The Strand Magazine/Volume 6/Issue 32/From Behind the Speaker's Chair
From Behind the Speaker's Chair
VIII.
(VIEWED BY HENRY W. LUCY.)
"OLD MORALITY." ONE of the most interesting books of the forthcoming season will be the "Life of W. H. Smith," a work undertaken by his friend and colleague, Sir Herbert Maxwell. Sir Herbert, who combines the qualities of an excellent Whip with those that go to make up a successful literary man, will doubtless have found himself hampered in his task by the exceptional goodness of the subject of his memoir. I suppose the most depressing work of biography still in print is that which many years ago had considerable vogue under the title "The Dairyman's Daughter." Mr. Disraeli, a keen judge of public taste, desiring at one time to say something pungently deprecatory of Mr. Gladstone, observed that he had no pleasant vices. Mr. Smith more fully and accurately came within this category. It will be impossible even for so attractive a writer as Sir Herbert Maxwell to make his biography as interesting as, for example, that of Becky Sharp.
Lord Salisbury and Mr. W. H. Smith.
Mr. Smith was, in truth, monotonously good. Yet what was meant to be a placid life had its stream unexpectedly turned into turbulent courses. Prosperity made him acquainted with some notable work-fellows, and led him to take a part in making the history of England. It was a strange fate that drew this modest, retiring, gentle-minded bourgeois citizen into being a colleague, first of Mr. Disraeli, and at last the very pivot of an Administration which had the Marquis of Salisbury for its motive power.
I remember more than a dozen years ago, crossing Palace Yard, seeing Lord Salisbury and Mr. W. H. Smith enter the precincts of the House by the archway leading to the Ladies' Gallery. Mr. Smith had at that time, doubtless to his own modest surprise, been nominated First Lord of the Admiralty, the first of a series of uses made of him whenever the Government were in difficulty. "When in doubt play trumps" is a time-honoured maxim, the wisdom of which some players are inclined to dispute. "When in difficulties play W. H. Smith" was a game Mr. Disraeli first led, and was followed up to the last by Lord Salisbury with unfailing success. It was doubtless a mere accident, but I noticed that Lord Salisbury strode along silent, taking no notice of his companion, who walked just half a pace behind him, as if feeling that he had no right to intrude on the meditation, or even the company, of the great patrician by whose side in the Cabinet an inscrutable Providence had led him to take his seat.
This is a trivial incident which only riotous fancy could invest with significance. It often came back to my mind watching Mr. Smith steadily yet surely marching to the first place in the aristocratic Cabinet, progress involuntarily made, impelled not more by sheer capacity than by force of simple, honest, upright character. In course of time it came to pass that the Cabinet of Lord Salisbury could have better withstood the shock of the Premier's withdrawal than of the resignation of plain Mr. Smith.
Though the study of such a character is apparently lacking in dramatic incident, what may be done with it by competent hands has been triumphantly proved in another branch of literature. Mrs. Walford has made a charming and touching sketch, which not only in many respects recalls the sterling qualities of "Old Morality," but, by a strange coincidence, bore his surname. "Mr. Smith; Mr. Smith; a Part of His Life" was published long before the member for Westminster came to think he might succeed Pitt, Wellington, and Palmerston in the Lord Wardenship of the Cinque Ports. Yet if Mrs. Walford had used him as a model she could not have come to a closer or more striking appreciation of the subject. Naturally enough, she never dreamed of placing her Mr. Smith in the turmoil of political life, surrounding him more appropriately with the placidity of village life. But in respect of simplicity of character, sterling capacity, generous mind, and unfailing loving-kindness, her Mr. Smith and ours of the House of Commons are identical. The coincidence is completed by the fact that both unexpectedly died just at the time when everyone had discovered how good they were, and when the highest aim of their desire was within their reach.
"At the post of duty."
There is one episode in the life of this good man in which his biographer will find the element of tragedy the more striking when found ruffling the serenity of the commonplace. Those most intimate with Mr. Smith firmly believe that had he been less resolute to do his duty to his Queen and country he would have been alive at this day, a placid pillar of strength to his party in the House of Lords. He died at the post of duty, with a heroism that need not shrink from comparison with the most brilliant deeds recorded in the annals of war by sea or land. He had meant to retire at the close of the Session of 1889, when the wearying illness that finally wore him away was beginning to sap his strength. At that time the Salisbury Government were already amid the breakers. The House of Commons was growing restive; the Ministerialists were disheartened; the Opposition growing in strength and audacity. Not only was Mr. Smith the only man who could be counted upon to ride upon the gathering storm, but his withdrawal from the scene would have led to extremely inconvenient competition for the vacant post of Leader of the House of Commons.
