At one end of the Terrace, nearest the Bridge, is the Speaker’s House, and that part of the walk is reserved for Members alone. On a hot summer afternoon twenty, thirty, or forty men may be seen there settling important business, or enjoying tea and cigarettes. Then comes the portion set aside for Members with guests, and there the gaiety of the dresses—for every woman puts on her best to go to tea at the House of Commons—is delightful, but mingled with the smart company are some queer folk. Members are always being asked to entertain their constituents, and some of the political ladies from the provinces must be rather a trial to their representatives at Westminster.
We were a funny little party that afternoon. Miss Braddon (Mrs. Maxwell) sat at the end of the table, then came Sir Gilbert Parker, myself, Mr. and Mrs. (now Sir Henry and Lady) W. H. Lucy, Sir William Wedderburn, and Mrs. John Murray.
Since the Radical majority in 1906 the Terrace has become a very different place. Smart ladies and pretty frocks, well-set-up and well-groomed men, are not predominant; for Labour Members wear labour clothes, and smoke pipes, while their families and friends look ill at ease below those glorious towers of Westminster.
A few days after that House of Commons tea with Dr. Farquharson I chanced to have tea at the House of Lords with Viscount Templetown. In this case, one drives up to the Peers’ Entrance, which is rather farther from Parliament Street, and alights beneath the fine portico, where officials in gorgeous uniform enquire one’s business, until the kindly peer, who is waiting in the hall, steps forward to claim his guest.
Passing, as on my visit to the House of Commons, through sundry cheerless passages and more horrible stone staircases, we stepped out upon the Terrace, this time at the end furthest from the Speaker’s House. The only difference in the arrangements is that at the Lords’ teas, waitresses are superseded by waiters wearing gorgeous blue ribbons and gold badges, so grand, indeed, that an American is said to have innocently asked if that was the Order of the Garter.
“Yes, my lud,” “No, my lud,” is the answer to every question. The tea is just the same, the fare is just as frugal, the cups and tray just as simple as for the House of Commons, but on every chair is painted “House of Lords.” What would not an American give to possess one of those chairs, iron-clamped and wooden-rimmed though they be?
The less said about the Ladies’ Gallery the better. I have never gone there without a feeling of disgust. One might as well be shut up in a bathing-machine, so foul is the air; or behind the screen of a cathedral, so little can one see; or in a separate room, so little can one hear. For many months in 1910 women were forbidden even this gruesome chamber as a punishment for militant disturbances. When the rule of banishment was rescinded only relations of members were admitted. Thus some curious relationships were invented. A story runs that someone asked a prominent Irishman if he would pass a lady in as his cousin.
“Certainly,” he replied—but when he saw her, she came from South Africa, and was black, and so he cooled off.