what his right hand did. He gave the money secretly, and blushed to find it a statue." Yates had a circumstantial story of strolling through Weymouth on a moonlight night and coming upon Henry Edwards walking round and about the statue, observing its effect from varying distances. But Edwards was accustomed to being chaffed by his friends, and as it was always done good-humouredly, with display of real personal liking, he suffered with a smile. He made a considerable fortune during the Crimean War, the result of a lucky consignment of linseed. Whence the style of " Linseed Edwards " under which he was known amid ancient House of Commons smoking-room coteries. It would not have been difficult for him to find a seat else- where after Weymouth was absorbed in the county. But his faithful heart could not woo another constituency. He and Weymouth were a sort of political Darby and Joan. When the ruthless hand of the reformer severed the union, he to the end of his days remained a Parlia- mentary widower. At the Reform Club and elsewhere he retained many of the friendships and ac- quaintances made in the House of Commons. He aimed at winning the distinc- tion of/e veritable Amphitryon, FA mphitryon oil Hon dine. He was justly proud of his cheer- ful little dinners in Berkeley Square. In their composition W. S. Gilbert's idea of a perfect dinner was realised, the company on the chairs being SIR HENRY EDWARDS ON A TRIAL TRIP. 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 79 selected with skill and care equal to those bestowed upon the viands and the wine on the table. Another scene on which Henry Edwards was found at great advantage was a trial trip of the P. and O.'s ever- increasing, ever-improving fleet. It was an ominous sign that, when the India set forth on her trial trip last August, he was obliged to decline the invitation of his old friend Sir Thomas Sutherland. I suppose it was the first of these charming voyages he had missed for twenty years. At other times he was sure to be found among the company. It was delightful to see him when the seas were calm, pacing the snowy deck in a natty serge suit suggestive of the trained yachtsman, his peaked cap cocked a little to one side so that he might keep his win'ard eye on the offing. A kindly soul, withal shrewd-headed, he lived a fortunate life and died a happy death. For as the newspaper report hath it, "he died in his sleep." A paragraph has been going the rounds Hats and to the effect Heads, that at a meeting of the Kildare Archaeological Society a hat worn by Daniel O'Connell was ex- hibited. There was no mistake about the article, for O'Connell, mindful of the com- pany he occasionally frequented, had written his name inside. That seems to have been a supererogatory precaution, for the hat was so large it would have been useful to but few pf O'Connell's contemporaries. The chairman putting it on TRYING ON O'CONNELL'S HAT. 8o LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 partially disappeared from view of the alarmed audience, the rim of the hat coming down to his chin. It is stated that " the width of the hat was 8^ in. ; its longer diameter 10 in." I have garnered some particulars of the sizes of the heads of eminent men, but have come upon nothing so big as this. Mr. Gladstone sports a hat of the size of 7-|, exactly Lord Macaulay's measurement. Lord Beaconsfield wore a hat of 7 inches, an undesigned but characteristically courtly imitation of the Prince of Wales, whose hat is of the same size. Charles Dickens, the late Lord Selborne, and Mr. John Bright wore hats 7^ size. The late Earl Russell wanted an eighth more. Charles Dickens's hat would have been too small for Thackeray by half an inch. Louis Philippe and, strange conjunction, M. Julien wore hats of 7f . An illustrious man of recent times who took the smallest hat on my list was Dean Stanley, for whom 6f sufficed. For his friend Dr. Thompson, Archbishop of York, a hat of full eight inches diameter was necessary. Dean Stanley's hat, comparatively small as it was, on one occasion held more than his head. There still lingers A sin uiar ''°""'^ St. Margaret's Church echoes of a story, Pulpit told about a sermon preached by the Dean to a morning congregation, including the accustomed leavening of members of the House of Commons. When the service was over, the Dean, evidently much pleased, remarked to his wife on the exceeding close attention the congregation had paid him. " I don't wonder at it, my dear," she said, " when one of your gloves was all the time on the top of your head." The Dean was habitually immobile in the pulpit, and accustomed to walk there with steady step. Removing his hat before entering the vestry, of his gloves therein stored one rested on the top of his head, and remained through his discourse. At least, that is the story told in ordinarily reputable Parliamentary circles. CHAPTER VII JUNE On the 17th of next month it will be sixty years since Queen Victoria first appeared in the House of Lords. The occasion was not to welcome the coming guest ^^^ in the person of a new House of Commons, and but to speed the parting guest — the last Parlia- p^"""""*"*- ment of the reign of William IV. All London flocked forth to greet the girl- Queen as she passed through the streets on her way, for the first time, to sit in Parliament. She charmed the crowd with her grace and beauty, her progress being accompanied by a salvo of cheering. It is noted in contemporary record that she was dressed in a white satin robe decorated with jewels and gold, the Garter on her arm, a mantle of velvet over her shoulders. A gay summer garb this, compared with the sombre habiliments in which the Queen made her final entrance to the House of Lords. But it is not nearly so pretty as that described by Miss Wynn, the very first in which the new Queen presented herself to her subjects. It was the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain who were privileged to behold the vision of loveliness. William IV. died just before dawn a„ g^^y of the 20th of June 1837. The Primate and Morning visit, the Lord Chamberlain were in attendance waiting the end. When it came they posted off to Kensington Palace, where the girl, straightway become a Queen, lived with her mother. It was five o'clock in the morning when they reached 81 G 82 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 the Palace. Naturally no one was up. Archbishop and Lord Chamberlain took turns in thumping at the gate, and at length brought up the porter. He thought the courtyard was near enough access to the house for elderly gentlemen out at such time in the morning. The Archbishop and his companion, after forlornly hanging round, found their way into a room off the courtyard. Here at least was a bell, which, being in good training with their exercise at the door, they vigorously rang. After long delay they saw the Princess's maid, who said her mistress was fast asleep and could not be disturbed. Their message, they urged, brooked no delay. So the Princess was awakened, and Miss Wynn writes : — " In a few minutes she came into the room in a loose white night-gown and shawl, her night- cap thrown off, her hair falling upon her shoulders, her feet in slippers, tears in her eyes, but perfectly collected and dignified." I wonder some great artist has not transferred this simple picture to imperishable canvas. It does not seem too late to begin even in the sixtieth year of the reign which opened in this room off the courtyard. The last time the Queen opened Parliament in person was on the 5th of February 1880. It was noted at the „ „ , ^ , time as a curious incident that in the course of Her Majesty's last Visit to the proceedings the Queen very nearly lost her es m ns er. ^.^q^j^ Seating herself on the throne, the long white ribbon pendant from the back of the cap on which the crown was set caught in her dress. But for the presence of mind of the Princess Beatrice, who deftly released the ribbon, the least that would have happened would have been that the Queen would have presented to the brilliant assembly the curious effect of the crown askew on the top of her head, portrayed in the melancholy design of the coinage struck a few years later. In the April number of the Strand of last year appears the following passage : " Within the walls of the Palace at Westminster, and on the grass - plots in its immediate i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 83 neighbourhood, statues are appropriately raised to great Parliament men. The muster will surely be ^0,^ Randolph incomplete if place be not found for a counterfeit churchm. presentment of Lord Randolph Churchill. . . . The House of Commons will not always refrain from doing honour to one of its most brilliant, if one of its most wilful, sons.'' This was an obvious suggestion, needing only to be thrown out to find acceptance. During the recess some correspondence privily took place among members, and as soon as the Session opened a small committee got to work and threw the project into practical shape. It was wisely resolved to have, not a full-length statue with the inevitable stone legs and marble fringe to a modern frock-coat, but a bust, to be placed in one of the passages of the House, where it might be seen by members going to and fro on their ordinary business. The subscription, limited to a guinea, is open only to members of the House of Commons who were contempor- aries at one stage or other of Lord Randolph's meteoric career. The list is of itself striking. If it were possible to engrave the names in columns on the pedestal it would add consider- ably to the historic value and interest of the monument. How much has happened since Lord Randolph sat in the House as member for Woodstock is found in conjunction of the two simple matters of fact that Mr. Gladstone sent his subscription from Cannes, where, far removed from the vortex of political life, he was making spring holiday in a green old age ; and that the plain Drummond Wolff of Fourth Party days sent his tribute from Madrid by the cheque of his Excellency the Right Hon. Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., Her Majesty's Minister to Alfonso XIII., King of Spain. If Lord Randolph's esteemed successor in the Leadership of the House of Commons were still alive, there is no doubt that, forgetful of some bitter memories, his ..ow guinea would also be forthcoming with intent Morality." to keep green the memory of Venfant terrible of his troubled times. By a happy chance Lord Randolph Churchill and 84 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 The Portrait. Mr. W. H. Smith, sometimes divided in life by sharp turns of controversy, united in death, will in memories of future Parliaments live together in close companionship. It is arranged that, when completed, Lord Randolph's bust shall have an honoured place found for it in the corridor leading out from the lobby, by the main staircase, where the placid face of " Old Morality '' looks out on the stream of members hurrying to and from the House. Another indication of the wisdom that prevails in the councils of the committee in charge of the bust is found in the fact that they ha;ve determined the face reproduced shall be that familiar to the House of Commons prior to Lord Randolph's journey to South Africa. The Lord Randolph who set forth in quest of sport and gold and health carried the face familiar in the House of Commons, on public platforms, and in a thousand illus- trated journals. He was closely shaven with the exception of a heavy moustache, the tugging of which during debate in the House of Commons was an appreciable assistance in concentrating his thoughts and shaping his replies. He came back almost unrecognisable, with short, thick, brown beard, cultivated amid the exigencies of life on the veldt. I am the fortunate possessor of a portrait for which Lord Ran- dolph sat in the year 1 89 1. It was painted in his library at Con- naught Place, and is admitted to be the most faithful present- ment of the living man. When in the year following Lord Randolph set out on his travels through South Africa he commissioned the artist to paint a replica. This, on the LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. Sketched by F. C. Gould from the Painting by E. A, Ward. 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 85 eve of his journey, he presented to his mother, the Duchess of Marlborough, with whom it remains a precious possession.^ It is the face here pictured, mature, resolute, in the very prime of life, that the sculptor will carve in indelible marble. When, the other day, an Irish member read long extracts from a Cork paper, alleging iniquity against a Government official, proceeding thereupon to put a question Newspapers to Mr. Gerald Balfour, the Speaker ruled him '" t*"" House, out of order. If, the Speaker said, the Hon. Member were prepared on his own responsibility to affirm belief in certain statements published in a newspaper, he might thereupon put a question to the Minister. But a question might not be so addressed merely upon the authority of a newspaper report. Mr. Gully is so habitually accurate and sound in his rulings that he, doubtless, has with him in this judgment the authority of the law and the support of the prophets. It is, nevertheless, a little startling to people familiar with the ordinary usage of the House. It is no exaggeration to say that one-third of the total of questions put in the course of a Session, an alarming aggregate, are avowedly based upon newspaper reports. In most instances the newspaper is named as the authority, the Minister being definitively questioned as to whether he has seen it. The rule, doubtless, had its birth in times when news- papers were not, or only furtively existed. To this day newspapers remain under a ban in the House contraband of Commons. A member dare no more take one aoods. out of his pocket and glance at it whilst the House is in Session than he dare take off his coat and sit in his shirt- sleeves. Strangers, safe in the panoply of ignorance, have been known in dull passages of debate to produce an even- ing newspaper, spread it forth, and propose to themselves a study of its contents. None has lived to repeat the indis- cretion. The manner in which the offender is pounced down ' In 1902 permission was given for the painting of a second replica, which Mr. Winston Churchill presented to his mother. 86 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 upon by janitors from either side of the gallery is in its vehemence sufficient to shatter the strongest nerves. Another quaint House of Commons' ordinance coming down from ancient times forbids direct reference to the "Another House of Lords or any of its works. The rule Place." is evaded by cautious reference to " another place." But that device may not be pushed far without risk of reproof from the Chair. In existing circumstances, not only with the Premier in the other House but with his lordship exercising the functions of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the rule has obvious inconveniences. These are sharpened by a pleasant habit, native to Lord Salisbury's mind, of ignoring the existence of the House of Commons, treating the House of Lords to confidences which at the very moment he is speaking may, under his instructions, be denied to the Commons by the representative of the Foreign Office in that House. The effect of such procedure on the placid mind of Sir William Harcourt is easily imagined. The consequences are aggravated since the rule of debate in the House of Commons precludes him from giving full expression to his feelings. LORD MELBOURNE — 1837. LORD SALISBURY — 1897. TWO PRIME MINISTERS. CHAPTER VIII July There still linger round the Houses of Parliament traces of the terror that reigned twelve years ago after the explosion in the Crypt, following at no long distance of The Reign time upon the more serious outrage that shook oi Terror. the offices of the Local Government Board at Whitehall. Something like a state of siege was declared within the precincts of the Houses of Parliament. The police garrison was more than doubled. The railings of Palace Yard formed the limit of approach. Respectable persons halting for a moment in passing to look within became objects of dire suspicion to the watchful police. The very messengers running between the newspaper offices and the Press Gallery were numbered and labelled, and required to display their authority before passing the cordon of police. Up to that period of panic Westminster Hall remained, though in somewhat restricted conditions, what it had ever been, a possession and a thoroughfare for the vvestminster people. In Barnaby Rudge there is a graphic Haii in the picture of the scene at the era of the Lord o'''"''^""*- George Gordon Riots, drawn by Charles Dickens from con- temporary records. " There were many knots and groups of persons in Westminster Hall," Dickens writes, " some few looking upward at its noble ceiling, and at the rays of evening light, tinted by the setting sun, which streamed in aslant through its small windows, and, growing dimmer by 87 88 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 degrees, were quenched in the gathering gloom below. Some noisy passengers, mechanics going home from work, and otherwise, who hurried quickly through, waking the echoes with their voices, and soon darkening the small door in the distance, as they passed into the street beyond. Some in busy conference together on political or private matters, pacing slowly up and down with eyes that sought the ground, and seeming, by their attitudes, to listen earnestly OLD WESTMINSTER HALL. From an Illustration in " Barnaby Rudge," by Cattermole. from head to foot. Here a dozen squabbling urchins made a very Babel in the air. There a solitary man, half-clerk, half-mendicant, paced up and down, with hungry dejection in his look and gait. At his elbow passed an errand-lad, swinging his basket round and round, and with his shrill whistle riving the very timbers of the roof ; while a more observant schoolboy, half-way through, pocketed his ball and eyed the distant beadle as he came looming on. The smooth, worn pavement, dusty with footsteps, still called upon the lofty walls to reiterate the shuffle and the tread of 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 89 feet unceasingly, save when the closing of some heavy door resounded through the building like a clap of thunder, and drowned all other noises in its rolling sound." As long as the Courts of Justice flanked Westminster Hall, the splendid vestibule was, by necessity, left free to access by the people. Whilst the Courts were ,„t,,e sitting, it was scarcely a less picturesque scene Claimant's Day. than that depicted by Dickens. Shortly before the demoli- tion of the old courts, the drama reached its climax in the coming and going of the Claimant. Morning and evening, through weeks and months, the broad width of Westminster Hall was narrowed by a wedge of humanity that opened to make room for this portly person waddling to and from his carriage. When the seat of justice was shifted to the Strand the House of Commons clutched at Westminster Hall, and with its traditional exclusive selfishness, proclaimed it sacred ground. The public were not absolutely excluded, but they were not, as heretofore, indiscriminately admitted, necessity being created for showing that they had some business or errand in direct communication with the courts. If, for example, they had orders for the gallery, they might pass through Westminster Hall on their way thither. They might even, on field nights, stand in groups to the right of the big doorway, watching the members pass through, and loudly whisper their names. After the explosion panic, the public were so rigidly excluded from Westminster Hall, that a member might not personally conduct a stranger along the echoing pavement of the lonely hall. As far as the safety of members in Session in the House of Commons is concerned, these restrictions are as ineffective as they are arbitrary. A nineteenth-century Guy Fawkes provided with a modern explosive would not haunt subter- ranean passages or waste his time in Westminster Hall. As that blatant personage O'Donovan Rossa showed a couple of Sessions ago, there is no difificulty in obtaining a seat on the front bench of the Strangers' Gallery. Being there, O'Donovan Rossa was content to obtain cheap adver- 90 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 tisement by flinging out a noisy protest upon the astonished heads of members. If he had meant business, he might, at his leisure, and with certain aim, have flung on the floor a bomb that would promptly and indefinitely have adjourned the sitting. This contingency was ever present with the authorities during the scare. They attempted to guard against it by careful examination of anything that looked bulky about the person of a stranger. Even members carrying small black bags were objects of police suspicion. It was felt then, and the assurance remains, that the unassailable basis of safety of the House of Commons from murderous assault from the Strangers' Galleries is the invincible objection Messieurs les assassins have to linger within reach of the explosive at its supreme moment. They hanker after the slow match and the opportunity it provides of getting away to a safe distance, before innocent and unsuspecting so- journers or passers-by are blown into eternity. One of the quaintest relics of the scare exists out of public view in the back courtyard of the Houses of Parlia- Forgotten nient. The long length of this is bridged at Sentries, various points by portions of the building. The habitual tendency of the dynamitards to place one of their infernal machines in a snug corner, under an arched building, pointed the police mind to these passages as being the very places where attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament would be made. Accordingly, in the height of the panic, order was given that a policeman should be placed on duty at every archway, relief being so arranged that by night as well as by day the spot should be guarded. The edict has never been withdrawn, and into this peaceful Jubilee year, day and night, summer and winter, through the recess as through the Session, every archway of the Court Yard echoes to the tread of a puzzled policeman wondering what he does there. Study of a collection of pictures and prints depicting the House of Commons in Session at various epochs of its history is, apart from the personalities, interesting as illustrat- i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 91 ing the changes in sartorial fashion. The House in Session in early spring was, to tell the truth, a very Dress in the ordinary-looking assembly. Summer setting in House with the severity of the last two years, the •" ^^o"""""*- dull-toned benches blossom in summer array. Now is the coy cummerbund seen, and the white ducks of Cap'en Tommy Bowles flutter to and fro, imbuing the scene with a grateful touch of purity and innocence. At its best and brightest, the House of Commons is, from the spectacular point of view, a poor thing compared with what it was in the time of Walpole, or even of Pitt. In the National Portrait Gallery there is a precious picture of the House, showing it at work in the Session of 1742. It is an engraving by Pin6 from a drawing from life by Gravelot. The scene is, of course, the old House of Commons, with its chapel-like galleries, its candelabra pendant from the ceiling. Speaker Onslow is in the Chair, and the crowded audience is addressed by Sir Robert Walpole, who bears the blue ribbon of the Garter. All the members wear wigs, and are dressed in handsome frock-coats with high stocks. Accord- ing to the custom common to gentlemen of England of the day, every man sports his sword. To-day the only armed man in the House of Commons is the Serjeant-at-Arms. The inflexibility of the rule against either members or strangers bringing weapons into the House Incidentally adds to the long list of injustices to Ireland. It is an ancient privilege of the City of Dublin, that when in its corporate capacity it presents a petition to the House of Commons, the document is presented in person by the Lord Mayor, gowned and chained, accompanied by his sheriffs, his mace- bearer, and his sword-bearer. But before entering the House the sword-bearer is obliged to deposit his lethal weapon with the door-keeper. Another instance where this rule, prohibiting the carry- ing of arms in the House, arbitrarily interfered ^^ Marjori- with a peaceable procedure, is connected with banks'sDis- one of the few speeches the present Lord Tweed- ""'"' " "*° ' mouth addressed to the House of Commons whilst he still 92 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 sat in it as Mr. Marjoribanks. respect to a new magazine rifle. LORD TWEEDMOUTH AND THE NEW RIFLE. He had strong views in I forget precisely what direction they took. In order to do justice to their exposition, it was found necessary to turn the Whips' room into a sort of armoury. For several nights any one entering, on whatever business, was pretty cer- tain to find himself covered by a deadly barrel, along whose glistening level Mr. Marjoribanks's eye gleamed. He was merely explaining to some one else the bearings of the new rifle. It was startling at first. But when the caller, by the frequency of his visits, grew accustomed to it, it came to be regarded as quite a friendly reception. Mr.. Marjoribanks had looked forward to the advantage of a collection of the magazine rifles within reach of him as he stood at the table of the House delivering his lecture. The Speaker thought it would be interesting, but ruled it was irregular. So the rifles were left in the Whips' room. In Pitt's time swords were no longer worn in the House of Commons, though in other respects the dress of members In Pitt's is scarcely less picturesque. In the National Parliament. Portrait Gallery there is another painting show- ing the House of Commons in Session in 1793. It is the work of a German artist, Karl Anton Hickel, who was fortunate in obtaining special sittings from prominent members. That such a picture was in existence long remained a tradition round Westminster. Diligent inquiry failed to get upon its track. It was ascertained that the artist on returning to his own country had taken his work with him. 1897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 93 It was the late Mr. Edward Stanhope who did the nation the service of capturing the prize. By diligent research he discovered that in the year after the Battle of Waterloo, the Emperor of Austria bought the picture from the heirs of the painter. It was carried to Vienna and subsided into a store- room. Earl Granville, at the time Foreign Secretary, took a warm interest in the matter, with the result that the Emperor of Austria graciously presented the picture to the National Portrait Gallery, where it now hangs — in somewhat of a vault it is true, but MR. PITT. From nickel's Picture of the House of Cotmnons. worth studying when the sun shines. The scene is full of life and colour. William Pitt, in velvet coat and knee-breeches, with white silk stockings, is addressing the House, looking much less like Mr. Chamberlain than he does in his statue at Knowle, and in the less meritorious work of art in the corridor leading to the Lobby of the House of Commons. All the members are clean-shaven, powdered, and wigged. One on the Treasury VERY LIKE SIR FRANK LOCKWOOD. 94 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 Bench, immediately behind Mr. Pitt, is a colleague start- lingly like Sir Frank Lockwood. With the exception of one or two members, who wear low, broad -brimmed felt hats, all are uncovered. Per contra, the Speaker wears the three-cornered hat, taken in hand in these days only for the purpose of counting the House. At the corner seat below the gangway, inconveniently squeezed, is a figure which one would at first sight take to be the Chaplain, though what he is doing there, seated among members, is inexplicable. It is not the Chaplain, but the Master of the Rolls, arrayed in black gown and clerical bands. To-day the -Master of the Rolls seated on that bench would be as much out of place as would be the Chaplain. A better -known picture of the House of Commons, since it has longer been a national possession, is Sir George In Peel's Hayter's view of the interior of the House Parliament, at the meeting of the first Reformed Parliament on the 5th of February 1833. In the serried ranks on the bench immediately behind his leader, Sir Robert Peel, is seated "the rising hope of the Conservative Party" — Mr. W. E. Gladstone, at the time in his twenty-fourth year, member for Newark. There is nothing about the face or figure that recalls the statesman we have known in recent years, the sole survivor of that now ghostly gathering. The muster-roll contains some names familiar in Parlia- mentary history. Lord John Russell is on the Treasury Bench. Near him his esteemed colleague Lord Palmerston. Seated in various parts of the House are Sir Francis Burdett, Thomas Fowell Buxton, William Cobbett, John Evelyn Denison, afterwards Speaker ; Sir James Graham, Grote, the historian ; Gully, the sometime prize-fighter ; Lord Althorpe, afterwards Earl Spencer ; Lord Ashley, longer known as the Earl of Shaftesbury ; the two Barings, who later severally became Lord Ashburton and Lord Northbrook ; Cam Hob- house, Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh; Henry Labouchere, who, unmindful of his nephew's later developed prejudices, became Lord Taunton ; Macaulay, then sitting for Leeds ; Daniel i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 95 O'Connell, who in this Parliament preceded Lord Randolph Churchill in his preference for the corner seat below the gangway to the left of the Chair ; John Arthur Roebuck, Lalor Shiel, Christopher Talbot, who only the other day, as it seemed, sat in the House of Commons with the proud title of its Father, now passed on to Mr. Villiers ; Poulett Thompson, Sir Harry Verney, not long passed away, and John Walter, proprietor of the Times. Among the Standing Orders added in recent years is, as already stated, one whereby the Speaker or Chairman of Committees, deeming a demand for a division frivolous, may refuse to waste the time of the House in sending members round the lobbies. In such cases he calls upon members crying for the division to stand up in their places. The division lobby clerks are called in, the names of the small minority are taken down, and printed in the papers distributed on the following day. For many Sessions this ordinance was passively operative. A fractious minority, knowing what was in store for them if they persisted, shrank from the ludicrous position of standing up like naughty boys whilst their names were taken down in presence of a jeering majority. This Session an ingenious mind discovered quite unexpected opportunities in Standing Order No. 30. He observed that the names of the minority, printed in the Orders of the Day, were reckoned as if they had taken part in an ordinary division. This was worth double an average opportunity. Not only did the minority get a mark each in the table of divisions, but others of the majority, who might be pressing them close for precedence, were out of the running. The discovery was followed by an epidemic of frivolously claimed divisions within the mean- ing of the statute. Loyal Ministerialists, staying up late at night to back up the Government, sat in anguished impotence whilst some five or a dozen members opposite, frivolously claiming divisions, ran up their score three or four points in a single night. After enduring this experience for what seemed an 96 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 'ANGUISHED IMPOTENCE. interminable period, an appeal was made to the Speaker, who, amid loud cheers, ruled that the practice, as far as it affected the division table, was an infringement of the spirit of the rule. Hereafter, the names of these minorities, though they will be taken down and printed, will not be included in the divi- sion list. This ruling was marked by a sudden and complete cessa- tion of the practice of frivolously claiming divisions. I hear a pretty story about a visit recently paid by Lord Charles Beresford to a new Hat a Yorkshire town Trick. famed for its ironworks. The popular visitor was conducted over one of the largest foundries, among whose chief possessions is a massive Nasmyth hammer. After the, mighty engine had performed a series of gigantic opera- tions Lord Charles was invited to place his hat beneath the hammer and see what would become of it. The hat was a new one, selected for the special occasion. Lord Charles had just seen chunks of iron battered out to the thickness of a threepenny- bit. But the commander of the Condor, the captain of the boat that went up the Nile and mended its boiler under a heavy fire, was not the man to flinch from the ordeal. He took off his hat and placed it under the hammer. ' CRUSHED AGAIN ! " i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 97 Down flashed the enormous weight, stopping short within a hair's-breadth of the roof of the hat. Lord Charles, with his childlike smile, resumed his prized possession. Amongst the visitor's escort was Sir E. Ashmead- Bartlett. " Most wonderful ! " said Lord Charles, turning to the local but far-famed M.P. " Oh ! not at all," said he ; "a mere nothing. They never fail. Now I'll try mine." He placed his hat (not quite so glossy a specimen as Lord Charles's) under the hammer. At a given signal down it came, smashing the astonished hat much flatter than a pancake. H CHAPTER IX AUGUST In his preface to White's Inner Life of the House of Commons, published in the summer by Fisher Unwin, Mr. Justin ,. «. ^ M'Carthy writes : " Mr. Gladstone's maiden Mr. Qlad- ' stone's Maiden speech fell SO Utterly unnoted that, until some Speech. j-gcgnt publications had settled the question, he was almost invariably set down as having made his first speech at a later date and on a more important subject." More than sixty years have elapsed since the speech was made. Few are now living who heard it. Record is slight, and, as Mr. M'Carthy points out, is a little mixed as to the precise occasion. But Mr. Gladstone vividly re- members it. " Mr. M'Carthy," he said, when I called his attention to the passage, "has fallen into a slight error. My maiden speech was noticed in debate in a marked manner by Mr. Stanley, who was in charge of the Bill." The memorable speech was delivered on the 17th of May 1833. The occasion was the introduction by Mr. Stanley, then Colonial Secretary, of a series of resolutions on which it was designed to found an Act abolishing slavery in the British Colonies. (Thirty-five years later Mr. Glad- stone adopted the same form of Parliamentary procedure as a preliminary to his Bill for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church.) Parliament, the first after the Reform Act, met on the 29th of January, and the 17th of May was a little early for a new member to claim a hearing. Mr. Disraeli, 98 i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 99 however, was even more prompt. He was returned for Maidstone in the first Parliament of the Queen. On the 20th of November 1837, it was opened by Her Majesty in person, and on the seventh day of the following month Mr. Disraeli delivered what remains as the most famous of his Parliamentary speeches, the one brought to abrupt conclusion with the passionate prophecy, "The time will come when you shall hear me." Mr. Gladstone has the excuse that he was directly dragged into the controversy. Lord Howick, afterwards Lord Grey, in the course of his speech pointedly referred to the estate of Mr. Gladstone's father in Demerara, drawing from its domestic history alleged proof that slave labour in the West Indies meant early death for the slaves. The Mr. Stanley whose commendation the new member was justly proud of became in due time Earl of Derby, Prime Minister, patron and colleague of Mr. Disraeli. Mr. Gladstone's memory of persons and incidents con- nected with his first Parliament is so precise as Door-kee ers to extend to the door-keepers. He remembers in the their names, " Scott and Williams, one tall, the *=»""«"•*• other short, but both with snow-white or powdered hair and florid faces." In this connection, Mr. Gladstone mentions a fact which will be new to the present generation of Parliament men. In his time, and for many years after, the door-keepers were not paid by salary charged on the Civil Service Estimates, but were dependent upon fees voluntarily paid them by members. An old official, whose memory goes back over thirty years, tells me he heard that the sum given was " two guineas each." This must mean a contribution per member of two guineas, one for each door-keeper. As there were then 658 members, this sum, duly paid up, would bring nearly ;£^700 per man for six months' attendance. There was a current belief amongst the less highly paid servitors of the House that these coveted posts were obtained by purchase. It was said that ;^i 000 was paid "to some one." As the some one must needs have been the Serjeant-at-Arms lOO LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 of the day, the story is not credible. It is quite possible for the student of advertisements in the Church newspapers to believe that places for the cure of souls under the aegis of the Church are bartered and sold. But the mind shrinks from contemplation of a Serjeant-at-Arms, even in the unreformed Parliament, selling the place of door-keeper, and guiltily secreting the .