THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
I have a vague remembrance of having as a small boy been taken round the Houses of Lords and Commons as a holiday treat. The Houses cannot have been sitting at the time, and the only thing that I remembered was the fact that the Lords sat on red seats, the Commons on green.
I did once, in later years, make an attempt to gain admission to hear a debate; but, after some waiting, the legislator to whom I had sent in my card came out with rather a long face. He had moved heaven and earth, he said, to find a place for me, but it was impossible. However, he suggested, brightening up, there was nothing to prevent our going together to the Aquarium over the way, which we should find much more amusing.
The House of Commons was, therefore, quite new ground to me, and I was very pleased when the Rising Legislator asked me if I would not dine some night with him in the House and hear a debate afterwards.
The House of Commons is a nice comforting address to give a cabman, and as I drove down Westminster wards I felt that in the eyes of one individual I was that glorious person, an M.P.
But, if my cabman thought I was the member for somewhere or another, he was soon undeceived. We bowled into Palace Yard as if the place belonged to me, and pulled up at an arched door, where a policeman was on guard. I mentioned the Rising Legislator's name, but the policeman, who, though hard-hearted, had excellent manners, could not admit me except on the personal appearance of my host.
"Then where am I to go?" I said, appealing to the better side of that policeman's nature, and he told me to go out of the yard and turn to the right, and I would be admitted at the first door. The cabman, who had been listening, must have been satisfied with the fare I gave him, for he invited me to get into the cab again, and said he would take me round to the right place in a jiffy. Though friendly, there was a distinct familiarity now in the cabman's manner. I had ceased to be an M.P. in his eyes.
The policeman at this other door was not hard-hearted, and directed me up a long lobby, on either side of which were gentlemen of various periods, in very white marble. Every policeman I passed I mentioned the Rising Legislator's name to, just as a guarantee of good faith, and I was passed on to a central lobby, where a small selection of the public, looking very melancholy, were sitting patiently on a stone bench, and where gentlemen of noble appearance—I do not wish to be brought up at the bar of the House for saying anything disrespectful of any member of the House—were in converse with others, whom I took to be influential constituents. Some ladies in evening dress were being shown about by smart gentlemen. There were policemen guarding an entrance, and whenever anybody of the outside crowd approached it they were warned away with a kind of "stand out of the draught" motion. It is, no doubt, some deadly crime to get in the way of an M.P. in his own House.
A policeman directed me to write the Rising Legislator's name on the back of my card, and, having scrutinised it to see whether I had spelled the name correctly, handed it over to a gentleman in dress clothes with what looked like a gilt plate with the Royal arms on it at the V of his waistcoat. I waited some little time and inspected the statues, some of which were rather comic, in the Lobby.
Presently the Rising Legislator appeared, and apologised for being somewhat late. A chat with a Cabinet Minister was the cause. I felt a sort of reflected glory in this. We passed the sacred portals, and, as we did so, I gave the policeman a glance as much as to say. "You see, I didn't deceive you; I really do know him!" And I set my hat on the side of my head with more of a cock. "It is the custom for no one except the members of the House to wear their hats here," said the Rising Legislator; and I relapsed again into humility.