The Strand Magazine/Volume 6/Issue 31/From Behind the Speaker's Chair
From Behind the Speaker's Chair.
VII.
(VIEWED BY HENRY W. LUCY.)
PARTIES AND PLACES THE sub-division of parties arising out of the adoption of Home Rule as a principal plank in Mr. Gladstone's platform has worked a curious and notable effect upon conditions of debate in the House of Commons. Time was when the House was divided between two political parties, one calling themselves Whigs or Liberals, the other Tories or Conservatives. When a member took part in debate he faced the foe, having the satisfaction of being surrounded and sustained by the company of friends. Now a member rising on either side does not precisely know where he is. The whole assembly is so inextricably mixed up that whichever way one turns he is certain to find unfriendly faces. The position of affairs is akin to that of a close mêlée on the battle-field. A battery in excellent position is afraid to fire lest in aiming at the enemy it may slay friends.
The new departure was marked on the birth of the Parliament of 1880, and it was, as usual, the Irish who took it. Through the Parliament of 1874, the Irish members, forming in accordance with their habit and customs part of the regular Opposition, sat together below the gangway, at the Speaker's left hand. When Lord Beaconsfield-was routed at the polls, and Mr. Gladstone took his place on the Treasury Bench, the Opposition in the House of Commons crossed over to the Ministerial side. But the Irish members resolved to remain where they were. A change of Ministry, more or less, was nothing to them.
Tros Tyrinsoe mihi nullo discrimine agetur. All Saxon Governments who refused to grant Home Rule to Ireland were their natural enemies, and they would remain with their back to the wall, their face to the foe.
"Shoulder to Shoulder."
This was a startling innovation on Parliamentary practice, made the more embarrassing by the circumstance that it brought the Irish members into close personal contact with a class that had been especially bitter in its animosity. Mr. Biggar, who, Imperial politics apart, was understood to be something in the pork and bacon line, sat on the same bench shoulder to shoulder with the son of a duke. Other members of the party similarly circumstanced at home more or less enjoyed analogous companionship. First, there was some doubt in the Conservative breast whether these things might be. Since Parliaments were, it had been the custom for the Opposition to cross over in a body on a change of Ministry, and question was raised whether the Irish members might vary the custom. The Speaker, privately consulted, declared he was powerless in the matter. A duly-returned member of the House of Commons may sit anywhere he pleases except on the Treasury Bench. Even the Front Opposition Bench, as some years later the House had occasion to learn, is not sacred to the use of ex-Ministers, although it is usually reserved for their convenience. It belongs by ancient right to Privy Councillors, and any such may, if he pleases, take his seat there, even though he never served in the Ministry.
Thus when the late Mr. Beresford Hope was evicted by the Fourth Party from his corner seat below the gangway, he crossed over and found a resting-place on the Front Opposition Bench, retaining it till his death. The gentleman who is now Lord Cubitt, being a Privy Councillor, always asserted his right to address the House from the table.
The Irish members, remaining in their old quarters, got along through the Parliament of 1880 much better than was at the outset expected. The Fourth Party set up in business for themselves at the corner of the Front Bench below the gangway. On the two benches behind them the Irish members were massed, and Lord Randolph Churchill frequently found the contiguity convenient when he had occasion to consult Mr. Tim Healy or other of the allies of the Constitutional party, then making common cause against Mr. Gladstone's Government.
Mr. John Redmond.
That arrangement was all very well in its way; was indeed not without logical justification. The Irish members were at the time in deadly opposition to the Government, and that they should sit on the Opposition side was convenient and desirable. It established and maintained the conditions that combatants should face each other. It is a different thing now, the localizing of parties being in a hopelessly intermixed state. The Irish members still keep their old places below the gangway on the Opposition side, but being there they find themselves split up into two sections. There are two kings in the Irish Brentford, and while Mr. Justin M'Carthy, leader of the larger section, sits with his friends on the third bench, Mr. John Redmond occupies the corner seat on the fourth bench. Nor does this division represent the full measure of variety. Mr. William Redmond has planted himself out in the very arcanum of Toryism, on a back bench behind ex-Ministers. There he sits, solitary among the gentlemen of England, none holding converse with him, and he, apparently, thoroughly enjoying isolation. From time to time the House is startled by hearing from this quarter explosive sentences, expressing sentiments foreign to those usually associated with Our Old Nobility, from whose citadel they fall upon the shocked ear.
Mr. William Redmond.
