Читать книгу Here and There in London - J. Ewing Ritchie - Страница 4

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Amongst the sights of London surely may be reckoned the Chamber of Peers—fallen from its high estate, but still existing as a potent institution in this self-governing country and democratic age. Of course it is usual to sneer at the peers—we all do so; and yet we would move heaven and earth to be seen walking arm in arm with a peer, no matter how old or vicious he be, on the sunny side of Pall Mall. We all say the peers must give way to the Commons; and yet we all know that half the latter are returned by the former, and that you can no more succeed in contesting a county against its lords and landlords, than you can hope to fly in the air, or to walk on the sea. Hear a pot-house orator on the House of Peers, you would think it the most indefensible establishment imaginable. But is it so? Ask Exeter Hall; that truly British institution is in raptures with the whole British peerage. A lord at a Bible meeting—a lord stammering a few unconnected common-places about the propagation of Christianity in foreign parts, or the conversion of the Jews—a lord denouncing the Pope, or anticipating the coming of the millennium—is a sight dear to the British public. Sneer at the Lords as you will, expatiate on the manifest absurdity of supposing that they are wiser and better than other people, say, what every one knows and thinks, that you cannot transmit brains as you can the family spoons, and that therefore the idea involved in hereditary peerage is a lie; nevertheless, the House of Peers still continues a great fact. And it is a gorgeous fact as well. The apartments of the Commons are poor and mean compared with the chamber, all resplendent with crimson and gold, where the Lords meet. As you enter the central hall in the new Houses of Parliament, the passage to the right leads you to the Lords. We will suppose you have got an order—any peer can give you one; and as the House commences its sitting at five, and there is plenty of room in the gallery, you may take your time almost as freely as the celebrated Miss Lucy Long herself. Passing the lobby, you soon find your way into the house, the magnificent adorning of which will be sure to excite your utmost admiration. Some may say it is too gaudy, everything pertaining to the chamber is so richly decorated; but it is very fine, and when Parliament is opened by Majesty in person, and the house is crowded with all the great men of our land, and the galleries blaze with beauty and diamonds, the effect must be, as it has always been described, imposing in the extreme. On ordinary evenings, however, nothing of this splendour is visible; the house has a deserted air; an assembly of a dozen or twenty is a very fair muster; a debate of a couple of hours is generally considered as unusually exciting and fierce. The best description of a debate in the Lords we have ever read is that by Disraeli, in the “Young Duke.” We quote the passage:—“The Duke of St. James took the oaths and his seat. He was introduced by Lord Pompey. He heard a debate. We laugh at such a thing, especially in the Upper House; but on the whole the affair is imposing, especially if we take a part in it. Lord Exchamberlain thought the nation going on wrong, and he made a speech full of currency and constitution. Baron Deprivey Seal seconded him with great effect—brief, but bitter, satirical, and sore. The Earl of Quarterday answered these, full of confidence in the nation and in himself. When the debate was getting heavy, Lord Snap jumped up to give them something light. The Lords do not encourage wit, and so are obliged to put up with pertness. But Viscount Memoir was very statesmanlike, and spouted a sort of universal history. Then there was Lord Ego, who vindicated his character when nobody knew he had one, and explained his motives because his auditors could not understand his acts. Then there was a maiden speech, so inaudible that it was doubted after all whether the young orator really did lose his virginity. In the end, up started the Premier, who, having nothing to say, was manly, and candid, and liberal; gave credit to his adversaries and took credit to himself, and then the motion was withdrawn. While all this was going on, some made a note, some made a bet, some consulted a book, some their ease, some yawned, a few slept. Yet, on the whole, there was an air about the assembly which can be witnessed in no other in Europe. Even the most indifferent looked as if he would come forward if the occasion should demand him, and the most imbecile as if he could serve his country if it required him.”