"The last time."
So he stayed on, suffering and patient, making his little jokes, declaiming his cherished copybook headings, sometimes genially laughed at, always trusted, and managing the peculiarly difficult business of the Leadership with an art the consummation of which was its perfect concealment—perhaps even from himself. The last time he appeared in the House was on a sultry afternoon in July. Members around him were gay in summer garb. He had brought with him his carriage rug, and as he sat on the Treasury Bench he tucked it round his knees, remaining there through the sitting with haggard eyes, pale face, still bravely smiling.
"A pitcher that goes often to the well will be broken at last," was a little tag he characteristically used about this time when one of his colleagues cheerily remarked that he was looking better, and would be all right again after the recess.
He was never seen in the House of Commons again, though this was not his last appearance in public. The final journeying forth of the pitcher, the occasion when it, doubtless, received the final fracture, was on Monday, July 13th, 1890. The Shah was on a visit to London, and this day was fixed for a reception at Hatfield. All the world were bidden to the festivities, which culminated in a great luncheon party on the Monday. Mr. Smith was one of the house party, arriving on the Saturday. He would have been much better in his bed, but the occasion was important, and if he could only crawl along the path of duty, he would go. One of his fellow guests, a colleague in the Cabinet, tells me of his appearance at the dinner on Sunday night. As he sat at the table he was evidently in acute pain.
"We could see death written on his face," said his colleague.
But he talked and smiled and made-believe that nothing was the matter. He was induced to withdraw as soon as the ladies left the dining-room. So acute was his agony, his ancient trouble having developed in an attack of gout in the stomach, that he could not go to bed, passing a sleepless night in a chair. But there was the luncheon next day, with the big company down from London, a fresh call of duty which he obeyed. He sat through the meal, and gallantly went home to die.
The end came at Walmer, after three months' additional suffering, borne with unfailing courage and patience. He was always sanguine that on the morrow he would be able to go out for a cruise in his beloved Pandora, lying at anchor just off the battlements of the castle waiting for the Master. It seemed quite a natural and appropriate thing that on the very day the newspapers contained the announcement of his death, news came of the tragic end of Mr. Parnell, and as newspaper space is strictly limited, and the British public can give their minds to only one excitement at a time, there was hardly room to do justice to the quietly noble life just closed at Walmer.
PETITIONS. Colonel Kenyon is not, except by chance, and unconsciously, a humorist. But there was one day in the Session when he flashed upon the pleased House a gleam of genuine humour. Being charged with the presentation of a number of petitions against the Welsh Suspensory Bill, he borrowed from the Library a huge waste-paper basket, stuffed the bundles of circulars therein, and, marching round the table in full view of a crowded House, deposited them in the sack which hangs at the corner of the table by the Clerk's seat.
"Premature."
This was premature, and, in the circumstances, sardonic. Colonel Kenyon being in charge of the petitions, might, but for the unaccustomed temptation of humour, have let them go along the ordinary course to oblivion. All petitions presented to the House of Commons are predestined for the waste-paper basket. Colonel Kenyon, with a promptitude learned in tented fields on which forty centuries looked down, scorned circumlocutory habits, and put the petitions in the waste-paper basket to begin with.
The right of petitioning the House of Commons is ancient, and at one time may have had some significance, even importance. It must have been prior to the time of Dr. Johnson, that shrewd observer having in the hearing of Mr. Boswell gone to the root of the matter.
"This petitioning," he genially observed, when the subject cropped up in conversation, "is a new mode of distressing Government, and a mighty easy one. I will undertake to get petitions either against quarter-guineas or half-guineas with the help of a little hot wine."
At this fin-de-siècle, whilst a stable Government is in no wise distressed by a shower of petitions, the process of bringing them to bear on the House of Commons remains a mighty easy one, in some cases not without suspicion of the help of a little hot wine.
Mr. Bartley.