The Labour Party is another new section developed in the modern House of Commons. They are exceedingly few in number, their political object is capable of narrow definition, and they, of all people, might be expected to sit together. But they, also, are divided. Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. John Burns rise from time to time to address the Speaker from a back bench below the gangway on the Opposition side, whilst Mr. Havelock Wilson and other accredited representatives of the working classes sit immediately opposite, on the Ministerial side. When any Minister or private member desires to address himself personally and directly to Labour questions, he is thus compelled to divide his attention between diverse sides of the House.
The position of the Dissentient Liberals is, perhaps, on the whole, most embarrassing, as being contrary to the traditions and convenient forms of the House. It is a little better in the present Parliament, since the Treasury Bench is free from the invasion to which Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues were subjected when they were tenants on the Front Opposition Bench. Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Henry James, and Mr. Heneage now sit with the rank-and-file of their party, not, as heretofore, mixed up with the Liberal leaders. But their quarters are selected on the Ministerial side. They sit surrounded by gentlemen from whom, on whom, on political grounds, they are separated by feelings of bitter animosity.
The effect of this state of things is, to a considerable extent, paralytic on debate. It affects both orator and audience. It is a habit strongly marked with Mr. Gladstone, and common in degree with other speakers, to turn and face supporters or Opposition according as the current passage in his argument may suggest. Now, as far as ordered lines of subdivision are concerned, there is neither Ministerial host nor Opposition. With a larger application of Mr. Bright's famous simile, it may be said that the House of Commons is like one of those hairy terriers of which it is difficult to distinguish between either extremity. Mr. Gladstone driving home an argument in favour of Home Rule, turning with eager face towards the benches opposite, finds himself preaching to the converted, being confronted by some eighty Irishmen, the very advance guard of his own party. Turning round with smiling face and palms outstretched for the sympathy and applause of the Liberal party, he meets the cold glance of Mr. Chamberlain's eye, and sees beyond that right hon. gentleman the buff waistcoat of Mr. Courtney.
Chilling Influence.
These are chilling influences which tell even upon Mr. Gladstone, and are fatal to the success of less experienced debaters. The consequence of the existing state of things works even fuller effect upon the audience. It is responsible for the marked decline observable this Session of the practice of cheering. It will be seen from the slight sketch given of the localities of sections of party that it is now physically impossible to get up a bout of that cheering and counter-cheering which up to recent times was one of the most inspiring episodes in Parliamentary debate. That is possible only when the audience is massed in two clearly-defined sections. One cheers a phrase dropped by the member addressing the House; the other side swiftly responds; the cheer is fiercely taken up by the party who started it, echoed on the other side, and so the game goes forward. Now, as will be clearly seen, if the Conservative Opposition set up a cheer the Irish members sitting among them must remain silent, the Dissentient Liberals observing the same attitude when the Ministerialists break forth into applause. They take their turn when opportunity presents itself. But the whole thing is inextricably mixed up and loses its significance. Parliamentary cheering to be effective must be spontaneous, and, within the limits of party, unanimous. Hopelessly embarrassed by the situation, members are discontinuing the practice of cheering, thus withdrawing a wholesome stimulus from debate.
Gibbs and Sons.
FATHERS AND SONS. One of the minor consequences of the withdrawal of Mr. Henry Samuelson from Parliamentary life is that there simultaneously disappeared from the House of Commons an interesting and unique phenomenon. It is a common, and perhaps natural, thing that sons sharing Parliamentary honours with their fathers should feel themselves embarrassingly overwhelmed with the parental position and authority. The present House contains several examples which will instantly suggest themselves. An additional one was spared by the strategic movement of Mr. Hicks Gibbs. In the last Parliament that eminent merchant appropriately represented the City of London. At the last General Election one of his sons stood with fair chance of election by the St. Albans Division of Herts. Mr. Gibbs thereupon retired from Parliamentary life, transferring his safe seat for the City of London to his elder son, thus leaving two able young men to make their way in Parliamentary life, unembarrassed by the presence on the scene of the head of the firm.