£^1000 in the pocket of his tight breeches. I believe Mr. White, the door-keeper whose interesting book has recalled Mr. Gladstone's reminiscences of his early Parliamentary life, was the first door-keeper whose salary was carried on the Votes. He was appointed by Lord Charles Russell, who was certainly far above the ;^iooo suspicion, even had grounds for it not been removed by the altered circumstances of payment. Lord Charles made Mr. White's ac- quaintance at a time when the future historian of the Inner Life of the House of Commons was taking an active part in local affairs of the ducal town. He liked him so much that, a vacancy in the chair at the door of the House hap- pening, he, fortunately for posterity, inducted the Bedford citizen. The salary of the principal door-keeper to-day is ;^300 a year, his colleague in the chair opposite drawing £2So. A Comfortable I* is one of the anomalies of the relations of the Berth. two Houses that, whilst this modest salary sufifices for the really hard-worked officials in the Commons, the door-keepers in the Lords, whose task is by comparison a sinecure, are paid at precisely the same rate. Moreover there are two principal door-keepers in the Lords, who between them draw ^600 a year. This arrangement did not escape the attention of a Committee recently reviewing the expenditure of the House of Lords' staff. Vested MR. WILLIAM WHITE. 1 897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT lOI interests have been preserved, to the extent that one or two assistant door-keepers on the way to promotion will, when they attain it, receive the same salary. Thereafter the wage of the principal door-keeper in the House of Lords will be ;£^200 a year. There are probably many poor baronets, not to mention earls' younger sons, who would thankfully take the berth at the reduced scale of payment. Its duties are not exhausting, either to mind or body. Day after day in the early period of the Session, the Lord Chancellor, with full pomp and ceremony, takes the Chair at a quarter-past four. Prayers are read, and a pause for private con- versation fills up the time till half- past four, the hour at which public business is appointed to commence. There usually being none, noble lords straightway go home, cheered by the consciousness of having deserved well of their country. This privilege the door-keepers, of course, share. They also enjoy much longer recess at Easter and Whitsuntide than falls to the lot of their brethren at the door of the Commons. Then there is the long recess of something like five months, during which they sit, the centre of admiring family circles, recalling how the Earl greeted them with " Good-morning ! " when it was really twenty-five minutes to five in the afternoon ; and what the Royal Duke said (this indicated only by initials) when one day he found another peer had in mistake taken his umbrella. As far as my memory goes back, and it just touches the time when Mr. White was principal door-keeper, jhe chief I have found the occupant of the chair a gentle- Door-keeper, man specially fitted for discharge of its onerous and important ' WHERE'S MY UMBRELLA ? " 102 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 duties. The position is one requiring tact, patience, presence of mind, and unvarying good manner. These are cheap at ;£^300 a year, and the selection of the Serjeant-at-Arms, at least for the quarter of a century that I have had opportunity of closely observing it, has been singularly fortunate. By chance rather than by ordered progress, the latest chief door-keepers have reached the blue ribbon of the service via the Ladies' Gallery. Mr. Wilson, the present incumbent of the chair,^ is .still spoken of kindly by ladies frequenting the gallery in recent Parliaments. The exceptional popularity he secured in the delicate position of custodian of ladies in a chamber where silence is peremptorily imposed has been established with equal universality in the more stirring air of the Lobby. MR. WILSON, THE DOOR-KEEPER. The House of Commons is quick to resent anything approaching rude smartness, or attempt on the part of a ,, ^ Minister replying to a question to score off an Answers that . t 1 1 turn away Unoffending member. Inability to recognise this ^™*''' honourable prejudice had a good deal to do with the unpopularity and final downfall of Mr. Ayrton. On the other hand, there are few things delight the House more than a sly hit dexterously dealt by a popular Minister at a too obtrusive member. But the conditions here set forth must be rigorously observed. Moreover, there must be no malice in the quip. This Session there have been two quiet flashes of this peculiar humour. In the first, the interlocutors were Mr. ^ Retired in 1904. i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 103 Caldwell and the Lord Advocate (Mr. Grahara Murray). Students of the Parliamentary reports have no opportunity of realising the individuality of Mr. Caldwell. A"Piati. He has a rich gift of what an eminent American, tudiniser." at present on a visit to this country, calls " platitudinising." The word will not be found in the New Oxford Dictionary. But it is most effective as indicating a constant, ever-fed supply of pointless words, wrapped up in cotton-woolly sentences. Amongst other attractions, he has a loud, level voice, a rapid intonation, and an almost inhuman staying power. He can go on talking for two hours just as conveniently as he can gabble through one, and probably will say less to the point than he might by accident have compressed in a spin of sixty minutes. One day a suffering colleague on the Select Committee on the Scotch Public Health Bill cut a notch on a stick every time Mr. Caldwell rose to make a speech. When the Committee adjourned the stick was found to con- tain forty -one notches. Of course, the member for Mid-Lanarkshire is never reported, for the managers of newspapers have to consider their interests with the public. That re- flection does not lessen the anguish of those who, whether in Select Com- mittee or the House, have to suffer Mr. Caldwell at length. It was late at night, in debate on a Superannuation Bill, that the Lord Advocate quietly scored off this contribution from Scotland to the business resources of the House. The proposal of the Bill was that superannuation should take place at the age of sixty. Mr. Caldwell, anxious for ecdnomy, moved an amendment extending the period for five years. MR. CALDWELL, M.P. 104 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 No man, he argued, ought on the ground of incapacity to be laid on the shelf before he reached the age of sixty-five. "Oh yes," said the Lord Advocate, sternly regarding Mr. Caldwell ; " some persons become incapable long before they are sixty-five." Members roaring with laughter turned up " Dod," and found that Mr. Caldwell is only fifty-eight. The second instance this Session is the more welcome as coming from an unexpected quarter. A member put a question to the Home puwic Secretary as to the Nuisances. powers of County Councils or other local authorities to deal with the nomad population of gipsies and tinkers living in vans. Sir Matthew White-Ridley replied that provision is made in the Housing of the Working Classes Act to enable local authorities to deal with nuis- ances caused by dwellers in tents and vans. Mr. Swift MacNeill's ready wit here saw an opportunity of dealing a backhander at the Primrose League, whose agents are accustomed to go about country places in vans. " Do these powers," he slyly asked, " apply to persons in Primrose League vans ? " "They apply," said the Home Secretary, staring straight at his interlocutor, "only to persons who become nuisances." The laughter which bubbled round Mr. MacNeill's sally became a universal shout at the Home Secretary's subtle, though effective, retort. SIR MATTHEW WHITE-RIDLEY IS FUNNY. One of the notable points about the Session just closed is the advance made by Sir Michael Hicks-Beach in the esteem i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 105 of the House. The Chancellor of the Exchequer ranks amongst the oldest members, having taken his seat for East Gloucestershire in 1864, four years "^""'"^"y- before Sir William Harcourt, who justly counts himself one of the oldest inhabitants. Long ago, Sir Michael made his re- putation as a sound debater, a safe administrator. In his fourth Session, Mr. Disraeli, who had a keen eye for capacity, picked him out for a minor Ministerial post. Gradually advancing, he seemed to reach his highest point when, in 1885, he was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. Not at that time, or earlier, has he filled so large a place in the estimation of the House as he has won during the past two years. This may in part be due to better health. It may in some measure be traced to the greater ease born of fuller self-confidence following on success. Sir Michael is, undoubtedly, somewhat lighter of touch than was his earlier habitude. Still, in the main, life is to him a serious thing, to be regarded through grave eyes with face unlit by laughter. Perhaps, after all, he is himself unaltered, and owes fuller success to personal environment. His solid know- ledge, his unfaltering consistency, supply sharp contrasts on the Treasury Bench that make members involuntarily turn to him with fuller appreciation. 1-^^ SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH. A country member confides to me a gruesome experience that has befallen him in connection with the discharge of his legislative duties. He did not take a house voices in in town this season, and after some experience the Night, of private lodgings, engaged rooms in one of the most io6 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 lately built of the palatial hotels that lift their lofty heads above the streets of London. He was much pleased with everything on the first day of his stay. The dinner was excellent, the wine good, if a little dear, the attendance unexceptional, bedroom and sitting-room thoroughly com- fortable. He went to bed glowing with pleasure at his good fortune, and soon fell asleep. How long he slumbered he can- not say, but was awakened by an un- familiar voice close at his ear. " Are you there?" it shouted. He certainly was, but was not expecting anybody else. He turned on the electric light convenient to his hand, and found he had the room all to himself. Again the voice resounded, this time a little sharply : — " Are you there ? " Then he grasped the situation. There was a telephone in the room, the latest resource of civilisation, at the disposal of tenants on the first and second floors. It must be urgent business that would call a man up at this time of night — illness at home, perhaps, and urgent recall. Jumping out of bed, he approached the telephone, through which came again the sharp challenge. " Yes," he replied breathlessly ; " who is it ? " " It's me," said the voice. " Come away directly ; your uncle's asking for you, and the doctor says he can scarcely last through the night." The M.P. rapidly reviewed his family relations, and THE MIDNIGHT TELEPHONE. i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT lo; knew that he had not an uncle anywhere nearer than Baltimore, in distant Maryland. "Who are you?" he asked, through the telephone. " What's your name ? " "I'm Thompson, the butler, you know," hoarsely whispered the voice. " Mistress says, come away directly, your uncle's asking for you, and the doctor says he can scarcely last through the night." " There's some mistake," the member signalled back, a little pettishly. It was early in the Session, and the nights were cold. " My name is B . You're on the wrong connection." " Oh ! " said the voice, in pained surprise, and then there was silence. The member returned to his couch and was soon asleep again. He seemed only to have dozed when the silence was broken by a well-known voice with the old cry, " Are you there ? " Angrily jumping out of bed, he roared through the telephone, " What's the matter now ? " " Your uncle's sinking fast," cried the too familiar voice, now tremulous with emotion. " Mistress says " " Go away ! " bawled the member ; " you're on the wrong line." The story is too painful to pursue, but as a matter of sober fact, twice before morning broke were the member's slumbers disturbed by the ringing of the telephone bell and the peremptory inquiry, " Are you there ? " Whether this was preliminary to further news of his sick uncle he does not know, remaining under the sheets resolutely irresponsive. He made angry remonstrance with the manager on the following morning. The manager was exceedingly sorry, but the connections had got mixed and the member had been awakened to receive some one else's message. The other day a Royal Academician, a famous portrait painter,^ made a remark on which I have since hopelessly pondered. He asked if I had noticed the strong facial resem- ^ Mr. Orchardson. to8 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 blance between the Marquis of Salisbury and his nephew, Family the Leader of the House of Commons. At first Likenesses, sight there are, I suppose, no two personages more distinct in appearance, — Lord Salisbury, with his leonine head, his bowed shoulders, his great girth, his almost elephantine trot ; Mr. Balfour, with rather small head, unchubby cheeks, maypole-like figure, long, swinging stride. SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW. In the now little read if not quite forgotten New Timon Bulwer Lytton gave to the world a little more than fifty years ago, there is a passage descriptive of O'Connell which applies with graphic accuracy to the Premier of to-day : — But who, scarce less by every gazer eyed, Walks yonder, swinging with a stalwart stride ? With that vast bulk of chest and limb assign'd So oft to men who subjugate their kind ; So sturdy Cromwell push'd, broad-shoulder'd, on ; So burly Luther breasted Babylon ; So brawny Cleon bawl'd his Agora down ; And large-limb'd Mahmoud clutch'd a Prophet's crown ! This description being curiously applicable to Lord Salisbury, the uncle cannot be said to recall the personality of the nephew. It was simply in respect of the face that i897 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 109 the R.A. made his allegation of strong personal resemblance, supporting it with a wealth of detail whose erudition I will not attempt to chronicle. Whatever may be the case as between uncle and nephew, there is no doubt that the personal resemblance among off- shoots of the Cecil family is remarkable. It cousins and does not occur in the case of Lord Cranborne, Brothers, who, whether in personal appearance, manner, or public speech, has no resemblance to his father or his cousins on the front bench of the House of Commons. But Lord Hugh Cecil is in some isolated respects exceedingly like his cousin Arthur. He has many of the inflections of his voice. His phras- ing and his general style of speech- making, even to the extent of occasional hesitation for the proper word, and the certainty of finding it, recall Mr. Arthur Balfour's earliest House of Commons efforts whilst he was yet attached to the flank of the Fourth Party. To see Lord Hugh crossing the lobby of the House of Commons, or walking along the street, is to have instantly recalled his most famous cousin. A back view of his figure startlingly resembles the First Lord of the Treasury, the illusion being completed by his long, swinging stride. It is probable that, if Lord Hugh retains his health and strength, and spends his days and nights in the House of Commons, he will at no distant day complete the parallel by drawing near to the Parliamentary position of his illustrious kinsman. A man of wide culture, he has also strong convictions, which, whether right or wrong, are rare things much appreciated in the House of Commons. He has in him, moreover, the making of a polished and pungent debater. LORD HUGH CECIL. no LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1897 In the case of Mr. Arthur Balfour and the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, family resemblance is in one particular development carried to an embarrassing perfection. Mr. Gerald Balfour's voice and inflection of speech are so identical with those of his brother that, entering the House when one or other is on his legs, one has to look towards the Treasury Bench to see who is " up " before deciding the question that presents itself when the voice first strikes on the ear. SESSION 1898 CHAPTER X FEBRUARY In the leisure of country-house life, and the confidence of the smoking-room, I have enjoyed opportunity of learning the views of a high authority on the delicate question possible of proximate Premiers on either side. If I were Premiers. permitted to name the oracle, his expressed views would gain alike in personal interest and in weight. That privilege is withheld ; but I am at liberty to record the dicta, which, though not professing to be a verbatim report of intermittent conversation carried over some period, may be accepted as an accurate record, since it has been seen in proof by the statesman to whom I am indebted for permission to publish the review of the situation as it stands at the opening of a new Session. " Harcourt will never be Premier," said my friend, " and, though not personally enamoured of his company, I pro- foundly regret it It is an unexpected, un- 5,, wHiiam deserved termination of a hard-working, brilliant, Harcourt. and, I believe, purely patriotic career. Harcourt has made great sacrifices of ease, time, and money for the public service. As you know, when he decided upon a political career he deliberately sacrificed a large and increasing income at the Parliamentary Bar. What he has since received in the way of Ministerial salary is probably not equal to six- iti I 12 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 pence in the pound on what he would have netted had he stuck to his work in the Com- mittee-rooms upstairs. As far as Ministerial life is concerned, ill-luck pursued him from the beginning. Scarcely had he, running in double harness with Henry James, worried Gladstone into making him, conjointly with his comrade, a Law Officer of the Crown, than the Liberals were swept out of Downing Street, and remained in the wilderness for six years. "When in 1893 Mr. G.'s hint at desire to resign the Pre- miership was somewhat hurriedly snapped at by his stricken col- leagues in the Cabinet, Harcourt had good reason to expect that the reversal of the office would fall to him. Perhaps it would, had not his temper been rather ' A TOWERING IMPATIENCE. Plantagenet than Archi- episcopal. He has a tower- ing impatience of anything approaching — I don't say stupidity, but — mental slowness. At heart he is one of the kindest men in the world. But he has a way of sitting upon people, and, his weight being ele- phantine, the experience of the sufferer is neither forgettable nor forgivable. The story 'ONE OP THE KINDEST OF MEN." ' A WAY OF SITTING UPON PEOPLE. J'3 i898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 115 goes that in January 1893 his colleagues in Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet with one accord began to make excuse from serving under him as Premier. I don't know whether that's true. But I can testify that, very early in the run of the Rosebery Cabinet, there were persistent rumours of Harcourt's approach- ing resignation. I took the liberty of asking one of the least excitable of his colleagues whether there was any foundation for the report. ' I don't know what Harcourt is going to do,' he said, ' but I'll tell you what. As things are going now, if he doesn't resign soon, we shall.' " There was evidently a tiff on at the time, which blew over, and they all lived happily after up to the unexpected and, in ordinary circumstances, inadequate cordite explosion. " Mr. G.'s resignation naturally opened up a prospect of Harcourt's advancement to the vacant post. By common consent he had earned the preferment. There was no one on the Treasury Bench of the House of Commons who might reasonably compete with him. That he should have been passed over in favour of a colleague of less than half his term of service, one who more than a dozen years earlier had actually served as his junior at the Home Office, was sufficient to disturb a temperament more equable than that of the Lord of Malwood. The late-comers to the toil of the vineyard, paid on equal terms with those who had laboured from break of day, were in quite ordinary case compared with Lord Rosebery exalted to the Premiership over the head of Sir William Harcourt. But things were so ordained, and if, whilst acquiescing in the arrangement, Harcourt did not enthusiastically contribute to its success, it must be remem- bered that, after all, he too is human. " The bitterness of the case is intensifiedj,by conscious- ness of irrevocable disappointment. It was then or never. It was not then. If he were ten years younger the prospects would be different. The success of leaving him to play second fiddle was not so conducive to harmony as to recom- mend renewal of the experiment The present Government will unquestionably live into the next century. In the year 1900 Harcourt will be seventy-three. That, of course, is ii6 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 not an impossible age for a Premier. When in August 1892, Mr. Gladstone for the fourth time became Prime Minister, he was nearly ten years older. Palmerston did not reach the Premiership till he was in his seventy-first year, and returned to the office when he was seventy-five. Earl Russell was for a few months First Lord of the Treasury at seventy-three. These were exceptional cases, and at best do not supply precedent for a statesman in his seventy-third year for the first time succeeding to the Premiership. What has not been found convenable in past history will not grow more likely of acceptance in the more strenuous political times of the twentieth century. What Mr. G. is accustomed to call the incurable disease of old age will bar Sir William Harcourt's enjoyment of a justly-earned prize. " Lord Rosebery is still in the running, but is handi- L^^d capped by Rosebery. a disqualification that, when the time of trial comes, will probably prove as fatal as that which, with quite differ- ent bearing, hampers his esteemed friend and former colleague. Dur- ing his brief tenure of No. 10 Downing Street, Rosebery left nothing to be desired from a Prime Minister — nothing save peace and harmony in the Cabinet. I n the con- current office of Leader "A PRISONER IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS." *-* rlOUSe Ol L.OrdS he was without a rival, a foeman worthy of the sword of the veteran Leader of the 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 117 Opposition. Regarded as a public speaker, he was as effective on the platform as in his place in Parliament. In brief, he has but one disqualification for the high position to which he was called. He is a peer. Even with the Conservatives, of whose party the House of Lords is a rampart, the inconvenience of having the Premier outside the House of Commons is acutely felt. With Liberals such an arrangement is a contradiction of first principles, " That the disqualification should have been overlooked in the case of Lord Rosebery is the supremest recognition of his high capacity and his peculiar fitness for the post. But it is not an experiment that can be tried again. The Liberals can come back to power only as the result of deep stirring of the popular mind such as Mr. G. accomplished on the eve of the General Election of 1880. The militant section of the Liberal electorate, the men who move the army, have dis- tinctly made up their minds that they will not have a peer for Premier, even though his lordship be so sound and thorough- going a Liberal as is the Earl of Rosebery. The Liberal Party, closing up its ranks for a pitched battle, cannot afford to march into the lists with avoidable cause of dissension riving its ranks. If Lord Rosebery were plain Archibald Primrose he would as surely be Prime Minister in the next Liberal Government as it is certain that the whirli- gig of time will bring its revenges at the poll to the Liberal Party. The Earl of Rosebery is impossible. " Rosebery's personal testimony on this point is interesting and conclusive. It will be found in his monograph on Pitt, where, dwelling on the difficulty that surrounds the accident of the Prime Minister being seated in the House of Lords, he writes : ' It would be too much to maintain that all the members of a Cabinet should feel an implicit confidence in each other ; humanity — least of all, political humanity — could not stand so severe a test. But between a Prime Minister in the House of Lords and the Leader of the House of Commons such a confidence is indispensable. Responsi- bility rests so largely with the one, and articulation so greatly with the other, that unity of sentiment is the one necessary Ii8 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 link that makes the relation, in any case difficult, in any way possible. The voice of Jacob and the hands of Esau may effect a successful imposture, but can hardly constitute a durable administration.' " Apart from Sir William Harcourt and Lord Rosebery, the Front Opposition Bench is not lacking in men who gj^^ would make passable Premiers. Campbell- campbeii- Bannerman, for example, would be a model Bannerman. Lg^der of the House of Commons, and a safe Prime Minister. That he should not have come more rapidly and more prominently to the front is one of the unexpected turns of political life. The main reason is, I believe, that, un- influenced by a well-known example in other quarters, he lets things slide. Stafford Northcote, harried by Randolph Churchill, once pathetically confessed that he was ' lacking in go.' Campbell- Bannerman is wanting in push. Some one has truly said that if he had been born to a patrimony not exceeding ;^3oo a year, he would long ago have been Leader of the House of Commons. A naturally indolent disposition completes the swamping influence of excessive wealth. " Oddly enough, the only occasion since middle age when he felt the blessed influence of personal ambition, and really strived to get himself a place, was when Arthur Peel retired from the Speaker's Chair. Strange as it may seem, Campbell -Bannerman really, almost fervidly, desired to be Speaker. One of the reasons confided to me was quaint. He has a horror of recessional speech -making. When he gets a holiday he likes to have it all the way through. The Speaker is not expected to conciliate his constituents by making speeches in the recess, and Campbell -Bannerman looked SIR H. CAMPBELL- BANNERMAN. 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 119 with large desire on an unruffled holiday from the date of the Prorogation to the opening of the new Session. He would have made a Speaker as good as the best of them. He has the judicial mind, the equable manner, the intellectual alertness, the wide political and Parliamentary knowledge indispensable to success in the Chair. He is, moreover, master of that pawky humour grateful to the House of Commons, especially when it edges the sable mantle of the majesty of the Chair. His willingness to accept the office relieved the Government and the House from an awkward position. Whilst ready to fight any one else, the Unionists would have accepted Campbell - Bannerman. It was Harcourt who upset the coach. He raised constitutional objections to a Minister stepping out of the Cabinet into the Speaker's Chair. I believe he even threatened resignation if CampbelUBannerman insisted upon pressing claims to the Speakership. His colleagues in the Cabinet, appalled by such a prospect, desisted from urging the candidature, and Campbell -Bannerman, possibly not without grateful consciousness of having narrowly escaped a burdensome responsibility, acquiesced. " Sir Henry Fowler is another thoroughly safe man, perhaps a little too safe to aspire to satisfy the popular idea of a Prime Minister, He is more akin to the - , T , T)- . . 1 III Sir H. Powler. type of the present Lord Kimberley, and the late Lord Iddesleigh, than to that either of Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone. Yet few men of less than twenty years' standing in the House of Commons have made such steady advance in their political career as has the ex-Mayor of Wolverhampton. Whatever he has been appointed to do, he has done well. Sometimes, notably in his speech on Henry James's motion raising the question of the Indian Cotton Duties, he has revealed to the House unsuspected depths of statesmanship and debating power. His conduct of the Parish Councils Bill was a masterpiece of adroit Parliamentary management. As an all-round Minister, a dependable man, he has no superior on either Front Bench. I am not sure that that is the type in which successful Prime Ministers are cast. It lio LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1S98 might possibly be better for the country if such were the case. But I am dealing with matters as we find them. " Assuming, of course, that they live and work, I think you will find a future — I do not say absolutely the next — Liberal Prime Minister in one of two of Sir One of Two. ^jjjj^^^ Harcourt's colleagues on the Front Opposition Bench. If you ask Asquith which of the two will come out first in the running, he will have no difficulty in deciding. He is not a man who wears his heart upon his sleeve, nor is he given to vain boasting. Yet eight years ago, whilst he could not be said as yet to have made his mark upon the House of Commons, I heard him, at a friend's dinner table, quietly announce that he intended some day to be Prime Minister. The third party to the conversation was Lord Randolph Churchill, who afterwards agreed with me that the aspiration, bold as it seemed at that time, was by no means improbable of fulfilment. "What Asquith lacks for the rapid achievement of his settled plan is more blood. Iron he has in plenty, and of excellent quality. He is failing in that sympathetic touch with the £-^to>^",J^ multitude which was one of the chief and ^ )^ abiding causes of Mr. G.'s supreme power. Asquith addressing a mass of humanity, MK. aayuiin. y/hether in the House of Commons or from a public platform, can bring conviction to the mind. He cannot touch the passions. His hard, somewhat gauche manner is, I believe, due rather to shyness than to self- assertion. That is a hopeful diagnosis, for it implies the possibility of his sometime letting himself go, with results that will astonish his audience and himself At present he is too cold-blooded, too canny, to capture the populace. " It was characteristic of him that, on losing his position as Cabinet Minister and Secretary of State for the Home Mr. Asquith. LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 121 Department, he should have gone back to the drudgery of the Bar, to plead before judges whose decisions in matters of life and death he but the day before was empowered to override. The decision was, in some aspects, creditable to him. To an able-bodied, high-spirited man nothing can be more distasteful than the lot of living upon a wife's dowry. Asquith would have done well if he had found any other means of satisfying his honourable instincts. In political life, when running for the highest prizes, the axiom that no man can serve two masters is pitilessly true. Even to attain ordinary success in the House of Commons a man must spend his days and nights in the Chamber. Apart from the conflict of interests and the imperativeness of diverse calls, there is one inexorable matter of fact that makes it impossible for a Leader at the Bar to concurrently iiU the place of a Leader in the House of Commons. The House now meets at three o'clock. Public business commences half an hour later, and it frequently happens that the portion of the sitting allotted to questioning Ministers is the most important of the whole. A member absent through the question hour cannot possibly be in close touch with the business of the day. This is more imperatively true in times of storm and stress. It is obvious that, as the Courts of Law do not usually rise before five o'clock, a member of the House of Commons in close attendance on his private business at the Bar cannot be in his place at Westminster during the lively, often critical, episode of questions. " Knowledge of this detail will help to explain the con- viction borne in upon old Parliamentary hands that, in return- ing to his work at the Bar, Asquith seriously handicapped himself in the race for the Premiership. " Asquith's only rival in sight among the younger men in the Liberal camp is the grand-nephew of the great Earl Grey. I have heard Mr. G. say Edward Grey sir Edward is the only man he knew in the long course of orey. his experience who might be anything he pleased in political life and seemed content to be hardly anything. The public know little of the young member for Berwick -on -Tweed. 