THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

6

Kinghamstead was one of the earliest constituencies fought, and we

came back-it must have been Saturday-triumphant but very tired, to

our house in Radnor Square. In the train we read the first

intimations that the victory of our party was likely to be a

sweeping one.

Then came a period when one was going about receiving and giving

congratulations and watching the other men arrive, very like a boy

who has returned to school with the first batch after the holidays.

The London world reeked with the General Election; it had invaded

the nurseries. All the children of one's friends had got big maps

of England cut up into squares to represent constituencies and were

busy sticking gummed blue labels over the conquered red of Unionism

that had hitherto submerged the country. And there were also orange

labels, if I remember rightly, to represent the new Labour party,

and green for the Irish. I engaged myself to speak at one or two

London meetings, and lunched at the Reform, which was fairly tepid,

and dined and spent one or two tumultuous evenings at the National

Liberal Club, which was in active eruption. The National Liberal

became feverishly congested towards midnight as the results of the

counting came dropping in. A big green-baize screen had been fixed

up at one end of the large smoking-room with the names of the

constituencies that were voting that day, and directly the figures

came to hand, up they went, amidst cheers that at last lost their

energy through sheer repetition, whenever there was record of a

Liberal gain. I don't remember what happened when there was a

Liberal loss; I don't think that any were announced while I was

there.

How packed and noisy the place was, and what a reek of tobacco and

whisky fumes we made! Everybody was excited and talking, making

waves of harsh confused sound that beat upon one's ears, and every

now and then hoarse voices would shout for someone to speak. Our

little set was much in evidence. Both the Cramptons were in, Lewis,

Bunting Harblow. We gave brief addresses attuned to this excitement

and the late hour, amidst much enthusiasm.

Now we can DO things!" I said amidst a rapture of applause. Men I

did not know from Adam held up glasses and nodded to me in solemn

fuddled approval as I came down past them into the crowd again.

Men were betting whether the Unionists would lose more or less than

two hundred seats.

"I wonder just what we shall do with it all," I heard one sceptic

speculating…

After these orgies I would get home very tired and excited, and find

it difficult to get to sleep. I would lie and speculate about what

it was we WERE going to do. One hadn't anticipated quite such a

tremendous accession to power for one's party. Liberalism was

swirling in like a flood…

I found the next few weeks very unsatisfactory and distressing. I

don't clearly remember what it was I had expected; I suppose the

fuss and strain of the General Election had built up a feeling that

my return would in some way put power into my hands, and instead I

found myself a mere undistinguished unit in a vast but rather vague

majority. There were moments when I felt very distinctly that a

majority could be too big a crowd altogether. I had all my work

still before me, I had achieved nothing as yet but opportunity, and

a very crowded opportunity it was at that. Everyone about me was

chatting Parliament and appointments; one breathed distracting and

irritating speculations as to what would be done and who would be

asked to do it. I was chiefly impressed by what was unlikely to be

done and by the absence of any general plan of legislation to hold

us all together. I found the talk about Parliamentary procedure and

etiquette particularly trying. We dined with the elder Cramptons

one evening, and old Sir Edward was lengthily sage about what the

House liked, what it didn't like, what made a good impression and

what a bad one. "A man shouldn't speak more than twice in his first

session, and not at first on too contentious a topic," said Sir

Edward. "No."

"Very much depends on manner. The House hates a lecturer. There's

a sort of airy earnestness-"

He waved his cigar to eke out his words.

"Little peculiarities of costume count for a great deal. I could

name one man who spent three years living down a pair of

spatterdashers. On the other hand-a thing like that-if it catches

the eye of the PUNCH man, for example, may be your making."

He went off into a lengthy speculation of why the House had come to

like an originally unpopular Irishman named Biggar…

The opening of Parliament gave me some peculiar moods. I began to

feel more and more like a branded sheep. We were sworn in in

batches, dozens and scores of fresh men, trying not to look too

fresh under the inspection of policemen and messengers, all of us

carrying new silk hats and wearing magisterial coats. It is one of

my vivid memories from this period, the sudden outbreak of silk hats

in the smoking-room of the National Liberal Club. At first I

thought there must have been a funeral. Familiar faces that one had

grown to know under soft felt hats, under bowlers, under liberal-

minded wide brims, and above artistic ties and tweed jackets,

suddenly met one, staring with the stern gaze of self-consciousness,

from under silk hats of incredible glossiness. There was a

disposition to wear the hat much too forward, I thought, for a good

Parliamentary style.

There was much play with the hats all through; a tremendous

competition to get in first and put hats on coveted seats. A memory

hangs about me of the House in the early afternoon, an inhumane

desolation inhabited almost entirely by silk hats. The current use

of cards to secure seats came later. There were yards and yards of

empty green benches with hats and hats and hats distributed along

them, resolute-looking top hats, lax top hats with a kind of shadowy

grin under them, sensible top bats brim upward, and one scandalous

incontinent that had rolled from the front Opposition bench right to

the middle of the floor. A headless hat is surely the most soulless

thing in the world, far worse even than a skull…

At last, in a leisurely muddled manner we got to the Address; and I

found myself packed in a dense elbowing crowd to the right of the

Speaker's chair; while the attenuated Opposition, nearly leaderless

after the massacre, tilted its brim to its nose and sprawled at its

ease amidst its empty benches.