But let us look around us. We, the strangers, are up in a comfortable gallery at one end of a long, narrow, and rather dark chamber, along the sides of which are narrow windows of painted glass, and bronze statues of the barons of the olden time. In a smaller gallery, just beneath us, sit the parliamentary reporters. Exactly opposite us is the Throne; its splendour we but faintly perceive, for it is veiled from vulgar eyes; but there it is—the very spot where Majesty sits, while around her are principalities and powers—there the royal assent is given to laws which affect the weal or woe of an empire—there, with silvery voice, and faultless delivery, and perfect pronunciation, are spoken royal speeches, greedily bought up in second editions of the morning papers, and flashed along the electric wires to all the great cities of our own and the capitals of other lands. At present a few peers are leaning against the rails and chatting—that is all. A little below the throne is the purple velvet cushion—the object of so many a struggle—of so many a year of unflinching toil—of so many a defence of party spoken in another place—of so many a clever piece of intrigue. We mean the woolsack, on which sits the Lord Chancellor Chelmsford. If the debate is continued till a late hour, and the keeper of her Majesty’s conscience retires to dine, Lord Redesdale acts as chairman pro tem. His lordship is eccentric in his dress—black trousers, white cravat, buff waistcoat, blue coat and brass buttons, white stockings and shoes, compose a tout ensemble rarely seen in the House of Lords or elsewhere. Greater men than Lord Chelmsford have sat on the woolsack. We live in a little age. Our great men are little men after all. Our Lord Chancellor has never done what other Lord Chancellors have done, viz., wielded the fierce democracy of the lower house, shone unrivalled on the parliamentary arena, thundered from the platform, won fame by their daring, and acumen, and learning, and eloquence, in every corner of the land. Indeed, he makes no pretensions to oratory or greatness of any kind. He is an able lawyer and eager partisan, little more. In this respect not at all resembling, or rather very much differing from, the extraordinary individual who has just darted on the woolsack, as if he would edge off the Chancellor and take his very seat. That individual we need not name; a glance at the nose and plaid trousers—trousers which he is incessantly hitching up when he speaks—are sufficient. It must be my Lord Brougham, and no one else. To no other man born of woman has nature vouchsafed the same power of universality. No other man would attempt to do what he is now doing, talking law with one man, politics with another, and scandal with a third, and all the while listening to the debate, and qualifying himself to take a part in it. In the course of time we shall see him pursuing an erratic career in any part of the house except in that one part in which sit ministers and their supporters. Amongst their ranks Lord Brougham is never to be found. To the party in power he is always opposed. It is his pride that he never worships the rising sun. The Ex-Chancellor has never forgotten or forgiven the treatment he received, but it does not affect his health—it does not tinge his life with melancholy. He does not let disappointment, like a worm in the bud, prey upon his damask cheek. His hair is a little greyer—his face is a little fatter; that is all the change the wear and tear of half a century of public life has produced: and of such a half century! the half century that waged war with France—triumphed at Waterloo—carried Reform—repealed the Corn Laws—and saw the birth of railways and the electric telegraph; a half century of more interest than any preceding age—the work and the excitement of which wore out our Romillys, Follets, and Horners, with premature decay. Yet Brougham still lives. Slightly altering Byron, we may say of him—

Time writes no wrinkles on his brazen brow,

Such as the Edinburgh’s dawn beheld he wriggleth now.

Below the woolsack is a table, at which Lord Campbell generally sits; and on each side are ranged the orators and partizans of the two great sections which, under some name or other, always have existed and always will exist in our national history. The uninitiated call them Conservatives and Whigs; the wiser simply term them the men who are in office and the men who are not. The Government for the time being sits on the right hand of the Lord Chancellor, who acts as Speaker, and who has a far easier berth of it than Mr. Denison. The Lords are not long-winded, nor noisy; not passionate, and, like true Britons, always adjourn to dinner. Hence no post-prandial scenes are visible. In the small hours no patriots, smelling strongly of whisky-and-water and cigars, expatiate to a wearied assembly on that ever fertile theme, the wrongs and woes of the Green Isle. The Lords, like Mr. Wordsworth’s gods—

“Approve the depth but not the tumult of the soul.”