122 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT The present House of Commons knows little more, and was, perhaps, not deeply impressed by the rare opportunity of forming a judgment supplied towards the close of last Session. " It is Gladstone and other Nestors of the Party whose pro- found belief in the young man fixes attention upon him. Here, even more hopelessly than in the case of Campbell-Bannerman, the potentialities of a possibly great career are influenced by total absence of pushfulness. Edward Grey does not want anything but to be left alone, supplied with good tackle, and favoured by fine weather for fishing. He would rather catch a twenty - pound salmon in the Tweed than hook a fat seal of office in the neighbour- hood of Downing Street. But he is only thirty-five, just ten years younger than Asquith, and no one can say what chances and changes the new century may bring." It will be perceived that, enjoying the irresponsibility of the pen that merely transcribes obiter dicta, I have not attempted to blunt any of their frankness. SIR EDWARD GREY. The House of Commons was distinctly poorer when on the eve of the General Election of 1895 Sir Isaac Holden sir Isaac resolved not to offer himself for re-election. Holden. During the recess the world became poorer by his death. He was in various ways a type of the best class of Englishman. His father was a Cumberland man ; he was born in Scotland ; he lived and worked in Yorkshire. More than thirty years ago, having accumulated a vast fortune, he bent his thoughts on Westminster. He was elected for Knaresborough towards the close of the Session of 1865, 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 123 and represented that borough till the General Election of 1868. At the dissolution he flew at higher game, fighting the Eastern Division of the West Riding. But even the high tide that carried Mr. Gladstone into power in 1868 could not establish a Liberal in that Tory stronghold. Four years later Isaac Holden tried the Northern Division of the West Riding with similar ill-fortune. At the General Election of 1874 he attacked the Eastern Division again, and was again beaten. But he was not the kind of man to accept defeat, whether in dealing with wool-combing machinery or politics. In 1882 he made a dash at the North -West Riding and carried it. At the time of his retirement from Parliamentary life he was seated for the Keighley Division of the same Riding. I do not remember hearing Sir Isaac speak during the thirteen years I knew him in the House of Commons. But he was an assiduous no talker but attendant upon his Parliamentary duties. Through « walker, the turbulent times which saw Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill carried through the House of Commons, there was none among the meagre majority of forty upon whom the Ministerialist whip counted with more certainty than the octogenarian member for Keighley Division. One night when the Bill was being forced through Committee by the automatic action of the closure, Sir Isaac took part in every one of ten divisions the Unionists insisted upon walking through. So high did party feeling run at the moment, that Mr. Villiers came down to the House and voted in the first two rounds taken immediately after ten o'clock, when the closure came into operation. After that, he reasonably thought he had done enough to save his country, and went '-e*5 SIR ISAAC HOLDEN. 124 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 off home. But though Ninety judiciously retired, two members of more than Eighty stopped to the last, going round and round the lobbies for two hours on a sultry night. One was Mr. Gladstone, then approaching his eighty-fifth year. The other was Isaac Holden, two years the senior of the Premier. Meeting Sir Isaac after one of the divisions, I asked him if he did not think he would be better in bed. " Not at all," he said, with his bright smile. " You know, I always walk a couple of miles every night before I go to bed. I have stepped the division lobbies, and find that the length traversed is as nearly as possible 200 yards. You see, if they give us nine divisions, I shall have done a trifle over a mile, and will have so much less to walk on my way home." As it turned out, ten divisions were taken at this particular sitting, those two young fellows, Mr. Gladstone and Isaac Holden, walking briskly through each one. When it was over. Sir Isaac went out to complete his two miles, taking Birdcage Walk on his way to his rooms in Queen Anne's Mansions. Much has been said and written about his peculiar dieting. He certainly was most methodical. An orange, a The Secret of baked apple, a biscuit made from bananas, and Long Life, twenty grapes^neither more nor less — made up his breakfast. He dined lightly in the middle of the day, and supped in the bounteous fashion of his breakfast. No whim of this kind was ever more fully justified. Almost up to the last Sir Isaac walked with rapid step, his back as straight as a dart, his eyes retaining their freshness, his cheek its bloom. It was his pride that he had grapes growing all through the year in his vinery at Oakworth House, near Bradford. During his stay in London he had the fruit sent up every day. When, some years ago, I visited him at Oakworth, he was at the time of my arrival out walking on the moor. Coming in, having done his then accustomed seven miles' spin, he insisted upon straightway escorting his guest all over the spacious winter garden. One 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 125 v^^ of his panaceas for lengthening your days was to live in an equable temperature. Sixty degrees was, he concluded, the right thing, and as he walked about bareheaded he begged me to observe how equable the temperature was. It may have been, but it was decidedly chilly. As he wore no hat I could not keep mine on, and caught a cold that lingered till I left Yorkshire. Another time, he and I, being neighbours in London, driving home from the house of a mutual friend where we had foregathered at dinner, he stopped the carriage at the top of St. James's Street and got out to walk the rest of the way home. It was raining in torrents, but that did not matter. He had not, up to this time, completed his regula- tion walk, and it must be done before he went to bed. Thus day by day he wound himself up with patient regularity, living a pure and beauti- ful life, dying with all that should accompany old age, as honour, love, obedience, troops of friends. If he suffered any disappointment in his closing hours, it would be because Death came to him at the compara- tively early age of ninety- one. One day he told me in the most matter-of-fact manner that, given an ordinary good constitution at birth, there was no reason in the world why a man should not live to celebrate his hundredth birthday. At Folkestone the other day, I came across a tradition of the time "The Noble when Baron de Worms, Baron." then a member of the House of Commons, was an occa- sional resident on the Leas. Com- bining business with pleasure, he, on one occasion, took part in a political meeting in anticipation of the General Election ■ A BARON OF HIGH DEGREE. 126 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 of 1892, which meant so much to him and to others. "The noble baron," as the late Sir Robert Peel, in a flash of that boisterous humour that delighted the House of Commons, once called the member for the East Toxteth Division of Liverpool, desirous of casting a glamour of ancient nobility over the cause of the friend it was his object to serve, dwelt with pardonable pride on his own lineage. " My brothers are barons," he said ; " my great grand- father was a baron ; my grandfather was baron ; my father was baron." " Pity your mother wasn't," cried a voice from the crowd. CHAPTER XI MARCH Last month I was privileged to be the confidant of the opinion of an eminent publicist on the chances and proba- bilities of the next Liberal Premier. The con- .. „ . More Smok- versation, or, to be more precise, the monologue, ine-room later extended to the Conservative field. Here, <^""''«"«»- as before, my part is absolutely confined to the humble duty of recorder. I can only repeat that if I were at liberty to mention the name of the authority for these obiter dicta they would gain alike in personal interest and in political importance. " The question of who is to be the next Conservative Premier is one," my Mentor said, " more likely to present itself on an early day than is the other we have been talking about. Lord Salisbury is not of a resigning disposition. ' I will never,' he has wittily said, ' consent to be in politics the Dowager Lord Salisbury.' He is a man of indomitable pluck, with a high sense of his duty to his country, and an honest conviction that it is most completely performed when Robert Cecil has his hand on the helm of State. But no one who watched him in the House of Lords last Session, or who has had personal dealings with him during the past six months, can fail to perceive that the state of his health leaves much to the desire of his many friends and innumerable admirers. At best he is not likely to form a Fourth Administration. Inevitably within a year or two the Conser- 127 128 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 vative Party will be face to face with the necessity of electing a new Leader. " I fancy when Goschen finally made up his mind to cross the Rubicon, on the marge of which he had long dallied, he was not free from expectation that some day he might be called upon to lead the Tory Party. When he went over, Arthur Balfour was untried ; Hartington Mr. Qoschen. THE UNEXPECTED FOOTPRINT. had declared against fusion of the two elements of the Unionist Party ; whilst Chamberlain was yearning after what he called a Nationalist Party, presumably made up of Jesse Collingses and Powell Williamses. It was quite on the cards when Goschen delivered the Conservatives from the dilemma i8g8 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 129 in which Randolph Churchill's defection left them that events might so shape themselves as to bring him to the Leadership of the House of Commons. Events took other shapes, notably in the development of Arthur Balfour into a first-class Leader. Hence Goschen's opportunity has finally eluded his grasp. So far from leading the party, it is doubtful whether the inexorable age-limit will not preclude his inclusion in the next Conservative Ministry, whenever, by whomsoever, it is formed. No one recognises that fact more clearly than does the present First Lord of the Admiralty, and none will accept the situation with greater dignity. " Failing Arthur Balfour, the man on the Treasury Bench whom the Conservative Party of all sections would hail with acclamation as Leader is Hicks-Beach. In matters g,, M,ci„e, of fact, especially of finance, he is more reliable Hicks-Beach. than his more brilliant colleague, the First Lord of the Treasury. Against the ultimate supremacy of Chamberlain he offers a barrier which good Conservatives fondly contemplate. ' If,' they say to each other, 'anything were to happen to Arthur Balfour, Joe would be inevitable save for Hicks- Beach.' " That is a fresh bond between this upright, stiff- backed, uncom- promising Conservative country gentleman and the party whose best instincts and habits he worthily represents. "It is too soon to speak of George Curzon. But if there did not hang over him the extinguisher of a coronet, I should confidently look for him seated in due time in the place of the Leader of the House of Commons, with the Premiership to follow. He holds on the Treasury Bench a position closely analogous to that of Edward Grey in the Opposition camp. Young, of good K UPRIGHT AND STIFF-BACKED. Mr. Curzon. I30 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 birth, impelled by Parliamentary instincts, a clear thinker, a forcible speaker, he has the advantage over his predecessor at the Foreign Office that he means to get to the top of the Parliamentary ladder. It is the fashion among some people to sneer at his superior manner and alleged affectation of speech. These superficial judges regard him as a sort of Parliamentary dandy. Wherein they are mightily mistaken. George Curzon is not physically a strong man, though hard work happily agrees with him, and since he went to the Foreign Office his health has been better than at any time since he left Oxford. But confronted with what he regarded as the duty of mastering the Eastern Question, he set out on an arduous journey, visiting Persia, Siam, Central Asia, Indo- China, and the Corea, scaling the Pamirs, making a morning call on the Ameer at a time when Cabul was in unrest, and the Khyber Pass promised to renew its old character as a death-trap for adventurous Englishmen. " A man that goes to work in this fashion is the kind out of which able Ministers are made. Met in a drawing-room or seen lolling on the Treasury Bench, George Curzon looks a lath. He is really a blade of tempered steel, and will go far.^ The pity of it is that his father is a peer, and he the eldest son. "These reflections deal with contingencies at present remote. The actual competition for the Leadership of the Mr. Balfour Constitutional Party lies between the nephew of and Mr. the Marquis of Salisbury and the ex-Mayor of am er a n. ^^^^ Radical Birmingham, the Jack Cade of Stafford Northcote's startled fancy, the politician who in 1885 affrighted staid Liberals with his unauthorised programme. " The surprise of such a position of affairs' is so dazzling in the case of Mr. Chamberlain as to obscure all lesser lights. Nevertheless, Mr. Arthur Balfour's contribution is part of the romance of political life. There were none even among the far-seeing who, sixteen or even a dozen years ago, ventured to predict the Arthur Balfour of to-day. The Leader of the present House of Commons has been a member for 1 Since this was written he has proved himself one of the most successful Viceroys known to the history Of India. LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 131 nearly a quarter of a century, and though perennially young, may commence to reckon himself among the old stagers. In his first Parliament, from 1874 to 1880, so far from having made a mark, he passed absolutely unrecognised. THE RACE FOR THE LEADERSHIP. Very early in the next Parliament, incited by the vitality of Lord Randolph Churchill and his colleagues of the Fourth Party, the young member for Hertford began to come to the front." [The first note made of his appearance by a long-time student of Parliamentary men and manner bears date August 20, 1880. As it was placed on public record at the time, I may quote it here without risk of accusation of being wise after the event. " The member for Hertford," it was then written in the Diary of the Gladstone Parliament, " is one of the most interesting young men in the House. He is not a good speaker, but he is endowed with the rich gift of conveying the impression that presently he will be a successful Parliamentary debater, and that in the mean- time it is well he should practise. He is a pleasing specimen of the highest form of the culture and good breeding which 132 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 stand to the credit of Cambridge University. He is not without desire to say hard things of the adversary opposite, and sometimes yields to the temptation. But it is ever done with such sweet and gentle grace, and is smoothed over by such earnest protestation of innocent intention, that the adversary rather likes it than otherwise."] " At the date of publication,'' said my Mentor, to whom I showed the note, " that would doubtless be regarded as a somewhat exaggerated estimate of Balfour's position and potentiality. He was, in truth, then looked upon as a sort of fragile ornamentation of the hard-headed, hard-working Fourth Party. They suffered him, liked him, but could very well do without him. In his first Ministerial office as Secre- tary for Scotland, Balfour did not stir the pulses of the House. His chance came when illness drove Hicks-Beach from the Irish Office, and a belated Premier was peremptorily called upon to find a successor. From the very first, Arthur Balfour set his back against the wall and let it be seen that if the Irish members wanted fight, here was a man who would give them plenty. From the time he went to the Irish Office up to the present day, he has, with occasional temporary lapses due to physical lassitude and exhausted patience, steadily pressed forward. On the death of W. H. Smith he was the inevitable Leader of the House of Commons, and took his seat on the Treasury Bench, with Randolph Churchill finally out of the running, John Gorst in subordinate office under him, Drummond Wolff comfortably shelved in Ambassadorial quarters. Thus shall the last be first, and the first last " Arthur Balfour is, as he deserves to be, popular with the Conservative Party. I should say his personal popularity Mr. Chamber- exceeds that of any of his colleagues, not except- lain. ing the Prime Minister. Lord Salisbury is highly esteemed in the City of London, now, as Goschen must sometimes reflect with surprise, the beating heart of British Toryism. I well remember a time when Arthur Balfour in his chivalrous manner made excuses for non- attendance at Lord Mayors' Banquets and the like, being 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 133 painfully embarrassed by the exuberance of a reception which thrust his uncle for the time into the second place. " Of the many causes of his popularity with good Con- servatives this stands forth with supremest force : ' Arthur Balfour,' they say, ' keeps Joe out of the Leadership.' That, I fancy, is as near the exact truth as club axioms run. If Arthur Balfour were to-morrow to be removed from the House of Commons, Chamberlain would, within possibly a decent interval of twelve months of Hicks-Beach, be seated in the place of Disraeli and of Sir Robert Peel. For a long time after his secession from the Liberal camp I person- ally clung to the con- viction that, however far he might go in his opposition to Gladstone and to those who remained faithful to the old chief, he would never appear in public and in history as Leader of the Party of which he was up to January 1886 the most violent denouncer, the most relentless foe. I have to-day no particle of such faith. I do not believe Chamberlain's Radical instincts and convic- tions have faded by a shade. But I perceive he has convinced himself that they may, for all practical purposes, be just as well exploited from the Conservative camp as from the Liberal. The Conservative Party, scarcely yet recovered from the surprise of their majority, having passed the Work- men's Compensation Bill of last Session, and with other kindred memories crowding upon them, perceive that Cham- berlain is, as usual, pretty correct. Ever since he went over to help them they have feared him more than they have IN THE PLACE OF DISE.'IELI. 134 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 loved him. They will not, save in extremis, accept him as Leader. Chamberlain, not unconscious of this prejudice, may console himself with reflection on the fact that, fifty years ago, analogous circumstances existed with at least equal bitterness to the detriment of Disraeli, who yet lived to become not only the Leader but the idol of the Tory Party. "Still, there is always Arthur Balfour, over whom no deadly peerage hangs, and who is twelve years younger than his esteemed friend and admired colleague, the Secretary of State for the Colonies." Although the Session is nearly a month old the House of Commons has not yet grown accustomed to the absence Frank °f Frank Lockwood. His burly figure with its Lockwood. more than 6 ft. of height was not easy to miss in a crowd. Superadded were a sunny countenance and a breezy manner, that made their influence promptly felt. The position finally secured by Lockwood in Parlia- mentary debate disappointed some of his friends, who looked for fuller development of his great gifts. Lockwood himself felt somehow he ought to have done better. But the situa- tion did not affect his loyal esteem for the House of Commons, a feeling deepening almost to personal affection. He had good cause to be satisfied with his success at the Bar. He would have bartered a large slice of it for a stronger hold on the House of Commons. That he did not secure it was due to temperament rather than to lack of capacity. He was, up to the last, afraid of the House, a superstition that had to some extent the effect of paralysing his powers. If he could have flung himself into Parlia- mentary debate with the same abandon that he tackled a witness in court or addressed a common-law jury, he would have carried all before him at Westminster, as was his wont in the Courts of Justice. He was aware of this curious fail- ing, and strove to overcome it, with increased success, notably in his last Session. In a brief rejoinder or in a remark flung across the table in debate he equalled his own renown. When taking part in set debate, he felt it due to the House 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 135 of Commons to make elaborate preparation, and the more prolonged the labour the less striking was the measure of success. It is quite true, as was stated at the time of his death, that Frank Lockwood, regarding the world as his oyster, resolved to open it from the stage of the theatre. The lady who is now Mrs. Kendal helped him "'* ^'"* '^''*'' to engagement with a travelling company of players. His explanation of his reason for withdrawing from the alluring prospect of histrionic success was the chagrin that filled his breast on regarding the bills at the theatre door and on the walls of the towns the troupe visited. " There was," he said, in indignant tones, belied by the twinkle in his eye, " Miss This and Mr. That, in letters half a foot long, whilst my name was incidentally mentioned in smallest type at the end of the list. When I looked at the bill I felt my vocation had nothing to do with the call-boy at the theatre." Mrs. Kendal did something better than help Lockwood on to the stage. She obtained for him his first brief, which at her personal entreaty was sent by Sir Albert Rollit, then in business as a solicitor at Hull. In the House of Commons, as at the Courts of Justice, Lockwood was as well known for his sketches as for his wise and witty sayings. His drawings lacked the c ■ u 4.U %. J ■u^ J ^- • "'* Sketches. nnish that made possible reproduction in pages of established artistic merit. But they were full of humour, with rare knack of hitting off the situation. The execution was remarkably swift. Many a time through the Session Lockwood came to me with suggestion of treatment of some episode adaptable for Punch. Having discussed the matter, he would withdraw to one of the writing-tables in the division lobby, returning in five or six minutes with a bright sketch. It was one of his most cherished ambitions to draw for Punch. His sketches were usually redrawn by a more practised hand. But the fun was all there in the hurried sketches on House of Commons note-paper, or waste places on briefs, of which hundreds are scattered about among the 136 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 possessions of his friends. The only fee Lockwood sought for his really valuable Punch work was that he should be placed on a footing of equality with the staff, and receive an early copy of the week's number. Of this privilege he was gleefully proud. His pen, travelling rapidly over the sheet, was wonderful at catching a likeness, with just sufficient caricature to make SIR RICHARD WEBSTER LED CAPTIVE. Frotn a Sketch by the late Sir Frank Lockwood. it more attractive for the friends of the model. His favourite subjects in the House of Commons were Sir Richard Webster and Sir Robert Reid, whose gravity of mien had irresistible fascination for him. iSgS LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 137 At the time of the last visit to London of the Shah there was some talk of his authorising missionary enterprise in Persia. This suggested to Lockwood's vivid imagination a picture of Sir Richard Webster led captive by his business- like Majesty en route for Teheran. Another pair of sketches commemorates a famous sentence in a speech by Mr. Robert Spencer, delivered in debate on a Bill affecting the agricultural labourer. In one From- a Sketch by the late Sir Frank Lockwood. ' BOBBY," AS HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN. Frotn a Sketch by the late Sir Frank Lockwood. sketch we have " Bobby," as the sometime member for Mid- Northamptonshire was affectionately called, standing at the table of the House of Commons arrayed in the last resources of civilisation as provided in the tailor's shop, diffidently de- precating the possible assumption that he was an agricultural labourer. In the other we see him got up as he probably would have ordered matters had he been born to the estate of Hodge, instead of to that of the Spencer earldom. 138 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 In another sketch that bears no date, but evidently was circulated about the time of a Lobby incident, in which an Irish M.P. and a well-known artist in black-and-white figured, Lockwood illustrated the following extract from a leading article which appeared in the pages of the Daily Telegraph : — If one could imagine so untoward a proceeding as, say, Mr. Henry Lucy slapping the face of Mr. Frank Lockwood in the Lobby of the House of Commons, the issue would be very different. It From a Sketch iy the late Sir Frank Lockwood. would not be the insulted M.P. who would be ordered to move on, but the brawling journalist who would be removed. The gigantic personality of Mr. Inspector Horsley would intervene with neatness and dispatch. He sent the sketch to me with the injunction, " Brawler, Beware ! " In a letter dated from Lennox Gardens, 21st July 1894, he writes : — LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 139 My dear Lucy — Don't you think that when Haldane and I spoke on Thursday night it was something like Preachers on pro- bation — the calm and philosophical and the fire and fury ? — Yours ever, Frank Lockwood. The note enclosed the two sketches next reproduced, illustrating the theme. As a portrait, Mr. Haldane's is not /"-y^^ Frotn a Sketch hy the late Sir Frank Lockwood, From a Sketch by the late Sir Frank Lockwood, so successful as some. But Lockwood's own is capital, and shows how freely he extended to himself that measure of humorous exaggeration he was accustomed to bestow upon others. The late Lord Chief Justice was another tempting subject. Lord Coleridge, dining one evening at Lennox Gardens, was much interested in the overflowing gallery of portraits of contemporaries at the Bar and on the Bench, drawn by this facile pen. " But, Mr. Lockwood," said Lord Coleridge, " you don't seem to have attempted me." " The I40 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT n fact is," said Lockwood, relating the story, " I had come home early from the Courts, and spent an hour hiding away, in anticipation of his visit, innumerable portraits I had done of the Chief." His first important pictorial work is bound up in the volumes of evidence taken when he sat as Commissioner in an election inquiry heard at Chester nearly twenty years ago. With the red and blue pencils supplied by a confiding Froyn a Sketch by the late Sir Frank Lockwood. State, Lockwood illustrated the broad margins of the printed evidence with an illimitable procession of witnesses and scenes in court. As far as I know, that is the only case where he used other media than pen and ink for his sketches. For many years he superseded the ordinary Christmas card by sending to his friends a sketch drawn with his own hand. Here is a reproduction of the last one designed, in serene un- consciousness of the shadow hanging over the happy house- hold and the far-reaching circle of friends and acquaintances. i898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 141 In conversation with his friends, Lockwood did not hide the desire of his heart. He wanted to be a judge. Although a diligent attendant at the House of Commons, H,g ^ast and always ready to serve his party with a Aspiration. speech in the country, he was by no means a keen politician. When a man of his native ability becomes Solicitor-General, there is no reason why he should not look forward to steadily walking up the ladder till he reaches the Woolsack. Lock- wood would have been content at any time during the last two years of his life to step aside to the quiet dignity of the Bench. The estimation in which he was held in the House of Commons was testified to on the retirement of Mr. Peel from the Chair by his name being prominently mentioned in succession to the Speakership. He would have admirably filled the Chair, and was, I have reason to know, ready to take it had acceptance been pressed upon him. But the project blew over, and through a curious avenue of chances, his old friend, Mr. Gully, came to the opportunity, modestly accepted, splendidly utilised. CHAPTER XII APRIL The advancement of Lord Halsbury to the status of an Earl was succeeded by a rumour that the event was The Earl of Halsbury. preliminary to his retire- ment from the Woolsack. Up to the present time of writing no sign in that direction has been made, his lordship still lending the grace and dignity of his presence to the House of Lords. It cannot be said by the boldest flatterer that Sir Hardinge Giffard's ad- vancement to the Wool- sack was due entirely, or to any extent appreci- ably, to Parliamentary success whether in the Commons or in the Lords. The former was necessarily the stepping-stone to his high preferment. But he never made his mark in debate. It is therefore well to know, particularly pleasant to record, the opinion of those brought J 42 THE EARL OF HALSBURY. LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 143 in contact with him in his judicial capacity — that Lord Halsbury is supremely capable as a judge. The first time I was privileged to look upon the Lord Chancellor and hear him speak dates back some thirty years. At that time I was trying my 'prentice hand on ^^^ Hardin e a country newspaper, and had been deputed to aiffard and report the proceedings taken before the Shrop- °''^'™°'' ^y*- shire magistrates against Governor Eyre, in the matter of what were known as the Jamaica massacres. Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, afterwards raised to the judicial Bench, prosecuted ex -Governor Eyre, who was defended by Mr. Giffard. The inquiry, upon which the eyes of the civilised world were fixed, took place in a little courtroom in the sleepy town of Market Drayton. The chairman of the Bench of magistrates was Sir Baldwin Leighton, for years member for South Shrop- shire, who has bequeathed to the present House the member for the Oswestry Division of the county. Mr. Giffard threw himself into the defence with an energy not to be accounted for by the fee marked on his brief The case was one in which political partisanship was deeply engaged, the Conservatives backing up Governor Eyre in his vindication of what in later times, in a nearer island, came to be known as Law and Order, whilst Liberals, especially the more advanced section, strenu- ously called for the Governor's conviction on a criminal charge. Mr. Giffard, though preaching to the converted, addressed Sir Baldwin Leighton and his fellow-magistrates at merciless length. I remember how at one point, having pictured Governor Eyre pro- tecting the lives entrusted to him by the Queen from fiendish outrage, barbarity, and lust, the learned counsel passionately asked whether for doing that the Governor was to be persecuted to death. " Good God ! " he cried, " is this justice ? " and answered his question by bursting into tears. ' IS THIS JUSTICE?" 144 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 It was a touching episode, a little marred by Sir Baldwin Leighton's naJvet^. Slowly recovering from the depth of his emotion, the learned counsel apologised for his weakness. " Oh, don't mention it," said Sir Baldwin ; " but will you be much longer ? Because, if you will, we had better go to lunch now." The ludicrousness of the contrast — a sturdy Queen's Counsel in tears, and a prim Chairman of Quarter Sessions thinking of his luncheon — spoiled the effect of an otherwise powerful passage. The remark was made with such chilling artlessness that Mr. Giffard, drying his eyes and resuming his natural voice, went out with the crowd to luncheon. Eleven years elapsed before I saw Hardinge Giffard again. It was in the spring of 1877, when the defender of A deadly Govemor Eyre, having been made Solicitor- Diiemma. General in Mr. Disraeli's Government, came to be sworn in. He had a hard tussle before being privileged to cross the bar. For the preceding eighteen months he went about from place to place wher- ever vacancies oc- curred, looking for a seat. Defeated in succession at Cardiff, Launceston, and Horsham, a second vacancy occurring in the Cornish borough, he stood again and got in by a small majority. Ill-luck pursued him over the threshold of the House. Arrived at the table, Sir Erskine May, then Clerk of the House, made the customary demand for the return to the writ. Sir Hardinge Giffard forthwith, amid a scene of uproarious merriment, proceeded to search for it. First of all he attacked his breast coat-pocket, which prqved to be 'THE LOST WRIT." iSgS LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 145 bulging with letters and documents of various kinds. These he spread on the table, littering it as if a mail-bag had accidentally burst on the premises. Not finding the return there, he dived into his coat-tail pockets on either side, the merriment of a crowded House rising at sight of his perturbed face and hurried gestures. The document was not to be found among the papers that filled his coat-tail pockets, in quantity excelled only by the stufifing at his breast. Having got to the end of the tether, the Solicitor-General stood helpless at the table, looking at the inexorable Clerk, who made no advance towards administering the oath pend- ing the production of the return to the writ. Sir William Dyke, Ministerial Whip, who had brought up the new member, struck by a happy thought, bolted down the floor of the House, and, reconnoitring the seat below the gallery the new member had occupied before being called to the table, found the missing document quietly reposing in the Solicitor-General's hat. He brought it up and, amid cheer- ing as wild as if he had won the Victoria Cross, the member for Launceston was sworn in. Politics apart, it is unquestionably pleasing to the public mind that Mr. Gladstone should close his long and illustrious ,., ,,„.., career a plain sir William *^ Gladstone, citizen as he began ^•°- it. To many « Mr. Disraeli " is a more illustrious style than is the " Earl of Beaconsfield." It seemed somehow natural that the author of Coningsby, and of that less - known but even more remarkable work, Early Letters to his ozster, should, ..placing a coronet on his brow." when opportunity presented itself, place a coronet on his own brow. Mr. Gladstone, following early exemplars, Mr. Canning and Sir Robert Peel, is content to be known amongst men by the simple name L ' NOLO CORONARI. 