Collections and Recollections Part 24

"_To the Hon. Mr. ----, M.P._

"Hon. Sir, Son in Jesu Christ, I beg most respectfully you, Hon. Sir, to accept the very deep grat.i.tude for the ticket which you, Hon. Sir, with n.o.ble kindness, favoured me by post to-day. May the Blessing of G.o.d Almighty come upon you, Hon. Sir, and may He preserve you, Hon. Sir, for ever and ever, Amen! With all due respect, I have the honour to be, Hon.

Sir, your most

"humble and obedient servant,

Surely the British Const.i.tuent might take a lesson from this extremely polite letter-writer when his long-suffering Member has squeezed him into the Strangers' Gallery.

Some letters, again, are odd from their excess of candour. A gentleman, unknown to me, soliciting pecuniary a.s.sistance, informed me that, having "sought relief from trouble in dissipation," he "committed an act which sent him into Penal Servitude," and shortly after his release, "wrote a book containing many suggestions for the reform of prison discipline," A lady, widely known for the benevolent use which she makes of great wealth, received a letter from an absolute stranger, setting forth that he had been so unfortunate as to overdraw his account at his bankers, and adding, "As I know that it will only cost you a scratch of the pen to set this right, I make no apology for asking you to do so."

Among "odd men" might certainly be reckoned the late Archdeacon Denison, and he displayed his oddness very characteristically when, having quarrelled with the Committee of Council on Education, he refused to have his parish schools inspected, and thus intimated his resolve to the inspector:--

"My dear Bellairs,--I love you very much; but if you ever come here again to inspect, I lock the door of the school, and tell the boys to put you in the pond."

I am not sure whether the great Duke of Wellington can properly be described as an "odd man," but beyond question he wrote odd letters. I have already quoted from his reply to Mrs. Norton when she asked leave to dedicate a song to him: "I have made it a rule to have nothing dedicated to me, and have kept it in every instance, though I have been Chancellor of the University of Oxford, and in other situations _much exposed to authors_." The Duke replied to every letter that he received, but his replies were not always acceptable to their recipients. When a philanthropist begged him to present some pet.i.tions to the House of Lords on behalf of the wretched chimney sweeps, the Duke wrote back: "Mr. Stevens has _thought fit_ to leave some pet.i.tions at Apsley House.

They will be found with the porter." The Duke's correspondence with "Miss J.," which was published by Mr. Fisher Unwin some ten years ago, and is much less known than it deserves to be, contains some gems of composition. Miss J. consulted the Duke about her duty when a fellow-pa.s.senger in the stage-coach swore, and he wrote: "I don't consider with you that it is necessary to enter into a disputation with every wandering Blasphemer. Much must depend upon the circ.u.mstances."

And when the good lady mixed flirtation with piety, and irritability with both, he wrote: "The Duke of Wellington presents His Compliments to Miss J. She is quite mistaken. He has no Lock of Hair of Hers. He never had one."[34] The Letter of Condolence is a branch of the art of letter-writing which requires very delicate handling. This was evidently felt by the Oxford Don who, writing to condole with a father on the death of his undergraduate son, concluded his tribute of sympathy by saying: "At the same time, I feel it my duty to tell you that your son would not in any case have been allowed to return next term, as he had failed to pa.s.s Responsions."

Curtness in letter-writing does not necessarily indicate oddity. It often is the most judicious method of avoiding interminable correspondence. When one of Bishop Thorold's clergy wrote to beg leave of absence from his duties in order that he might make a long tour in the East, he received for all reply: "Dear--,--Go to Jericho.--Yours, A.W.R." At a moment when scarlet fever was ravaging Haileybury, and suggestions for treatment were pouring in by every post, the Head Master had a lithographed answer prepared, which ran: "Dear Sir,--I am obliged by your opinions, and retain my own." An admirable answer was made by another Head Master to a pompous matron, who wrote that, before she sent her boy to his school, she must ask if he was very particular about the social antecedents of his pupils: "Dear Madam, as long as your son behaves himself and his fees are paid, no questions will be asked about his social antecedents."

