The Strand Magazine/Volume 5/Issue 28/From Behind the Speaker's Chair
From Behind the Speaker's Chair.
IV.
(VIEWED BY HENRY W. LUCY.)
ABOUT INDENTED HEADINGS. I SUPPOSE if anyone has a right to indulge in the convenience of indented headings when writing a discursive article, I may claim a share in the privilege. When I retired from the editorship of a morning newspaper, a not obtrusively friendly commentator wrote that my chief claim to be remembered in that connection was that I had invented sign-posts for leading articles. But he was careful to add, lest I should be puffed up, this was not sufficient to establish editorial reputation.
Indented headings.
It is true; but it is interesting to observe how the way thus adventured upon has grown crowded. The abstentions indicate a curious and interesting habitude ingrained in the English Press. Whilst most of the weekly papers, not only in the provinces but in London, have adopted the new fashion, no daily paper in London, and in the country only one here and there, has followed it. That is a nice distinction, illustrating a peculiarity of our honoured profession. As it was a daily paper that made the innovation, weekly papers may, without loss of dignity, adopt the custom as their own. But it is well known that, in London at least, there is only one daily paper, and that is the "We" speaking from a particular address, located somewhere between Temple Bar and St. Paul's.
"contemp(t)oraries."
Argal, it is impossible that this peculiarly situated entity should borrow from other papers. Yet I once heard the manager of what we are pleased to call the leading journal confess he envied the Daily News' side-headings to its leaders, and regretted the impossibility of adapting them for his own journal. That was an opinion delivered in mufti. In full uniform, no manager―certainly no editor―of another morning paper is aware of the existence of the Daily News; the Daily News, on its part, being courageously steeped in equally dense ignorance of the existence of other journals.
Few things are so funny as the start of surprise with which a London journal upon rare occasion finds itself face to face with a something that also appears every morning at a price varying from a penny to threepence. Nothing will induce it to give the phenomenon a name, and it distantly alludes to it as "a contemporary." This is quite peculiar to Great Britain, and is in its way akin to the etiquette of the House of Commons, which makes it a breach of order to refer to a member by his proper name. It does not exist in France or the United States, and there are not lacking signs that the absurd lengths to which it has hitherto been carried out in the English Press are being shortened.
SIR WALTER BARTTELOT. But that is an aside, meant only to introduce an old friend in a new place. I was going to explain how it came about that, in the mid-February issue of The Strand Magazine, the name of Sir Walter Barttelot should appear in the list of members of the present House of Commons who had seats in the House in 1873, and that another number of the Magazine has been issued without the correction, widely made elsewhere, being noted. It is due simply to the fact of the phenomenal circulation of a magazine which, in order to be out to date, requires its contributors to send in their copy some two months in advance.
It is not too late to say a word about the late member for Sussex, a type rapidly disappearing from the Parliamentary stage. He entered the House thirty-three years ago, when Lord Palmerston was Premier, Mr. Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir George Cornewall Lewis was at the Home Office, and Lord John Russell looked after Foreign Affairs.
The House of Commons was a different place in those days, the heritage of the classes, a closed door against any any son of the masses. Sir Walter was born a country gentleman, his natural prejudices not being smoothed down by a term of service in the Dragoon Guards. He was not a brilliant man, nor, beyond the level attainments of a county magistrate, an able one. But he was thoroughly honest; suspected himself of ingrained prejudice, and always fought against it. He suffered and learnt much during his long Parliamentary life.
"Anticipation."
"Reality."
One of the earliest shocks dealt him was the appearance in the House of Mr. Chamberlain, newly elected for Birmingham. It is difficult at this time of day to realize the attitude in which the gentlemen of England sixteen years ago stood towards the statesman who is now proudly numbered in their ranks. When he presented himself to be sworn in, it was one of the jokes of the day that Sir Walter Barttelot expected he would approach the Table making "a cart-wheel" down the floor, as ragged little boys disport themselves along the pavement when a drag or omnibus passes. Sir Walter was genuinely surprised to find in the fearsome Birmingham Radical a quietly dressed, well-mannered, almost boyish-looking man, who spoke in a clear, admirably pitched voice, and opposed the Prisons Bill, then under discussion, on the very lines from which Sir Walter had himself attacked it when it was brought in during the previous Session.
It was characteristic of this fine old English gentleman that, having done a man an injustice by unconsciously forming a wrong opinion about him, he hastened forthwith to make amends.