146 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 of his fathers. Peel, it is true, had the title of a baronet, but that was not his fault or his seeking, being part of the family hereditaments. Mr. Gladstone's father also was a baronet, but the title descended over the younger son's head, and no accident marred the majestic simplicity of plain " Mr." Had he pleased, he might at any time during the past quarter of a century have taken rank as a peer. Happily, all his instincts and impulses have been opposed to submission to that form of medio- - ^<^ps!si^ 1^^^^^^^^^. crity. But there is one rank and title, the supremest open to a commoner, which Mr. Gladstone might accept without derogation. The style of a Knight of the Garter would, as far as common speech and ordinary address are concerned, slightly vary the proud simplicity of the name he has borne since he went to the University. The Order is encumbered with surplusage in the way of foreign Royalty, but it is the highest guerdon of the class open to an Englishman, and has always been reckoned as a prize of distinguished political services. Of Knights of the Garter who have fought by the side of or in front of Mr. Gladstone during the last sixty years, mentioning them in the order of their investment, are Earl Spencer, Earl Cowper, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Ripon, Lord Salisbury, the Duke of Argyll, Lord Kimberley, the Duke of Rutland, Lord Cadogan, the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Rosebery, Lord Lansdowne, and the Earl of Derby. Of this list Mr. Gladstone has of his personal initiative made Knights of six. The noblest Knight of all is not named upon the roll. Granting the existence of a strong and widely-spread popular feeling of satisfaction that Mr. Gladstone, springing from the ranks of the people, has, like the Shunanjite woman, been 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 147 content to dwell among them, I believe few events, would cause such a thrill of national satisfaction as the announce- ment that, under gentle pressure from Lord Salisbury, Mr. Gladstone had accepted the Garter. Who will write the Life of Mr. Gladstone when the time comes for the stupendous task to be undertaken ? Mr. John Morley's name is sometimes mentioned in ^he aiadstone connection with the work. It seems too big a Memoirs, thing to be approached single-handed. Fairly to grapple with the task would require the combined effort of a syndicate of skilled writers. The amount of material is even greater than may be surmised from outside contemplation of Mr. Gladstone's long and always busy life. He has preserved for more than sixty years all papers and correspondence that might properly serve the purposes of a memoir. They are stored in a fire-proof room at Hawarden — in what precise order was indicated by an incident that happened a few years ago. Reference was made in Mr. Gladstone's pres- ence to an episode in the life of Cardinal Newman. He remembered that his old friend had, half a century earlier, written him a letter bearing on the very point. He under- took to find it, and did so, apparently without any trouble. It was dated 1843. Talking about the writing of memoirs, Mr. Gladstone once emphatically expressed to me the opinion that the publication of a memoir, to be a full success, should promptly follow on the death of the subject. He did not cite it, but there is a well-known instance in support of his argument. For more than half a century the world had to wait for publication of the correspondence of Talleyrand. When at length it came out it fell as flat as if the letter-writer had been a grocer at Autun or a tailor in Paris. It is now certain that Disraeli's Life, if ever published, will have to run the risk of failure by reason of delay. Lord Rowton will certainlynever undertake accomplish- . , , . t . , Mr. Disraeli. ment of the task left to his discretion by his friend and leader. No one else has access to the papers — and there are boxes full of them — without whose assistance it 148 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 would be impossible to accomplish the work. This is rather hard on the present generation, who must needs forego the pleasure of reading what should be one of the most fascinat- ing books of the century. On the death of Mr. Villiers, the Times made haste to proclaim Mr. W. B. Beach, member for the Andover Division of Hants, successor to the honoured position of The Father of ' _, . the House of Father of the House of Commons. inat is a Commons, (conclusion of the matter not likely to be accepted with unanimous consent. The Father of the House is, by a rare combination of claims, Sir John Mowbray, member for Oxford Uni- versity. Returned for Durham in 1853, he has continuously sat in Parliament four years longer than Mr. Beach, who came in as member for North Hants in 1857. Sir John has sat in eleven Parliaments against Mr. Beach's ten. He has, in this com- parison, all to himself the honour of having been a Privy Councillor for forty years. He has held office under three Administrations, Lord Derby being his chief in 1858 and '66, Mr. Disraeli in 1868. For twenty-four years he has acted as Chairman of the Committee on Standing Orders and of the Committee of Selection. That is a record unique in the present Parliament, and it has been carried through with steady acquisition of personal popularity almost as rare. It is presumable that the judgment of the Times has gone against Sir John Mowbray on the ground that he has not during his long membership represented the same constituency. Entering the House as member for Durham, he, in 1868, transferred his services to Alma Mater, a safe SIR JOHN MOWBRAY. 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 149 and honourable seat he retains to this day. It is quite true that Mr. Villiers and his predecessor, Mr. Talbot, uninter- ruptedly held their several seats at the time they came into succession to the Fathership. But I am not aware of any definite ruling on that point. If there were such Mr. Beach would be disqualified, for, coming into the House in 1857 as member for North Hants, he now sits, and has sat since 1875, as member for the Andover Division of the county. Whilst nothing is said in the written or unwritten law about the Father of the House necessarily having sat uninterruptedly for the same constituency, it is p^^gg required that he shall have continuously sat in Possibles, the House from the date at which his claim commences. It was this rule that placed Mr. Gladstone out of court. First elected for Newark in 1832, he would have taken precedence of Mr. Villiers in the honourable rank but for the hiatus of some eighteen months in his Parliamentary career which followed on his leaving Newark on the way to Oxford University. This gave Mr. Villiers his chance, though the date of his entering the House is three years later than that of Mr. Gladstone. In the present House, Sir John Mowbray is the only relic of the Parliament of 1852 the course of Time has left to Westminster. Recent deaths and retirements removed several well-kqown members who otherwise would, on the death of Mr. Villiers, have come in competition for the Fathership. Of these are Sir Charles Forster, Sir Rainald Knightly, Sir Hussey Vivian, and Mr. Whitbread, who all sat in the Parliament of 1852. One thinks with kindly recognition of what a pathetic figure-head of a Father Sir Charles Forster would have made, wandering about corridors and lobbies in search of the hat he, through a long and honourable career, persistently mislaid. To the full success of a Ministry a variety of quality in its constituent parts contributes. The more varied the basis the brighter the prospect of prosperity. In Her Majesty's ISO LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 present Government not the least distinguished, or least "Our Arm popular, Cabinet Minister is said to be gifted swore terribly with an accomplishment that would have an ers. Qjj^^j^gj fg^ j^jjjj brevet rank with our Army in Flanders. To look at him seated on the Treasury Bench, to hear him addressing the House, above all to watch him repairing to his parish church on peaceful Sabbath mornings, no one would suspect this particular accomplishment. I have no personal acquaintance with it, but I have heard the fact stated by so many intimates of the right hon. gentle- man, that I fear there is some foundation for the assertion. It certainly receives confirmation from the recent experience of a member of the Ministerial rank-and-file. A short time ago there was some rufHe of discontent in the well-drilled ranks immediately behind the Treasury Bench. This esteemed member, an eminent solicitor, a severe church- goer, who is accustomed to fancy himself in debate, and to estimate at its proper value the position of a member representing a populous centre of industry, volunteered to bring the matter personally under the notice of the Cabinet. The particular member of that august body selected for the confidence was the right honourable gentleman whose name wild horses will not drag from me. It was agreed that, whilst the Minister should not be troubled with the attend- ance of a deputation, half-a-dozeri of the malcontents should accom- pany their spokesman to the door of his private room, remaining in "AFTER THE INTERVIEW." the corridor whilst the interview took place. The spokesman bravely marched into the room, pride in his port, his attitude being perhaps generously tempered by i898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 151 consideration of the pain he was about to give an esteemed Leader. His fellow-conspirators began to stroll up and down the lobby expectant of having to wait some time whilst the matter at issue was being discussed between their spokesman and the Minister. In a surprisingly short time their representative issued from the Minister's door with a scared look on his expressive visage. " Well ? " said the deputation, eagerly. " Well," replied the spokesman, with a pathetic break in his voice. " I don't think I've been very well treated by either side since I entered the House of Commons. But I was never before called a d — d canting attorney." In addition to Mr. Villiers', another familiar face vanished during the recess from House and Lobby is that of Osborne Morgan. Returned for Denbighshire at the osborne historic General Election of 1868, he had come Morgan, to rank amongst the oldest members. Only a year ago he sent me a list of members sitting in the present House of Commons who also had seats in the House that disestablished the Irish Church and brought in the first Irish Land Bill. I forget the precise number, but it was startlingly small. Like Sir Frank Lockwood, but for other reasons, Osborne Morgan did not fulfil expectation reasonably entertained of his Parliamentary success. Early in the fifties he went to the Bar, having gained a brilliant reputation and several scholarships at his University. Like Mr. Gladstone, he to the last, amid whatever pressure of modern daily life, preserved ever fresh his touch with the classics. Trained in law, fed from the fount of literature (ancient and modern), gifted with fluent speech that sometimes surged in flood of real eloquence, he was just the man who might be counted upon to captivate the House of Commons. The melancholy fact is, that when he rose he emptied it. His conspicuous failings as he stood at the table were lack of humour and a style of elocution fatally reminiscent of the uninspired curate in fine frenzy preaching. Yet, when he spoke from the platform he was a real force. Mr. 152 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 Gladstone, accustomed to his failures in the House of Commons, spoke in private with unqualified admiration of a speech he chanced to hear him deliver at a crowded political meeting in North Wales. This dual character Osborne Morgan shared in common with the counsellor of Kings, the sustainer of Sultans, who represents one of the divisions of Sheffield. The House of Commons insists on making Sir E. Ashmead-Bartlett a butt, and in regarding him as a bore. Inasmuch as his advocacy of any particular question has eiifect upon this uncompromisingly critical audience, it is hurtful rather than helpful to his client. Yet I have heard upon competent authority that on the platform, even faced by hard- headed Yorkshiremen, " Silomo " is a really eflfective speaker. The doctors gave an orthodox name to the sickness of which Osborne Morgan died. What really killed him was disappointment suffered when, in August 1892, Advocate- Mr. Gladstone formed his °*°*"'- last Administration. I do not know what he expected, but he was certainly mortally offended when offered his old post of Judge Advocate-General, even though it was considerately gilded with a baronetcy. He hotly declined the office, and when Mr. Gladstone, with patient benignity, pressed the baronetcy upon him, he would have none of it. It was only after the lapse of several days, when his ruffled plumage had been smoothed down by the friendly hands of two of his old colleagues, that he accepted the friendly offer. A warm - hearted, y^ kindly-natured, hot-headed Welshman, THE LATE SIR G. o. MORGAN, t^ose bcst Hked Osbome Morgan who knew him best. He combined in his person in fullest measure the attributes of a scholar and a gentleman. iUgS LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 153 Though, as is admitted, Osborne Morgan was not conspicuous for a sense of humour, he found grim enjoyment in recital of a true story. Travelling up to London one early spring day to resume his Parliamentary duties, he was conscious of a certain pride in a new portmanteau to which he had treated himself It was THE NEW PORTMANTEAU. fine and large, and carried in bold relief his initials — G. O. M. On arriving at Paddington, he found his prized possession had been subjected to an outrage comparable only with the Bulgarian atrocities which at the time Mr. Gladstone was denouncing with flaming eloquence. Some patriot Jingo, seeing the initials, and confusedly associating them with the Grand Old Man, had whipped out his knife and cut away from the unoffending portmanteau the hateful letters. CHAPTER XIII MAY Cliveden, once, as Pope genially put it, The bower of Wanton Shrewsbury and love, now the modest home of an American millionaire, has still another claim to fame. It was at Cliveden, a few months The Birth Jace ™°''^ ^^^^ thirty years ago, that Mr. Gladstone of the Irish finally decided, not only upon a campaign Church BUI. j^gj^jnst the Irish Church, but on the form in which action should be opened in the House of Commons. Under the auspices of the Duchess of Sutherland, then in residence at Cliveden, Mr. Gladstone was a frequent visitor. So also was the Duke of Argyll. Another guest, at that time closely connected with one of these statesmen, tells me that Mr. Gladstone and the Duke had long consultations on the question of the Irish Church. Mr. Gladstone had set himself the task of bring- ing the Duke round to his views on the subject. The Duke hesitated, and was lost. One morning, after renewed dis- cussion and explanation, he yielded. Strong in his powerful support, Mr. Gladstone went back to London, resolved to move for the Committee to consider his Resolutions for the Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland, the first blow given at its foundations. Counting his close connection with eleven Parliaments >S4 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT iSS of the Queen, Sir John Mowbray has the advantage of one who has known only seven. Relics of 1874. ... . . ' , A sight of a picture of one of these older Houses, or a glance down a division list of twenty or twenty - five years ago, shows with startling effect the mutability of the assembly. Without going so far back as the Session of 1873, when I com- menced regular attendance upon the debates, I have gone carefully through the roll-call of members elected to the Parliament of 1874, and compared it with the list of to-day. I find that of the crowd of members sworn in in 1874, only twenty-six have seats in the present Parliament. Of these the oldest is the Father of the present House, Sir John Mow- colonel SIR E. GOURLEY. bray. Next to him comes Mr. Beach, the Young Pretender in the claim to succes- sion to the throne of the Fathership. He was, by the way, elected in the same year that John Bright was returned to Par- liament by Birming- ham. There is a notable group of veterans from the Parliament of 1868, At their head towers MR. TALBOT. of which I saw the closing Session. iS6 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT Sir William Harcourt, with his present colleague on the Front Opposition Bench, Sir H. Campbell - Bannerman. Others of this year are Mr. A. H. Brown, the gallant ex - Cornet, who represents a division of Shropshire in the present Parlia- ment ; Mr. J. Round (Essex), Mr. Chaplin, Colonel Sir E. Gourley, Lord George Hamilton, Mr. Staveley Hill, and Mr. J. G. Talbot. Sir Michael Hicks- Beach, though he does not look it, is an older member than any of these, having taken his seat in 1 864. Sir William Hart Dyke, Sir Joseph Pease, and Mr. M. Biddulph date from 1865. Mr. Abel Smith (I am not quite sure whether he has yet made his maiden speech) came in in 1866. Sir John Kennaway goes back to 1870. Of the 1874 brand are Mr. Arthur Balfour, Mr. Burt, Sir Charles Cameron, Mr. T. F. Halsey, Mr. F. C. Morgan, Sir Charles Palmer, Mr. Ritchie, and Mr. C. H. Wilson, member for Hull in the present Parliament. SIR JOHN KENNAWAY. In respect of our Parliamentary usages, the Colonies are preferring a request which, though it may not lead to sub- A Colonial mersion of tea-chests in Sydney Harbour or arievance. other Australasian port,' may, in time, seriously engage the attention of Mr. Chamberlain. When members of the Imperial Parliament visit any of the self-governing Colonies it is the pretty fashion for the Premier to move that i898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 157 chairs be provided for them on the floor of the House at the right of the Speaker. When members of Colonial Parlia- ments, not to mention Colonial Premiers and Ministers of the Crown, visit the House of Commons, they have no privileges other than those shared in common with more or less distinguished strangers. If there is room they may have a seat in the Diplomatic Gallery ; or, on the same con- ditions, under the gallery, with the proviso that they shall be bundled out whenever a division is called. The con- gregation of Colonial Premiers who flocked to London in honour of the Jubilee brought this condition of affairs to a head. Mr. Hogan, M.P., whose birthplace was Nenagh, whose home is the world, with a special preference for Australia, has taken the matter in hand. He does not go the length of proposing that Colonial magnates shall have a seat on the floor of the House, but suggests that they may be admitted to the side-gallery on the right of the Speaker, at present reserved for members. This point of view is not nearly so good as that provided by the front row of the Diplomatic Gallery. But honourable distinctions are of more account than is personal convenience. The laxer rules of the House of Lords as affecting the outside public is illustrated when foreign potentates or high Ministers of State visit this country. Last year License in we had the King of Siam, who diligently went **" '''"■''*■ the round of both Houses. In the Commons he was treated as an ordinary distinguished stranger, a seat being provided for him in the gallery over the clock. When he went over to the House of Lords a chair was placed for him on the steps of the Throne, literally on the floor of the House. This contiguity with the Woolsack enabled His Majesty to observe with close and audibly -expressed delight the graceful performance of the Lord Chancellor as, popping on and off" the Woolsack, he formally placed the House in and out of Committee. No one present can ever forget the boyish delight with which the King, digging his chaperon. Lord Harris, in the ribs, pointed to the stately figure, which 158 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 he seemed to think had been specially wound up to go through this quaint per- ■'^ formance for his Royal pleasure. When, a year earlier, Li Hung Chang was a visitor to these shores, he suffered the same reverse of fortune. In the Com- mons he was seated with Westminster boys and other distinguished visitors in the Diplomatic Gallery. In the House of Lords he had a chair set for him almost under the shadow of the Throne. Per contra, this par- ticular part of the House of Commons, xhe cross in close proximity to the Bar, has its restrictions Benches, for members. The very best place in the Chamber from 'POPPING ON AND OFF THE WOOLSACK. THE CROSS BENCHES. which a member might address an audience is the Cross Bench on either side of the Bar. It comes more nearly i898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 159 than anything else available to the Tribune, from which in Continental Parliaments the orator faces the House. So attractive is the place that a member seated there, and feeling suddenly impelled to take part in debate or to put a supple- mentary question, sometimes rises and commences an observa- tion. It is promptly interrupted by a roar of execration, amid which the trembling member is projected or dragged forth, and made to stand before one of the side benches. The explanation of what to the stranger in the Gallery seems an unprovoked and unmanly assault is, that the Cross Benches are technically outside the House, whose area at this quarter is defined by an imaginary bar. When morning after morning through the Session I hear the Speaker, a few minutes after midnight, put the question " That this House do now adjourn," I think of „ . . ^ ' Daybreak on times that are no more, and wonder how Westminster members of the present House would like to "^ ^^' have them resuscitated. Twenty years ago, nay a dozen years ago, the hour at which members now expect to go home, querulous if they are kept up for an extra half-hour, was the epoch of the sitting at which business usually began to brisk up. Members flocking down for questions at half- past four never knew at what time of the next morning they would be free from their labours. For the cry, " Who goes home ? " to echo through the lobby at half-past one in the morning was a sign of uncommonly quiet times. Two or three o'clock was more usual, and history records how, at frequent intervals, there was what came to be called an " All- night sitting." Often leaving the House after a ten or twelve hours' sitting, I have stood on Westminster Bridge and seen what Wordsworth described as he drove over it on an early September morning in 1 803 : — This city now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning ; silent, bare. Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields and to the sky, AH bright and glittering in the smokeless air. i6o LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT The fields are built over, but there remained the truth which Wordsworth hymned, and his sister Dorothy described scarcely less charmingly in a prose letter, that earth has not anything to show more fair than the scene from Westminster DAYBREAK ON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. Bridge at the break of a summer day. Naturally it was the more soothing after the heat and turmoil of a long sitting in the adjoining House of Commons. When the Twelve o'clock Rule was introduced it was avowedly an experiment, timidly made in face of that The Twelve Stern Conservatism that animates the House o'clock Rule, ^f Commons in all that relates to procedure. Members were assured it would be easy to go back to the old order of things if after the experience of a Session return were found advisable. I suppose there is no power on earth that would to-day induce the House of Commons to revoke the Twelve o'clock Rule. From time to time, to suit Minis- terial convenience, it is suspended for a particular sitting. It is necessary that motion to that effect should be formally 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT i6i made at the commencement of the sitting. The motion carried, the House is at Hberty to peg away till two or three o'clock in the morning, or, if it pleases, till breakfast time. It turns out in a majority of cases that extension of time is not needed, debate being brought to a conclusion before midnight, just as if the Rule were still in force. When the limit is overstepped it is only by a few halting paces, members fuming with indignation if they are kept up as late as half- past twelve. The best part of the story is, that at least as much legislative work is now accomplished in the average Session as was scored during the barbaric times that preceded the establishment of the Twelve o'clock Rule. It is true that the House meeting now at three o'clock instead of four has an hour to the good. By comparison with the old order of things, the rising of the House under the new rule is equivalent to dispersal at one o'clock in the morning. But, taking a Session through, the aggregate duration of a sitting is not nearly what it used to be, whilst there is added the whole- some certainty of members knowing exactly the hour of breaking up. The Twelve o'clock Rule, like household suffrage and other beneficent revolutionary enactments, was carried under Conservative auspices. Had the proposal been ^-^^ made by a Liberal Minister, Mr. W. H. Smith Revolutionists, and his colleagues on the Treasury Bench who carried it would have died on the floor of the House in resisting it. It is one of the advantages of having a Tory Government occasionally in power, that its tenure of office frequently sees bold reforms accomplished. To Mr. Arthur Balfour, sub- servient to the same law of nature, the House is indebted for the scheme whereby Supply is regularly dealt with through a succession of Friday nights. This rule on its proposal was violently assailed by some Liberal critics as an infringement on freedom of debate, most jealously guarded in all that relates to Supply. It has come to pass that, under the new regulation. Supply is more fully, and more calmly, discussed than it was in the good old days. M l62 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 Incidentally, the close of the Session within reasonable time is automatically fixed. This is another rule aimed at obstruction — individual or organised — which, whilst it shortens the Session, does not practically narrow opportunity for accomplishing useful work. In spite of occasional sug- gestions to the contrary, the House of Commons is, after all, an assembly of business men. It is ready (sooner or later) to recognise the inevitable. Having a certain strict measure- ment of cloth dealt out to it, convinced that in no circum- stances will it get an inch more, it cuts its coat accordingly. If there be any difference in the output of the work of a Session under the new and the old orders of things, I should say that, with the shorter sittings and the automatically - closed Session, more work is done than under the looser arrangements that made obstruction master of the situation. The lamented death of Sir H. Havelock- Allan relieves the public purse from two dis- „ , ^ . Pensioners In tmct payments. Sir the House of Henry was in receipt '=<"""«'"*• of ;^700 a year retired pay as Major - General and Honorary Lieut. -General. In addition, he received a pension of ;^iooo a year for military services. In this respect he topped the list of members of the House of Com- mons drawing State pay. I think the nearest to him is General Fitzwygram, who draws retired pay to the amount of ;f 11 85 a year. General Edwards, Member for Hythe, is comforted in his retirement with a pension of ^770. General Goldsworthy draws only £466, but he commuted £2 $6 per annum of his retired pay, receiving a THE LATE SIR HENRY HAVELOCK- ALLAN. I89S LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 163 lump sum of;^i95i:i6:6. The odd shillings and pence recall the items in President Kruger's little bill. General Laurie draws ;^6io retired pay. General Russell and General McCalmont each have ;£^50o a year, the half-pay of a Major-General. Colonel Wyndham Murray, of Bath, draws ;^300 a year retired pay, with an additional ;^70 a year for arduous and gallant services as Gentleman- at-Arms. Sir John Colomb battens on the retired pay of a captain, amounting to ;^ 1 3 3 : 1 6 : 8. But he has, or had, to the good ;^IS95 : 153., amount paid for commutation of pensions. Mr. Arthur O'Connor preserves pleasant reminis- cences of duties at the War Office in the shape of retired pay amount- ingto;^i72 : los. He commuted his pension for a lump sum of .£^2420 : 18 : 6. The Marquis of Lome draws £1100 a year as Governor and Con- stable of Windsor Castle. Serjeant Hemphill, some time Solicitor - General for Ireland, has a pension of 1000 guineas a year in commemora- tion of his Chairmanship of County Kerry. From the same distressful country, Mr. W. J. Corbett draws a pension of ;^292 : I OS., he having for a while been Chief Clerk of the Lunatic Department. Mr. Doogan, the member for East Tyrone, modestly assimilates ;^i 1 1 : 5 : 4, the pension of a National School Teacher. Sir Thomas Fardell has his new knighthood supported by a pension of ;^666 : 13 : 4, the pension of a Registrar in Bankruptcy. 666 is, of course, the Number of the Beast ; the 1 3s. 4d. more directly pertains to the lawyer. Colonel Kenyon Slaney has ;^420 a year retired pay, and Mr. Staveley Hill receives, in addition to fees, ^100 SERJEANT HEMPHILL. 164 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 The Minnows. as Counsel to the Admiralty and Judge Advocate of the Fleet. These are the whales among the pensioners in the House of Commons. There are some small fry who receive trifling recogni- tion of military ardour devoted to the service of their country. Lord Cran- borne, for example, draws ;£^2 2 : 19s. annual pay as Colonel of the 4th Battalion of the Bedfordshire Regiment. He further has an allowance of ;^ 1 7 : 11 : 6. Mr. Hermon Hodge sustains his distinctively military appearance on £6 : 1 1 : 3, supplemented by an allow- ance of £2 : I : 7 as Captain and Honorary Major of the Oxford Yeomanry. Sir Elliot Lees, 9^ Bart., draws a Captain's pay in the Dorset Yeo- manry. Together with allowance it foots up to ;^8 : 1 1 : 3 per annum. Mr. Legh, Captain and Hon. Major of the Lancashire Hussars Yeomanry, draws an aggregate of is. lod. a year more. Mr. Walter Long supple- ments his salary as President of the Board of Agriculture by pay and allowance amounting to ;£^io : 3 : 6, the guerdon of his colonelcy of the Royal Wilts Yeomanry. Mr. George Wyndham, Captain of the Cheshire Yeomanry, is put off with a paltry ;^S : 1 3 : 4 in annual pay and allow- ance. In worst plight of all is Lord Dudley's brother, Mr. MR. HERMON HODGE. MR. SWIFT MACNEILL : "HAVE YOU SEEN MR. WARD?" I89S LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT i6s Ward, who represents the Crewe division of Cheshire. As Second Lieutenant of the Worcester Yeomanry he receives in pay and allowance £4. : 1 9s. a year. The House of Commons will begin to understand why the gallant member has gone to the Cape, exciting the con- cern of Mr. Swift MacNeill at his prolonged abstention from Parliamentary duties. A man can't get on in London on £^ a year minus one shilling. The present Earl of Derby is one of the few members of An Unknown the House of Lords Poet. vvho can bring to discussion of affairs in Crete personal knowledge of the island. Just twenty years ago, when he was Secretary of State for War, he made a semi-official tour in Eastern waters, accompanied by that gallant seaman Mr. W. H. Smith, at the time First Lord of the Admiralty. The event was celebrated in the following verse, the manuscript of which, in an unrecognised hand, I turned up the other day among some papers relating to the epoch : — ■ The head of the Army and chief of the Fleet Went out on a visit to Cyprus and Crete. The natives received them with joyful hurrahs, Called one of them Neptune, the other one Mars. They ran up an altar to Stanley forthwith. And ran up a bookstall to W. H. Smith. To the sensitive ear the rhyme of the last couplet is not everything that might be desired. But the intention is good. ' ' THE HEAD OF THE ARMY AND CHIEF OF THE FLEET." MARS : COL. THE HON. A. F. STANLEY. NEPTUNE : THE LATE W. H. SMITH. CHAPTER XIV JUNE During Mr. Gladstone's stay at Bournemouth in the early days of March conversation turned upon the prog- . , „ „ nostications about the next Unionist Premier. Lord Sails- . ^^ bury's Asked whon^ he thought would succeed Lord f" S""^*"'- Salisbury, Mr. Gladstone replied in that deep chest note he uses when strongly moved : " The Duke of Devonshire.'' In reviewing probable candidates for the post, the authority whose opinion I was privileged to quote did not glance beyond the House of Commons. I fancy that, fascinated by consideration of possible rivalry in the running between Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour, he " forgot Devonshire," as Lord Randolph Churchill on an historic occasion " forgot Goschen." Mr. Gladstone, who forgot nothing, seems to have hit the right nail on the head. The succession of the Duke of Devonshire to the post of the Marquis of Salisbury — men of all parties and politics will hope the occasion may be far distant — would, save from one aspect presently noted, be as popular as it would be meet. The Duke's promotion, on whatever plane or to whatever height it may reach, would never evoke the opposition instinctively ranged against the advance of a pushful man. Every one knows that, if the Duke followed his natural impulse and gratified his heart's desire, he would stand aside altogether from the worry and responsibility of public life. i66 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 167 As it is, he compromises by strolling in late to meet its successive engagements. It was under personal persuasion of Mr. John Bright that he first essayed public life. In deference to party loyalty and a sense of public duty he, on the retirement of Mr. Gladstone in 1874, undertook the thankless task of leading the disorganised and disheartened Liberal Party. Having twelve years later, for conscience' sake, withdrawn from the Leadership of Mr. Gladstone, he again caught a glimpse of the land where it is always afternoon. Mr. Chamberlain at this crisis braced him up to meet the new call of duty. In a long and not un- varied political career no one has ever hinted at suspicion that the Duke of Devonshire was in- fluenced in any step by self-seeking motive. He may have been right, he may have been wrong. He always did the thing he believed to be right, irrespective of personal prejudice or desire. Neither on the public platform nor in either House of Parliament has he met with the success that marks the effort of some others. But it would be impossible to exaggerate the width and the depth of the esteem with which this shy bored man, who would chiefly like to be let alone, is held in the hearts of the people. A Ministry STROLLING IN LATE." "BRACING HIM UP." 1 68 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 formed under his Premiership would start with an enormous and sustaining access of popular confidence. Apart from that, the arrangement would recommend itself by shelving off that otherwise inevitable conflict for final pre-eminence between Mr. Balfour and Mr. Chamberlain the prophetic soul of my Mentor discovered, and disclosed in his conversation recorded in an earlier chapter. Whatever lllli IN III" niiiiiiinipi,|| A "BALLON D ESSAI. may be the views of those statesmen with respect to playing second fiddle one to the other, there would be no possible objection to either serving under the Duke of Devonshire as Premier. The quarter from which opposition to the Duke of Devonshire's advancement to the Premiership will come is A Tory the Tory wing of the Unionist camp. Just before Protest. Easter, a story with circumstance was circulated, indicating the immediate retirement of Lord Salisbury from the Premiership and the succession of the Duke of Devon- iSgS LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 169 shire. That was certainly not a ballon d'essai from Downing Street. It equally well served the purpose. It drew forth unmistakable testimony that proposal of such arrangement would occasion unpleasant protest. Objection was not taken on the ground of personal disqualification on the part of the Duke. What was bluntly said in private conversation was that, in the division of the spoils of office, the Liberal Unionists had secured something more than their full share. To confer the Leadership upon a member of their body, however distinguished and, on personal grounds, however acceptable, was too great a sacrifice to be claimed for the altar of Unionism. This demonstration will, doubtless, have due influence in directing the final arrange- ment whenever circumstances call for its settlement.