Sketches in the House: The Story of a Memorable Session (1893)

by T. P. O'Connor

A brilliant scene.

The brilliancy of the scene in the House of Lords on September 4th, when the fight over the Home Rule Bill began, was undeniable. Standing at the bar, in that small space which is reserved for members of the other Chamber, and looking out at the view, it was, I thought, one of the most picturesque and brilliant spectacles on which my eye had ever rested. The beauty of the House of Commons is great. But it is undoubtedly inferior in beauty to the House of Lords. In the House of Commons the roof is a false one, for the original loftiness of the ceiling was found too great to allow anyone to be properly heard. But in the House of Lords, where the acoustic properties are still extremely bad, the anxiety to hear its members has not yet proved great enough to induce them to make any change in the roof, with the result that the Chamber gives you an impression of loftiness, spaciousness, and sweep, such as you do not find in the other. And then the walls at the end obtain additional splendour from the fine pictures that there stand out and confront you—pictures full of crowded life, movement, and tragedy. The Throne, too, with all its gilded splendour, remains, even in its emptiness, a reminder of that stately and opulent lordship which our institutions give to a great personage above all parties and all classes.

Lovely woman.

In addition to all this, the House of Lords has made provision for the appearance of lovely woman, which contrasts most favourably with the curmudgeon and churlish arrangements of the House of Commons. In the House of Commons women have to hide themselves, as though they were in a Mahommedan country, behind a grille—where, invisible, suffocated, and crowded, they are permitted to see—themselves unseen—the gambollings of their male companions below. In the House of Lords, on the other hand, there is a gallery all round the house, in which peeresses and the relatives of peers are allowed to sit—observed of all men—prettily dressed, attentive—a beautiful flower-bordering, so to speak, to the male assemblage below. The variety and brilliancy of colour given by their fashionable clothes adds a great richness and opulence and lightness to the scene; in fact, takes away anything like sombreness, in appearance and aspect at least, from an assembly which otherwise is calculated to suggest sinister reminiscences of coming trouble and the approaching darkness of political agitation. The benches, too, have a richness which is foreign to the House of Commons, as the members of the popular assembly sit on benches covered with a deep green leather, which is dark, modest, and unpretentious. There is always something, to my eye at least, that suggests opulence in the colour crimson, and the benches of the Upper Chamber are all in crimson leather, and the crimson has all the freshness which comes from rarity of use. In the House of Commons, with all its workaday and industrious life, the deep and dark green has always more or less of a worn and shabby look. In the Upper Chamber the original splendour of the crimson cloth is undimmed; for most of the benches remain void and unoccupied for 999 nights of the thousand on which their lordships meet.

The two chambers—a contrast.

Whatever the cause I always associate the House of Lords in my mind with emptiness and silence, and the gloomy scenes of desertion. And, therefore, when I see it crowded as it was on this historic Monday evening, the effect it produces is heightened by the recollection and the sense of the contrast it presents to its ordinary appearance. The House of Commons has a certain impressiveness and splendour of air when it is very full; I always have a certain sense of exaltation by the mere looking at its crowded benches on these nights when the excitement of the hour brings everybody to his place. But then the House of Commons is frequently full, and there is no such sense of unusualness when you see it thus that you have when you look on the House of Lords with benches teeming with multitudinous life which you have seen so often empty, lifeless, and ghostly. Thus splendid was the scene, and yet it gave you a prevailing and unconquerable impression of gloom and lifelessness. In the House of Commons, the member addressing the assembly is like the wind which passes through an Æolian harp. You cannot utter a word which does not produce its full and immediate response. You say a thing which has the remotest approach to an absurdity in it, and the whole House laughs consumedly and immediately. You utter a phrase which excites party feeling, and at once—quick as lightning falls—comes back the retort of anger or approval; your way is studded and punctuated with some response or other, that signifies the readiness and the depth and amplitude of emotion in one of the most emotional, and noisy, and responsive assemblies in the world. It is a curious change from all this to look on all these crowded benches sitting in a silence that is unbroken more than once in the course of half an hour.

Spencer's serene courage.

I have often had to admire Lord Spencer—to admire him when he was a political foe as well as when he has been a political friend; but I don't think I ever admired him so much as when he stood up on September 4th to address this strange assembly. Hours he has passed through of all-pervading and all-surrounding gloom, danger, and assassination; but I do not suppose his nerve was ever put to a test more trying than when he confronted those large battalions of uncompromising and irresponsive foes. There were foes on all sides of him. They filled the many benches opposite to him; they filled, with equal fervour and multitudinousness, the benches on his own side. It was remarkable to see the thoroughness with which the Tories had mustered their forces; but the spectacle of the Liberal Unionists' Benches was even still more remarkable, for there was not a seat vacant; they had all come—those renegade and venomous deserters from the Liberal ranks—to do their utmost against the Liberal party and their mighty Liberal leader. And what support had Lord Spencer against all these foes—before him, around him—on all sides of him? On the benches immediately behind him there was a small band of men—not forty all told—looking strangely deserted, skeleton-like, even abashed in all their loneliness and isolation. These were the friends—few but faithful—amid all the hundreds, who alone had a word of cheer for Lord Spencer in a long and trying speech he had to address to his irreconcilable foes. But if there was any tremor in him as he stood up in surroundings so trying, I was unable to detect it. Indeed, at the moment he rose, there was something very fine and very impressive in his figure. He is, as most people know, a man of unusual height; hard exercise and the ride across country have kept him from having any of that tendency to embonpoint which destroys in middle age so many a fine figure. On the contrary, there is not a superfluous ounce of flesh on that tall, alert figure; it is the figure of a trained athlete rather than the figure one would associate with a nobleman in the end of a self-indulgent and ever-eating and over-drinking century. The features, strong yet gentle, though far from regular, have considerable distinction, and the flowing red beard makes the face stand out in any assembly. Carefully but plainly dressed, erect, perfectly composed, and courteous in every word and look and gesture, Lord Spencer made his plea for justice to the nation where once his name was the symbol for hatred and wrong.

A man of deeds, not words.