"If," he said, when Mr. Chamberlain had resumed his seat, "the hon. member for Birmingham will always address the House with the same quietness, and with the same intelligence displayed on this occasion, I can assure him the House of Commons will always be ready to listen to him."
This is delicious, looking back over the years, watching Mr. Chamberlain's soaring flight, and thinking of the good county member thus loftily patronizing him. But it was a bold thing to be said at that time of Mr. Chamberlain by Sir Walter Barttelot, and some friends who sat near him thought his charity had led him a little too far.
The Sussex squire was of fine nature—simple, ever ready to be moved by generous impulses. There were two men coming across the moonlight orbit of his Parliamentary life whose conduct he detested, and whose influence he feared. One was Mr. Parnell, the other Mr. Bradlaugh. Yet when the Commission acquitted Mr. Parnell of the charges brought against him by the forged letters, Sir Walter Barttelot sought him out in the Lobby, publicly shook hands with him, and congratulated him upon the result of the inquiry. When Mr. Bradlaugh lay on his death-bed, on the very night the House of Commons was debating the resolution to expunge from the Order Book the dictum that stood there through eleven years, declaring him ineligible either to take the oath or to make affirmation, Sir Walter Barttelot appealed to the House unanimously to pass the motion, concluding his remarks with emphatic expression of the hope that "God would spare Mr. Bradlaugh's life."
Sir Walter never recovered from the blow dealt by the death of his son in Africa, aggravated as the sorrow was by the controversy which followed. Of late years he spoke very little; but in the Parliaments of 1874-80 and 1880-85 he was a frequent participator in debate. He was no orator, nor did he contribute original ideas to current discussion. Moreover, what he had to say was so tortured by the style of delivery that it lost something of whatever force naturally belonged to it.
I have a verbatim note taken fifteen years ago of a speech delivered in the House of Commons by Sir Walter, which faintly echoes an oratorical style whose master is no longer with us. It lacks the inconsequential emphasis, the terrific vigour of the gesture, and the impression conveyed by the speaker's intense earnestness, that really, by-and-by, he would say something, which compelled the attention of new members and strangers in the gallery. But if the reader imagines portentous pauses represented by the hyphens, and the deepening to tragic tones of the words marked in italics, he may in some measure realize the effect.
"Shadows."
The speech from which this passage was taken was delivered in debate upon a resolution moved by Mr. Forster on the Cattle Plague Orders. Whenever in the passage Mr. Forster is personally alluded to it is necessary, in order to full realization of the scene, to picture Sir Walter shaking a minatory forefinger, sideways, at the right hon. gentleman, not looking at him, but pointing him out to the scorn of mankind and the reprobation of country gentlemen:
"Yet he knows [here the finger wags]—and—knows full well—in the—position he occupies—making a proposal of this kind—must be one—which—must be—fatal—to—the Bill. No one knows better than the right hon. gentleman—that when—he—raises a great question of this kind—upon a Bill of this sort—namely upon the second reading—of—this Bill—that that proposal—that he makes—is absolutely against the principle—of—the Bill. Now, I—de—ny that the principle—of this Bill—is confined—and is to be found—in the 5th Schedule—of—the Bill."
A few minutes later an illustration occurred to the inspired orator, and was thus brought under the notice of the entranced House:—
"Now, Denmark—it is a remark—able country, is Den—mark—for—we have little—or no—dis—ease from Den—mark. The importation—from Den—mark—is something like fifty-six—thousand—cattle—and the curious part of it is this, that nineteen—thousand—of these—were—cows—and these cows came—to—this country—and—had been allowed to go—all over—this country—and—I have never yet heard—that these cows—that—have so—gone over this country—have spread any disease—in this country—."
This was a mannerism which amused the House at the time, but did nothing to obscure the genuine qualities of Sir Walter, or lessen the esteem in which he was held. It cannot be said that the House of Commons was habitually moved by his argument in debate. But he was held in its warmest esteem, and his his memory will long be cherished as linked with the highest type of English country gentleman.
THE PAYMENT OF MEMBERS. At this time of writing there is talk in the House about payment of members. A private member has placed on the paper a resolution affirming the desirability of adopting the principle, and it is even said—(which I take leave to doubt)—that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has a card up his sleeve intended to win this game. It would be rash to predict stubborn resistance on the part of a body that has so often proved itself open to conviction as has the House of Commons. But I should say that to secure this end it would need a tussle quite as prolonged and as violent as has raged round Home Rule. Lowering and widening the suffrage has done much to alter the personal standard of the House of Commons. Nothing achieved through these sixty years would in its modifying effect equal the potency of the change wrought by paying members.