^ Mr. Goschen has, I believe, made considerable progress with a labour of love, his solace in the comparative leisure of the recess. It is preparation of the life and ^^_ ooschen's correspondence of his grandfather, a publisher in uterarywork. Berlin a century ago. He lived through the time of the First Empire, his literary connections bringing him in contact with some of the principal men of the age. These letters he preserved, together with copies of his own correspondence. Nobody wishes the First Lord of the Admiralty that prolonged leisure which would result from dismissal of Her Majesty's Ministers from office. Still, it would be a loss to the country, equal to the non-completion of a new ironclad, if he failed to find time to finish his book. I never read the First Lord's Theory of the Foreign Exchange, and am not in a position to judge of his literary style. But he is a man of keen literary taste, who certainly has to his hand the materials for a memorable book. One of the fables about Mr. Balfour that endear him to the public mind is that which pictures him as never reading ' When in 1902 Lord Salisbury retired, the legacy of his Ministerial vesture was parted in twain. The Duke of Devonshire succeeded him in the Leadership of the l.ords, Mr. Balfour in the Premiership. I/O LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT a newspaper. It is only partially true, and like most true A Precedent »or things, it is not new. The peculiarity finds Mr. Balfour, parallel in so distinct a personage as Edmund Burke. In the interesting and curious autobiography, of Arthur Young, edited by M. Betham - Edwards, there is note of an interview with Burke. Under date May i, 1796, Arthur Young describes how he visited the great statesman, who " after breakfast took me a sauntering walk of five hours over his farm and to a cottage where a scrap of land had been stolen from the waste." Speaking on public affairs, Young records, " Burke said he never looked at a newspaper. ' But if anything happens to occur which they think will please me, I am told of it.' " Young observed that there was strength of mind in this resolution. " Oh no," Burke replied, " it is mere weakness of mind." With Mr. Arthur Balfour the motive is probably philo- sophical indifference. Another proof supplied by this book of the truth of the axiom about nothing being new under the sun is personal to Mr. Jesse CollingS. Three Acres That eminent states- ""^ « cow. man first came into prominent notice as a politician by his adop- tion of the battle-cry, " Three Acres and a Cow." A forebear of the present Lord Winchilsea, whose interest in agriculture is hereditary, was first in this par- ticular field. Writing in June 18 17, Mr Young notes : " Lord Winchilsea called here and chatted with me upon cottagers' land for cows, which he is well persuaded, and most justly, is the only remedy for the evil of poor rates." That is not exactly the way Mr. It comes to the same thing in the end. ' AH, YES, I USED TO SING IT, BUT THAT WAS YEARS AGO." Jesse CollingS put it. 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 171 The innate Conservatism of the House of Commons is picturesquely shown in the retention of the thin line of red that marks the matting on either side of the floor, ..^^^ j^in a short pace in front of the rows of benches on ««<> Line." either side. Up to the present day it is a breach of order for any members addressing the Speaker or Chairman of Committees to stand outside this mark. If by chance one strays he is startled by angry shout of " Order ! Order ! " Probably few members who thus vindicate order know the origin of this particular institution. The red line is a ' THE RED LINE. relic of duelling days. It then being the custom for every English gentleman to wear a sword, he took the weapon down with him to the House, with as easy assurance as to- day he may carry his toothpick. In the heat of debate it was the most natural thing in the world to draw a sword and drive home an argument by pinking in the ribs the con- troversialist on the other side. The House, in its wisdom, therefore ordered that no member taking part in debate should cross a line to be drawn on the floor. This was judiciously spaced so that members standing within the line were far beyond reach of each other's sword-point. 172 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 In spite of this grandmotherly precaution, duels arising out of quarrels picked in the House, and forthwith settled in its immediate precincts, became so frequent that Swords. ., ,^ , ,ri_-jj- a fresh order was promulgated lorbiddmg members to carry arms during attendance on their Parliamentary duties. The only armed man in attendance on debate is the Serjeant-at-Arms, who carries a pretty sword. Once a year exception is further made in the case of the mover and seconder of the Address, who may wear the sword pertaining to their naval or military uniform. The way it persistently gets between their legs as they walk up the floor, or try to sit down, consoles less dis- tinguished members for general abrogation of the privilege. One other nice distinction in the matter of steel imple- ments exists to the disadvantage (or advantage according as the case is regarded) of the borough member. A Knight of the Shire may, if he thinks fit, enter the House of Commons and take part in debate with spurs on. This luxury is forbidden to the borough member. Sir Herbert Maxwell tells me he once saw a borough member who had ridden down to the House innocently attempt to enter the Chamber with armed heel. He was immediately stopped — whether by the doorkeeper or the lynx-eyed Serjeant-at-Arms, watchful in his chair, deponent sayeth not — and compelled to remove his spurs. A new-fangled notion the House of Commons cannot away with is that of type-writing. It is true that in recent Type-written years accommodation has been made for private Petitions, members to use type-writing machines. That is a private affair, strictly guarded to the extent that members availing themselves of the machines must pay the type-writer. It is quite another thing when, as sometimes happens, people, ignorant of some of the more delicate of the founda- tions on which the safety and prosperity of the Empire rest, forward type-written petitions to the House. More than a century ago it was ordered that all petitions presented to the honourable House should be written in legible, clerkly hand. 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 173 Neither lithograph nor printed type was permitted. Editors of newspapers and magazines, publishers, press readers, and the like, welcome the sight of type-written manuscript in matter submitted to their judgment. The House of Commons is above petty considerations of the kind that influence this opinion. When it was established, there was no such device as lithography, type-writing, or, for the matter of that, a printing-press. Petitions were then written by hand, and they must be so written now. The Committee on Petitions, accordingly, make a point of returning every petition other than those written by hand, and in this decision it has the support of the Speaker, to whom the question has been solemnly submitted. Our Cap'en Tommy Bowles is not the first of his clan in the House of Commons. There was one there more than AMid-century fifty years ago, though Bowles, M.p. (happy augury) he ranked as admiral. In The Mirror of Par- liament oi the Session 1845 I find the following entry : " Admiral Bowles alluded to the Duke of Portland having built the Pantaloon to improve naval architecture. But the Navy could not boast of a pair of panta- loons. (A laiugh.) He (Admiral Bowles) had himself commanded the armament in the Shannon, which had distinguished itself in the collection of the Irish poor rates." This last remark further shows how apt is history to repeat itself. There is no recent case of the British Navy in Irish waters being commis- sioned for the collection of rents or rates ; but during Coercion days, between 1886 and 1890, detachments of the British Army were not infrequently invoked for assistance in the collection of rents. cap'en tommy BOWLES, OF THE HORSE MARINES. 174 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 At the time of the Queen's Jubilee there was published a list of people who, living at that happy time, had been present at the coronation of the Queen. One omission from the printed list was the name of the Marquis of Salisbury, at the time a small boy of seven summers, absolutely indifferent to the bearings of the Concert of Europe. In the matter of experience at coronations, Sir John Mowbray stands alone. He saw the Queen's Coronation Procession as it passed along the street. He was actually present at the Coronation of William IV. The Westminster boys had the privilege of being seated in Westminster Abbey just above the benches allotted to the Peers. Sir John, then at Westminster School, availed himself of the opportunity, and to this day declares that he and his school chums had a much better view of the scene than had the Peers. Sir John, older by fifteen years than the Prime Minister, was at Oxford when the Queen came to the throne. On the occasion of Her Majesty's marriage, the University drew up a loyal address and sent a deputation of their members to present it. Young Mowbray (young at this day) was one of those entrusted with this pleasant and honourable duty. His keenest and still abiding recollection of the scene is the Duke of Wellington standing in close attendance on the girl Queen. 'YOUNG MOWBRAY. In the rough-and-tumble of electioneering contest, Sir E. Ashmead-Bartlett is more successful than he proves in the The Bald finer fence of the House of Commons. But he Truth. sometimes meets his match in Yorkshire. At one of the gatherings in an electoral campaign, he was frequently interrupted by a man in the body of the hall, who resented his uncompromising attacks upon political opponents. 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 17s The Knight bore this trial with admirable good-humour, till, seeing an opening for scoring a point, he said — " Now I am going to tell you something about the late Liberal Govern- ment that will make my friend's hair stand on end," in- dicating, with smil- ing nod, the vigorous critic in the body of the hall. "Wrong again!" shouted the irrepres- sible one, removing his cap and display- ing a head smooth as a billiard - ball. " It can't be done." „, ,, , " WRONG AGAIN ! " The other day a member of Her Majesty's Government, one of the oldest living statesmen, whose acquaintance with public puwic meetings is equal to that of any of his contem- Audiences, poraries left in the House of Commons, was talking to me about the varying quality of public audiences. As any one accustomed to speak from the platform knows, audiences differ widely and inscrutably. " Broadly speaking," said the right hon. gentleman, " the farther north the political orator travels the better — I mean the more inspiriting — will he find his audience. Going into particulars, I should say that London, for this purpose, is the worst of all. The best audiences are Scotch, and I have found in my personal experience the pick of them at Glasgow. Newcastle-on-Tyne is excellent ; Liverpool is second-rate ; Birmingham, so-so." It would be interesting to have these experiences com- 176 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 pared. Doubtless a speaker's judgment would be biassed by the practical result of his visit to particular towns. If, for example, he were elected at the head of the poll in Glasgow, and left at the bottom in London, he could hardly be expected to retain through life fond recollections of the com- munity that had dissembled its love. The Minister to whom I allude ^ never contested Glasgow, and for many years was returned at the head of the poll for a great London constitu- ency. His testimony may therefore be regarded as unbiassed by personal predilection. The Terrace of Westminster Palace flanking the river is so intimately connected with the House of Commons, that it ex- clusively The House of bears its commons' Terrace. name. " The House of Com- mons' Terrace," it is called, as it looms large through the London season. But members of the House of Lords have an equal share in its privileges. They might,if they pleased, on fine summer after- noons bring down bevies of fair dames and regale them with tea, strawberries, and cream. By way of asserting their rights, the Peers some time ago caused to be set forth on the Terrace a few belated benches specially assigned to and reserved for their use. They are deposited at the farther, bleaker end of the Terrace, whence the afternoon sun earliest flees. On very rare occasions a peer may be seen haughtily seated in solitary state on one of these benches. Somehow the thing does not 1 Mr. Goschen. 'IN SOLITARY STATE. iSgS LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 177 work, and noble Lords strolling on the Terrace are humbly grateful if invited to sit at the table of a friend among the Commoners. I suppose that, next to the Queen and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Speaker of the House of Commons is the recipient of the oddest correspondence in the ji,^ speaker's world. The late Lord Hampden, presiding over Letter-box. the House of Commons at a time of extreme excitement consequent on the opening of the campaign of Irish obstruc- tion, was especially enriched. Amongst his oddest experi- ences was the receipt by railway parcel of a box whose way-bill showed that it came from Ireland. Mr. Brand found it awaiting him on returning to Speaker's House after an uninterrupted sitting in the Commons of some forty-eight hours. He was piqued at the appearance of the box, and before seeking much-needed rest had it opened — discreetly, as became such undertakings in those troublesome times. The uplifted lid disclosed a pair of torn and toil-worn trousers, the odour filling the room with pained sense of the absence of primroses. On the garment was pinned a piece of paper on which was written the text, " God's will be done ! " Its application to the trousers and their despatch, carriage paid, to the Speaker of the House of Commons was and remains obscure. The incident was long anterior to the date at which Mr. William O'Brien's garments figured largely in the political history of the day. It serves to show how intimately, if in this case obscurely, Irish politics are, so to speak, wrapped up in trousers. The member for a northern constituency tells me of a melancholy accident that recently befell him. He happens to represent a borough in which party spirit runs Misdirected high, and finds outlet in physical demonstrations. z^ai. On the occasion of his annual visit news reached his com- mittee that the other side were planning, if not to pack the hall, at least to insert some formidable wedges of hostility. N 178 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 It was agreed that these tactics must be met on their own lines. The member accordingly recruited in London a score of stout fellows who had served lusty apprenticeship as chuckers-out at music-halls, public-houses, and other popular resorts. They were disci-eetly conveyed in groups of two or three to the borough, lodged out with instructions to gather in the body of the hall within touch of each other, and unite their forces in the event of a hostile demonstration. The member got through his speech pretty well, attempts at criticism or interruption being drowned in the applause of his supporters. When he resumed his seat a meek-looking gentleman rose in the middle of the hall and said, " Mr. Chairman ! " He was greeted with cheers and counter- cheers, through the roar of which he feebly tried to continue his remarks. The lambs, disappointed at the tameness of the business, began to warm up in prospect of work. As the mild-looking gentleman persisted in endeavour to speak, they, at a given signal from their captain, swooped down upon him, lifted him shoulder high, and made a rush for the door with intent to fling him out. The townsmen in the body of the hall rallied to the rescue. A fight of fearsome ferocity followed. In the end the police were called in, and the hall cleared. " This will be a nasty business for us at the next elec- tion," gloomily said the chairman of the meeting to the member, as they made their way out from the back of the platform. "That was Mr. K , one of your most in- fluential supporters. He had risen to propose a vote of thanks to you when he was set upon in that infamous manner. It's not only him that was attacked. I saw scores of our best men going out with bleeding noses and blackened eyes. It'll tell some hundreds of votes against you at the next election." It is a peculiarity of Parliamentary debate that when- ever a certain journal is alluded to it is always styled " The Times newspaper." Any other paper mentioned is alluded to simply by its name. In private conversation or in 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 179 correspondence, the very same members who mouth a refer- ence to " The Times newspaper " would, as a parliamentary matter of course, speak of " The Times'.' It is Fatuities, one of those little things which show how much there is among mankind, even in the House of Commons, of the character of a sheep. In a field you shall see one of a flock jumping over an imaginary obstacle, the rest following, doing exactly the same, though there is plainly nothing in the way. In the dim past some pompous person, stretching out his verbi- age, talked of " The Times newspaper." Others fol- lowed suit. To-day the custom is as firmly rooted as are the foundations of Victoria Tower. A kindred fatuity of Parliamentary speech is to talk of an hon. member " rising in his place," as if it were usual for him to rise in somebody else's, and, therefore, necessary for a variation in the habit to be noted. Funnier is the fashion amongst Ministers, especially Under-Secretaries, to talk about " laying a paper." What they mean is laying a paper on the table of the House. Tradition has grown up in the Foreign Office and elsewhere that a Parliamentary paper, whether Report, Despatch, or Blue Book, should be regarded as if it were an egg. The Minister accordingly always talks tout court, either of " laying it " or " having laid it " or of under- taking to " lay it in a very few days," the latter an assurance of prevision far beyond the scope of the average hen-coop. ' LAYING. A member of the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, i8o LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 who long ago took his last " turn " and handed in his final Shakespeare copy, Hves tenderly in my memory by reason of up to Date, a passage in his report of a speech delivered in the country by a great statesman. It ran as follows : " The right hon. gentleman concluded by expressing the opinion that the quality of mercy is not unduly strained. It dropped, he said, as the gentle rain from heaven descends upon the place beneath. In fact, he did not hesitate to assert that it was twice blessed, conferring blessing alike upon the donor and the recipient. (Loud cheers, amid which the right hon. gentleman resumed his seat.) " It was another of the confraternity, a painstaking, con- scientious colleague of my own, who, reporting a speech, happed upon the flawless couplet — Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust. Whether he did not catch the last word, or, having it on his notes, thought it would be kind to save the speaker from the consequences of a slip of the tongue — for how could a flower blossom in the dust ? — he wrote the lines thus — Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom like a rose. CHAPTER XV JULY When the history of the influence of the Home Rule move- ment on the fortunes of the Liberal Party is written the The Rent In world wiU the Liberal leam hoW, Temple: ' behind at a parti- theveii. j,yiar junc- ture, the riven party came near closing up its ranks. Meanwhile I am able to supply from private sources an authentic narrative of a political event which in national im- portance, in influence on the career of individuals, and in dramatic effect, finds its nearest parallel in Sir Robert Peel's conversion to Free Trade and what fol- lowed thereupon. In the middle of December 1885, what was subse- quently recognised as a ballon dessai was sent up by a Leeds 181 THE WHIGS TAKE FRIGHT. l82 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 newspaper announcing that Mr. Gladstone had determined to celebrate the Liberal triumph at the General Election by bringing in a measure conferring Home Rule upon Ireland. Attention being called to the report, it was circumspectly denied. But the Whig section of the Liberal Party, of whom Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen were representatives, took fright. Lord Hartington found an opportunity of publicly announcing that " no proposals on the policy to be adopted by the Liberal Party in reference to the demand of a large number of Irish representatives for the legislative inde- pendence of Ireland " had been communicated to him. As the weeks slipped by doubt deepened into certainty. The Whig wing of the Liberal Party drew farther apart from Mr. Gladstone. The situation was accentuated when, on the 26th of January 1886, Lord Salisbury, who, in spite of heavy defeat at the poll, met the new Parliament as Premier, was with his Government over- thrown. It was Mr. Jesse Collings who led the attack on the Ministers, his battle-flag proud- ly emblazoned with the famous design of three acres and a cow. Behind him stood Mr. Chamberlain. Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen spoke against the amendment, and were accompanied into the Minis- terial division lobby by Sir Henry James. When, a week later, Mr. Gladstone formed his Administration, Lord Hart- ME. JESSE COLLINGS LEADS THE ATTACK. 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 183 ington and Sir Henry James declined to join it, the latter sacrificing for conscience' sake the prize of the Woolsack. Mr. Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan, accepting what they understood as assurances that the now inevitable Home Rule Bill would not imperil the unity of the Empire, joined Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet, one as President of the Local Government Board, the other as Secretary for Scotland. On the 27th of March these two Ministers resigned. In Cabinet Council they had learned the full truth about the Home Rule Bill. When it was first drafted it contained a clause establishing the supremacy of the Imperial Parlia- ment, and retaining at Westminster the collaboration of the Irish members. In a slightly modified form this clause appeared in the second draft of the Bill. In the third and final form Mr. Gladstone, yielding to the imperative con- ditions of Mr. Parnell, master of eighty-six votes, eliminated the clause. Whereupon Mr. Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan withdrew from the Cabinet. This brief risumi of events is necessary for the full under- standing of the narrative that follows. The yy,,,,ga„j public have during the past ten years grown so Radical accustomed to finding Mr. Chamberlain and the peer who was Lord Hartington working together in the unity of Liberal Unionism, that they are apt to suppose the same conditions existed from the first. As a matter of fact, in February 1886, Mr. Chamberlain was as widely dissevered from Lord Hartington as a month later he came to be parted from Mr. Gladstone. The Radical Anti-Home Rulers, following his lead, were bitterly resentful of the Whig Anti-Home Rulers, captained by Lord Hartington, a feeling accentuated by the vote given by them on Mr. Jesse Collings's amendment to the Address, which made an end of Lord Salisbury's foredoomed Administration. This was Mr. Gladstone's opportunity, used in the fitful negotiations that almost recaptured the Radicals. Lord Hartington and his friends in council did not want Home Rule on any terms. Mr. Chamberlain and his more than 1 84 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 half-hundred Radical followers were quite willing to give Ireland Home Rule if the control of the Imperial Parliament were jealously conserved. This state of things existed up to Monday, the loth of May 1886, on which day Mr. Gladstone rose to move the A Flag second reading of his Bill. The position of the of Truce. Government was critical. There were ninety- three Liberals who had declared against the Bill. If they carried their objection as far as the division lobby it would be thrown out, and Mr. Gladstone and his Gov- ernment must go with it. Many discerned the dire peril of the Liberal Party. One perceived a way of averting it. This was Mr. Labouchere, who, whilst an uncompromising Home Ruler, at the time enjoyed the confidence of Mr. Chamberlain. He ap- pointed to himself the task of reuniting the Radical section of the Liberal Unionists with what later came to be known as the Gladstonians. The fissure had opened on the question of the retention of Irish members at Westminster. If Mr. Gladstone gave way on that point all might be well. In conference with his colleagues the Premier finally agreed to the adoption of provisions whereby the Irish members should sit and vote on questions of Imperial range, including matters of finance. On Saturday, the 8th of May, ,Mr. Labouchere, having obtained this assurance in Downing Street, sought an interview with Mr., Chamberlain, who after some hesitation consented to accept this understanding as a LABOUCHERE AS THE MESSENGER OF THE GODS. 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 18s A Hitch. basis of reconciliation. The agreement was put in writing, Mr. Chamberlain dictating the terms, Mr. Labouchere acting as scribe — an arrangement which recalls the circumstances under which what is known in history as the Benedetti Treaty was committed to paper. Mr. Labouchere, having carried this flag of truce to Downing Street, went off to the country for a Sunday's rest, which he felt he had well earned. Coming back to town on the memorable Monday, the morn of the day on which the second reading of the Home Rule Bill was to be moved in terms and upon conditions that would bring back to the fold the strayed sheep, Mr. Labouchere discovered that his patriotic labour was undone. A note from Mr. Chamberlain awaited him, bitterly complaining that Mr. Gladstone was backing out, an assurance based on what purported to be an authorised paragraph in one of the London papers, in which Mr. Glad- stone was represented as protesting that he had yielded on no point connected with his Bill. Mr. Labouchere made haste to communicate with the Liberal Whip, and learned what had happened whilst he was spending a peaceful Sabbath day on the banks of the Thames. It had been brought to Mr. Gladstone's knowledge that Mr. Cham- berlain, after his interview with Mr. Labouchere on the Saturday, sent round to his friends a telegram announc- ing " absolute surrender " on the part of the Premier. Captain O'Shea received one of these messages. He showed it to Parnell, who sent it on to Mr. Gladstone. , , CAPTAIN O SHEA. At this epoch the great j,„,„, sketch „.adc at t>uPamcn commission. statesman had been con- vinced of the impossibility of carrying, against the defection of a powerful section of his followers, the Home Rule Bill in its original form. He was ready to compromise. But those 1 86 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 familiar with his constitutional tendencies will understand how desperately he struggled against any appearance of being overcome in fight, more especially by a former lieutenant, and that lieutenant Mr. Chamberlain. When the emissary of a newspaper brought him news of the currency of the Cham- berlain telegram, and asked if it were true, the temptation to Mr. Gladstone to convince himself that he had yielded nothing would be irresistible. Hence the counter paragraph. When this bolt from the blue swiftlydescended,threatening to destroy the edifice of peace carefully built up, the amateur More architect turned to Mr. Gladstone. He found Negotiations. , the Premier was staying with a friend at Sheen. Thither was despatched a messenger on a swift horse with an account of the new dilemma and request for instructions. Mr. Gladstone replied, it was quite true he had agreed to two alterations in his Bill — allowing Irish members to vote (i) on Imperial matters; (2) on finance of an Imperial character. The first amendment he undertook to draw up himself. The second he said he did not fully comprehend. If Mr. Chamberlain would formulate his demand in the shape of a clause, he did not doubt that he would be able to accept it. Mr. Labouchere brought this proposal to Mr. Chamberlain, who plainly denounced it as an effort to shirk the question, reading into Mr. Gladstone's letter a determina- tion not to adopt the second amendment. Mr. Labouchere, industrious, indomitable, did not despair. All was not lost as long as the Bill awaited the second Disappoint, reading. If Mr. Gladstone would only announce ment. intention of dropping the Bill after its broad principle had been approved by a vote on the second reading, it might be brought up again next Session, with reconstruction of the 24th and 39th Clauses meeting the objection of Mr. Chamberlain and his friends. On such understanding the fifty-five Radicals who followed Mr. Chamberlain would vote for the second reading, crisis would be averted, the Ministry would be saved, the Session might be appropriated for other business, and the work approached on safer grounds in 1887. 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 187 On the eve of the motion for the second reading, Mr. Labouchere believed he had Mr. Gladstone's definite and distinct assurance that he would take this course. It is difficult to believe that so shrewd a man, one so well versed in affairs, can have been deceived on this important point. What happened in the interval between Mr. Labouchere's last message from the Premier and the delivery of the speech in the House of Commons ? Perhaps if Mr. Parnell were alive and in communicative mood, he might tell. However it be, when the Premier rose to move the second reading of the Home Rule Bill the Radicals below the Gangway sat straining their ears for the promised words of concession and conciliation. They were not spoken, and when Mr. Gladstone resumed his seat it was felt that all was over. It is easy to be wise after the event, and every one, not excepting Mr. Gladstone, had early occasion to perceive how fatal and irrevocable was the error com- mitted on this memorable day. Had the Premier followed the lines laid down for him, understood to have been accepted by him, the history of England during the last twelve years would have greatly varied in the writing. The member deputed by Mr. Chamberlain to follow Mr. Gladstone, and accept the flag of truce he was expected to hold out, was Sir Lewis Mclver, then Radical member for Torquay, a member who, in a quiet, effective way, had much to do with the Radical revolt against the Bill. Mr. Labouchere, through the Whip, sent Mr. Gladstone a message on the Treasury Bench to inform him that the ambiguity of his phrase had wrought final and fatal mischief. Mr. Gladstone privily replied that he had meant it to be clearly under- stood that the Irish members were to sit at s,r lewis mciver. Westminster. Somehow or other the accus- tomed master of plain English had failed to make himself understood. Prepared to yield, he wanted things to look as 1 88 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 little as possible like surrender, and so the opportunity of building the golden bridge sped. Mr. Gladstone suggested that Lord Herschell should have an interview with Mr. Chamberlain, when all would be explained. Mr. Chamber- lain hotly replied that he would have no more negotiation, but would vote against the Bill. At a meeting of the Liberal Party, held at the Foreign Office on the 27th of May, the second reading debate being The Foreign Still in progress, Mr. Gladstone said what he OHiee Meeting, surprisingly omitted to say on moving the second reading. He asserted in the most emphatic manner the supremacy of the Imperial Legislature, and promised to frame a plan that would entitle Irish members to sit and vote at Westminster when Imperial questions arose, or when any proposal for taxation affecting the condition of Ireland was submitted. He even offered to withdraw the Bill before going to a second reading. These were the points of his concession. Wrapped up in a speech an hour long, they still had about them a disquieting air of mistiness. Desiring to put the matter in a nutshell, Mr. Whit- bread, at the conclusion of the speech, rose and said, " Then we ^L-e^ understand that the Irish will sit MR. wHiTBREAD. at Westminster ? " "Mr. Gladstone positively glared upon his interrogator " (I quote from the private notes of a member who was present). '"I do not,' he said, ' under- stand the technicalities of drafting, so I will read again what I am prepared to do.' Then he re-read the passage laboriously turned so that it might appear that, whilst conceding the demands of Chamberlain and his party, he was really doing nothing more than what he had con- templated from the first, the alterations in the Bill being quite immaterial. In short, having been right in proposing 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 189 Too Late I that Irish members should not sit at Westminster, he was equally right in now promising that they should." Four days later a meeting of the Radical Party was held in one of the Committee-rooms of the House of Commons in order to decide what course they should adopt in the approaching division. Rarely has so momentous a meeting been held under the roof of the Palace at Westminster. These fifty-five men held the fate of the Government in their hands. If they voted with Mr. Glad- stone, the second reading of the Home Rule Bill would be triumphantly carried. If they abstained, it would creep through and the Ministry would be saved. If they voted against it, the Bill must go and the Ministry with it. All this was clear enough. None in the room, nor any waiting at the doors to hear the decision, had the slightest forecast of the momentous events hanging on their decision : changes amounting to a revolution of English political parties, accompanied by far- reaching consequences at home and abroad. Mr. Chamberlain submit- ted the issue in a speech which one present tells me was a model of judicial im- partiality. There were open to them, he said, the familiar three courses. They might vote for the Bill ; they might vote against it ; they might abstain from the division lobby. He advocated no one of the three, confining himself to the task of summarising the consequences that would severally follow. He sug- gested that in coming to a second ballot should be adopted. On the first division of the fifty-five members present JOSEPH ADDRESSING HIS BRETHREN. A HISTORICAL FRAGMENT. decision the process of the I90 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 three voted in favour of the Bill, thirty-nine against it, thirteen electing to abstain. On a second vote, the three who had voted in favour of the Bill stood by their guns. Of the abstainers nine went over to the stalwarts, and the die was cast. Shortly after the stroke of one o'clock on the morning of 8th June 1886 the House divided, and a second reading was Division on •"^fused the Home Rule Bill by 343 votes against tiie Second 3 1 3. Of the majority there were 250 Conserva- Reading. ^.