Gleanings in Europe

by James Fenimore Cooper

You know, already, that the hall of the House of Lords is divided into three divisions—that around the throne, that which contains the peers, and that which is set apart for the public. I should think the latter, which is termed below the bar, might hold two or three hundred people, standing. There are no seats, and even the reporters are compelled to write on their knees, or to sit on the floor. Luckily for them, there is little, in general, to report.[17] There is also a small area around the fireplace which appears to be a no-man’s-land, for I heard a commoner ask a peer, lately, whether it was permitted for the members of the other house to occupy it, and the answer was an admission of ignorance, though the peer rather thought it was. The members of the commons, however, usually stand around the throne. Mr. Wortley, a gentleman I had seen in America, was standing on the steps of the throne to-night, while his father, Lord Wharncliffe, made a speech.

We found a thin house, and plenty of space below the bar. The Duke of Wellington was on the ministerial bench, and not far from him was my dinner acquaintance, the Bishop of ——, in his lawn sleeves. With the exception and that of another bishop, who entered in the course of the evening, besides the chancellor and the other officers of the house, I saw no one that was not in ordinary attire. All but the bishop and the latter wore their hats, and they wore their precious wigs. The chancellor looked like a miller with his head thrust through his wife’s petticoat. As for my bishop, he appeared fidgety and out of his place.

Lord Lansdowne and Lord Grey and Lord Holland, were all in their places, but neither said any thing but the first, who spoke for a few minutes. When we entered, I do not think there were twenty peers in their seats, though the number doubled at a later hour. These twenty were mostly clustered around the table, and their meeting strongly resembled that of an ordinary committee. The Marquis of Salisbury, a descendant of Burleigh, was on his feet when we came in, discussing some point connected with the game-laws. I doubt if his great ancestor knew half as much of the same subject. The tone was conversational and quiet, and, altogether, I never was in a public body that had so little the air of one. I could not divest myself of the idea of a conseil de famille, that had met to consult each other, in a familiar way, about the disposition of some of their possessions, while the members of the house who were listening, resembled the children who were excluded by their years.

Although one so seldom hears the term “my lord” in the world, it was pretty well bandied among the speakers to-night. They pronounced it “my lurds,” the English uniformly sounding the possessive pronoun in question more like the Italians than we do, so that it makes “mee lurds.” I was a good deal puzzled, when I first arrived here, to account for many abuses of the language, in the middling classes, and which sometimes are met with in the secondary articles of the public prints. “Think of me going without a hat,” is a sentence of the sort I mean. It is intended to say, “Think of my going, &c.;” but, from a confusion between the sound and the spelling, the personal pronoun is used, by illiterate people, instead of the possessive. This species of illiteracy, by the way, extends a good way up English society.

I take it, the polite way of pronouncing this word is by a sort of elision—as m’horse, m’dog, m’gun, and that my horse, my dog, my gun, the usual American mode, and me horse, me dog, me gun, the English counterpart, are equally wrong; the first by an offensive egotism, and the last from offensive ignorance. I think more noble peers, however, said “me lurds,” than “m’lurds,” though the formal tone of public speaking is seldom favourable to simple or accurate pronunciation. It usually plays the deuce with prosody, unless one has a naturally easy elocution. The French, in this respect, have the advantage of us, their language having no emphatic syllables. A Frenchman will often talk an hour without a true argument or a false quantity.

Lord Salisbury appeared to have a knowledge of his subject, which, in itself, was scarcely worthy to occupy the time of the peers of Great Britain. I do not mean that game is altogether beneath one’s notice, and still less that the moral enormities to which the English game-laws have given birth, do not require a remedy; but that local authority ought to exist to regulate all such minor interests; first, on account of their relative insignificance, and, secondly, because the reasoning that may apply to one county, may not fitly apply to another.

You may perhaps be ignorant that, by the actual law, game cannot be sold at all in England. My wife was ill lately, and I desired our landlady to send and get her a bird or two, but the good woman held up her hands and declared it was impossible, as there was a fine of fifty pounds for buying or selling game. The law is evaded, however, hares, it is said, passing from hand to hand constantly in London, under the name of lions!

I remember once, in travelling on our frontiers, to have received an apology from an inn-keeper, for not having any thing fit to eat, because he had only venison, wild pigeons, and brook trout. I asked him what he wanted better. He did not know, “but the gentleman had quite likely been used to pork!” Absurd as all this seems, I remember, after serving a season on the great lakes, to have asked for boiled pork and turnips, as a treat. Our physical enjoyments are mere matters of habit, while the intellectual, alone, are based on a rock. The worst tendency we have at home, is manifested by a rapacity for money, which, when obtained, is to be spent in little besides eating and drinking.

A Lord Carnarvon said a few words, and Lord Wharncliffe made a speech, but it was all in the same conversational tone. The peers do not address the chancellor in speaking, but their own body; hence the constant recurrence of the words “my lurds.” The chancellor does not occupy a seat at one end of the area, like a speaker, but he is placed on his woolsack, considerably advanced towards the table.

I should have been at a loss to know the members, but for a plain tradesman-like looking man at my elbow, who appeared to be familiar with the house, and who was there to show the lions to a country friend. I was much amused by this person’s observations, which were a strange medley of habitual English deference for rank and natural criticism. “There,” said he, “that is Lord L——, and he looks just like a journeyman carpenter.” His friend, however, was too much awe-struck to relish this familiarity.