"A personal standard."
One illustration is found in the assertion, made with confidence, that under such a system the House would know no more men of the type of Sir Walter Barttelot. He was not the highest form of capacity, knowledge, or intelligence. But he was of the kind that gives to the House of Commons the lofty tone it speedily regains even after a paroxysm of post-prandial passion. The House of Commons is unique in many ways. I believe the main foundation of the position it holds among the Parliaments of the world is this condition of volunteered unremunerated service.
In spite of sneers from disappointed or flippant persons, a seat in the House of Commons still remains one of the highest prizes of citizen life. When membership becomes a business, bringing in say £6 a week, the charm will be gone. As things stand, there is reason why any constituency desiring to do so may not return a member on the terms of paying him a salary. It is done in several cases, in two at least with the happiest results. It would be a different thing to throw the whole place open with standing advertisement for eligible members at a salary of £300 a year, paid quarterly. The horde of impecunious babblers and busybodies attracted by such a bait would trample down the class of men who compose the present House of Commons, and who are, in various ways, at touch with all the multiform interests of the nation.
A surprise.
HATS AND SEATS. The great hat question which agitated the House of Commons at the commencement of the new Session, even placing Home Rule in a secondary position, has subsided, and will probably not again be heard of during the existence of the present Parliament. Whilst yet to the fore it was discussed with vigour and freshness; but it is no new thing. With the opening Session of every Parliament the activity and curiosity of new members lead to inconvenient crowding of a chamber that was not constructed to seat 670 members. In the early days of the 1880 Parliament the hat threatened to bring about a crisis. One evening Mr. Mitchell Henry startled the House by addressing the Speaker from a side gallery. This of itself was regarded as a breach of order, and many members expected the Speaker would peremptorily interfere. But Mr. Mitchell Henry, an old Parliamentary hand, knew he was within his right in speaking from this unwonted position. The side galleries as far down as the Bar are as much within the House as is the Treasury Bench, and though orators frequenting them would naturally find a difficulty in catching the Speaker's eye, there is no other reason why they should not permanently occupy seats there.
Mr. Mitchell Henry explained that he spoke from this place because he could not find any other. He had come down in ordinarily good time to take his seat, and found all the benches on the floor appropriated by having hats planted out along them. In each hat was fixed a card, indicating the name of the owner. What had first puzzled Mr. Henry, and upon reflection led him to the detection of systematic fraud, was meeting in remote parts of the House, even in the street, members who went about wearing a hat, although what purported to be their headgear was being used to stake out a claim in the Legislative Chamber. Mr. Henry made the suggestion that only what he called "the working hat" should be recognised as an agent in securing a seat.
The non-working hat—Unionist.
The strict morality of this arrangement was acquiesced in, and its adoption generally approved. But nothing practical came of it. By-and-by, in the ordinary evolution of things, the pressure of competition for seats died off, and the supernumerary hat disappeared from the scene. This Session the ancient trouble returned with increased force, owing to the peculiar circumstances in which political parties are subdivided. The Irish members insisting upon retaining their old seats below the gangway to the left of the Speaker, there was no room for the Dissentient Liberals to range themselves in their proper quarters on the Opposition side. They, accordingly, moved over with the Liberals, and appropriated two benches below the gangway, thus driving a wedge of hostile force into the very centre of the Ministerial ranks. It was the Radical quarter that was thus invaded, and its occupants were not disposed tamely to submit to the incursion. The position was to be held only by strategy. Hence the historic appearance on the scene on the first day of the Session of Mr. Austen Chamberlain with relays of hats, which he set out along the coveted benches, and so secured them for the sitting. On the other side of the House a similar contest was going forward between the Irish Nationalist members, represented by Dr. Tanner, and their Ulster brethren, who acknowledge a leader in Colonel Saunderson.
The non-working hat—Irish.
These tactics are made possible by the peculiar, indeed unique, arrangement by which seats are secured in the House of Commons. In all other Legislative Assemblies in the world each member has assigned to him a seat and desk, reserved for him as long as he is a member. That would be an impossible arrangement in the House of Commons, for the sufficient reason that while there are 670 duly returned members, there is not sitting room for much more than half the number. When a member of the House of Commons desires to secure a particular seat for a given night he must be in his place at prayer time, which on four days a week is at three o'clock in the afternoon. On the fifth day, Wednesday, prayers are due at noon. At prayer time, and only then, there are obtainable tickets upon which a member may write his name, and, sticking the pasteboard in the brass frame at the back of the seat, is happy for the night.