SAMUELSON père et fils. With Mr. Henry Samuelson and his respected father matters stood on a different footing. Mr. Bernhard Samuelson, member for Banbury in the Parliament of 1880, is a man of sterling ability, a Fellow of the Royal Society, an ironmaster at Middlesbrough, and (though no one would suspect it) a Knight of the Legion of Honour. As an authority educational on matters, Banbury always thought he took the cake. But he was nothing in the House of Commons when son Henry appeared on the scene. The Parliamentary relations of the two were in their way a realization of a phase of Mr. Anstey's immortal "Vice-Versa." Possibly it would have been a difficult matter for anyone to impress Mr. Henry Samuelson with a sense of his own comparative smallness. Certainly his father never succeeded in the undertaking. What threatened to become an awkward situation was averted by an act of magnanimity on the part of Samuelson fils, for which perhaps the House, though it knew him, was not prepared. Reversing the movements in the Gibbs family, the son retired from the Parliamentary scene, leaving his father in undisturbed possession.
It was noble act, but in this case virtue, with something less than ordinary unobtrusiveness, brought its own reward. The member for Banbury, relieved from the moral incubus of his son's superiority, speedily blossomed into a baronetcy, and the former member for Frome in his act of self-abnegation was, all unknowingly, preparing the way for his becoming the second Baronet of Bodicote Grange.
HERBERT GLADSTONE.
The most familiar and the supremest case known to the House of Commons of a son being overshadowed by the reputation and renown of a father is found in the case of the member for Leeds. Mr. Herbert Gladstone is a man of wide culture, rare knowledge of public affairs, shrewd judgment, tireless energy, and sound common-sense. Moreover, he is, as is better known in the country than in the House of Commons, an admirable and effective speaker. One of the most constant attendants on the business of the House, his name standing high in the derelict Buff Book for the number of divisions he has taken part in, he never, or hardly ever, speaks in the House of Commons.
"Overshadowed."
His elder brother, when he sat in the House, occupied a precisely similar position. To him it was more natural, being of a gentle, retiring disposition, with no affinity for public life. He sat in the House of Commons for many years, but I do not remember hearing him speak. He had a curious way of entering by a doorway under the gallery and timidly making for a back seat. He habitually wore an apologetic air, as if he really begged you to excuse him going about as "Mr. Gladstone," an appellation shared in common with his father.
Herbert Gladstone is cast in another mould. He took to politics and the House of Commons with the same avidity as did William Pitt. But when Pitt entered the House his illustrious father had been dead two years. Fourteen years earlier he had quitted the Commons for the Lords, and only a few of the young member for Appleby's contemporaries were in a position to make comparisons between father and son. Herbert Gladstone is returned to the House his father still adorns, and in such circumstances has as much chance of shining there as the most reputable planet enjoys when the sun is at meridian. He long ago deliberately abandoned the approach to endeavour, and his energy, which is great, and his capacity, which is high, are devoted to the service of the party in the country.
Mr. Herbert Gladstone has, perhaps, too acute a sense of the proper feeling in his peculiar circumstances. Talking on this subject he once told me that whilst he can speak without any embarrassment on a public platform, he can never rise to address a meeting which numbers his father among the audience without faltering tongue and trembling knees. I remember something like ten years ago an interesting scene in which a crowded House took the kindliest interest. At that time Mr. Henry Northcote sat for Exeter, and Mr. Herbert Gladstone had at the General Election been elected for Leeds. Mr. Gladstone was Premier, and Sir Stafford Northcote sat on the Front Bench as Leader of the Opposition, daily striving with the Fourth Party, then in the plenitude of its young life. It was arranged that in some debate the two young scions of the opposing houses should in succession make their maiden speech. I forget what the occasion was, but well remember the crowded House, and on the two Front Benches, facing each other, the fathers, critical, kindly, and on the whole well pleased, each hastening to pay a compliment to the other's son.
Mr. Justin M'Carthy.
MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHY. It is difficult to picture one of the gentle mood and instinctively retiring habits of Mr. Justin M'Carthy hampering anyone with a consciousness of his superiority. His modesty is even more conspicuous than his capacity, which seems an exaggerated form of speech. But undoubtedly the presence of the father, even so gentle a presence as this, operated in the direction of effacing the son. Huntley M'Carthy is a young man who might well have been expected to make a high position for himself in the House of Commons. Of good presence, with pleasant voice, a pretty turn of phrasing, a mind stored with learning, familiar with history and politics, touched with the tender light of poetry, he should have gone straight to the heart of the House of Commons. But he rarely spoke, and took an early opportunity of gracefully retiring from the scene.
MR. COLERIDGE.