Sydney Smith's reply, when Lord Houghton, then young "d.i.c.ky Milnes,"

wrote him an angry letter about some supposed unfriendliness, was a model of mature and genial wisdom: "Dear Milnes,--Never lose your good temper, which is one of your best qualities." When the then Dean of Hereford wrote a solemn letter to Lord John Russell, announcing that he and his colleagues would refuse to elect Dr. Hampden to the See, Lord John replied: "Sir,--I have had the honour to receive your letter of the 22nd inst., in which you intimate to me your intention of violating the law." Some years ago Lady----, who is well known as an ardent worker in the interests of the Roman Church, wrote to the Duke of----, a st.u.r.dy Protestant, that she was greatly interested in a Roman Catholic Charity, and, knowing the Duke's wide benevolence, had ventured to put down his name for 100. The Duke wrote back: "Dear Lady----,--It is a curious coincidence that, just before I got your letter, I had put down your name for a like sum to the English Mission for converting Irish Catholics; so no money need pa.s.s between us." But perhaps the supreme honours of curt correspondence belong to Mr. Bright. Let one instance suffice. Having been calumniated by a Tory orator at Barrow, Mr. Bright wrote as follows about his traducer: "He may not know that he is ignorant, but he cannot be ignorant that he lies. And after such a speech the meeting thanked him--I presume because they enjoyed what he had given them. I think the speaker was named Smith. He is a discredit to _the numerous family of that name._"

FOOTNOTES:

[34] Sir Herbert Maxwell, in his _Life of Wellington_, vouches for the genuineness of the Duke's letters to "Miss J." She was Miss A.M.

Jenkins.

x.x.xIII.

OFFICIALDOM.

The announcements relating to the first Cabinet of the winter set me thinking whether my readers might be interested in seeing what I have "collected" as to the daily life and labours of her Majesty's Ministers.

I decided that I would try the experiment, and, acting on the principle which I have professed before--that when once one has deliberately chosen certain words to express one's meaning one cannot, as a rule, alter them with advantage--I shall borrow from some former writings of my own.

The Cabinet is the Board of Directors of the British Empire. All its members are theoretically equal; but, as at other Boards, the effective power really resides in three or four. At the present moment[35]

Manchester is represented by one of these potent few. Sat.u.r.day is the usual day for the meeting of the Cabinet, though it may be convened at any moment as special occasion arises. Describing the potato-disease which led to the repeal of the Corn Laws, Lord Beaconsfield wrote: "This mysterious but universal sickness of a single root changed the history of the world. 'There is no gambling like politics,' said Lord Roehampton, as he glanced at the _Times_: 'four Cabinets in one week!

The Government must be more sick than the potatoes!'"

Twelve is the usual hour for the meeting of the Cabinet, and the business is generally over by two. At the Cabinets held during November the legislative programme for next session is settled, and the preparation of each measure is a.s.signed to a sub-committee of Ministers specially conversant with the subject-matter. Lord Salisbury holds his Cabinets at the Foreign Office; but the old place of meeting was the official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury at 10 Downing Street, in a pillared room looking over the Horse Guards Parade, and hung with portraits of departed First Lords.

In theory, of course, the proceedings of the Cabinet are absolutely secret. The Privy Councillor's oath prohibits all disclosures. No record is kept of the business done. The door is guarded by vigilant attendants against possible eavesdroppers. The dispatch-boxes which constantly circulate between Cabinet Ministers, carrying confidential matters, are carefully locked with special keys, said to date from the administration of Mr. Pitt; and the possession of these keys const.i.tutes admission into what Lord Beaconsfield called "the circles of high initiation." Yet in reality more leaks out than is supposed. In the Cabinet of 1880-5 the leakage to the press was systematic and continuous. Even Mr. Gladstone, the stiffest of sticklers for official reticence, held that a Cabinet Minister might impart his secrets to his wife and his Private Secretary.

The wives of official men are not always as trustworthy as Mrs. Bucket in _Bleak House_, and some of the Private Secretaries in the Government of 1880 were little more than boys. Two members of that Cabinet were notorious for their free communications to the press, and it was often remarked that the _Birmingham Daily Post_ was peculiarly well informed.

A n.o.ble Lord who held a high office, and who, though the most pompous, was not the wisest of mankind, was habitually a victim to a certain journalist of known enterprise, who used to waylay him outside Downing Street and accost him with jaunty confidence: "Well, Lord----, so you have settled on so-and-so after all?" The n.o.ble lord, astonished that the Cabinet's decision was already public property, would reply, "As you know so much, there can be no harm in telling the rest"; and the journalist, grinning like a dog, ran off to print the precious morsel in a special edition of the _Millbank Gazette_. Mr. Justin McCarthy could, I believe, tell a curious story of a highly important piece of foreign intelligence communicated by a Minister to the _Daily News_; of a resulting question in the House of Commons; and of the same Minister's emphatic declaration that no effort should be wanting to trace this violator of official confidence and bring him to condign punishment.