^^^ ^^^ ^^ Dissentient Liberals. Of these last fifty-five were followers of Mr. Chamberlain, thirty- eight men whom on other platforms and in times not long past they angrily denounced as Whigs. They were now united under a common flag, and have to this day, with few notable defections, remained in unity. It is important to note that the two sections came together for the first time in avowed alliance at a meeting held at Devonshire House on the 14th of May 1886, some time after the secret negotiations with Mr. Gladstone, con- ducted exclusively with Mr. Chamberlain's section. I have the best reason to know that these began and ended without the personal knowledge of Lord Hartington and his inner council. On referring to Annals of Our Time, I find under date 31st May 1886 that the figures in the divisions taken at Mr. Brigiit's the fateful meeting of Radical Dissentients, pre- Letter. sided over by Mr. Chamberlain on the eve of the second reading, slightly vary from my account. It was rumoured in the Lobby of the House of Commons that fifty-four members met ; that three declared for the second reading ; twelve would abstain ; and that thirty-eight were in favour of voting against it. This, it will be observed, accounts for only fifty-three. The figures I give are supplied by a member who took a leading part in the revolt. " A great impression," it is written in the Annals, " was made by a letter from Mr. Bright, who stated that though he would not speak he would vote against the Bill." I have had communicated to me some curious particulars about that 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 191 unpublished letter, the importance of which upon the history of the country can scarcely be exaggerated. In those troubled times, on the eve of the dissolution of life- long friendships, one sur- passing all, Mr. Bright, could not bring himself to resume his attendance at the House of Commons. He spent his evenings at the Reform Club, an arrangement being made that Mr. W. S. Caine, who acted as Whip of the inchoate party, should see him every evening about nine o'clock, and report pro- gress. The final meeting of the Chamberlainites having been decided uoon — by a »j^v,iui.u u^yjLi uj, <* j^jj CAINE KEEPING MR. BRIGHT ADVISED. striking coincidence it was held in Committee-room No. 15, at a later stage famous in connection with another episode of the Irish question — Mr. Caine saw Mr. Bright, and begged him to attend it. Mr. Bright declined, but agreed to write a letter that might be read at the gathering. After it had been read it was destroyed, no copy being kept. There was a report current at the time that an enterprising journal offered Mr. Caine ;^ioo for the text of the letter. Mr. Bright was not permitted to receive exclusive in- The Friendly formation from Mr. Caine Broker. of what was going forward at this crisis. Mr. Labouchere, THE FRIENDLY BROKER. 192 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 the friendly broker throughout the whole business, posted off to the Reform Club as soon as he heard the decision arrived at by the Radical meeting on the 3 1 st of May. " What have they done ? " eagerly asked Mr. Bright, as he entered. " They have resolved to vote against the Bill," said Mr. Labouchere. According to Mr. Labouchere's account of this interview, given at the time to a friend who permits me to use his notes, Mr. Bright expressed regret at this conclusion. The purport of Mr. Bright's letter was that, whilst he distrusted the compromise Mr. Gladstone was at this date prepared to make — to withdraw the Bill after the second reading, re- introducing it the following Session amended in the direction of the views of Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain — he would fall in with whatever conclusion the meeting arrived at. That is the summary of the letter given by one who heard it read at the meeting. Mr. Labouchere, on the contrary, was under the impression that Mr. Bright announced his intention to vote against the Bill. Mr. Labouchere reminding him that he had earlier stated he would abstain from voting, Mr. Bright answered that he had been grossly insulted in public by Mr. Sexton, an incident in his long connection with Ireland which had decided him finally to break with the Nationalist party. Mr. Labouchere, who suspected that only a portion of the letter had been read to the meeting, asked Mr. Bright to give him a copy for publication. Mr. Bright consented to the publication, but said he had kept no copy. Mr. Caine arriving at this moment, Mr. Bright said, " Give Labouchere my letter to go to the papers." Mr. Caine had already destroyed it. This narrative of the inner history of the historical epoch, compiled from letters and oral communications made Who killed ^° ™s ^^°^ leading members in the various Cock Robin? camps, will enable the judicious reader to form his own opinion as to who killed the Home Rule Bill. " Who defeated the Bill ? " one of the fifty-five meeting I89S LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 193 in Committee-room No. 15, still a trusted member of the Unionist party, writes. He answers himself with ascending notes of admiration, preserved from his text : " Hussey Vivian 1 W. S. Caine ! ! Winterbotham ! ! ! George Tre- velyan ! ! ! ! These, following in succession with bitter non- surrender speeches, turned the feeling which Chamberlain's speech had left in a condition of icy impartiality." " The man who was bitterest against any compromise," writes another leading member of the fifty- five, who has since found salvation, " and was most determined that the Bill should be thrown out, was not Bright, but George Trevelyan, who made a vehe- ment speech, which undoubtedly settled the line the meeting took." A third correspondent, go- ing back earlier to the date of the first negotiation conducted by Mr. Labouchere between Downing Street and Prince's »5«^a\\fflraa^vs:'^ier Gardens, writes : " It having ^^^^V^9<-4 leaked out that negotiations were going forward on the basis of retaining Irish members at Westminster, and in other directions securing the supremacy of the British Parlia- ment, Parnell went storming down to Downing Street, about two o'clock on the Saturday afternoon before the second reading speech, and knocked the whole arrangement into pie." CHAPTER XVI AUGUST When the world grew accustomed to the near prospect of Mr. Gladstone's retirement from the Premiership there was curious inquiry as to how long previous to its stone's Resig. disclosure the determination had been reached, naton. -pj^ j^^ Gladstone mean to resign the Premier- ship when he set out for Biarritz .? If so, were his colleagues in the Cabinet aware of the fact ? I recently had opportunity of making inquiry on the point, and found the momentous decision was arrived at shortly after the defeat of the Home Rule Bill, and was made known to his colleagues in the Cabinet some time before he set out on the journey to Biarritz. There are some among them who retain the conviction that for Mr. Gladstone's dignity and the appropriate rounding off of his illustrious career it would have been more appropriate that he should have quitted the stage when the curtain fell on his last great drama. To go pottering along with the Parish Councils Bill in their opinion partook something of the nature of an anti- climax. It was whilst struggling under the burden of this Bill that he dropped the first hint of necessity for retirement. It was characteristic of him that, having one time gone so far as directly and unmis- takably to announce his decision, he shrank from its ful- filment. There is a delightful and true stoiy of a Cabinet dinner 194 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 195 that may some day be told in fuller detail than is permissible here. A Cabinet dinner is distinct in several a surprise ways from a Cabinet Council. At the latter Dinner, the Sovereign presumably presides, and all proceedings are conducted with strict routine, surrounded by an impenetrable wall of secrecy. Though in these days the Sovereign no longer attends Cabinet Councils, her communication with it is closely maintained, the Prime Minister sending to her at the close of each sitting a full account of what has taken place. The Cabinet dinner, at which much important work is often done, is established on more informal, not to say more convivial, lines. A short time after the Home Rule Bill was thrown out, Mr. Gladstone issued invitations for a Cabinet dinner. It was understood that the occasion was specially devised in order that he might make a final announcement of his pend- ing resignation. The guests assembled in the subdued mood proper to the melancholy event. Conversation on ordinary topics flagged whilst the dinner dragged on. At length a noble lord, specially in Mr. Gladstone's favour and confi- dence, ventured to ask the host whether it was not time the servants left the room. « Why ? " said Mr. Glad- stone, turning quickly upon him with the glowing glance sometimes flashed upon an interlocutor. " Have you anything private to say ? " The embarrassed Coun- cillors thus learned that since the dinner invitations were issued, possibly since he had entered the room, Mr. Glad- stone had changed his mind about taking the irrevocable step, and indefinitely deferred its announcement. It did not come for at least a fortnight later. But it A GLOWING GLANCE. 196 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 Who told? pre-dated his departure for Biarritz. When he set out on that journey, his colleagues in the Cabinet knew that his Ministerial career would close with the dying Session. They loyally kept the secret, which was not disclosed from London. Who betrayed it to the advantage of an evening newspaper is one of the minor mysteries of the piece. When I think of it, I recall Miss Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler's words of wisdom — A woman's tongue is ever slow To tell the thing she does not know. Lord Playfair. The late Lord Playfair's^ occupation of the Chair in Committees was contemporaneous with the wildest Parlia- mentary orgies of modern times. Those were the days of the Bradlaugh scenes, of the growth and full vigour of the Fourth Party, of Mr. Par- nell in his prime, with Mr. Biggar in the proud flush of his imitation sealskin waistcoat. On the whole, Dr. Lyon Playfair, as he then was, did tolerably well. But he was sorely tried. There was some- thing righteously impres- sive in his manner when, rising to full height and adjusting his spectacles, he invested with Scotch accent the familiar cry of " Order! Order 1 " It once fell to Dr. Playfair's lot to " name " twenty-five Irish members righjt off. He also took part in the more historic all-night ' Died 1898. THE LATE LORD PLAYFAIR. iSgS LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 197 sittings which led to the suspension of thirty-seven members, including Mr. Parnell. That was the occasion when the House, meeting on a Monday to debate the question of leave to introduce a Protection Bill, uninterruptedly sat till Wednesday. At midnight on Tuesday the worn-out Speaker left the Chair, and Dr. Playfair, acting as Deputy Speaker, took it, remaining at his post all night. The hapless Chairman had to struggle not only with the Irish members, but with the Leaders of the Opposition, who had no patience with his long-suffering. Thirsting for the blood of Mr. Parnell, they insisted that he should be " named." Dr. Playfair declining to accede to the request, Sir Stafford Northcote, Sir M. Hicks -Beach, and his col- leagues on the front bench rose and, shaking the dust of the House from off their feet, quitted its precincts. There was a suspicion at the time that this was a cunningly devised scheme whose principal object was to secure a night's rest without the appearance of neglecting duty. But it was a little hard on a sufficiently battered Chairman. At nine o'clock on the Wednesday morning the Speaker returned, peremptorily stopped Mr. Biggar, who was on his legs, and for the first time in Parliamentary history put the closure in force. In considering Dr. Playfair's career as Chairman of Ways and Means, there should be taken into account the fact that not only did he live in stormy times, but the Chair was unprotected by those disciplinary rules which now fortify it. Speaker and Chairman alike were ludicrously at the mercy of astute practitioners, whether they sat in the Irish camp or were ranged in the scanty column of the Fourth Party. But Lord Playfair had no claim to be regarded as a great Parliament man, whether in the Chair or out of it. When he took part in debate he learned his speeches off by heart, and delivered them much as if he were addressing the audience in a lecture-room. His most successful speech was reeled off in the course of debate arising on the sale of margarine. There the ex-Professor was at home, charming and instructing a crowded House. ig8 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 When he sat down members felt they knew more about margarine than ever they had dreamt about butter. Mr. Plimsoll/ who survived Lord Playfair only a few days, was the hero of one of the most dramatic scenes ever "Piimsoii's witnessed in the House of Commons. It broke Mark." t^g almost somnolent peace of the second Session of the Parliament that saw Disraeli in power as well as in office. The Government had been induced to bring in a Merchant Shipping Bill. It did not arouse enthusiasm in Minis- terial circles, and as the end of the Session approached was quietly displaced by a measure dealing with agricultural hold- ings. The Premier having an- nounced its abandonment, Mr. PlimsoU passionately interposed, entreating Disraeli " not to con- sign some thousands of men to death." In the excitement of the moment he rose to address the House from the cross bench before the chair of the Serjeant- at-Arms. That is, technically, out of the House, and he was committing a breach of order in endeavouring to speak from it. Amid stormy cries of " Order," he went on shouting at the top of his voice. "Name! Name!" shocked members cried, meaning that Mr. Plimsoll should be " named " for disorderly conduct. He, mistaking their intent, cried out, " Oh, I'll give names ! " Rushing forward into the midst of the House, wildly gesticu- lating, he pointed at a well-known shipowner sitting behind the Treasury Bench, and reading out a long list of ships 1 Died 1898. MR. PLIMSOLL S OUTBURST. 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 199 lost at sea, gave notice that he would ask the President of the Board of Trade whether those ships belonged to the member whom he named. The turmoil now reached stormy heights. Members on both sides added to it by shouting " Order ! Order ! " Mr. Plimsoll, ordinarily the mildest-mannered of men, developed a strange passion for standing on one leg, perhaps dimly feeling that that was only half as bad as standing on two in the middle of the House, where no member should halt when the Speaker is in the Chair. First he stood on the right leg, then on the left, shaking his fist impartially at the Speaker, the Premier, and at the ship-owning member whom he denounced. " I am determined," he cried, his voice audible amid the uproar, " to unmask the villain who sent these men to their graves." It was all very wrong. Mr. Plimsoll was compelled to apologise. But Disraeli, a keen judge of signs of the times, found it necessary to set aside all other work in order to add the Merchant Shipping Bill to the Statute-book. Formal notification of Mr. PlimsoU's indiscretion is written in the journals of the House. At the same time he wrote with indelible ink his mark on the side of every vessel that carries the British flag, and the overloading of ships, whether criminal or careless, became a thing of the past. The fine portrait of the ex-Speaker (Lord Peel), which has formed a principal attraction of the Royal Academy this season, was painted for addition to the unique collection in j^e Peei Speaker's House at Westminster. In the stately Portrait, dining-room hang counterfeit presentments of Speakers from earliest Parliamentary times. By a curious accident Lord Peel's portrait will not hang in the same room with the long line of his predecessors in the Chair. It is too big for the place. When Mr. Orchardson, R.A., undertook the commis- sion, he sent a man down to measure the allotted space. Through some miscalculation the canvas was planned on too large a scale. The picture completed and sent down to 200 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 Speaker's House to await the opening of the Academy, the mistake was discovered. The bold British workmen in charge of the treasure were equal to the emergency. The picture was too large for the wall. The wall could not be extended, but the canvas might be cut down. They were preparing to carry out this simple design when the opportune entrance of a member of Mr. Gully's household discovered the intent and frustrated it. The picture in its untrimmed proportions will, as soon as it is returned from the Academy, be hung in a room adjoining that in which the other portraits stare from the walls at successive groups of Her Majesty's Ministers once a year dining in full dress with the Speaker. Amongst other claims to distinction Mr. Orchardson is the only man, not being a member of the House of "Movin the Commons, who ever "moved the Speaker into Speaker into the Chair." In this particular case it was an ex- Speaker. That is a mere detail, not affecting the unique distinction. Lord Peel, after the ordinary fashion, gave sittings to the artist at his studio. It was necessary to the completeness of the situation that the ex-Speaker, arrayed in wig and gown, should be seated in the Chair of the House of Commons. The Chair could not be spared for transport to Portland Place, even if it were practicable to move it. When the work was nearly finished. Lord Peel made tryst with the artist at the House of Commons, and there Mr. Orchardson literally " moved him into the Chair." A curious incident befell during the operation. One morning a member of the Press Gallery on duty in one of An unrecorded ^^^ Committee-rooms, bethought him of a paper Sitting in the he had left in his drawer in the Gallery of the ommons. fjQygg ^f Commons. Proceeding thither he was amazed, even shocked, on glancing down from behind the Speaker's Chair to observe a newspaper held in an unseen hand projecting from the edge of the sacred piece of furniture ! Was it possible that one of the workmen — peradventure the charwoman — suspending his (or her) labours, handsomely remunerated by a vote on the Civil Service Estimates, was iSqS LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 20I lolling in the Speaker's Chair reading the morning news- paper ? Moving softly towards the left so as to come in full side view of the Chair, the startled Pressman discovered Mr. Orchardson sitting at his easel, quietly working away at his picture, whilst Lord Peel sat in the Chair occupied by him through twelve memorable Sessions, reading his Times. Out of the artist's studio the portrait was first seen by House of Commons men on the occasion of Mrs. Gully's " At Homes " in the early weeks of the present The Picture as Session. Among the company gathered round » Portrait, it on both nights it was astonishing to find how few there were to praise. It might be a picture, they said, but it was no portrait. Particular objection was taken to the alleged fact that the Speaker had only one eye. Some one, probably Mr. Caldwell, having " caught " the other, had permanently appropriated it. That and other seeming defects were attributable simply to the height at which the picture was hung. Spectators were fain to throw back the head and look up at it, thus getting curious and fatal foreshortening effect. A similar drawback attached to Lord Randolph Churchill's bust when placed in the corridor lead- ing to the central lobby of the House of Commons. It was stuck on a pedestal at least a foot too high. When Lord Randolph was still with us, in the flesh, men were not accustomed to regard him from the point of view of looking up at his chin and nostrils — except, in- deed, on the historic occasion when, on the defeat of Mr. Glad- stone's Government on the 8th of June 1885, he jumped on the corner seat below the gangway and, uproariously THE BUST OF LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL. 202 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 cheering, wildly waved his hat. Much disappointment was expressed, a feeling that will be removed when the authorities consent to place a really clever work of art in a suitable position. Lord Peel's portrait being hung on the line at the Academy became quite another thing. It is not only a great painting worthy of an old master — it is the living portrait of a great man. When Lord Randolph's bust is dropped a foot in height it will be equally advantaged. It is striking evidence of the intuition of genius that Mr. Orchardson has preserved the look of Speaker Peel on one of those not infrequent occasions during his tur- bulent times when he only partially succeeded in re- pressing feelings of stormy indignation. The R.A. was not, for example, present when Mr. Peel admonished the Cambrian Railway directors, for breach of privilege in their dealing with a station-master who had given embarrassing evidence before a Select Committee of the House of Commons. Nor did he a year later see and hear THE EX-SPEAKER — SCATHING INDIGNATION. . , ■. t him turn and rend Mr. Conybeare, who, in supplement of newspaper attacks on the Speaker, had for weeks kept on the paper an offensive resolution directed against him. Yet looking at the portrait, memory recalls the spectacle of the affrighted directors at the Bar, as Mr. Peel " admonished " them. Or one can hear him as, trembling in every fibre with indignation, he rose to full height and, turning upon the member for Cam- bourne seated below the gangway, with head hung down arms sullenly folded, thundered forth, " And now, forsooth ! under the guise of performing a public duty, he charges iSgS LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 203 me with the grossest offence possible to a man in my position." Mr. Orchardson saw neither of these things, and yet he has preserved for all time Mr. Speaker Peel as he then looked. Through the Session the House of Lords meet four days a week at four o'clock in the afternoon. The doors are not open till a quarter past four, the interval under- ^.^5 Lo,jg ^^ stood to be occupied by their lordships in Prayer. devotion. As a matter of fact, it often happens that during this period the House is empty and silent. The House sometimes sits in its capacity as the final Court of Appeal. In such case it is regarded as an ordinary meeting of the House. In the morning the Lord Chan- cellor takes his seat on the Woolsack with cus- tomary ceremony, and the proceedings open with prayer. When the judicial business is finished the House does not adjourn. The sitting is " suspended," being re- sumed at the customary hour in the afternoon. But there are no more prayers, nor does the Lord Chancellor again enter in State, quietly dropping in from the doorway by the Throne to take his seat on the Woolsack. The identity of the House of Lords sitting as a Court of Appeal and as a legislative assembly is perfect in theory. In the great betting appeal case, which came before the THE LORD CHANCELLOR QUIETLY DROPS IN. 204 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 House in May, the whole body of peers — six Princes of the Blood, two archbishops, twenty -two dukes, twenty -two marquises, 121 earls, thirty viscounts, twenty-four bishops, 387 barons, sixteen Scottish and twenty-eight Irish repre- sentative peers — might, had they pleased, have met to take part in deciding the momentous question, "What is a place ? " The late Lord Denman, jealous of the privileges of a peer, on one occasion not only insisted upon his right to sit in an appeal case, but ventured to offer a few observa- tions in supplement of the judgment of the learned lords. He did not repeat the experiment. The Court of Appeal is ordinarily composed of the Lord Chancellor for the time being, and other peers who have sat on the Woolsack or the judicial Bench, or have served as Law Officers of the Crown. The most frequent attendants are Lord Ashbourne, Lord Herschell, Lord Watson, Lord Hobhouse, Lord Macnaghten, Lord Shand, Lord Davey, and Lord James of Hereford. What these pundits do not know about law is, perhaps, not worth mentioning. Up to a recent period, it was the custom for the junior bishop last admitted to a seat in the House of Lords daily The youngest t° officiate at prayer-timc. It was Dr. Ridding, Bishop strikes, the Bishop of Southwell, who freed the neck of the youngest bishop from this intolerable yoke. The newly- appointed Bishop of Southwell was son-in-law of Lord Selborne, at the time Lord Chancellor. He effectively pleaded his hard case, and at the instance of the Lord Chancellor a new arrangement was made whereby the bishops take weekly turns at prayer-time. As there are twenty-four of them, it does not often happen that a bishop gets more than one turn in a Session. Once a clergyman always a clergyman is an old saying, meaning that a man admitted to holy orders cannot divest "The Hon ^imself of them. This particularly affects and Reverend reverend gentlemen so far as the House of ^^ ® ■ Commons is concerned, since they may not offer themselves as Parliamentary candidates. Nevertheless, there 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 205 is in the present House at least one member ^ who has been in the Church, and who, having left it, availed himself of a recent statute to clear his disability. He was, indeed, rector of a plump parish, and proudly preserves the record that he restored its church at an outlay of ;^ 10,000. I rather fancy that early in his rectorial career his attention was diverted by the attraction of dogs. There is no reason why a parish parson shall not keep a dog or two. When it comes to three hundred, the number seems to exceed the area of the pale of the Church. The rector was a born dog-fancier, with hereditary skill in training, and to this day is the proud possessor of a multitude of prize medals, gold and otherwise. He may possibly have begun to drift away from the Church drawn by the dogs. What directly decided his fate was an accident in the discharge of his rectorial functions. Being called upon to officiate at a wedding, he, somehow or other, married the wrong man. How it came about is not at this day clearly explained. Probably, whilst the bridegroom- elect was of a retiring disposition, the best man was what in politics is called of pushful tendencies. However that be, when the ceremony was over and the rector was benevolently regarding his handiwork, his error was pointed out to him. It was very awkward ; but nothing could be better than the conduct of the whole party. Above all things they desired to save their beloved pastor from annoyance, so they frankly accepted the situation. The best man went off with the bride. What became of the bridegroom, and what relations he subsequently held with the unexpectedly estab- lished household, I have never heard. Sir John Brunner modestly disclaims the sole conception of the idea with which, at the outbreak of the Hispano- American War, he fascinated the civilised world. ^ private His suggestion was that, instead of the Great ironciad. Powers each having its own Navy, adding vastly to national 1 Mr. Macdona. 2o6 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT taxation by systematic competition, they should provide out of a joint purse two Navies of equal strength, hiring them out to any two nations bent upon fighting. Sir John tells me the germ of the idea lies in a proposal once actually made to him by a well-known naval constructor. He wanted Sir John to give him a com- mission to build an ironclad as his private property. Sir John pointed out that he did not particularly want an iron- clad. But the naval con- structor demonstrated that, regarded strictly as an investment, it was better even than Brunner Mond ordinary shares at par. " You never know from day to day," he said, " what may turn up. War may break out to-morrow, when up goes the price of ironclads. You sell out ; clear a little fortune." The prospect was alluring, but nothing practical came of the interview. Sir John had nowhere to put the ironclad, the space at the back of the houses in Ennismore Gardens being limited. " And," as he remarked, " you can't leave an ironclad in your hall as if it were a bicycle." The events of the spring showed the naval constructor was right. If Sir John Brunner had last April chanced to have had an ironclad in stock, he could have sold it at his own price either to Spain or the United States. SIR JOHN brunner: "no thanks, I don't.want any ironclads to-day." CHAPTER XVII SEPTEMBER More than four years have elapsed since, viewing the House of Commons from behind the Speaker's Chair, - //j//'///z,y/^^^..^>^ A vacant one's glance Place. instinctively turned to, and lingered upon, the noble figure on the Treasury Bench seated opposite the brass- bound box. No man is indispensable to man- kind. But in the interval since, on the ist of March 1894, Mr. Gladstone finally walked out of the House of Commons, members have frequently had occasion to realise how irreparable is their loss. When he spoke, he uplifted debate from whatever rut of medio- crity it may have fallen into. That was the power of the orator. When he sat silent, his mere presence communicated to the House a sense of dignity and a 207 WALKING OUT FOR THE LAST TIME. 2o8 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 moral strength easier to feel than to describe. That was the quality of the man. I do not propose to attempt to add to the far-sounding tribute of applause and admiration which resounded over the death -bed and the grave of the great Englishman.^ I have, rather, strung together some re- miniscences such as may be discreetly withdrawn from a record of personal association with which I was for some years honoured. One day at luncheon at Dalmeny, during the campaign of 1885, Mr. Gladstone turned the conversation upon Punch APaach work, showing keen interest in the Wednesday Dinner. dinner, and in the personnel of the staff. A year or two later, when, being in Opposition, he was at fuller leisure, I asked him to dinner to meet a few of my colleagues. He replied : — 4 Whitehall Gardens, Nmi. 14, '88. Dear Mr. Lucy — I thank you much for the invitation to join the goodly company to be assembled round your table on the nth of Dec. But I am living in hope of escape to the country before that date, and therefore I fear I am precluded from accepting your kind invitation. At the same time, if the dinner is in any case to come off, and if it were allowed me in the event of my being in or near London to offer myself, I should thankfully accept such a reservation, — Faithfully yours, W. E. Gt-APSTOUE, ' Mr. Gladstone died 19th May 1898. HE TOOK A GREAT INTEREST IN PUNCH. LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 209 The dinner came off in May of the following year. In addition to the editor and the artists of Punch, the company included Earl Granville and Lord Charles Beresford. Mr. Gladstone evidently enjoyed the company, and was in bounding spirits. We were all struck on this close view with surprise at his amazing physical and mental virility, at that epoch noted by every observer of the veteran statesman in public life. He had just entered upon that term of four- score years at which, according to the Psalmist, man's days are but labour and sorrow. Yet the only indications of advanced age were observable in increasing deafness and a slight huskiness of voice. Deafness was at this time a failing shared by Lord Granville. Talking to either, it was desirable to raise the voice above conversational level. Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, though separated by the breadth of the table, and both deaf, were able to make each other hear without exceptional effort in raising or modulating the voice. A notable thing about Mr. Gladstone's face at that date, a marvel to the end, was the brightness of his eyes. They were fuller, more un- clouded, than those of many a man under fifty. As he talked — and his talk was like the bubbling of an illimitable water- spring — the huskiness of his voice wore off. To every one's delight, he did most of the talking. But there was not then — nor on any other of the occasions when I have been privileged to sit within the circle of his company was there — any appearance of his monopolising conversation. As Du Maurier wittily said, he was " a most attractive listener." ' AN ATTB ACTIVE LISTENER. 