This Session, concurrent with the introduction of a hotly contested measure such as the Home Rule Bill, there has been a notable recrudescence of petitions. It is true nothing in the way of petition presenting has equalled the famous scene in the Session of 1890, when "the Trade" demonstrated against an attack by the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon their preserves. On that occasion the floor of the House, from within the Bar to the shadow of the Mace, was packed with gigantic wooden frames, containing massive cylinders reported to enshrine the signatures of 600,000 citizens anxious that the poor man should not have his noggin of neat spirits enhanced in price. It turned out upon inquiry, hotly made, that the Speaker, having been approached on the subject, had given his consent to the petitions being brought in. But, as he apologetically observed, he had not taken into account the wooden cases. These, towering full six feet high, entirely obscured the view between the two sides of the House.
Mr. Bartley was, by chance, making a few preliminary observations, and one at this day remembers with pleasure the keen solicitude displayed by the Radicals that the hon. member should not be embarrassed, and that they should have opportunity not only of hearing his remarks, but of benefiting by full view of the orator whilst they were delivered. They stood up in their places craning their necks so that they might catch a glimpse of him, over what one irreverently alluded to as "these vats." Suggestion was made that he should cross the gangway and continue his observations from the Treasury Bench. Mr. Labouchere bettered this by proposing, in softest voice and most winning manner, that the member for North Islington might scramble on to the top of the cases, and from that coign of vantage address the Speaker. In the end, the six House messengers who had brought in the cases one by one were summoned, and the things were ignominiously removed.
Mr. Dalziel.
WHAT BECOMES OF PETITIONS. That demonstration, which must have cost much hot wine, was not so successful as to induce repetition on similar lines. But petitions have, through the Session, still flowed in, and have, from time to time, been made the occasion for objurgatory remarks. Just after the House resumed at the close of the Easter holidays, the subject came up in piquant fashion with intent to show how vastly petitions against the Home Rule Bill preponderated. The Chairman of the Petitions Committee, whose withdrawal from Parliamentary life is regretted on both sides of the House, was asked to state the number of petitions for and against the Bill. Mr. McLagan set forth statistics which demonstrated the overwhelming activity in this field of the opponents of the measure. When the cheers this statement elicited subsided, Mr. Dalziel interposed, and read a letter which would have interested Dr. Johnson had he been privileged to peruse it. Written by the secretary of a Conservative Association, it was addressed to hotel-keepers at places of popular resort on the southern coast. Accompanying it were printed petitions against Home Rule, and the hotel-keepers were begged to obtain as many signatures as possible, "whether by man, woman, or child." "Your Easter visitors," the shrewd Conservative agent added, "should be able to fill up several sheets."
To a conversation which followed, Mr. McLagan contributed an interesting recollection of how a couple of years ago the Petition Committee had been called upon to deal with a case where a whole school of children had impartially signed a petition for (or against) some measure then engrossing public attention. Another member was able, as the result of his own investigation, to state that many petitions presented to the House of Commons were signed in a good flowing hand by infants in arms.
"Carried out."
These facts, familiar enough in the House of Commons, would seem to suffice to put a stop to the industry of petitioning. But, as the experience of the Session shows, that anticipation is not realized. The cry is, "Still they come," and the labours of the Petition Committee, over which for many years the late Sir Charles Forster presided, are as exacting as ever. It must, I suppose, be to someone's interest and advantage to keep the thing going. In what direction the interest lies is indicated in the statement, more than once made in conversation on the subject in the House, that the labour of obtaining signatures is remunerated at the rate of so much per hundred.
That, with the rarest exceptions, petitions presented to the House of Commons have not the slightest effect upon its deliberations is an affirmation that may be made with confidence. One of the exceptions is to be found in the popular movement that demanded the Reform Bill. But that was sixty years ago, a time when the public voice had not such full opportunities of expression as are found to-day in the Press and on the platform. For the most part, petitions addressed to the House of Commons do not secure even the compromising attention attained by the comicality of the situation created by the appearance on the floor of obstructive packing-cases, or the reading by a member of letters disclosing the indiscretions of too zealous agents.
What happens in the majority of cases is, that a petition being forwarded to a member, he quietly drops it in the sack at the corner of the table. When the sack is full it is carried out to one of the Committee rooms, and entry is made of the place whence each petition comes, of the number of signatures, and of the name of the Bill for or against which it is launched. The clerks attached to the Committee on Petitions subsequently glance over the list of names, and if there is anything in the array glaringly suggestive of irregularity, the Committee have their attention called to it, and occasionally think it worth while to bring the matter under the notice of the House with intent to have somebody punished. Otherwise the document unobtrusively proceeds on its way to the paper mill, the House of Commons, all unconscious of its existence, voting "Aye" or "No" on the various stages of the Bill with which it had concerned itself.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN. The most striking feature in the Session has been the position achieved by Mr. Chamberlain. Nothing seen in his travels by Baron Munchausen, nothing recorded in the adventures of "Alice in Wonderland," exceeds this marvel. Mr. Balfour has been the titular Leader of the Opposition; but Mr. Chamberlain has ordered the plan of campaign, and has led in person all the principal attacks on the enemy's entrenchment. Mr. Balfour has reigned; Mr. Chamberlain has governed.