While it is true that outsiders sometimes become possessed by these dodges of official secrets, it is not less true that Cabinet Ministers are often curiously in the dark about great and even startling events. A political lady once said to me, "Do you in your party think much of my neighbour, Mr. ----?" As in duty bound, I replied, "Oh yes, a great deal." She rejoined, "I shouldn't have thought it, for when the boys are shouting any startling news in the special editions, I see him run out without his hat to buy an evening paper. That doesn't look well for a Cabinet Minister." On the fatal 6th of May 1882 I dined in company with Mr. Bright. He stayed late, but never heard a word of the murders which had taken place that evening in the Phoenix Park; went off quietly to bed, and read them as news in the next morning's _Observer_.

But, after all, attendance at the Cabinet, though a most important, is only an occasional, event in the life of one of her Majesty's Ministers.

Let us consider the ordinary routine of his day's work during the session of Parliament. The truly virtuous Minister, we may presume, struggles down to the dining room to read prayers and to breakfast in the bosom of his family between 9 and 10 A.M. But the self-indulgent bachelor declines to be called, and sleeps his sleep out. Mr. Arthur Balfour invariably breakfasts at 12; and more politicians than would admit it consume their tea and toast in bed. Mercifully, the dreadful habit of giving breakfast-parties, though sanctioned by the memories of Holland and Macaulay and Rogers and Houghton, virtually died out with the disappearance of Mr. Gladstone.

"Men who breakfast out are generally Liberals," says Lady St. Julians in _Sybil_. "Have not you observed that?"

"I wonder why?"

"It shows a restless, revolutionary mind," said Lady Firebrace, "that can settle to nothing, but must be running after gossip the moment they are awake."

"Yes," said Lady St. Julians, "I think those men who breakfast out, or who give breakfasts, are generally dangerous characters; at least I would not trust them."

And Lady St. Julians's doctrine, though half a century old, applies with perfect exactness to those enemies of the human race who endeavour to keep alive or to resuscitate this desperate tradition. Juvenal described the untimely fate of the man who went into his bath with an undigested peac.o.c.k in his system. Scarcely pleasanter are the sensations of the Minister or the M.P. who goes from a breakfast-party, full of b.u.t.tered m.u.f.fins and broiled salmon, to the sedentary desk-work of his office or the fusty wrangles of a Grand Committee.

Breakfast over, the Minister's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of exercise. If he is a man of active habits and strenuous tastes, he may take a gentle breather up Highgate Hill, like Mr. Gladstone, or play tennis, like Sir Edward Grey. Lord Spencer when in office might be seen any morning cantering up St. James's Street on a hack, or pounding round Hyde Park in high naval debate with Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth. Lord Rosebery drives himself in a cab; Mr. Asquith is driven; both occasionally survey the riding world over the railings of Rotten Row; and even Lord Salisbury may be found prowling about the Green Park, to which his house in Arlington Street has a private access. Mr. Balfour, as we all know, is a devotee of the cycle, and his example is catching; but Mr. Chamberlain holds fast to the soothing belief that, when a man has walked upstairs to bed, he has made as much demand on his physical energies as is good for him, and that exercise was invented by the doctors in order to bring grist to their mill.

Whichever of these examples our Minister prefers to follow, his exercise or his lounge must be over by 12 o'clock. The Grand Committees meet at that hour; on Wednesday the House meets then; and if he is not required by departmental business to attend either the Committee or the House, he will probably be at his office by midday. The exterior aspect of the Government Offices in Whitehall is sufficiently well known, and any peculiarities which it may present are referable to the fact that the execution of an Italian design was entrusted by the wisdom of Parliament to a Gothic architect. Inside, their leading characteristics are the abundance and steepness of the stairs, the total absence of light, and an atmosphere densely charged with Irish stew. Why the servants of the British Government should live exclusively on this delicacy, and why its odours should prevail with equal pungency "from morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve," are matters of speculation too recondite for popular handling.