Mr. Bernard Coleridge in this, at least, resembles Pitt, that he is not handicapped by the presence in the House of an illustrious father. Still like the younger Pitt, he has the further advantage of his father's disappearance from the scene at a period so remote that there are few of his contemporaries in the present House. It is doubtful, moreover, whether the member for the Attercliffe Division of Sheffield would have been embarrassed had his father still been sitting for Exeter. We must not be misled by the coincidence that he bears the same Christian name as the young gentleman who sat for Frome in the Parliament of 1874. If any movement of the kind then suggested by family devotion had been entered upon, it is not probable that Bernard Coleridge, like Bernhard Samuelson, would have retired from the scene, so that his father might have fuller scope. He is too deeply impressed with the debt he owes his country to permit natural modesty or family affection to draw him into taking a back seat. He is filled with that ambition which distinguished the acceptable youth who figures in Le Nouveau Jeu. "Soyons de notre époque," says Costard. "Je veux même être plus que le jeune homme d'aujourd'hui. Je veux être le jeune homme de demain, d'après-demain si possible." For Mr. Coleridge possibility looms larger even than this, nothing more than the middle of next week bounding his clear, steadfast vision.
Mr. Coningsby Disraeli.
MR. CONINGSBY DISRAELI. Mr. Coningsby Disraeli is not handicapped in the Parliamentary race by overbearing connection with the fame of his father. That gentleman was not unknown at Westminster, he having through many years occupied a useful position in the legislative machinery, serving in wig and gown as one of the clerks at the table of the House of Lords. It was from that comparatively humble position he, on a February afternoon in 1877, watched the entrance on a new scene of his illustrious brother. It chanced that on this day the Queen opened Parliament in person, and made her entry with all the ceremony proper to the rare occasion. But for the distinguished and illustrious crowd that peopled the chamber from floor to topmost gallery the most attractive figure in the pageant was that disguised in red cloak tipped with ermine, who bore aloft a sword sheathed in jewelled scabbard, and whom the world thenceforward knew as Benjamin Earl of Beaconsfield.
It is with the Parliamentary fame of his uncle that the young member for Altrincham has to struggle. To be a Disraeli in the House of Commons is to fill a place from the occupant of which much is expected. It is to Mr. Coningsby Disraeli's credit in the past, full of hope for the future, that he has hitherto shown himself so modestly that few members know his personal appearance or where he sits. Before he found a seat in the House he threatened to fall into courses of conduct that alarmed his best friends. He took to writing in the Times on questions of Imperial policy, lucubrations the style of which was plainly founded on his uncle's earliest and worst style. This procedure seemed to portend that when he once took his seat he would be incessantly rising from it and putting things straight generally. Happily he has taken the wiser course, sitting attentive and watchful, endeavouring to learn before he begins to teach. Up to this present time of writing he has interposed only once in the proceedings of the House, and that was to ask a pertinent question, addressed to the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Probably for him also "the time will come when we shall hear him." He is judiciously preparing for it by a reasonable interval of silence.
Lord Selborne.
Lord Wolmer.
L'ALLEGRO AND IL PENSEROSO. No one regarding Lord Wolmer would, with whatsoever imaginative fancy, be able to construct out of him the Earl of Selborne as he is known in the House of Lords and in other phases of public life. It is impossible to conceive two men of more widely different temperament, personal appearance, or modes of thought. Lord Selborne might stand as Il Penseroso, whilst Lord Wolmer might dance as L'Allegro. There are few members of the present House of Commons who recollect Sir Roundell Palmer seated on the Treasury Bench as Attorney-General. Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister at the time; Mr. Gladstone. was for the third time Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sir George Grey had lately succeeded Cornewall Lewis at the Home Office; Lord John Russell was Foreign Secretary; Lord Westbury was Lord Chancellor; and Sir Robert Peel was just beginning to tire of the Irish Office, because, as he found to be the case in those halcyon days, there was not enough to keep the Chief Secretary going.
Lord Wolmer is relieved from competition in the House of Commons with the memory of his father. He will possibly never rival his father's fame, but he really means business in the political world. He had an admirable training as Whip to the Dissentient Liberal party when it was led in the Commons by Lord Hartington. When he was returned for Edinburgh in the new Parliament, he thought the time had come when he might better serve his country in the Legislative Chamber than in the bustling Lobby. Early in his new career he received a slight check, having, with the exuberance of comparative youth and extreme conviction, spoken of the Irish members in terms that led to an awkward debate on a question of breach of privilege. But Lord Wolmer has survived that, and though it led to a momentary pause in his public conversation on current affairs, it would not be safe to regard the influence as other than temporary.