Here is where the marvel comes in. It is no unusual thing for a prominent member of a party to break away from his colleagues in the Leadership and set up in business for himself. But he invariably opens his shop on the same side of the street. Mr. Chamberlain has gone over bag and baggage, has been received into the inner councils of his ancient adversary, and, being there, rules the roost. There was a time within recent memory when he was of all public men the most detested in Conservative circles. In this respect he succeeded to the heritage of his friend and colleague, Mr. Bright. Mr. Gladstone they distrusted and detested. Chamberlain they loathed and feared.
Mr. Chamberlain.
The scenes that took place in the House of Commons in connection with the Aston Park riots, which for bitterness and fierce resentment have not been equalled during the Session by any attack on an individual made from the "Unionist" ranks, forcibly illustrate Mr. Chamberlain's position this time eight years ago in view of the Conservative party. He for his part joyously accepted the situation, hitting back swinging blows at the House of Lords that has "always been the obsequious handmaid of the Tory party," and at the larger body in the Commons and the country, the "men whom we have fought and worsted in a hundred fights, men who borrow our watchwords, hoist our colours, steal our arms, and seek to occupy our position." That the relentless foeman of 1870-1885 should be to-day the foremost ally, the most prized captain of the host he then fought, seems to be a phantasy of nightmare.
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?
"Blows at the House of Lords."
How the miracle was wrought is a story that will doubtless some day be written large. Pending authoritative chronicle, there are not lacking those who trace the whole story back to troublous days in May, 1882. At that time Mr. Forster, long at issue with some of his colleagues in the Cabinet, resigned the office of Chief Secretary. A new pathway had been selected by the Government in their relations with Ireland. Coercion had been tried and had failed. Kilmainham Treaty had been signed. Mr. Parnell had come out of prison "prepared to co-operate cordially for the future with the Liberal party in forwarding Liberal principles." Lord Cowper had resigned the Lord Lieutenancy, and Earl Spencer reigned in his stead.
In bringing about this transformation scene Mr. Chamberlain had been principally active. It seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should succeed Mr. Forster at Dublin Castle. That he was prepared to do so and expected the appointment were matters certainly understood in the House of Commons at the time. A member of the Irish party, then as now predominant in its councils, tells me that on the 4th of May, 1882 (the day Mr. Forster announced in the House of Commons the reasons for his resignation), Mr. Chamberlain had an interview with him and sought his counsel as to the course he should take in the contingency of the Chief Secretaryship being offered to him. This gentleman, with characteristic bluntness, asked whether the offer had been made. Mr. Chamberlain, with a meaning smile, said "No."
That the offer would be made was assumed, as a matter of course, by both parties to the conversation. The friendly Irishman, whilst welcoming, as all his political friends did, the prospect of accession to the Chief Secretaryship of a statesman then above all others pledged to Home Rule, on personal grounds advised Mr. Chamberlain not to take the office, foreseeing, as he said, that it would bring upon him incessant trouble and possibly political ruin. On the next day, Friday, the 5th of May, the writ for a new election for the West Riding was moved consequent on the acceptance by Lord Frederick Cavendish of the post of Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant. The Irish member whom I am quoting added the amazing and, save on such authority, the incredible statement that the first intimation of this arrangement Mr. Chamberlain received was when, from his place on the Treasury Bench, he heard the writ moved.
If this story is true—and if I were at liberty to mention the authority it would be accepted as unimpeachable—it does much to explain, if not to excuse, Mr. Chamberlain's subsequent action, and the attitude of relentless animosity he has since exhibited towards Mr. Gladstone.
"One of his Right Hon. Friends."