The Minister's own room is probably on the first floor--perhaps looking into Whitehall, perhaps into the Foreign Office Square, perhaps on to the Horse Guards Parade. It is a large room with immense windows, and a fireplace ingeniously contrived to send all its heat up the chimney. If the office is one of the older ones, the room probably contains some good pieces of furniture derived, from a less penurious age than ours--a bureau or bookcase of mahogany dark with years, showing in its staid ornamentation traces of Chippendale or Sheraton; a big clock in a handsome case; and an interesting portrait of some historic statesman who presided over the department two centuries ago. But in the more modern offices all is barren. Since the late Mr. Ayrton was First Commissioner of Works a squalid cheapness has reigned supreme. Deal and paint are everywhere; doors that won't shut, bells that won't ring, and curtains that won't meet. In two articles alone there is prodigality--books and stationery. Hansard's Debates, the Statutes at Large, treatises ill.u.s.trating the work of the office, and books of reference innumerable, are there; and the stationery shows a delightful variety of shape, size, and texture, adapted to every conceivable exigency of official correspondence.

It is indeed in the item of stationery, and in that alone, that the grand old const.i.tutional system of perquisites survives. Morbidly conscientious Ministers sometimes keep a supply of their private letter-paper on their office-table and use it for their private correspondence; but the more frankly human sort write all their letters on official paper. On whatever paper written, Ministers' letters go free from the office and the House of Commons; and certain artful correspondents outside, knowing that a letter to a public office need not be stamped, write to the Minister at his official address and save their penny. In days gone by each Secretary of State received on his appointment a silver inkstand, which he could hand down as a keepsake to his children. Mr. Gladstone, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, abolished this little perquisite, and the only token of office which an outgoing Minister can now take with him is his dispatch-box. The wife of a minister who had long occupied an official residence, on being evicted from office said with a pensive sigh, "I hope I am not avaricious, but I must say, when one was hanging up pictures, it was very pleasant to have the Board of Works carpenter and a bag of the largest nails for nothing."

The late Sir William Gregory used to narrate how when a child he was taken by his grandfather, who was Under-Secretary for Ireland, to see the Chief Secretary, Lord Melbourne, in his official room. The good-natured old Whig asked the boy if there was anything in the room that he would like; and he chose a large stick of sealing-wax, "That's right," said Lord Melbourne, pressing a bundle of pens into his hand: "begin life early. All these things belong to the public, and your business must always be to get out of the public as much as you can."

There spoke the true spirit of our great governing families.

And now our Minister, seated at his official table, touches his pneumatic bell. His Private Secretary appears with a pile of papers, and the day's work begins. That work, of course, differs enormously in amount, nature, importance, and interest with different offices. To the outside world probably one office is much the same as another, but the difference in the esoteric view is wide indeed. When the Revised Version of the New Testament came out, an accomplished gentleman who had once been Mr. Gladstone's Private Secretary, and had been appointed by him to an important post in the permanent Civil Service, said: "Mr. Gladstone, I have been looking at the Revised Version, and I think it distinctly inferior to the old one."

"Indeed," said Mr. Gladstone, with all his theological ardour roused at once: "I am very much interested to hear you say so. Pray give me an instance."

"Well," replied the Permanent Official, "look at the first verse of the second chapter of St. Luke. That verse used to run, 'There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.' Well, I always thought that a splendid idea--a tax levied on the whole world by a single Act--a grand stroke worthy of a great empire and an imperial treasury. But in the Revised Version I find, 'There went out a decree that all the world should be enrolled'--a mere counting! a census! the sort of thing the Local Government Board could do! Will any one tell me that the new version is as good as the old one in this pa.s.sage?"

This story aptly ill.u.s.trates the sentiments with which the more powerful and more ancient departments regard those later births of time, the Board of Trade, the Local Government Board, the Board of Agriculture, and even the Scotch Office--though this last is redeemed from utter contempt by the irritable patriotism of our Scottish fellow-citizens, and by the beautiful house in which it is lodged. For a Minister who loves an arbitrary and single-handed authority the India Office is the most attractive of all. The Secretary of State for India, is (except in financial matters, where he is controlled by his Council) a pure despot.

He has the Viceroy at the end of a telegraph-wire, and the Queen's three hundred millions of Indian subjects under his thumb. His salary is not voted by the House of Commons; very few M.P.'s care a rap about India; and he is practically free from Parliamentary control. The Foreign Office, of course, is full of interest, and its social traditions have always been of the most dignified sort--from the days when Mr.

Ranville-Ranville used to frequent Mrs. Perkins's b.a.l.l.s to the existing reign of Sir Thomas Sanderson and Mr. Eric Barrington.

The Treasury has its finger in every departmental pie except the Indian one, for no Minister and no department can carry out reforms or even discharge its ordinary routine without public money, and of public money the Treasury is the vigilant and inflexible guardian. "I am directed to acquaint you that My Lords do not see their way to comply with your suggestion, inasmuch as to do so would be to _open a serious door_."

