A Change in the Cabinet

A CHANGE IN THE CABINET
BY H. BELLOC
“STRIVE, STRIVE, HOWE’ER WE STRIVE YOUTH DECLINES AT FIFTY-FIVE.” Old Saw
METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON
First Published in 1909
TO MISS ALICE BEARDSLEY

A CHANGE IN THE CABINET
SIR—or to speak more correctly, the Right Honourable Sir T. Charles Repton, Bart., M.V.O., O.M., Warden of the Court of Dowry, a man past middle age but in the height of industry, sat at breakfast in his house: a large house overlooking Hyde Park from the North, close to the corner of the Edgware Road, and therefore removed by at least a hundred yards from the graphic representation which marks the site of the old Permanent Gallows that once stood at Tyburn.
I have said that he was Warden of the Court of Dowry, and the reader, if she has any acquaintance with parliamentary affairs, will remember that at the time of which I speak, the month of March, 1915, that post commonly carried with it Cabinet rank. The experienced in political matters will certainly induce that he was also in the House of Commons. He sat there for Pailton, a borough which had been the last to elect him after previous experiences in Merionethshire, Kirkby, Bruton, Powkeley and the Wymp division of Dorset, in which last his somewhat constrained and cold manner had perhaps led to his defeat.
It was not his first experience of office, but he had never stood so high in the Councils of the Nation, nor had his presence in the Cabinet ever more weighed with the young and popular Prime Minister (who was suffering slightly from his left lung) than at this moment. For though Charles Repton did not belong by birth to the group of families from which the Prime Minister had sprung, he was of those who, as they advance through life, accumulate an increasing number of clients, of dependents and of friends who dare not trifle with such friendships.
In figure he was tall and somewhat lean; he was clean-shaven; his brilliant white hair was well groomed; his brown eyes were singularly piercing, and, in contrast with his head, two thick, very dark and strongly arched eyebrows emphasized his expression. He was by persuasion at this time of his life a Second Day Wycliffite, and had indeed professed his connection with that body since at least his fortieth year, before which period in his career he had permanently resided in a suburb of Leicester, to which in turn he had removed from Newcastle.