THE CHAMBERLAINS. Mr. Austen Chamberlain supplies perhaps the most striking example in the present House of the embarrassment of a young member whose father stands in the front rank of House of Commons' debaters. On the Second Reading of the Home Rule Bill the member for East Worcestershire delivered a maiden speech that, for any other young member, would have established a Parliamentary position. Mr. Gladstone, with keen appreciation of the peculiar personal circumstances of the case, described it as "a speech dear and refreshing to a father's heart." If the father in question had happened to be engaged, at whatever point of eminence, in some other walk of life—say, science, art, or literature—it would have been well for the new member, complimented by this high authority, and cheered by the general good-will displayed towards him by a crowded House.
The speech was in every way excellent. Mr. Austen Chamberlain has a good presence, a recommendation which Lord John Russell managed to dispense with, but which is nevertheless desirable. He has a pleasant voice, excellent delivery, and really had something to say. But close by him as he spoke sat his father, and what critics said was, not that the young member for East Worcestershire had made a notable maiden speech, but that his voice was singularly like his father's, the manner of speech almost identical, and that he much resembled him in face, only that he was perhaps better looking—this last being the solitary approval personal to the débutant that was forthcoming. Worse than all, as indicating the hopelessness of the situation, it was more than hinted that the best things which sparkled in the speech were contributions from the paternal store. The voice might be the voice of Austen. The polished antitheses, the piercing darts, the weighty arguments, were from the armoury of Joseph.
Father and Son.
This is scarcely any the less unimportant because it does not happen to be true. Mr. Austen Chamberlain's speech, like the grace of its delivery, was his own; but that is of no matter if the House of Commons insists upon thinking otherwise. "Why drag in Velasquez?" Mr. James Whistler asked, when a gushing lady insisted upon telling him that he and Velasquez were the greatest painters of this or any age. "Why drag in my father?" the member in the position of capable young men like Mr. Herbert Gladstone and Mr. Austen Chamberlain may reasonably ask. But the protest will be in vain, and the dragging-in process will instinctively and inevitably follow whenever they chance to take prominent part in the proceedings of the House.
HOW HISTORY IS WRITTEN. In Mr. Patchett Martin's "Life of Lord Sherbrooke," just issued, I find the following passage: "Much as he bewailed the signs of democracy in the House of Commons, Mr. Lowe grew tolerant as the years passed by, and regarded legislative folly and dulness with an amused smile. It was in this mood that he pointed to the deaf M.P. who used to skirmish all over the House with an ear-trumpet, listening to the dreary speeches on both sides. 'Good Heavens!' said he, 'to think of a man so throwing away his natural advantages.'"
The story will be familiar to the public, since there was scarcely an obituary notice in the newspapers published immediately after the death of Lord Sherbrooke which did not include it. I did not take notice of that method of enshrining a myth, but when it comes to making part of a serious book, written avowedly upon special authority, I am impelled to unbosom myself.
The fact is, Mr. Lowe is as innocent of this little jape as is Lord Selborne. One night in the Session after he had gone to the House of Lords, the keen debater whom we long knew in the Commons as Mr. Lowe re-visited the glimpses of the gas-lit roof in the Commons. As he sat in the gallery, blinking on the old familiar scene, Mr. Thomasson, then member for Bolton, happened to be sitting, ear-trumpet in hand, listening to the late Mr. Peter Rylands making one of his not infrequent speeches. Mr. Rylands was an estimable, well-meaning man, but not specially acceptable as a speaker. He had a loudly verbose way of saying nothing particular which irritated the sensitive mind, and used to render Mr. Lowe more than usually impatient. Mr. Thomasson had a way of flitting over the House (much as an hon. baronet in the present Parliament has), and was wont to sit down drinking in, through his ear-trumpet, words that the ordinary person would willingly have let die.
The Late Mr. Rylands.
It struck me at the moment that Lord Sherbrooke might be thinking, as in truth I was myself, of the pandering with Providence displayed by a deaf man putting himself to some inconvenience in order not to lose a word of one of Peter Rylands's harangues. In a London Letter to the provinces I was then contributing, I put in Lord Sherbrooke's mouth the phrase quoted—a fashion habitually and sometimes less reasonably adopted at the present time in the writing of "Toby's Diary" in Punch. It took on immensely, largely because it was supposed to be Lord Sherbrooke's. It has since been quoted so widely and frequently that it is not impossible Lord Sherbrooke may have come to believe he had really said it, just as King George, by dint of frequent repetitions, convinced himself that he had led a regiment in the last charge at Waterloo. But his memory is really free from the reproach.
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