Where, what Mr. Mitchell Henry called, the non-working hat comes in is in the practice of members gathering before prayer time and placing their hats on the seat they desire to retain. That is a preliminary that receives no official recognition. "No prayer, no seat," is the axiom, and unless a member be actually present in the body when the Chaplain reads prayers, he is not held to have established a claim. Thus his spiritual comfort is subtly and indispensably linked with his material comfort.
A NEW THING IN SYNDICATES. There is nothing new under the glass roof of the House of Commons, not even the balloting syndicates, of which so much has been heard since the Session opened. Fifteen or sixteen years ago the Irish members astonished everybody by the extraordinary luck that attended them at the ballot. The ballot in this sense has nothing to do with the electoral poll, being the process by which precedence for private members is secured. When a private member has in charge a Bill or resolution, much depends on the opportunity he secures for bringing it forward. Theoretically, Tuesday, Wednesday, and (in vanishing degree) a portion of Friday are appropriated to his use. On Tuesday he may bring on motions; on Wednesday advance Bills; and on Friday raise miscellaneous questions on certain stages of Supply. On days when notices of motion may be given there is set forth on the Table a book with numbered lines, on which members write their names. Say there are fifty names written down—or four hundred, as was the melancholy case on the opening night of the Session—the Clerk at the Table places in a box a corresponding number of slips of paper. When all is ready for the ballot, the Speaker having before him the list of names as written down, the Clerk at the Table plunges his hand into the lucky-box and taking out, at random, one of the pieces of paper, calls aloud the number marked upon it.
Say it is 365. The Speaker, referring to the list he holds in his hand, finds that Mr. Smith has written his name on line 365. He thereupon calls upon Mr. Smith, who has the first chance, and selects what in his opinion is the most favourable day, ceteris paribus, the earliest at liberty. So the process goes through till the last paper in the ballot-box has been taken out and the list is closed.
Ballot.
It is at best a wearisome business, a criminal waste of time, useless for practical purposes. It was well enough when Parliament was not overburdened with work, and when the members balloting for places rarely exceeded a score. But when, as happened on the opening day of the Session, two of the freshest hours of the sitting are occupied by the performance, it is felt that a change is desirable. This could easily be effected, there being no reason in the world why the process of balloting for places on the Order Book should not be carried out as was the balloting for places in the Strangers' Galleries on the night Mr. Gladstone introduced his Home Rule Bill. On that occasion the Speaker's Secretary, with the assistance of a clerk, and in the presence of as many members as cared to look on, arranged the ballot without a hitch or a murmur of complaint from anyone concerned. The sooner the public balloting is relegated to the same agency the better it will be for the dispatch of public business. With it should disappear the consequent wanton waste of time involved in members bodily bringing in their Bills, a performance that appropriated nearly half the sitting on the second day of the Session.
The spread of the syndicate contrivance would happily hasten the inevitable end. It was by means of the syndicate, though it was not known by that name, or indeed at first known at all, that the Home Rule party managed in the Parliament of 1880-85 to monopolize the time pertaining to private members. Their quick eyes detected what is simple enough when explained—that the ballot system contained potentialities for increasing the chances of a Bill by twenty or thirty fold. Suppose they had ten Bills or motions they desired to bring forward. They usually had more, but ten is sufficient to contemplate. These were arranged in accordance with their claim to priority. Every member of the party wrote his name down in the ballot-book, thus securing an individual chance at the ballot. Whilst the ballot was in progress, each had in his hand a list of the Bills in their order of priority. The member whose name was first called by the Speaker gave notice of the most urgent Bill, the second and third taking the next favourable positions, and so on to the end.
It will be seen that, supposing fifty or sixty members thus combined, their pet Bill would have fifty or sixty chances to one against the hapless private member with his solitary voice. The secret was long kept, and the Irish members carried everything before them at the ballot. Now the murder is out, and there are almost as many syndicates as there are private Bills. All can grow the flower now, for all have got the seed. But it naturally follows that competition is practically again made even. The advantage to be derived from the syndicate system has appreciably decreased, whilst its practice immeasurably lengthens the process of balloting.