We can never fancy the House of Lords to be what you may sometimes take the House of Commons to be—a bear garden or a menagerie. You miss the vulgarity of the one, and you also miss its excitement and earnestness—its cries of “question” and “divide” when some well-known bore is on his legs, and its long resounding cheers when some favourite partisan sits down. All is staid, and correct, and proper, with the exception of a tirade from the Rupert of debate, or some father in God on the Episcopal Bench. We would fain say a few words about these reverend gentlemen. One could hardly expect to find the ministers of the self-denying and lowly Jesus of Nazareth sitting in a gorgeous house with the proudest and wealthiest of the English peers. You would expect to find them rather by the bed-side of the sick, in the houses of the poor, combating with the vice and infidelity of the day; or else you would look for them in their studies, surrounded with stately folios; or in the midst of their clergy, reviving the fainthearted, urging on the timid, counselling the young, and girding up the energies and hearts of all. You would expect to find them in the House of the Lord rather than in the House of Lords. In short, anywhere but in the turmoil of party conflict. This, however, is not the case. The bishops are almost the first object that attracts your eye. They sit on benches by themselves, on the Government side, but beyond the ministerial bench. In the “dim religious light” of the Upper House, you can scarcely make out what they are. You see venerable wigs, and black robes, and lawn sleeves; and if you look sharp, you may, at times, catch the outline of a reverend face—most probably of Dr. Tait, the energetic bishop of London, or of the pug nose and plebeian profile of Samuel of Oxford. They are very regular in their attendance, and frequently take part in the debate. Indeed, the latter bishop is a great man in the Lords; and so was Henry of Exeter, but his voice is seldom heard, and his name never mentioned now, though he is generally present, and sits at the end of the benches nearest to the spectator, while the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is also pretty regular in his attendance, occupies the other end of the bench. The other bishops do not muster quite so strongly. Half of them is a good attendance. It is to be hoped they are more profitably employed.

Coming lower down, our eyes rest on the men who did carry on government, and generally occupy the unenviable situation of Ministers of the Crown. At present they are out of office, and are seated on the Lord Chancellor’s left. Generally, at the top of the bench, is seated a slight, undersized, juvenile, red-haired Scot—that is the Duke of Argyle, who, in virtue of being a Duke, and the husband of the daughter of the Duchess of Sutherland, was Lord Privy Seal. His lordship is as pert and ready as any forward youth in a debating-club, and has much of the appearance and manner of such a one. He gives you no great idea of hereditary statesmanship, the only quality conspicuous in him being a tolerable amount of modest assurance, perfectly natural to a peer who is an author and has lectured at mechanics’ institutions, and read papers before the British Association. By him is seated Lord Panmure, very red in the face, which redness seems to arise from a military stock which he persists in wearing. There sits the Marquis of Clanricarde, who has suffered much from public opinion, and who deserves to suffer, if only his conduct in certain electioneering matters be taken into account. The Earl of Granville is the leader of this small band; he is a pleasant looking man, and speaks not badly for a lord. The Whig Nestor, the aged Marquis of Lansdowne, worthy of remembrance for his friendship for Tom Moore, is easily detected by his blue coat and brass buttons, that remnant of the palmy days of party. None of these men are remarkable for oratorical power. A strong contrast is presented by the illustrious personage sitting on the next row, higher up, just opposite the bishops—a severe, well-made, heavy, grey-haired man, who sits almost silent and sullen, as if he had no feelings, as if the debate was a sham, and he should be glad if it were over. We refer to

“The travelled thane, Athenian Aberdeen,”

