"No, sir," said the man. "Lord Richard Grosvenor sent me to bring Mr. ——— down to the House, and said I was not to come away without him."
"Ah, well, you can go off now; the House is up."
Mr. ———, it turned out on subsequent inquiry, had gone down to Brighton with his family, and the servants left at home did not think it necessary to answer a bell rung at this untimely hour.
"PAIRED FOR THE NIGHT." It was about the same time, in the Parliament of 1880, that another messenger from Government Whip went forth in the early morning in search of a member. He lived in Queen Anne's Mansions, and the messenger explaining the urgency of his errand, the night porter conducted him to the bedroom door of the sleeping senator. Succeeding in awakening him, he delivered his message.
"Give my compliments to Lord Richard Grosvenor," said the wife of the still somnolent M.P.; "tell him my husband has gone to bed, and is paired for the night."
Mr. Jacoby.
BARE-HEADED. It is an old tradition, observed to this day, though the origin of it is lost in the obscurity of the Middle Ages, that a Whip shall not appear in the Lobby with his head covered. It is true Mr. Marjoribanks does not observe this rule, but he is alone in the exception. All his predecessors, as far as I can remember, conformed to the regulation. In the last Parliament the earliest intimation of the formation of a new Radical party was the appearance in the Lobby of Mr. Jacoby without his hat. Inquiry excited by this phenomenon led to the disclosure that the Liberal opposition had broken off into a new section. There was some doubt as to who was the leader, but none as to the fact that Mr. Jacoby and Mr. Philip Stanhope were the Whips. Mr. Stanhope was not much in evidence. But on the day Mr. Jacoby accepted the appointment he locked up his hat and patrolled the Lobby with an air of sagacity and an appearance of brooding over State secrets, which at once raised the new party into a position of importance.
Dick Power, most delightful of Irishmen, most popular of Whips, made through the Session regular play with his hat. Anyone familiar with his habits would know how the land lay from the Irish quarter. If Mr. Power appeared hatless in the Lobby, a storm was brewing, and before the Speaker left the chair there would, so to speak, be wigs on the green. If his genial face beamed from under his hat as he walked about the Lobby the weather was set fair, at least for the sitting.
"Skulking out."
THE WINSOME WIGGIN. One of the duties of the junior Whips is to keep sentry-go at the door leading from the Lobby to the cloak-room, and so out into Palace Yard. When a division is expected, no member may pass out unless he is paired. That is not the only way by which which escape from the House may be made. A member desirous of evading the scrutiny of the Whips might find at least two other ways of quitting the House. It is, however, a point of honour to use only this means of exit, and no member under whatsoever pressure would think of skulking out.
For many nights through long Sessions, Lord Kensington sat on the bench to the left of the doorway, a terror to members who had pressing private engagements elsewhere, when a division was even possible. There is only one well-authenticated occasion when a member, being unpaired, succeeded in getting past Lord Kensington, and the result was not encouraging.
One night, Mr. Wiggin (now Sir Henry), the withdrawal of whose genial presence from the Parliamentary scene is regretted on both