2IO LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 He had never been in Du Mauriei's company before, but took to him with quick appreciation and evident delight. Almost immediately after Du Maurier had been presented to him, the conversation turned upon Homer. For ten minutes Mr. Gladstone talked about Homer, with glowing glance and the deep, rich tones of voice that accompanied any unusual emotion. Homer, he insisted, evidently did not like Venus — Aphrodite, as Mr. Gladstone preferred to call hen He cited half-a-dozen evidences of Homer's distaste for a goddess usually fascinating to mankind. Pictures and artists he discussed, with special reference to the picture shows at the time open in London. He said he always liked to go round a picture-gallery in the company of an artist. " Artists," he said, " looking at a picture always see in it less to criticise, more to admire, than is possible to ordinary people. An artist sees more in a man's face than you or I can." For many years preceding his retirement to Hawarden, Mr. Gladstone was accustomed to make tryst with Sir William Agnew in the early morning of the opening of the Royal Academy. Sir William once told me he insisted upon seeing everything, his critical remarks upon the varied pictures being singularly acute. At the date of this dinner Mr. Gladstone had had his portrait painted not less than thirty-five times. How many times he has been photographed is a sum beyond even his power of com- putation. He spoke with warm admiration and esteem of Millais. " I have had the good fortune," he said, " to fall into the hands of a great artist, who made the minimum of demand upon my somewhat occupied time. Millais came to know me so well that sittings of five hours sufificed him for his most elaborate portrait, and this time I was able to give with real pleasure." " Is Millais, then, a charming companion when at his work ? " " Yes," said Mr. Gladstone, " but not only because he talks. iSgS LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 211 Just to watch him at his easel is a delight. He throws his whole heart and soul into his canvas." Talking about Mr. Bright, he spoke regretfully of the carelessness with which his old friend dealt with himself in the matter of health. '^' "^ *' " Bright," he said emphatically, " did nothing he should do to preserve his health, and everything he should not." If he had only been wise, and wise in time, there was, in Mr. Gladstone's opinion, no reason in the world why he should not, on that May Day 1889, have been alive, hale and strong. But he would never listen to advice about himself. Mr. Gladstone told a funny little story about his habits in this respect. Up to within a period of ten years preceding his death Mr. Bright had no regular, at least no recognised, medical attendant. There was some mysterious anonymous person to whom he occasionally went for advice, and of whom he spoke oracularly. " But," said Mr. Gladstone, with that curious approach to a wink that sometimes varied his grave aspect, " he would never tell his name." Somewhere about the year 1879 ^'^- Bright surprised Sir Andrew Clark by one morning appearing in his consulta- tion-room. Sir Andrew, who knew all about his eccentricities in the manner of medical attendance, asked him how it was he came to see him. " Oh," said Mr. Bright, " it's Gladstone. He never will let me rest about the state of my health." Long neglect had irretrievably wrought mischief, but Mr. Bright acknowledged the immense benefit derived from following the directions of Mr. Gladstone's friend and physician, and nothing more was heard of the anonymous doctor. Mr. Gladstone seems to have been always on the look- out for opportunity to give a little friendly advice to Mr. Bright. One thing he strongly recommended sleeping was never to think of political affairs on getting Habits, into bed or immediately on waking in the morning. " I never do that," Mr. Gladstone said. " I never allow 212 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT myself to do it. In the most exciting political crises I absolutely dismiss current controversies from my mind when I get into bed. I will not take up the line of thought again till I am up and dressing in the morning. I told Bright about this. He said, 'That is all very well for you. But my way is exactly the reverse. I think over all my speeches when I am in bed.' " Like Sancho Panza, Mr. Gladstone had a great gift of sleep. Seven hours he insisted upon getting, " and," he added with a smile, " I should like to have eight. I detest getting up in the morning, and every morning I hate it just as sharply. But one can do everything by habit. When I have had my seven hours' sleep, my habit is to get out of bed." His memory was amazingly minute, more particularly for events that took place half a century ago. Oddly enough, An early whcre memory failed him was in the matter of Appreciation, human faces. This gift precious to, indispensable for. Princes was withheld from him. He told how some- where in the late thirties there lived in London a man with a system, now sunk into oblivion, by which he brought electricity to bear in the direction of reading character. " There were three faculties he told me wherein 1 was lacking," said Mr. Gladstone. " One of them was that I had no memory for faces ; I am sorry to say it was, and remains, quite true." It would have been interesting to hear what were the other two faculties absence of which the wise man detected. A LITTLE FRIENDLY ADVICE. LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 213 Mr. Gladstone did not say. But forgetfulness of faces he admitted and lamented, probably recognising in the failing occasion of some personal misunderstandings. He talked a good deal about old Parliamentary days, lapsing into that gentle tone of charming reminiscence which on quiet Tuesday evenings or Friday nights q^ oays in sometimes delighted the House of Commons, the commons. One scene he recalled with as much ease and fulness of detail as if it had happened the week before. Its date was the 4th of June 1841. Sir Robert Peel had moved a resolu- tion of No Confidence in Her Majesty's Government. " You were there," said Mr. Gladstone, pointing eagerly across the table to Lord Granville. "You had not left the Commons then. Didn't you vote in the division ? " Lord Granville smilingly shook his head, and to Mr. Glad- stone's pained amazement posi- what! not remember it? it was ^ , ONLY FORTY-EIGHT YEARS AGO. tively could not remember what had taken place in the House of Commons on a particular night sped forty-eight years earlier. To Mr. Gladstone the scene was as vivid as if it had taken place at the morning sitting he had quitted to join us at dinner. Naturally, as the issue of the pending division involved the fate of the Ministry, party passion ran high. Forces were so evenly divided that every member seemed to hold in the hollow of his hand the fate of the Ministry. " The Whips of those days," he observed parenthetically, " somehow or other seemed to know more precisely than they do now how a division would go. It was positively known that there would be a majority of one. On which side it would be was the only doubt. There was a member of the Opposition almost at death's door. He zvas dead," Mr. Gladstone added emphatically, "except that he had 214 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 just a little breath left in him. The question was, could he be brought to the House ? The Whips said he must come, and so they carried him down. He was wheeled in in a Bath-chair. To this day I never forget the look on his face. His glassy eyes were upturned, his jaws stiff. We, a lot of young Conservatives clustered round the door, seeing the Bath-chair, thought at first they had brought down a corpse. But he voted, and the resolution which turned out Lord Melbourne's Government was carried by a majority of one." Mr. Gladstone did not affect that indifference to the written word in the newspapers with which Mr. Arthur Balfour The News- i^ equipped. He had his favourites among the papers. dailies and weeklies. Of the latter was for many years the Spectator, a paper abandoned, as stated in a published record of private conversation, because in its new manner, soured by the Home Rule controversy, it " touched him on the raw." For many years I contributed a London Letter to the columns of a Liverpool paper, edited by my old friend and, as Mr. Pumblechook used to describe himself in connection with Pip, " early Benefactor," now Sir Edward Russell. Mr. Gladstone once surprised, and, I need hardly add, highly honoured me by saying that when in residence at Hawarden, the Liverpool Daily Post being the earliest paper to reach him, the first thing he turned to was the London Letter. "Dear Mr. Lucy," he writes under date Jan. 14, 1890 — " I hope we may meet in town, and I can then speak to you more freely than I like to write respecting a gentleman with whom I have been intimate for thirty years, and in whose uprightness of intention I fully believe, but who has exposed himself deplorably by his last effusion to the Times. I had read your comparison with great interest where I read you daily, viz. in the Liverpool Daily Post." The gentleness and lingering affection with which Mr. Gladstone, even in the white heat of personal political con- History re- trovcrsy, speaks of an old friend makes it possible peating Itself, to mention that the one he alludes to in this connection was the late Duke of Argyll. The comparison 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 215 which attracted him was attempted to be established between himself in this year 1890 and Sir Robert Walpole in 1742. At the period Mr. Gladstone wrote Mr. Chamberlain had not finally made up his mind to throw in his lot with his old THE DUKE OF ARGYLI. WRITES TO THE TIMES. foemen the Tories. He dreamed a dream of what he called ■' a National Party." In the article to which Mr. Gladstone refers it was pointed out that a hundred and fifty years earlier an almost exactly parallel case was set forth in English history. In 1742, at the close of a Ministry that had run a splendid career of twenty years, the factions arrayed against Sir Robert Walpole gained force sufficient to encourage his arch-enemies to strike the long-impending blow. The Opposition of the day was divided into two parties diametrically opposed to each other in political opinion, just as were the Dissentient Liberals and the Conservatives of 1890. And as these latter were each all one in their hatred of Mr. Gladstone, so the manifold opposition of 1 742 were united in animosity towards Walpole. " Hatred of Walpole," Macaulay writes, " was almost the only feeling common to them. On this one point they 2i6 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 concentrated their whole strength. So much did they narrow the disputed ground, so purely personal did they make the question, that they threw out friendly hints to other members of the Administration, and declared that they refused quarter to the Prime Minister alone." By precision of coincidence the leading part in the cabal against Walpole was taken by the then Duke of Argyll, whose successor in the title a hundred and fifty years later took a leading part in the revolt against a greater than Walpole. In January 1886 I was called upon to undertake the Editorship of the leading Liberal paper in London. In The ordinary times the post is one involving incessant Dally News, labour and grave responsibility. But at least the party whose views are represented are pretty fairly decided as to what those views are, and moderately united in giving them expression. Within a few weeks of my assuming the Editorship, the Dat/j News was faced by the problem of taking instant decision as to whether it would stand by Mr. Gladstone in the matter of Home Rule, or whether it would join its colleagues of the Liberal Press which, without exception among London morning papers, went over to the other side. What happened is picturesquely set forth in the subjoined letter, one of the last, if not abso- lutely the last, written by Mr. Gladstone from the Premier's room in Downing Street : — 10 Downing Street, Whitehall, March 5, '94. Dear Mr. Lucy — Though under very great pressure I must thank you for your kind letter. I must add a word to your statement of the solitude in which the Daily News took and gallantly maintained its post. I remember a day on which the Pall Mall Gazette under its clever, but queer, erratic Editor published an object-lesson of the field of battle on the Irish question. On one side were D.N and P.M. G — on the other the rest. I took my P.M. G., drew a noose round the fighting figure, and with a long line with a \ at the end of it, carried it over to the other side, and by this verifying process placed the support of the P.M.G. at its true value, and left D.N. occupying absolutely alone its place of honour. I hope my account is intelligible. — I remain, faithfully yours, W. E. Gladstone. 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 217 When the split in the Liberal Party occasioned by the Home Rule movement showed itself there was among other difficulties that of denominating the seceders ..Dissentient from the main body of Liberals. The delicacy uberais." of the situation was increased by the natural desire of those WRITING A POST-CARD. concerned for the welfare of the Liberal Party not to widen the rift by use of opprobrious names. Otherwise there was a term ready to hand in the phrase applied by the Northerners when the Southern States withdrew from the Union. After much cogitation I hit upon the phrase " Dissentient Liberals," which, used in the leading columns of the Daily News, became generally adopted. The following memorandum from Mr. Gladstone, written to me during the progress of the General Election of 1886, shows how anxious was his care in the matter : — I am really desirous that the newspapers should not go on representing as D.L. those who are distinctly L., like Talbot. If there is doubt about Sir H. Vivian, Villiers, and others, that ought 2i8 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 rather to be given in our favour than against us. Further, the old division into Liberals and Tories ought to be regularly given, as well as the division into Irish and anti-Irish. At any rate, as soon as total L. overtops C, which at first it does not — but best, I think, without waiting for this. That phrase, '' as soon as total L. overtops C," shows how sanguine he was up to the last that the country would respond to his appeal. As history records, the achievement was never completed, the poll finally made up showing the new House of Commons to consist of 317 Conservatives, 74 Dissentient Liberals, 191 Liberals, and 84 Parnellites, leav- ing Mr. Gladstone in a hopeless minority of 116. Even with the fresh soreness of the wounding, Mr. Glad- stone habitually refrained from public resentment of the jyi,. Thanes who in 1886 fled from him. If occasion Chamberlain, arosc to answcr them in debate, he was even more than usually courteous in his address. There was one memorable occasion when he could not resist an invitation to fall upon and rend his severed friend. I am reminded of the incident by a post-card, here re- produced, as illustrating not only Mr. Gladstone's familiar use of this medium of communication, but his characteristic prevision in beginning at the very top in small handwriting, so that if the spirit moved him he might utilise every scrap of space. " One word of thanks, however hasty," he writes from I Carlton Gardens, April 12, 1892, "for the brilliant article. It had but one fault, that of excess with reference to the merits of the principal subject of it." The article alluded to appeared in the " Cross Bench " series of the Observer. It dealt with a memorable scene in the House on the 8th of April 1892, when, in the course of debate, Mr. Gladstone, rising without a note of prepara- tion, fell upon Mr. Chamberlain and belaboured him with effect all the greater since the onslaught was free from slightest display of brutal force. It is difficult to say on which side of the House the joy of the sport was more acutely felt and unreservedly displayed. There dwells still 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 219 in the memory recollection of the scene in which the little comedy was set — the crowded House ; the laughing faces all turned upon the picturesque figure standing at the table ; h 4^*4t U*4^i^M feuA^-^^ iiiu^n:^ CiiC^^ k/iUi^ t^^ <:-*-«*- ^"^^^ FACSIMILE OF ONE OF MR. GLADSTONE'S POST-CARDS. Mr. Chamberlain gallantly trying to smile back on the benevolent visage turned upon him with just a flash of malice in the gleaming eyes ; and, that no touch might be missing to complete the perfectness of the scene, just behind 220 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1898 Mr. Chamberlain, sitting well forward on the bench with folded arms, and on his face a mechanical grin of perhaps qualified appreciation, Mr. Jesse CoUings, " the hon. member for Bordesley, the faithful henchman of my right hon. friend, who would cordially re-echo that or any other opinion." Immediately after the result of the General Election of 1886 was made known, Mr. Gladstone betook himself to A Holiday Hawarden and cheerfully entered on a quite new Task. field of labour, his ordinary fashion of seeking recreation. A letter dated December 18, 1886, gives an interesting peep at him holiday-making : — Dear Mr. Lucy — I read the article in the D.N., and thought it clever, entertaining, and quite fair : the one in the P.M. Gazette, the secret of which I think I know, rather brutal. My ambition during my " holiday " has been to give eighteen hours a week out of seventy, or one-fourth, to the prosecution of a study of which the Olympian Religion is a central part. But the O.R. of your articles is not mine. Mine is the religion of the Homeric Poems, and a totally different affair. For thirty years I have had this on hand. But of this appropriation I have fallen very far short. It has been my maximum. You may like to have the enclosed, from a special correspondent of the Journal des Dkbats. — Faithfully yours, W. E. Gladstone. The following letter, dated from Dollis Hill, April 28, 1887, is interesting for its reference to Mr. Mr. Parnell's „ „ ~, . , , t^ ., Offer to retire Parnell. 1 here was communicated to the Daily '""ufel"'"' ^^"^^ ^ report of a statement made by Mr. Gladstone at a dinner given by Mr. Armitstead. To this he alludes in the postscript : — Dear Mr. Lucy — i. Will you, if you think proper, print the enclosed letter from me as a reply to an Edinburgh Correspondent, and let it be posted ? 2. Mr. W is an excellent man, but is behind the world. To the Eighty Club that I had long desired, and had made efforts for Liberal co-operation, outside the Irish question, but without effect. A pointed sSorX. of that kind was made many weeks, nay, I think, several months, ago. — Yours faithfully, The Editor, Daily News. W- ^- GLADSTONE. 1898 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 221 The account given you of the Armitstead dinner goes beyond the mark, and evidently mixes the writer's impressions with my state- ment, which was simply that Mr. P. offered to retire from Parliament if I thought it right to desire it. I spoke from recollection. Paragraph 2 of this letter is a little obscure, suggesting accidental omission of a phrase. I give it as it was written. The fault is redeemed by the delightfully brief but perfect description of Mr. W , who is still alive, as excellent and as far behind the world as ever. I saw him looking reverently on from the fringe of the crowd of personal friends gathered in Westminster Hall round the bier of the lost Leader. Of all the touching episodes in the progress from the death-bed at Hawarden Castle to the graveside at Westminster Abbey, this last muster of old friends and ,„ wegt„,„gt„ colleagues round the coffin in Westminster Hall "«"■ was the most pathetic, the grandest in its simplicity. When Eleanor, wife of Edward I., was borne from Lincoln to the same burial ground, her husband erected at various places Crosses to mark where she had rested on the way. For those present in Westminster Hall on Saturday, the 28th of May 1898, there will ever live among the storied recollec- tions of the fane the remembrance that its roof for a while enshrined the coffin of Mr. Gladstone, making his last halt on the way to his final dwelling-place. SESSION 1899 CHAPTER XVIII FEBRUARY jHE proceedings at the opening of the forthcoming Session, the fifth in the fourteenth Par- The search for liament of Queen QuyFawkes. Victoria, will be fully reported in the morning papers. There is a proceeding preliminary to the Speaker's taking the Chair which, from its history and character, is of necessity conducted in secret. It is the search through the underground chambers and passages of the House with design to frustrate any schemes in the direction of a dissolution of Parliament that descendants or dis- ciples of Guy Fawkes may have in hand. The present generation has seen, more especially when a Conservative Government have been in power, some revolutionary changes in Parliamentary procedure. The solemn search underneath the Houses of Parliament, preceding the opening of the revolving Sessions ever since Gunpowder Plot, is still observed with all the pomp and circumstance attached to it three hundred years ago. \ BEEF-EATER TEMP. HENRY VIII. i899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 223 The investigation is conducted under the personal direc- tion of the Lord Great Chamberlain, who is answerable with his head for any miscarriage. When a peer comes newly to the office he makes a point of personally accompanying the expedition. But, though picturesque, and essential to the working of the British Constitution, it palls in time, and the Lord Great Chamberlain, relying upon the discretion, presence of mind, and resource of his Secretary, usually leaves it to him. Oddly enough, the House of Commons is not officially represented at the performance, the avowed object of which is not, primarily, to secure the safety of the Lords and Commons, but to avert the conclusion aimed at by Guy Fawkes — namely, to blow up the Sovereign. It is as the personal representative of the Queen that the Lord Great Chamberlain takes the business in hand. To this day the result of the inquiry is directly com- municated to Her Majesty. Up to a period dating back less than fifty years, as soon as the search was over, the Lord Great Chamberlain despatched a messenger on horse- back to the Sovereign, informing him (or her) that all was well, and that Majesty might safely repair to Westminster to open the new Session. To-day the telegraph wires carry the assurance to the Queen wherever she may chance to be in residence on the day before the opening of Parliament. Whilst the Commons take no official part in the per- formance, the peers are represented either by Black Rod or by his deputy, the Yeoman Usher, who is accom- The search panied by half-a-dozen stalwart doorkeepers and P^^y. messengers, handy in case of a fray. The Board of Works are represented by the Chief Surveyor of the London District, accompanied by the Clerk of Works to the Houses of Parliament. The Chief Engineer of the House of Commons, who is responsible for all the underground workings of the building, leads the party, the Chief Inspector of Police boldly marching on his left hand. These are details prosaic enough. The nineteenth century has engrafted them on the sixteenth. The 224 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1899 INSPECTOR HORSLEY. picturesqueness of the scene comes in with the appearance of the armed contingent. This is made up of some fourteen or sixteen of the Yeomen of the Guard, who arrive at the place of rendezvous armed with halberds and swords. The halberds look well, but this search is, above all, a business undertaking. It is recog- nised that for close combat in the vaults and narrow passages of the building halberds would be a little unwieldy. They are accordingly stacked in the Prince's Chamber, the Yeomen fearlessly marching on armed with nothing but their swords. Clad in their fifteenth-century cos- tume, they are commanded by an officer who wears a scarlet swallow- tailed coat, cocked hat, and feathers, gilt spurs shining at his martial heel. The spurs are not likely to be needed. But the British officer knows how to prepare for any emergency. Following the Yeomen of the Guard stride half-a-dozen martial men in costumes dating from the early part of the present century. They wear swallow-tail coats, truncated cone caps, with the base of the cone uppermost. They are armed with short, serviceable cutlasses, and batons such as undertakers' men carry, suggesting that they have come to bury Guy Fawkes, not to catch him. Most of the underground chambers and passages of the Houses of Parliament are lit by electricity. Failing that, they are flooded with gas. When search for Guy Fawkes was first ordered, the uses of gas had not been discovered, much less the possibilities of electricity. Lanterns were the only thing, so lanterns are still used. As the dauntless company of men-at-arms tramp along the subterranean passages, it is pretty to see the tallow dips in the swinging lanterns shamed by the wanton light that beats from the electric lamps. i899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 225 Her Majesty's Ministers meeting Parliament at the opening of their fifth Session remain happy in the reflection that their position is not endangered by any p„„^„^„^,^ mines dug within the limits of their own escarp- caves. ment. It is different in the opposite camp. The first thing good Liberals do as soon as their own party comes into power is to commence a series of manoeuvres designed to thrust it forth. Sometimes they are called "caves," occa- sionally "tea-room ciabals," But, as Mr. Gladstone learned in the 1868-74 Parliament, in that of 1880-85, and, with tragic force, in the Parliament which made an end of what Mr. Chamberlain called "The Stop-Gap Government," they all mean the same thing. Lord Rosebery when he came to the Premiership found the habit was not eradicated. The condition of men and things in the House of Commons when Parliament met after the General Election in July 1895, was rarely favourable to the formation of " caves " on the Ministerial side. To begin with, the Government had such an overwhelming majority that the game of playing at being independent was so safe that its enjoyment was not forbidden to the most loyal Unionist. Given that condition, there were existent personal circum- stances that supplied abundant material for cave-making. The necessity imposed on Lord Salisbury of finding place in his Ministry for gentlemen outside the Conservative camp made it impossible not only to satisfy reasonable aspirations on the part of new men of his own party, but even to re- instate some ex-Ministers. Some, like Baron de Worms, Q A CAVE-MAN. 226 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1899 were shelved with a peerage. Others, overlooked, were left to find places on back benches above or below the gangway. Of men who held office in Lord Salisbury's former Ad- ministration, Mr. Jackson, Sir James Fergusson, Sir W. Hart-Dyke, and Sir E. Ashmead-Bartlett were left out in the cold. Whilst most of the leading members of the Liberal Unionist wing, including Mr. Jesse CoUings and Mr. Powell Williams, were provided with office, Mr. Courtney's claims were ignored, and Sir John Lub- bock's were probably never considered. Amongst Conservative members who had not been in office, but were not alone in An old their belief that they were well fitted for it, were Parliamentary Mr. Gibson Bowles and Mr. George Wyndham — the latter since deservedly provided for. Moreover, to a corner seat below the gangway returned Mr. James Lowther, thought good enough in Disraeli's time to be Under-Secretary for the Colonies and Chief Secretary for Ireland. Since the death of Lord Beaconsfield kings had arisen in Egypt who knew not "Jemmy," or, at least, forgot his existence at a time when Ministerial offices were dispensed, shelved with a peerage, (baron de worms. ) "WHO KNEW NOT JEMMY." The member for East Thanet, 1899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 227 first returned for York in the summer of 1865, is not only personally popular in the House, but has high standing as an old Parliamentary hand. If he had liked to turn rusty, he might have done the Conservative Party at least as much harm as Mr. Horsman when in the same mood wrought to the party with which, to the last, he ranked himself. From time to time Mr. Lowther has vindicated his independence of Ministerial discipline by dividing the House on the question of the futility of reading, at the com- mencement of recurring Sessions, the standing order forbid- ding peers to interfere with elections. He has not gone beyond that, and whenever attempt has been made from the Opposition side to inflict damage on the best of all Govern- ments, he has ranged himself on the side of Ministers. Sir W. Hart-Dyke, Sir James Fergusson, and the late Sir W. Forwood, instead of openly resenting neglect, on more than one occasion went out of their way to -.T^. i>/r.. t Overlooked. defend the colleagues of the Prime Minister who slighted them. Mr. Wyndham was last Session not less generously loyal. Mr. Tommy Bowles, it is true, has been on occasions frac- tious. As for Sir E. Ashmead- Bartlett, when he recovered from the shock of realisa- tion that Lord Salisbury had not only formed a Ministry without including him in , , . THE HUMBLE FUNCTION OF THE FOOTBALL. its membership, but looked as if he would be able to carry it on, he showed signs of resentment. Through successive Sessions he has sedulously endeavoured to embarrass an unappreciative Premier by cunningly devised questions addressed to the Colonial Secretary or to the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Curzon alike proved able 228 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1899 to hold their own, and the Sheffield Knight coming out to kick has found himself fulfilling the humble function of the football. A more serious defection was threatened last Session as the result of the distrust and discontent in Ministerial circles of Lord Salisbury's foreign policy. Mr. er urg . yerburgh, moved by apprehension that the interests of the British Empire in the Far East were at stake, instituted a series of weekly dinners at the Junior Carlton, where matters were talked over. The dinners were excellent, the wines choice, and Mr. Yerburgh has a delicate taste in cigars. This meeting at dinner instead of at tea, as was the fashion in the Liberal camp at the time of Mr. Gladstone's trouble over the Irish University Bill in 1873, seemed to indicate manlier purpose. But nothing came of it except a distinct advancement of Mr. Yerburgh's position in the House of Commons. He, as spokesman of the malcontents, found opportunity to display a complete mastery of an intricate geographical and political position, com- bined with capacity for forcibly and clearly stating his case. Thus Lord Salisbury remained master of himself though China fell. Had Mr. Gladstone been in his position, under precisely similar circumstances, it would have been Her Majesty's Ministry that would have fallen to pieces. As usual, the recess has seen the final going over to the majority of old members of the House of Commons. Two Joined the ^^° have died since the prorogation were dis- Majority. tinct types of utterly divergent classes. There was nothing in common between the Earl of Winchilsea and Mr. T. B. Potter, except that they both sat in the 1880 Parliament, saw the rise of the Fourth Party, and the crumbling away of Mr. Gladstone's magnificent majority. Mr. Potter was by far the older member, having taken his seat for Rochdale on the death of Mr. Cobden in 1865. Except physically, he did not fill a large place in the House, but was much esteemed on both sides for his honest purpose and his genial good-temper. 1 899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 229 This last was imperturbable. It was not to be disturbed even by a double misfortune that accompanied one of the Cobden Club's annual dining expeditions to Greenwich. On the voyage out passing Temple Pier, one of the guests fell overboard. At the start on the return journey, another guest, a distinguished Frenchman, stepping aboard as he thought, fell into the gurgling river, and was fished out with a boat-hook. Yet Mr. Potter, President of the Club, largely responsible for the success of the outing, did not on either occasion intermit his beaming smile. He was always ready to be of service in whatsoever unobtrusive manner. The House cherishes tender memories of a scene in 1890. The fight in Committee- room No. 15 had recently closed. Its memories still seared the breasts of the Irish members. Members A Buffer State. THE BUFFER STATE. were never certain that at any moment active hostilities might not commence even under the eye of the Speaker. One night a motion by Mr. John Morley raising the Irish question brought a large muster of the contending forces. Mr. Parnell, who had temporarily withdrawn from the scene, put in an appearance with the rest. He happened to seat 230 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1899 himself on the same bench as Mr. Justin M'Carthy, whom the majority of the Irish members had elected to succeed him in the leadership. Only a narrow space divided the twain. The most apprehensive did not anticipate militant action on the part of Mr. M'Carthy. But, looking at Mr. Parnell's pale, stern face, knowing from report of proceedings in Committee-room No. 1 5 what passion smouldered beneath that mild exterior, timid members thought of what might happen, supposing the two rose together diversely claiming the ear of the House as Leader of the Irish Party. At this moment Mr. T. B. Potter entered and moved slowly up the House like a Thames barge slipping down the river with the tide. He made his way to the bench where the severed Irish Leaders sat, and planted himself out be- tween them, they perforce moving to right and left to make room. Seeing him there, his white waistcoat shimmering in the evening light like the mainsail of an East Indiaman, the House felt that all was well. Mr. Parnell was a long- armed man ; but, under whatsoever stress of passion, he could not get at Mr. M'Carthy across the broad space of the member for Rochdale. Lord Winchilsea sat in this same Parliament as Mr. Finch - Hatton. He early made a promising his mark by a maiden ^*"'^" speech delivered on one of the interminable debates on Egypt. He was content to leave it there, never, as far as I remember, again taking part in set debate. His appearance was striking. Many THE LATE LORD WINCHILSEA. ycars after, he having succeeded to the earldom, I happened to be present when he rose from the luncheon -table at Haver- holme Priory to acknowledge the toast of his health. By accident or design he stood under a contemporary portrait 1899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 231 of his great ancestor, Christopher Hatton, Queen Elizabeth's Lord Chancellor. The likeness between the founder of the family and a scion separated by the space of more than three hundred years was almost startling. Lord Winchilsea aged rapidly. When he made his maiden speech in the House of Commons he had not advanced beyond the stage of the young dandy. His face was a shade of ivory, the pallor made more striking by the coal-black hair. His attitude, like his dress and everything about him, was carefully studied. His left hand, rigidly extended, lightly rested behind his back. His right hand, when not in action, hid its finger-tips in the breast of a closely-buttoned frock-coat. Occasionally he withdrew his hand and made stiff gestures in the air as if he were writing hieroglyphs. Occasionally he emphasised a point by slightly bowing to the amused audience. The matter of his speech was excellent, its form, occasionally, as extravagant as his get-up. The House roared with laughter when Mr. Finch- Hatton, pointing stiff finger- tips at Mr. Gladstone smiling on the Treasury Bench, invited members to visit the Premier on his uneasy couch and watch him moaning and tossing as the long procession of his pallid victims passed before him. This reminiscence of a scene from Richard III. was a great success, though not quite in the manner Mr. Hatton, working it out in his study, had forecast. A man of great natural capacity, wide culture, and, as was shown in his later connection with agriculture, of indomitable industry, he would, having lived down his extravagances, have made a career in the Commons. Called thence by early doom he went to the Lords, and was promptly and finally extinguished. Another old member of the House who died in the recess is Mr. Colman. The great mustard manufacturer, whose name was carried on tin boxes to the Mustered at uttermost ends of the earth, never made his mark ••• ••• coiman's. in the House of Commons. I doubt whether he ever got so 232 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1899 far as to work off his maiden speech. A quiet, kindly, shrewd man of business, he was content to look on whilst others fought and talked. He came too late to the House to be ever thoroughly at one with it, and took an early opportunity of retiring. Mr. Gladstone had a high respect for him, and occasionally visited his beautiful home in Norfolk. One of these occasions became historic by reason of Mr. Gladstone unwittingly making a little joke. Coming down to breakfast one morning, and finding the house-party already gathered in the room, Mr. Gladstone cheerily remarked, " What, are we all mustered ? " He never knew why this innocent observation had such remarkable success with Mr. J. J. Colman's guests. A few more recollections of Mr. Gladstone whilst still in harness. I remember meeting him at a well-known house Mr. Gladstone's during the Midlothian campaign of 1885. He Table-talk, came in to luncheon half an hour late, and was rallied by the host upon his unpunctuality. " You know," he said, " only the other day you lectured us upon the grace of punctuality at luncheon-time." Mr. Gladstone took up this charge with energy familiar at the time in the House of Commons when repelling one of Lord Randolph Churchill's random attacks. Finally, he drew from the host humble confession that he had been in error, that so far from recommending punctuality at luncheon-time he had urged the desirability of absence of formality at the meal. " Any one," he said, " should drop in at luncheon when they please and sit where they please." Through the meal he was in the liveliest humour, talking in his rich, musical voice. After luncheon we adjourned to the library, a room full of old furniture and precious memorials, chiefly belonging to the Stuart times. On the shelves were a multitude of rare books. Mr. Gladstone picked up one, and sitting on a broad window seat, began reading and discoursing about it. Setting out for a walk, 1 899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 233 he was got up in a most extraordinary style. He wore a narrow-skirted square-cut tail-coat, made, I should say, in the same year as the Reform Bill. Over his shoulders hung an inadequate cape, of rough hairy cloth, once in vogue but now little seen. On his head was a white soft felt hat. The back view as he trudged off at four-mile-an-hour pace was irresistible. Mrs. Gladstone watched over him like a hen with its first chicken. She was always pulling up his collar, fastening a button, or putting him to sit in some particular chair out of a draught. These little attentions Mr. Gladstone accepted without remark, with much the placid air a small and good-tempered babe wears when it is being tucked in its cot. In the Session of 1890, Mr. Gladstone rented a house in St. James's AT A FOUR-MILE-AN-HOUR PACE. An old London House. Square, a big roomy, gloomy mansion, built when George I. was King. On the pillars of the porch stand in admirable preservation two of the wrought -iron extinguishers in which in those days the link-boys used to thrust their torches when they had brought master or mistress home, or convoyed a dinner guest. Inside hideous, light-absorbing, flock wall-papers prevailed. One gained an idea — opportunity rare in these days — of the murkiness amid which our grandfathers dwelt. Dining there one night, I found the host made up for all household shortcomings. He talked with unbroken flow of spirits, always having more to say on any subject that turned up, and saying it better, than any expert present. 