the best-abused man, at one time, in her gracious Majesty’s dominions, but without whom, nevertheless, it is questionable whether the Queen’s Government could be carried on. Unfortunately, Lord Aberdeen is not the man for the public. The public likes to be gammoned, and his lordship cannot gammon. He is spare in words, cold and unimpassioned in delivery, and somewhat too indifferent to party attacks. On neighbouring benches are seated discontented Whigs, overlooked in the scramble for place, and who therefore view the proceedings of all governments with an impartial, but yet a jealous eye. Prominent amongst such is the sandy-looking unamiable Earl Grey, who seems angry with himself and all the world, because he is lame, and has not the command of the colonies. Below the table are half-a-dozen benches, on which congregate a few peers till dinner time. Here sits Earl Fitzwilliam—here also sits one of the most frightful bores in the House, Lord Monteagle, who always speaks, and, for a lord, cruelly long. That is the consequence of his having been in the Lower House. Never stop to hear him. As soon as you see his bald head, be off. The Dukes sit here. On the front bench on your right is the Duke of Cambridge. On his left is seated the Duke of Newcastle, a promising orator when a member of the Lower House, and a follower of Sir Robert Peel. Crossing to the government benches, the Earl of Derby fills the first place. We need not paint his portrait; the sharp aristocratic face—but feebly reflected in that promising young man, but unfortunate speaker, his son—is familiar to us all; there he is out of place. He has no fitting opponents. It was among the Commons that he won his laurels. Yet, at times, the old afflatus fills him, and his clear voice and fluent declamation are as bitter and terrible as when night after night he wrestled, as if for very life, with the brawny champion of Catholic Emancipation, and the somewhat too selfish, unscrupulous exponent of Irish wrongs. By his side is his trusty page, the inelegant and insipid Malmesbury, of whom, in a passing freak, the author of “Vivian Grey” not merely made a statesman, but actually Minister for Foreign Affairs. On the bench behind the Premier sits that wonderful old man eloquent, whose shrill tones may occasionally be heard, and whose intellect seems as great and grand as when he was Sir John Copley—Attorney-General before the Reform Bill was carried, and England, according to Croker, for ever undone. Near him sits a tall, thin gentleman, with a copious head of hair, and a force of gesticulation hardly English: that is the Earl of Ellenborough, in his own opinion hero, statesman, lawyer, “all things by turns, and nothing long;” in this respect second only to Lord Brougham, who sits everywhere, speaks wherever he can, and whose Ciceronian eloquence, aided by a delivery more expressive than dignified, by gestures and tones at any rate vivacious, astonish the weak nerves of the spectators, and oft-times puzzles the parliamentary reporters themselves. Few other notabilities do we see. Perhaps we may note on the opposition benches the pale aristocratic form of that popular nobleman, the Earl of Shaftesbury. Disraeli makes one of his peers say, the House of Lords looks like a house of butlers. We think the satirist is unjust. At any rate, the peers are well dressed. Hats, gloves, boots, and frock-coats are all unexceptionable. We need not say, in this respect, the House of Lords presents a very different appearance to the House of Commons. Yet the Lords need not be so particular about their “gorgeous array;” there are seldom more than half-a-dozen ladies present to admire and reward their display. The Lords are more polite than the Commons. Such ladies as are present take their seats in the gallery, where they can see and be seen; in the other house, as our readers know, the case is different. But even the ladies, we dare say, would not mind being treated as the Commons treat them, if the debates in the Lords were as good as in the Commons. If the peers did not dress so well, and were not so excessively polite, but spoke better, no great harm would be done; but there’s the difficulty. It is difficult for a polite man to be ill-bred, and to lose his temper, and say sharp things. In the House of Commons nothing is easier. Say something bitter, and you will have a murmur of applause—be savage, and at any rate your own party will cheer; but in the Lords you can’t get up the semblance of earnestness. The whole thing seems too much like play—an apology for business, and that is all. No man can speak to twenty sleepy peers as he could to four or five hundred eager partisans. No man can be impressive in the bosom of his family—and the Lords are a family party, all connected, or nearly so; and if a stranger comes in, he soon apes the fashionable tone, and becomes as dull and apathetic as the rest. And why should a lord be otherwise? A lord is not more a lord for having brains—nor the less a lord for being without. Intellect, skill, oratory, are no helps—are unnecessary in an hereditary institution. Sir Robert Peel knew this, and lived and died a commoner. Chatham became comparatively a small man when he took a pension and a peerage. So was it with Walpole, when meeting his old rival Pulteney, after they had both been raised to the peerage, he exclaimed, “Here we are, my lord, the two most insignificant personages in Europe.” The Upper House but registers the decisions of the Lower—the business of the country is carried on elsewhere.

But while we have been looking at the House, the debate has closed. Lord Granville has asked a question and made an attack. Lord Derby has uttered a few petulant remarks, to which Lord Aberdeen has made a cold and formal reply, to which some peers, disappointed of place, have added a little independent criticism on their own account. Two or three exquisites have been discussing little matters of their own, till they find that if they stop much longer they will be too late for Rotten Row, and the House merely waits for Lord Monteagle to sit down and go home. Happily his lordship is briefer than his wont, and the Lord High Chancellor declares the House adjourned. Rushing outside, we catch hasty glimpses of our hereditary legislators as they, in fashionable brougham or on splendid blood, start for their parks or respective Belgravian homes. We also, in more plebeian manner, do the same. We are sure the reader will have had enough of the Lords for one night. He will have found out that they are not much better orators or speakers than other men—that even lords stammer, utter incoherent remarks, display poverty of ideas. Let us add, in conclusion, the great merit of a night in the Lords is, that it is soon over. If the Lords be dull, at any rate they are short. To be dull and long-winded is an offence against good breeding of which few peers are guilty.