There was a tremendous hullaboo about something, and I craned to see

over the shoulder of the man in front. ''Order, order, order!"

"What's it about?" I asked.

The man in front of me was clearly no better informed, and then I

gathered from a slightly contemptuous Scotchman beside me that it

was Chris Robinson had walked between the bonourable member in

possession of the house and the Speaker. I caught a glimpse of him

blushingly whispering about his misadventure to a colleague. He was

just that same little figure I had once assisted to entertain at

Cambridge, but grey-haired now, and still it seemed with the same

knitted muffler he had discarded for a reckless half-hour while he

talked to us in Hatherleigh's rooms.

It dawned upon me that I wasn't particularly wanted in the House,

and that I should get all I needed of the opening speeches next day

from the TIMES.

I made my way out and was presently walking rather aimlessly through

the outer lobby.

I caught myself regarding the shadow that spread itself out before

me, multiplied itself in blue tints of various intensity, shuffled

itself like a pack of cards under the many lights, the square

shoulders, the silk hat, already worn with a parliamentary tilt

backward; I found I was surveying this statesmanlike outline with a

weak approval. "A MEMBER!" I felt the little cluster of people that

were scattered about the lobby must be saying.

"Good God!" I said in hot reaction, "what am I doing here?"

It was one of those moments infinitely trivial in themselves, that

yet are cardinal in a man's life. It came to me with extreme

vividness that it wasn't so much that I had got hold of something as

that something had got hold of me. I distinctly recall the rebound

of my mind. Whatever happened in this Parliament, I at least would

attempt something. "By God!" I said, "I won't be overwhelmed. Iam

here to do something, and do something I will!"

But I felt that for the moment I could not remain in the House.

I went out by myself with my thoughts into the night. It was a

chilling night, and rare spots of rain were falling. I glanced over

my shoulder at the lit windows of the Lords. I walked, I remember,

westward, and presently came to the Grosvenar Embankment and

followed it, watching the glittering black rush of the river and the

dark, dimly lit barges round which the water swirled. Across the

river was the hunched sky-line of Doulton's potteries, and a kiln

flared redly. Dimly luminous trams were gliding amidst a dotted

line of lamps, and two little trains crawled into Waterloo station.

Mysterious black figures came by me and were suddenly changed to the

commonplace at the touch of the nearer lamps. It was a big confused

world, I felt, for a man to lay his hands upon.

I remember I crossed Vauxhall Bridge and stood for a time watching

the huge black shapes in the darkness under the gas-works. A shoal

of coal barges lay indistinctly on the darkly shining mud and water

below, and a colossal crane was perpetually hauling up coal into

mysterious blacknesses above, and dropping the empty clutch back to

the barges. Just one or two minute black featureless figures of men

toiled amidst these monster shapes. They did not seem to be

controlling them but only moving about among them. These gas-works

have a big chimney that belches a lurid flame into the night, a

livid shivering bluish flame, shot with strange crimson streaks…

On the other side of Lambeth Bridge broad stairs go down to the

lapping water of the river; the lower steps are luminous under the

lamps and one treads unwarned into thick soft Thames mud. They seem

to be purely architectural steps, they lead nowhere, they have an

air of absolute indifference to mortal ends.

Those shapes and large inhuman places-for all of mankind that one

sees at night about Lambeth is minute and pitiful beside the

industrial monsters that snort and toil there-mix up inextricably

with my memories of my first days as a legislator. Black figures

drift by me, heavy vans clatter, a newspaper rough tears by on a

motor bicycle, and presently, on the Albert Embankment, every seat

has its one or two outcasts huddled together and slumbering.

"These things come, these things go," a whispering voice urged upon

me, "as once those vast unmeaning Saurians whose bones encumber

museums came and went rejoicing noisily in fruitless lives."…

Fruitless lives!-was that the truth of it all?…

Later I stood within sight of the Houses of Parliament in front of

the colonnades of St Thomas's Hospital. I leant on the parapet

close by a lamp-stand of twisted dolphins-and I prayed!

I remember the swirl of the tide upon the water, and how a string of

barges presently came swinging and bumping round as high-water

turned to ebb. That sudden change of position and my brief

perplexity at it, sticks like a paper pin through the substance of

my thoughts. It was then I was moved to prayer. I prayed that

night that life might not be in vain, that in particular I might not

live in vain. I prayed for strength and faith, that the monstrous

blundering forces in life might not overwhelm me, might not beat me

back to futility and a meaningless acquiescence in existent things.

I knewmyself for the weakling I was, I knew that nevertheless it

was set for me to make such order as I could out of these disorders,

and my task cowed me, gave me at the thought of it a sense of

yielding feebleness.

"Break me, O God," I prayed at last, "disgrace me, torment me,

destroy me as you will, but save me from self-complacency and little

interests and little successes and the life that passes like the

shadow of a dream."