2 34 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1899 His memory was as amazing as his opportunities of acquiring knowledge had been unique. As we sat at table he, in his eighty-first year, recalled, as if it had happened the day before, an incident that befell Memories of when he was eighteen months old. Prowling Childhood, about the nursery on all fours, there suddenly flashed upon him consciousness of the existence of his nurse, as she towered above him. He remembered her voice and the very pattern of the frock she wore. This was his earliest recollection, his first clear consciousness of exist- ence. His memory of Canning when he stood for Liver- pool in 1 8 1 2 was perfectly clear ; indeed, he was then nearly three years old, and took an intelligent interest in public affairs. Of later date was his recollection of Parliamentary Elections, and the strange processes by which in the good old days they were accomplished. The poll at Liverpool was kept open sometimes for weeks, and the custom was for voters to be shut up in pens ten at a time. At the proper moment they were led out of these enclosures and conducted to the polling-booths, where they recorded their votes. These musters were called " tallies," and the reckoning up of them was a matter watched with breathless interest in the constituency. It was a point of keen competition which side should first land a " tally " at the polling-booth. Mr. Gladstone Doctoring a to^^ with great gusto of an accident that befell Tally. one in the first quarter of the century. The poll opened at eight o'clock in the morning. The Liberals, determined to make a favourable start, marshalled ten voters, and as early as four in the morning filled the pen by the polling-booth. To all appearances the Conservatives were beaten in this first move. But their defeat was only apparent. Shortly after seven o'clock a barrel of beer, conveniently tapped, with mugs handy, was rolled up within hand-reach of the pen, where time hung heavy on the hands of the expectant voters. They naturally regarded this as a delicate attention on the part of their friends, and did full i899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 235 justice to their hospitable forethought. After a while, consternation fell upon them. Man after man hastily withdrew till the pen was empty, and ten Conservatives, waiting in reserve, rushed in and took possession of the place. " The beer," said Mr. Gladstone, laughing till the tears came into his eyes, " had been heavily jalaped." CHAPTER XIX MARCH Writing in an earlier chapter about Mr. Gladstone's first speech in the House of Commons, I quoted a remark made Mr oiad- ^^ ^™ °" perusal of Mr. M'Carthy's preface to stone's Maiden White's Inner Life of the House of Commons. peec . rpj^^ historian of Our Own Times asserted that the speech fell utterly unnoticed. Mr. Gladstone, jealous for the fame of the young member for Newark, corrected this statement with the remark : " My maiden speech was noticed in debate in a marked manner by Mr. Stanley, who was in charge of the Bill." Reading over again the memoirs of the Earl of Albemarle, published more than twenty years ago, and now forgotten, I came upon a passage vividly illustrating contemporary opinion about this, now famous, then, in the main, uneventful, epoch in Parliamentary history. " One evening, on taking my place," Lord Albemarle writes, " I found on his legs a beardless youth, with whose appearance and manner I was greatly struck. He had an earnest, intelligent countenance, and large, expressive black eyes. Young as he was he had evidently what is called ' the ear of the House,' and yet the cause he advocated was not one likely to interest a popular assembly — that of the Planter versus the Slave. I had placed myself behind the Treasury Bench. ' Who is he ? ' I asked one of the Ministers. I was answered, ' He is the member for Newark — a young 236 i899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 237 fellow who will some day make a great figure in Parliament.' My informant was Edward Geoffrey Stanley, then Whig Secretary for the Colonies, and in charge of the Negro Eman- cipation Bill, afterwards Earl of Derby, The young Con- servative orator was William Ewart Gladstone — two states- men who each subsequently became Prime Minister and Leader of the Party to which he was at this time diametri- cally opposed." It is curious to note that Mr. Gladstone, adopting Mr. A consecrated M'Carthy's vcrsion. Error. Jong Current with- out question, speaks of this discourse as " my maiden speech." It was, as contem- porary records show, so ac- cepted by the House. As a matter of fact, supported by the irrefragable testimony of the Mirror of Parliament, his first speech was delivered on the 2 1 st of February 1833, the subject being the alleged discreditable state of things in Liverpool at parliamentary and municipal elections. The speech of the 3rd of June in the same Session, to which Mr. M'Carthy alludes, was delivered in Committee, upon con- sideration of resolutions submitted by Stanley, Colonial Secretary, as a preliminary to the emancipation of the West Indian slaves. On turning back to the Hansard of the day, Mr. Glad- stone's recollection of the Ministerial compliment is fully justified. Evidently it made a deep impression on the mind of the young member, remaining with him for more than sixty years, " If the hon. gentleman will permit me to make the observation," said the Colonial Secretary, " I beg AN EARLY APPEARANCE IN THE PARLIAMENTARY RING. 238 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1899 to say I never listened with greater pleasure to any speech than I did to the speech of the hon. member for Newark, who then addressed the House, I believe, for the first time. He brought forward his case and argued it with a temper, an ability, and a fairness which may well be cited as a good model to many older members of this House, and which hold out to this House and to the country grounds of confident expectation that whatever cause shall have the good fortune of his advocacy will derive from it great support." It will be observed that the Minister spoke without con- tradiction of Mr. Gladstone's speech as his first appearance on the Parliamentary scene, a circumstance which probably did much to crystallise the error. More than a hundred years ago a young Prussian clergy- man, Moritz by name, visited this country, travelling on foot from London through Oxford as far north as Pictures In an ° •, j Old Pariia- Derby and home by Nottingham. He described "*"'■ his impressions in a series of homely letters written to a friend. The book found modest publication, appearing in this country in a slim volume bearing date 1795. Moritz visited the House of Commons, and in his quiet, matter-of-fact way paints the scene in which Pitt, Fox, and Burke loomed large. " Passing through Westminster Hall," he reports, " you ascend a few steps at the end, and are led through a dark passage into the House of Commons." Westminster Hall remains to-day as it was when the quiet-mannered, observant Prussian passed through it. The steps at the end are there, but the House of Commons, to which he presently obtained entrance, was, more than half a century later, burned to the ground. Entrance to the Strangers' Gallery in those days was approached, as it is now, by a small staircase. " The first time I went up this small staircase," says the ingenuous visitor, " and had reached the rails, I saw a very genteel man in black standing there. I accosted him with- out any introduction, and I asked him whether I might be allowed to go into the gallery. He told me that I must be 1 899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 239 introduced by a member, or else I could not get admission there. Now, as I had not the honour to be acquainted with a member, I was under the mortifying necessity of retreating and again going downstairs, as I did much chagrined. And now, as I was sullenly marching back, I heard something said about a bottle of wine which seemed to be addressed to me. I could not conceive what it could mean till I got homie, when my obliging landlady told me I should have given the well-dressed man half- a -crown or a couple of shillings for a bottle of wine. Happy in this information, I went again the next day ; when the same man who before had sent me away, after I had given him only two shillings, very politely opened the door for me, and himself recom- mended me to a good seat in the gallery." Strangers visiting the House of Commons will know how far we have advanced beyond the level of morality here indicated. Mr. Moritz found the House of Commons " rather a mean-looking building, not a little resembling a chapel. The Speaker, an elderly man with an enormous wig with two knotted kind of tresses, or curls, behind, in a black cloak, his hat on his head, sat opposite to me on a lofty chair." The Speaker of the House of Commons long ago removed his hat, which in modern Parliament- ary proceedings appears only when he produces it from an unsuspected recess and uses it pointing to members when he counts the House. " The members of the House of Com- M.P. , OLDEN TIME. 240 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1899 mons," he notes, "have nothing particular in their dress. They even come into the House in their great-coats with boots and spurs," which to-day would be thought a something very particular indeed. " It is not at all uncommon to see a member lying stretched out on one of the benches whilst others are debating. Some crack nuts, others eat oranges, or whatever else is in season." We have changed all that. During the all-night sittings in the heyday of the Land League Party an Irish member brought a paper bag of buns with him, and proceeded to refresh himself in the intervals of speech-making. This outrage on the Constitution was swiftly and sternly rebuked from the Chair, and was never repeated. Another old-world custom of the House noted by the stranger who looked down from the gallery a hundred and seventeen years ago was that members addressing their remarks to the Speaker prefaced them, as they do at this day, with the observation " Sir." " The Speaker on being thus addressed generally moves his hat a little, but immediately puts it on again." The Speaker not now wearing a hat cannot observe this courteous custom. But it exists to this day among members generally. A member referred to by another in the course of his speech always lifts his hat, in recognition of the attention, complimentary or otherwise. In the House of Lords, more conservative of old customs than the Commons, the Lord Chancellor is upon certain occasions seen of men with a three-cornered hat crowning his full-bottomed wig. This happens when new peers take the oath and their seat. As the new peer is conducted on his quaint peregrination and salutes the Lord Chancellor from the Barons' or Earls' bench, to which he has been inducted, the Lord Chancellor responds by thrice gravely uplifting his three-cornered hat. Another time when he wears his hat in the House is when acting with other Royal Commissioners at the opening of Parliament, at its Prorogation, or at the giving the Royal Assent to Bills. The Prussian chanced to visit the House on the historic occasion when proposal was made for doing honour to 1899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 241 Admiral Rodney, the gallant victor at Cape St, Vincent. "Fox," Mr. Moritz reports, "was sitting to the charies right of the Speaker, not far from the table on Ja^^ pox. which the gilt sceptre lay. He now took his place so near it that he could reach it with his hand, and, thus placed, he gave it many a violent and hearty thump, either to aid or to show the energy with which he spoke. It is impossible for me to describe with what fire and persuasive eloquence he spoke, and how the Speaker in the Chair inces- santly nodded approbation from beneath his solemn wig. Innumerable voices in- cessantly called out, ' Hear him ! hear him ! ' and when there was the least sign that he intended to leave off speaking they no less vo- ciferously exclaimed, ' Go on.' speak in this manner for nearly two hours." " Charles Fox," writes this precursor of picturesque description of Parliamentary proceedings, " is a short, fat, and gross man, with a swarthy complexion, and dark ; and in general he is badly dressed. There certainly is something Jewish in his looks. But upon the whole he is not an ill- made, nor an ill-looking, man, and there are strong marks of sagacity and fire in his eyes. Burke is a well-made, tall, upright man, but looks elderly and broken. Rigby is excessively corpulent, and has a jolly, rubicund face." Mr. Moritz makes the interesting note that when the division on the Rodney vote was pending, ..gj^^^ ^^^ members, turning their faces towards the gallery, wui with- called aloud, "Withdraw! Withdraw!" "On ""'*'•" this," he writes, " the strangers withdraw, and are shut up R CHARLES JAMES FOX. (.From an Old Portrait.) And so he continued to 242 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1899 in a small room at the foot of the stairs till the voting is over, when they are again permitted to take their places in the gallery." In our time, strangers in the gallery, despite the Speaker's order to withdraw, retain their seats. Only those who, with pride of port, have been conducted to the special seats under the gallery are marched out, conducted across the lobby, and left outside the locked doors till the division is over. According to Mr. Moritz's testimony, the Strangers' Galleries were not exclusively allotted to men, ladies mingling in the closely-packed company. The old House of Commons had no Ladies' Gallery. There was, of course, no such thing as a Press Gallery in the days before the earlier Revolution in France. " Two Reporters shorthand writers," says the stranger in the In the House, gallery, whose quick glance nothing escapes, " have sat sometimes not far distant from me, who, though it is rather by stealth, endeavour to take down the words of the speaker. Thus all that is very remarkable in what is said in Parliament may generally be read in print the next day." Dr. Johnson often sat in this gallery, though he did not use shorthand in reporting the speeches. The omission would doubtless be to the advantage of some speakers. Mr. Moritz heard that those in constant attendance with '^^lll/SirB *^^ object of reporting the 'l|IHllllilllfl///lllm debates paid the door-keeper a guinea for the privilege of DR. JOHNSON WATCHING PARLIAMENT. ^^^ Scssiou. The fee was paid in advance. There was no Strangers' Gallery in the House of Peers at that time, but the irresistible Prussian gained admission. He writes : " There appears to be much more politeness and more courteous behaviour with the members of the i899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 243 Upper House. But he who wishes to observe mankind and to contemplate the leading traits of the different characters most strongly marked, will do well to attend frequently the lower rather than the upper House." Those familiar with both Houses of Parliament will know how admirably this shrewd advice pertains to the present day. The Session is already three weeks old, but the lobby has not yet lost a certain sense of desolateness since Baron Baron F^rdy Rothschild ^ "Ferdy." comes not any more. He was not, in the ordinary sense of the term, a Parliamentary figure. I have no recollection of hearing him make a speech. He was not given to sitting up late at night in order to save the State or (the same thing) serve his party. But he was a man of wide human sympathies, and the House of Commons, microcosm of humanity, irresistibly attracted him. His habit of an afternoon was to enter the lobby, generally after questions were over. With one hand in his pocket, and a smile on his face, he made straightway for a friend, standing in an accus- tomed spot by the doorkeeper's chair, and " wanted to know " everything that had happened since the House met, and what was going on next. Baron Ferdy, otherwise a distinct individuality in his notable family, had, in marked degree, their characteristic of acquiring information. He always " wanted to know." This habitude was indicative of the universality of his sympathy. He was one of the most 1 Baron Ferdinand Rothschild, died 1898, BARON "FERDY. 244 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1899 unaffectedly kind-hearted men I ever knew. Looking in upon him one morning in his study at Waddesdon, I found him seated before two heaps of opened letters, one very much smaller than the other. " All begging letters," he said, glancing, with a faint smile, towards the larger bundle. Undeterred by their predominance and persistency, Baron Ferdy had, in accordance with his custom, spent an early hour of the morning in going through them himself, fearful lest he might miss a genuine case of distress that he could alleviate. It was not money only he bestowed. Out of its abund- ance a cheque more or less was nothing. More self-sacrificing, His Ways of ^^ gave time and personal attention, not shrinking Charity, from putting himself under a personal obligation in order to assist some one who really had no claim upon him. The longest letter I ever had from him begged me to obtain an appointment on the London Press for a country journalist. He followed it up with renewed personal applica- tions, impatiently treating my plea that, there being no vacancy within my knowledge, it would not be possible violently to supersede any one of the leading contributors to London journals in order to make room for his protege. Judging from the ardour of the pursuit, I concluded the gentleman in question must in some way be closely connected with the Baron or his establishment. On inquiry I found he had never seen him — knew nothing about him save particulars set forth in a letter the youth had written to him. It was the old story of unrest and yearning ambition, familiar to all of us who have served on the treadmill of the Press. It was new to Baron Ferdy. It touched his kind heart, and he espoused the youth's cause with fervour that could not have been excelled had he been a kinsman. Another of his quiet kindnesses, of which I had personal knowledge, befell on the day of the wedding of the Duchess ■■A Cup of of York. He had invited a few friends to view Water." the scene from the balcony of his mansion in Piccadilly. The crowd at this favoured spot, commanding the d^bouchemmt from Constitution Hill, was enormous, i899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 245 The day was intensely hot, men and women fainting in the crowd, gasping for water. Baron Ferdy, observing this from the balcony, ran downstairs, ordered the servants to bring buckets of fresh water into the barricaded space before the house, and stationed two of them in a position overlooking the barricade, whence they could hand down tumblers of water to the thirsty and grateful crowd. Last year but one, on the occasion of the Queen's Golden Jubilee, Baron Ferdy, never neglectful of opportunity to do a kindness, made, in advance, preparations for relieving the discomfort of the crowd at his gates. Finding in the course of the day that the police on duty had had nothing to eat since they turned out in the morning, he, as soon as the business of the day was over, sent out into the highways and byways, and compelled the not unwilling police to come in and partake of the remains of the sumptuous banquet he had prepared by way of luncheon for his personal friends, watching the scene from the balcony. These are but trifling things. 1 tell them as happening to have come under my personal observation. They are indicative of the sweetness of Baron Ferdy's nature, the boundless charity of his disposition. The catalogue would be indefinitely extended if every one who knew him were to contribute his item. The House of Commons could better have spared a more prominent politician, a more frequent contributor to its daily debates. It would be interesting to know whether, in all respects, Scotland stands where it did since the salary of its Heritable Usher is no longer carried on the books of the ^^^ Heritable Consolidated Fund. What were precisely the usheroi duties of the Heritable Usher is not known. Long ago the inheritor did his last ushering, his heirs selling for a considerable mess of pottage the salary pertaining to the office. It was created in the year 1393, and by solemn Act of the Parliament of Scotland was conferred upon Alexander Cockburn, of Langton, and his heirs. Subsequent Acts of the Scottish Parliament, passed in 1681 and 1686, confirmed 246 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1899 the original grant, the latter Act attaching a salary of ;^2SO a year to the office. When the Union of England and Scotland was effected the Heritable Usher, with many similar useful persons, was established in possession of his dignity and emoluments by a special clause in the Treaty of Union providing that " all heritable offices, superiorities, etc., being reserved to the owners thereof as rights of property in the same manner as they are now enjoyed by the laws of Scotland, notwithstanding of this treaty." At the beginning of the century the office with the salary, being a marketable commodity, was acquired by one Sir A KEEN SCENT FOE JOBS (MR. HANBURY). Patrick Walker, who, with nice precision, paid a sum equivalent to 31^ years' purchase. The office and, what is much more important, the salary finally came into the possession of the Dean and Chapter of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Mary's, Edinburgh. Mr. Hanbury, who, in this capacity of Financial Secretary to the Treasury, has a keen scent for these ancient jobs, has concluded a trans- action for the computation of the salary. The Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral of St. Mary's will pouch a trifle under £7000, and the Heritable Usher of Scotland will be ushered into final obscurity. It will be a nice task for any boy home for the holidays to reckon up with compound interest what the Heritable i899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 247 Usher of Scotland has cost Great Britain since he stepped on the scene in the year of Our Lord 1393. This transaction has been conducted in pursuance of a Treasury Minute founded upon the report of a House of Commons' Committee which met twelve years . , , , . , , . Plodden Field. ago to consider the subject of perpetual pensions. They recommend that holders of pension allowances or payments which the Law Officers of the Crown consider to be permanent in character, but to which no obligation of an onerous kind attaches, should be invited to commute. CHAPTER XX APRIL There is a general impression that Lord Rosebery's accession to the Premiership in 1 894 was directly and absolutely , , , A Surprise. due to Mr. Gladstone's nomina- tion. The fact is the appointment was made on the personal initiative of the Queen. The selec- tion of the Prime Minister remains, even in these demo- cratic days, the abso- lute prerogative of the Sovereign. But the prerogative is not now enforced in antagonism to the obvious drift of popular feeling. The last time it was exercised in anything approaching autocratic manner happened sixty- five years ago, when William IV. was King. When Lord Althorp (of whom we had in the 248 9^ LORD ALTHORP (AFTER H. K.B. ). 1 899 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 249 House of Commons a singularly close replica in the person of Lord Hartington) went to the House of Lords it became necessary to ap- point a successor ,' '"•ow him." as his successor, he said, " I daresay he is a very good man, but I don't happen ever to have seen him.' " A moment's reflection will show that unless Disraeli is assumed to have told a deliberate and purposeless falsehood, this rumour cannot be true. At the time of his election to 326 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1900 the Chair, Mr. Brand had held a seat in the House of Commons for twenty years. For nine, from 1859 to 1868, he was chief Whip of the Liberal Party. Concurrently Mr. Disraeli was in succession Chancellor of the Exchequer, Prime Minister, and Leader of the House. To suppose the Leader of the House of Commons " didn't happen ever to have seen " the Opposition Whip, one of whose duties is to march up to the Table with the other tellers on big party divisions, is too great a strain on credulity. It is, however, true that when the present Speaker's name came to the front, as the Government nominee for the Chair vacated by Mr. Peel, there were many members who would have been nonplussed if they had been called upon to pick him out. I remember, A dark Horse. ' DO YOU KNOW HIM ? ' ' NO ! DO YOU ? " shortly after his election, Mr. Arthur Balfour telling me that, at dinner on the evening of the day authoritative notice was published of intention to nominate Mr. Gully for the Chair, Mr. Chamberlain asked him what sort of a man the candi- date was. Mr. Balfour was obliged to admit that as far as he knew he had never set eyes upon him, Mr. Chamberlain confessing to a similar state of ignorance. There is a well-known case of an Irish member in the 1880 Parliament, observing the precaution of posting to his 19CX) LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 327 local paper the full text of a speech he intended to make on a particular night. He failed to catch the Speaker's eye. But his speech duly appeared, to the delight and pride of his constituents, richly lined with notes of " cheers," " much laughter," and " loud cheers." There is nothing new under the sun. A similar accident befell another and a greater Irishman. It was otherwise notable for the fact that it led to Thackeray's Thackeray's first appearance in print. It befell when he was first "Pome." a lad, some fifteen years old, staying with his stepfather. Major Smyth, who, turning his sword into a ploughshare, settled down as a gentleman farmer in Devonshire. Ottery St. Mary is the name of the district in the matter-of-fact Postal Guide. Later, in a work of even greater circula- tion, it became famous as Clavering St. Mary, " the little old town " in which Pendennis was born. It happened that Lalor Shell, the Irish orator, proposed to advocate the policy of emancipation at a mass meeting on Penenden Heath, in Kent, When he presented himself to deliver his discourse there burst forth an outcry that prevented a sentence being heard beyond the limits of the cart on which he stood. Happily he had observed the precaution before leaving town of sending to the morning papers a copy of his projected speech. Accordingly, though unspoken at Peneden, it appeared in the morning news- papers in verbatim form. Boy Thackeray thus described the incident : — He strove to speak, but the men of Kent Began a grievous shouting ; When out of the waggon the little man went And put a stop to his spouting. " What though these heretics heard me not," Quoth he to his friend Canonical, " My speech is safe in the Times, I wot. And eke in the Morning Chronicle." At best, Lalor Shell was not equipped by Nature for the difficult task of addressing a mass meeting out of doors. 328 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1900 Mr. Gladstone, who heard many of his speeches, and had a A Note of profound admiration for his eloquence, described Heredity, hig yoicc as " resembling the sound of a tin kettle beaten about from place to place." There is a curious note of heredity in the fact that his kinsman and successor in the House of Commons, Mr. Edward Shell, was equally weak in the matter of voice. Once he managed to deliver a long speech without sound of voice. He acted as Whip to the Party, a post for which he had the prime qualification of being popular on both sides of the House. As Whip, he was not expected to contribute to the campaign of speech-making carried on by his colleagues with a view to obstructing public business. As a rule he availed himself of his privilege, remaining a silent spectator of the fun. One night, after prolonged sitting, when the ordinary contributors to speech-making from the Irish side were worn out, Mr. Shell gallantly undertook to hold the field whilst his comrades had a brief rest. He rose from the third bench below the gangway on the Opposition side. The Speaker had called him ; he was in possession of the House, and members turned with languid interest to hear what he might have to say. A dead silence fell over the Chamber. Members looking more closely to see why Mr. Shell had not commenced his speech observed that his lips were moving. Also, from time to time, he with outstretched arm enforced by gesture a point he thought he had made. But not a whisper escaped his lips. After a while members beginning to enter into the fun of the thing cried, " Hear ! hear ! " Thus encouraged, Mr. Shell's oratorical action became more forcible and frequent, but never a sound from his lips was heard. The scene went on for fully a quarter of an hour, amid rapturous cheering from thfe delighted House, Mr. Shell resuming his seat with the air of a man who felt he had spoken to the point. Among Lord Granville's papers (when are we to have 190O LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 329 his Memoirs ? ) will be found a letter written to him by the late Lord Stanhope, dated from " Chevening, ^ ^j^^^^ ^^^^^ October 1866." Lord Granville had recently on waimer come into the office, more prized than the Foreign Seal, of Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. The late Lord Stanhope was born almost within the precincts of Waimer Castle, Mr. Pitt, then Lord Warden, having on their marriage lent his father and mother the cottage which stands close to the entrance of the Castle grounds from the village side. As one familiar with Waimer Castle in the time of Pitt and the Duke of Wellington, Lord Granville asked Earl Stanhope to give him a few notes on the subject, a task cheerfully undertaken by the historian and genially accomplished. One of the distinctions of Waimer Castle is that on a treeless coast its grounds are umbrageous. It was Pitt who planted the trees, though he did not live long , . ,1.11 T^- • 1 M Pitt's Room. enough to sit under their shade, ritt, with all the Castle wherein to choose, selected a curious room as his own. He might have had one facing either the sea or the south. His room to this day looks into the moat, and is faced by the dead wall that guards it. For more than thirty years the room was left exactly as it was when Pitt lay down in it for the last time. The Queen and Prince Consort spent a portion of their honeymoon at Waimer Castle. In anticipation of the event a new dining-room was contrived by knocking down the wall of Pitt's room and joining it to the next one. When the young couple left the wall was rebuilt, and to-day Pitt's room is — or was in Lord Dufiferin's day when I was a guest at the Castle — the habitat of the housekeeper. Long before her time the room had quite another occupant. Lord Stanhope, in the letter quoted from, says : " Wellington told me that when he received a visit from Prince Talleyrand at Waimer Castle, Talleyrand asked particularly to occupy Mr. Pitt's room, and seemed to live there in some sense of triumph. His idea was that he had been treated rather slightingly by Mr. Pitt when he came 330 LATER PEEPS AT PARLIAMENT 1900 over as secretary to M. Chacevelin in 1792, and that to sleep in his rival's bed was like taking a revanche!' That is, perhaps, rather a fanciful conclusion. In the circumstances Pitt's profounder sleep was not likely to be ^^^P 1 ^^^^^^^^^^^ wm pSB *