THE DUELLO. The long fight in the Commons over the Home Rule Bill has been rather a duel than a pitched battle. Night after night the forces were marshalled on either side; firing was incessantly kept up; brigades engaged, and now and then, from other quarters than the Treasury Bench and the corner seat of the third bench below the gangway, a speech was made that attracted attention. For the most part it was dull, mechanical pounding, varied now and then by a personal contest between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain. The House was invariably crowded when Mr. Chamberlain spoke. For him the audience was comprised in the one figure on the Treasury Bench. Mr. Gladstone, when he spoke, habitually turned round to the corner seat below the gangway, and personally addressed his "right hon. friend."
"The Right Hon. Friend."
It was jarring throughout to hear the use of this phrase bandied across the gangway. Mr. Gladstone used it sparingly. Mr. Chamberlain interlarded his speech with it, investing the simple phrase with many shades of meaning, none particularly friendly. Once Mr. Gladstone, contrary habitude, moved to a personal jibe, audibly interposed with the remark, "Which 'right hon. friend'? The right hon. gentleman has so many right hon. friends."
That hint would have been taken by some more sensitive people. Mr. Chamberlain is not inclined to forego one of his advantages. He has never quarrelled with Mr. Gladstone. He still reveres him as the greatest statesman of our time, still thinks of him in connection with a lofty mountain, whose magnitude we do not appreciate whilst we are still close to it. Still he resents the action of "men who, moved by motives of party spite, or eagerness for office, have not allowed his age, which should have commanded their reverence; his experience, which entitles him to their respect; his high, personal character, or his long services to his Queen and his country, to shield him from vulgar affronts and lying accusations." But Mr. Gladstone has gone wrong on the Home Rule Question, as, in quite another sense, he was wrong in the spring of 1882. Mr. Chamberlain, giving the first place to the interests of his country and sternly loyal to a sense of duty, has found himself leading the Conservative party against its former chief. But it is only the political leader from whom he has parted. He still retains the "right hon. friend."
There was a time when it seemed that Mr. Chamberlain, in stepping outside the pale of the Liberal party, had voluntarily suffered political ostracism. It was a view in which to a certain extent he appeared to acquiesce. For a considerable period approaching the term of the last Parliament he was content to take a back seat in politics. Occasionally he appeared at a public meeting in the country. In the House of Commons he was not often seen, and still more rarely heard. He came down for the questions, went off in good time for dinner, and was seen no more through the sitting. If a division were pending, or any interesting speech expected, he broke through the rule, coming down in evening dress, dined and debonair.
"Pitiless!"
It is apparently a small matter, really of profound significance, that, during the present Session, Mr. Chamberlain, whilst in nightly attendance, has not half-a-dozen times been seen in dinner dress. He must needs dine; but he performs the incidental duty as the Israelites fed at Passover time, with loins girded and staff in hand. He has been the backbone of the opposition to the Home Rule Bill, tireless, unfaltering, and ruthless. It is probable that but for him the Conservative gentry, weary of the monotony of constant attendance and incessant divisions, would have retired from the fight, content to leave the final destruction of the Bill to the House of Lords. Mr. Chamberlain has been pitiless. No point has been too minute for his criticism, none too large for his virile grasp. Through it all he has never swerved from the urbane, deferential manner with which he has turned to discuss successive points with his "right hon. friend" on the Treasury Bench.
Now and then a quick ear might detect metallic notes in the ordinarily soft voice, or a watchful eye might observe a gesture that mocked the friendly phrase and the almost reverential attitude. These were idle fancies, possibly born of meditation on what may never have taken place in those far-off May days, when Mr. Forster was fighting forlornly at his last outpost.
MORE ABOUT A PREMATURE REPORT. M. P. writes: As I read The Strand Magazine month by month through the Session I come to the conclusion that you must have either a marvellous memory or a priceless note-book. I remember very well O'Connor Power's prematurely reported speech in the House of Commons, but thought others had forgotten it. It was published, not, as you suggest, in a local paper, but in Freeman's Journal, then in the plenitude of its power and the full tide of its circulation. May I add to the details you give that the speech, evidently elaborately prepared, finished up by way of peroration with the not unfamiliar lines from Tennyson about "Freedom broadening slowly down from precedent to precedent"? In the too-previous report it was stated that this passage was received with "enthusiastic cheering."
O'Connor Power actually got off the speech on the following night. As, at the hour when he caught the Speaker's eye, no copy of Freeman's Journal had reached London, he was presumably safe from immediate consequences of the accident. But some of his compatriots, learning by telegraph what had happened, gave him away, and when he arose to deliver the cherished oration, he was met by hilarious cries of "Spoke! Spoke!"