"ADMIRABLY-FEIGNED SURPRISE."
This was the period of the evening when chartered libertines of debate appeared on the scene and the fun grew fast and furious. It was Mr. O'Donnell's pleasing habit to rise when the duel between the Leaders was concluded, and the crowded House roared for the division like caged lions whose feeding-time is overstepped. Pausing to recapture his errant eyeglass, Mr. O'Donnell was accustomed to gaze round the seething mass of senators with admirably-feigned surprise at their impatience. When the uproar lulled he began his speech; when it rose again he stopped; but the speech was inevitable, and members presently recognising the position, sat in sullen silence till he had said his say.
This was comedy, not highly conceived it is true, but worked out with great skill, the enraged House chiefly contributing to its success. It was varied by the tragedy of the desperate English or Scotch member who, striving vainly night after night to catch the Speaker's eye, made a mad plunge at his last chance, and was literally howled down. It was a favourite hour for the late Mr. Biggar's manifestations, and the lamented and immortal Major O'Gorman never failed to put in an appearance at eleven o'clock, ready for any fun that might be going or might be made.
Now, when members slowly fill the House after dinner, dropping in between ten and eleven o'clock, they know there is no time for anything but business. If a division is imminent the debate must necessarily stop before midnight for the question to be put. If it is to be continued, it must be adjourned sharp on the stroke of midnight. As the House rarely refills much before eleven o'clock, there is not opportunity after dinner for more than one set speech from a favourite orator. The consequence is that the plums of debate are in these days all pulled out before dinner; and though at this period, the withers of the House being unwrung it is ready for a brisk fight, it is not in the mellow mood that invites and encourages the humorous.
"ELOQUENCE."
Whilst the opportunities of the Parliamentary Yorick are thus peremptorily curtailed, he is at a further disadvantage in view of the personality of the Leadership. It is impossible that a House led by Mr. W. H. Smith can be as prone to merriment as was one which found its head in Mr. Disraeli. When, in the Parliament of 1868, Mr. Gladstone was Premier and Mr. Disraeli Leader of the Opposition, or in the succeeding Parliament, when these positions were reversed, the House of Commons enjoyed a unique incentive to conditions of humour. Mr. Gladstone, with his gravity of mien, his sonorous sustained eloquence, and his seriousness about trifles, was a superb foil for the gay, but always mordant humour of Mr. Disraeli.
From the outset of his career that great Parliamentarian enjoyed extraordinary advantage by reason of the accident of the personality against which, first and last, he was pitted. Having had Sir Robert Peel to gird against through the space of a dozen years, it was too much to hope that for fully a quarter of a century he should have enjoyed the crowning mercy of being opposed to and contrasted with Mr. Gladstone. Yet such was his good fortune. How little he did with Lord Hartington in the interregnum of 1874-7, and how little mark he made against Lord Granville when he met him in the Lords, brings into strong light the advantage fortune had secured for him through the longer period of his life.
