Some years ago the present chronicler and others were staying at a small hotel in a remote corner of Silesia. After breakfast the waiter appeared and addressed the linguist of the party. What did the Herrschaft propose? he should recommend the ascent of the Flaschenberg. At what hour would the Herrschaft dine?
“What does he call us?” I asked the linguist.
“Herrschaft,” he said: “Their Lordships; you ought to know.”
We were “My Lords”! Probably some Hanoverian monarch had imported the title from Germany, and had applied it to a Committee of the Privy Council. Under this sign they conquered. It took the place of the kingly and editorial WE. It called up a vision of phantasmal, coroneted heads, shaking a negative, more rarely nodding an affirmative. In front there might seem to be a Secretary, an Assistant Secretary, even a clerk: but when the suppliant got as far as “What ho! Arrest me that agency,” the official vanished, and there was but a voice, “My Lords regret.” “And so the vision fadeth.” With this weapon they put to silence inquisitive members of the Opposition, who “wanted to know” things better unknown: with this they conquered School Boards and school managers of all denominations: with this they even tried to intimidate H.M. Inspectors themselves, who well knew that it was no lion that roared, but only Snug the joiner.
My Lords were but a Parliamentary fiction; in theory composed of the Lord President, the First Lord of the Treasury, and some Secretaries of State: in practice they had no existence; but I think the Whitehall staff had by long “making believe” persuaded themselves that they were flesh and blood. A newly appointed examiner would go to his immediate superior with a letter from the School Board of Swaggerby, protesting against a deduction of one-tenth from the annual grant paid in respect of the Slum Street Board School: how should he reply?
“Pooh, pooh: it’s Article 32, c. (3): tell them to go to the deuce.” And the beardless stripling would sit down, and write:—
“Adverting to your letter of the 24th inst., I am directed to inform you that My Lords regret that They are unable to reconsider Their decision in the matter. I am to refer you to Art. 32, c. (3) of the Code; and I am to add that Their Lordships will look for a marked improvement in the results of the next examination as a condition of the payment of any further grant.”
The capital letter prefixed to the third personal pronoun always seemed to me the height of impertinent arrogance. But the examiners enjoyed it immensely; and I am convinced that, if they ever went to church and heard the petition in the Litany supplicating wisdom and understanding for the Lords of the Council, they mentally added, “Meaning US, though WE are already well supplied.”
The composition of the Education Department was very simple in 1872 when I trod the corridors. At that time elementary education pure and simple was controlled from Whitehall. Science and art were the care of another establishment, which we knew as “South Kensington.” The Montague and Capulet retainers never met; only they bit their thumbs when the other house was mentioned. When—in the later ’seventies—we began to clash, science and art were considered pastimes for retired officers, who had exchanged the sword for an H.B. pencil, and all sorts of majors and captains used to be mixed up with the study thereof. They used to examine in drawing, and they conducted examinations in May and December with a code of regulations of their own composing. They even invented an envelope with a fastening that reminded one of Rob Roy’s purse—(“the simplicity of the contrivance to secure a furred pouch, which could have been ripped open without any attempt on the spring, &c.”)—and when, as occasionally happened, we were appealed to for help in superintending their examinations at the training colleges, we danced in fetters of red-tape.
It used to be told of one of the best known of the Whitehall officials, F. T. Palgrave, of Golden Treasury fame, that a school manager once interviewed him on some grievance, and, getting little satisfaction, enquired whether he might ask whom he had the honour of addressing.