This delightful formula, with its dread suggestion of a flippant door and all the mischief to which it might lead, is daily employed to check the ardour of Ministers who are seeking to advance the benefit of the race (including their own popularity among their const.i.tuents) by a judicious expenditure of public money. But whatever be the scope and function of the office, and whatever the nature of the work done there, the mode of doing it is pretty much the same. Whether the matter in question originates inside the office by some direction or inquiry of the chief, or comes by letter from outside, it is referred to the particular department of the office which is concerned with it. A clerk makes a careful minute, giving the facts of the case and the practice of the office as bearing on it. The paper is then sent to any other department or person in the office that can possibly have any concern with it. It is minuted by each, and it gradually pa.s.ses up, by more or fewer official gradations, to the Under-Secretary of State, who reads, or is supposed to read, all that has been written on the paper in its earlier stages, balances the perhaps conflicting views of different annotators, and, if the matter is too important for his own decision, sums up in a minute of recommendation to the chief. The ultimate decision, however, is probably less affected by the Under-Secretary's minute than by the oral advice of a much more important personage, the Permanent Head of the office.

It would be beyond my present scope to discuss the composition and powers of the permanent Civil Service, whose chiefs have been, at least since the days of Bagehot, recognized as the real rulers of this country. For absolute knowledge of their business, for self-denying devotion to duty, for ability, patience, courtesy, and readiness to help the fleeting Political Official, the permanent chiefs of the Civil Service are worthy of the highest praise. That they are conservative[36] to the core is only to say that they are human. On being appointed to permanent office the extremist theorists, like the bees in the famous epigram, "cease to hum" their revolutionary airs, and settle down into the profound conviction that things are well as they are. All the more remarkable is the entire equanimity with which the Permanent Official accepts the unpalatable decision of a chief who is strong enough to override him, and the absolute loyalty with which he will carry out a policy which he cordially disapproves.

Much of a Minister's comfort and success depends upon his Private Secretary. Some Ministers import for this function a young gentleman of fas.h.i.+on whom they know at home--a picturesque b.u.t.terfly who flits gaily through the dusty air of the office, making, by the splendour of his raiment, suns.h.i.+ne in its shady places, and daintily pa.s.sing on the work to unrecognized and unrewarded clerks. But the better practice is to appoint as Private Secretary one of the permanent staff of the office.

He supplies his chief with official information, hunts up necessary references, writes his letters, and interviews his bores.

When the late Lord Ampthill was a junior clerk in the Foreign Office, Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary, introduced an innovation whereby, instead of being solemnly summoned by a verbal message, the clerks were expected to answer his bell. Some haughty spirits rebelled against being treated like footmen, and tried to organize resistance; but Odo Russell, as he then was, refused to join the rebellious movement, saying that whatever method apprized him most quickly of Lord Palmerston's wishes was the method which he preferred. The aggrieved clerks regarded him as a traitor to his order--but he died an amba.s.sador. Trollope described the wounded feelings of a young clerk whose chief sent him to fetch his slippers; and in our own day a Private Secretary, who had patiently taken tickets for the play for his chief's daughters, drew the line when he was told to take the chief's razors to be ground. But such a.s.sertions of independence are extremely rare, and as a rule the Private Secretary is the most cheerful and the most alert of ministering spirits.

But it is time to return from this personal digression to the routine of the day's work. Among the most important of the morning's duties is the preparation of answers to be given in the House of Commons, and it is often necessary to have answers ready by three o'clock to questions which have only appeared that morning on the notice-paper. The range of questions is infinite, and all the resources of the office are taxed in order to prepare answers at once accurate in fact and wise in policy, to pa.s.s them under the Minister's review, and to get them fairly copied out before the House meets. As a rule, the Minister, knowing something of the temper of Parliament, wishes to give a full, explicit, and intelligible answer, or even to go a little beyond the strict terms of the question if he sees what his interrogator is driving at. But this policy is abhorrent to the Permanent Official. The traditions of the Circ.u.mlocution Office are by no means dead, and the crime of "wanting to know, you know," is one of the most heinous that the M.P. can commit.

The answers, therefore, as prepared for the Minister are generally jejune, often barely civil, sometimes actually misleading. But the Minister, if he be a wise man, edits them into a more informing shape, and after a long and careful deliberation as to the probable effect of his words and the reception which they will have from his questioner, he sends the bundle of written answers away to be fair-copied and turns to his correspondence.