LOUIS JENNINGS. Mr. Louis Jennings, though he sat on the same side of the House as Sir Walter Barttelot, and within a week or two of his neighbour's departure likewise answered to the old Lobby cry, "Who goes home?" was of a different type of Conservative, was a man of literary training, generous culture, and wide knowledge of the world, and made his fame and fortune long before he entered the House of Commons. It was the late Mr. Delane whose quick eye discovered his journalistic ability, and gave him his first commission on the Times. He visited America in the service of that journal, and being there remained to take up the editorship of the New York Times, making himself and his journal famous by his successful tilting against what, up to his appearance in the list, had been the invincible Tweed conspiracy. He edited the "Croker Papers," and wrote a "study" of Mr. Gladstone—a bitterly clever book, to which the Premier magnanimously referred in the generous tribute he took occasion to pay to the memory of the late member for Stockport.
Mr. Louis Jennings.
Upon these two books Mr. Jennings's literary fame in this country chiefly rests. It would stand much higher if there were wider knowledge of another couple of volumes he wrote just before he threw himself into the turmoil of Parliamentary life. One is called "Field Paths and Green Lanes"; the other "Rambles Among the Hills." Both were published by Mr. Murray, and are now, I believe, out of print. They are well worth reproducing, supplying some of the most charming writing I know, full of shrewd observation, humorous fancy, and a deep, abiding sympathy with all that is beautiful in Nature. I thought I knew Louis Jennings pretty intimately in Parliamentary and social life, but I found a new man hidden in these pages—a beautiful, sunny nature, obscured in the ordinary relations of life by a somewhat brusque manner, and in these last eighteen months soured and cramped by a cruel disease. Jennings knew and loved the country as Gilbert White knew and loved Selborne. Now
The circuit of the summer hills
Is, that his grave is green.
His Parliamentary career was checked, and, as it turned out, finally destroyed, by an untoward incident. After Lord Randolph Churchill threw up the Chancellorship of the Exchequer and assumed a position of independence on a back bench, he found an able lieutenant in his old friend Louis Jennings. At that time Lord Randolph was feared on the Treasury Bench as much as he was hated. For a Conservative member to associate himself with him was to be ostracised by the official Conservatives. A man of Mr. Jennings's position and Parliamentary ability was worth buying off, and it was brought to his knowledge that he might have a good price if he would desert Lord Randolph. He was not a man of that kind, and the fact that the young statesman stood almost alone was sufficient to attract Mr. Jennings to his side.
As Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Up to an early date of the Session of 1890 the companionship, political and private, of Lord Randolph Churchill and Mr. Jennings was as intimate as had been any one of his lordship's personal connections with members of the Fourth Party. This alliance was ruptured under circumstances that took place publicly, but the undercurrent of which has never been fathomed. One Monday night, shortly after the opening of this Session of 1890, there appeared on the paper a resolution standing in the name of Mr. Jennings, framed in terms not calculated to smooth the path of the Conservative Government, just then particularly troubled. That Mr. Jennings had prepared it in consultation with Lord Randolph Churchill was an open secret. Indeed, Lord Randolph had undertaken to second it. Before the motion could be reached a debate sprang up, in which Lord Randolph interposed, and delivered a speech which, in Mr. Jennings's view, entirely cut the ground from under his feet. He regarded this as more than an affront—as a breach of faith, a blow dealt by his own familiar friend. At that moment, in the House, he broke with Lord Randolph, tore up his amendment and the notes of his speech, and declined thereafter to hold any communion with his old friend.
Present day.
No one, as I had opportunity of learning at the time, was more surprised than Lord Randolph Churchill at the view taken of the event by Mr. Jennings. He had not thought of his action being so construed, and had certainly been guiltless of the motive attributed to him. There was somewhere and somehow a misunderstanding. With Mr. Jennings it was strong and bitter enough to last through what remained of his life.
Whilst he did not act upon the first impulse communicated to one of his friends, and forthwith retire from public life, he with this incident lost all zest for it. Occasionally he spoke, choosing the level, unattractive field of the Civil Service Estimates. It was a high tribute to his power and capacity that on the few occasions when he spoke the House filled up, not only with the contingent attracted by the prospect of anything spicy, but by grave, financial authorities, Ministers and ex-Ministers, who listened attentively to his acute criticism. His public speaking benefited by a rare combination of literary style and oratorical aptitude. There was no smell of the lamp about his polished, pungent sentences. But they had the unmistakable mark of literary style. Had his physical strength not failed, and his life not been embittered by the episode alluded to, Louis Jennings would have risen to high position in the Parliamentary field.