THE LETTER-BAG OF TOBY, M.P.
From a Hooded Eagle.
H-tf-ld House, Friday.
Dear Toby,
After a too brief holiday I am back again to H-tf-ld and to L-nd-n, and take an early opportunity of dropping you a line. I call the interval since the House was up a holiday for convenience sake; but what with the daily arrival of despatch boxes and the delivery of the morning papers, the repose has been intermittent. I fancy that since the days of Old Pam the recess has always been a mockery for the Premier of the day. D-zzy had some bad times from 1874 to 1880, and Gl-dst-ne’s subsequent Premiership was not a bed of roses, even in the recess. But they at least had the satisfaction of feeling that they were in power as well as in office. If they decided upon a particular line of policy, they could initiate it without first inquiring how it might suit half-a-dozen people. Moreover, each was in varying degree supported by capable colleagues, able to hold their own on the platform or in the House. For unhappy Me things are quite otherwise. I may devise a policy for Ireland and elsewhere, but before I can announce it, I must humbly learn how it suits my Lord H-rt-ngt-n and my good friend Ch-mb-rl-n. As for my colleagues and the help I receive from them——well, that is a matter of which of course I cannot write, even in the confidence of correspondence with you. But I may tell you that over at Châlet C-c-l I found some little time for reading other literature than Blue Books. Looking through Shelley once again, I came upon the line descriptive of Coleridge, “flagging wearily through darkness and despair,”
“A hooded eagle among blinking owls.”
I don’t exactly know why, but when I think of some things that have taken place lately, I have a strong feeling of personal sympathy with the hooded eagle.
But this is a trifle melancholy, and will make you think I am in low spirits, or even that there is truth in the newspaper rumours of failing health. Nothing of the sort, dear boy; never better in my life. Full of health and spirits, of hope for the coming time, and eagerness for the fray of next Session. How I have envied Gl-dst-ne going about the country making speeches which would have been twice as effective if they had been half as long, receiving the homage of the masses, and driving in state through the streets of Derby, with his led Captain, H-rc-rt, on the box-seat of his carriage! What a curious man is Gl-dst-ne, the Elephant of our political life, who can in the morning crush a Ministry, and in the afternoon achieve a petty economy by selling waste timber. There has been a good deal written about Napoleon whilst involved in his fatal campaign in Russia occupying spare moments in drawing up regulations for the Opera House at Paris. But what is that compared with Gl-dst-ne marching through the Midlands to upset my Government, and, en route, drafting an announcement that timber felled at Hawarden by his own hand would be on sale “at a uniform charge, viz., 1s., 6d. for a small log, or 3s. per cubic foot, exclusive of railway carriage.” Of course I know that William Henry has gallantly rushed into the breach, and avowed the authorship of this remarkable proclamation. But if W. H. is allowed to do this kind of thing without consultation or authority, all I can say is that discipline at Hawarden is fatally faulty. Besides, amiable and engaging as he is, I do not believe that W. H. is equal to the unassisted concoction of this incomparable production. However it be, no one but Gl-dst-ne could stand the ridicule of the thing, and he doubtless doesn’t feel it.