From Behind the Speaker's Chair.
II.
(VIEWED BY HENRY W. LUCY.)
OOKING round the House of Commons now gathered for its second Session, one is struck by the havoc death and other circumstances have made with the assembly that filled the same chamber twenty years ago, when I first looked on from behind the Speaker's Chair. Parliament, like the heathen goddess, devours its own children. But the rapidity with which the process is completed turns out on minute inquiry to be a little startling. Of the six hundred and seventy members who form the present House of Commons, how many does the Speaker suppose sat with him in the Session of 1873?
The Speaker.
Mr. Peel himself was then in the very prime of life, had already been eight years member for Warwick, by favour and of his father's old friend and once young disciple, held the office of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. Members, if they paid any attention to the unobtrusive personality seated at the remote end of the Treasury Bench, never thought the day would come when the member for Warwick would step into the Chair and rapidly establish a reputation as the best Speaker of modern times.
I have a recollection of seeing Mr. Peel stand at the table answering a question connected with his department; but I noticed him only because he was the youngest son of the great Sir Robert Peel, and was a striking contrast to his brother Robert, a flamboyant personage who at that time filled considerable space below the gangway.
Sir Robert Peel.
In addition to Mr. Peel there are in the present House of Commons exactly fifty-one members who sat in Parliament in the Session of 1873—fifty-two out of six hundred and fifty-eight as the House of that day was numbered. Ticking them off in alphabetical order, the first of the Old Guard, still hale and enjoying the respect and esteem of members on both sides of the House, is Sir Walter Barttelot. As Colonel Barttelot he was known to the Parliament of 1873. But since then, to quote a phrase he has emphatically reiterated in the ears of many Parliaments, he has "gone one step farther," and become a baronet.
Sir W. Barttelot.
This tendency to forward movement seems to have been hereditary; Sir Walter's father, long honourably known as Smyth, going "one step farther" and assuming the name of Barttelot. Colonel Barttelot did not loom large in the Parliament of 1868-74, though he was always ready to do sentry duty on nights when the House was in Committee on the Army Estimates. It was the Parliament of 1874-80, when the air was full of rumours of war, when Russia and Turkey clutched each other by the throat at Plevna, and when the House of Commons, meeting for ordinary business, was one night startled by news that the Russian Army was at the gates of Constantinople—it was then Colonel Barttelot's military experience (chiefly gained in discharge of his duties as Lieutenant-Colonel of the Second Battalion Sussex Rifle Volunteers) was lavishly placed at the disposal of the House and the country.
When Disraeli was going out of office he made the Colonel a baronet, a distinction the more honourable to both since Colonel Barttelot, though a loyal Conservative, was never a party hack.
Sir Michael Beach sat for East Gloucestershire
