Sketches by Boz, by Charles Dickens (1836) - Scenes - Chapter 18

CHAPTER XVIII—A PARLIAMENTARY SKETCH

    We hope our readers will not be alarmed at this rather ominous title.  We assure them that we are not about to become political, neither have we the slightest intention of being more prosy than usual—if we can help it.  It has occurred to us that a slight sketch of the general aspect of ‘the House,’ and the crowds that resort to it on the night of an important debate, would be productive of some amusement: and as we have made some few calls at the aforesaid house in our time—have visited it quite often enough for our purpose, and a great deal too often for our personal peace and comfort—we have determined to attempt the description.  Dismissing from our minds, therefore, all that feeling of awe, which vague ideas of breaches of privilege, Serjeant-at-Arms, heavy denunciations, and still heavier fees, are calculated to awaken, we enter at once into the building, and upon our subject.
    Half-past four o’clock—and at five the mover of the Address will be ‘on his legs,’ as the newspapers announce sometimes by way of novelty, as if speakers were occasionally in the habit of standing on their heads.  The members are pouring in, one after the other, in shoals.  The few spectators who can obtain standing-room in the passages, scrutinise them as they pass, with the utmost interest, and the man who can identify a member occasionally, becomes a person of great importance.  Every now and then you hear earnest whispers of ‘That’s Sir John Thomson.’  ‘Which? him with the gilt order round his neck?’  ‘No, no; that’s one of the messengers—that other with the yellow gloves, is Sir John Thomson.’  ‘Here’s Mr. Smith.’  ‘Lor!’  ‘Yes, how d’ye do, sir?—(He is our new member)—How do you do, sir?’  Mr. Smith stops: turns round with an air of enchanting urbanity (for the rumour of an intended dissolution has been very extensively circulated this morning); seizes both the hands of his gratified constituent, and, after greeting him with the most enthusiastic warmth, darts into the lobby with an extraordinary display of ardour in the public cause, leaving an immense impression in his favour on the mind of his ‘fellow-townsman.’
    The arrivals increase in number, and the heat and noise increase in very unpleasant proportion.  The livery servants form a complete lane on either side of the passage, and you reduce yourself into the smallest possible space to avoid being turned out.  You see that stout man with the hoarse voice, in the blue coat, queer-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, white corduroy breeches, and great boots, who has been talking incessantly for half an hour past, and whose importance has occasioned no small quantity of mirth among the strangers.  That is the great conservator of the peace of Westminster.  You cannot fail to have remarked the grace with which he saluted the noble Lord who passed just now, or the excessive dignity of his air, as he expostulates with the crowd.  He is rather out of temper now, in consequence of the very irreverent behaviour of those two young fellows behind him, who have done nothing but laugh all the time they have been here.
    ‘Will they divide to-night, do you think, Mr. -’ timidly inquires a little thin man in the crowd, hoping to conciliate the man of office.
    ‘How can you ask such questions, sir?’ replies the functionary, in an incredibly loud key, and pettishly grasping the thick stick he carries in his right hand.  ‘Pray do not, sir.  I beg of you; pray do not, sir.’  The little man looks remarkably out of his element, and the uninitiated part of the throng are in positive convulsions of laughter.
    Just at this moment some unfortunate individual appears, with a very smirking air, at the bottom of the long passage.  He has managed to elude the vigilance of the special constable downstairs, and is evidently congratulating himself on having made his way so far.
    ‘Go back, sir—you must not come here,’ shouts the hoarse one, with tremendous emphasis of voice and gesture, the moment the offender catches his eye.
    The stranger pauses.
    ‘Do you hear, sir—will you go back?’ continues the official dignitary, gently pushing the intruder some half-dozen yards.
    ‘Come, don’t push me,’ replies the stranger, turning angrily round.
    ‘I will, sir.’
    ‘You won’t, sir.’
    ‘Go out, sir.’
    ‘Take your hands off me, sir.’
    ‘Go out of the passage, sir.’
    ‘You’re a Jack-in-office, sir.’
    ‘A what?’ ejaculates he of the boots.
    ‘A Jack-in-office, sir, and a very insolent fellow,’ reiterates the stranger, now completely in a passion.
    ‘Pray do not force me to put you out, sir,’ retorts the other—‘pray do not—my instructions are to keep this passage clear—it’s the Speaker’s orders, sir.’
    ‘D-n the Speaker, sir!’ shouts the intruder.
    ‘Here, Wilson!—Collins!’ gasps the officer, actually paralysed at this insulting expression, which in his mind is all but high treason; ‘take this man out—take him out, I say!  How dare you, sir?’ and down goes the unfortunate man five stairs at a time, turning round at every stoppage, to come back again, and denouncing bitter vengeance against the commander-in-chief, and all his supernumeraries.
    ‘Make way, gentlemen,—pray make way for the Members, I beg of you!’ shouts the zealous officer, turning back, and preceding a whole string of the liberal and independent.
    You see this ferocious-looking gentleman, with a complexion almost as sallow as his linen, and whose large black moustache would give him the appearance of a figure in a hairdresser’s window, if his countenance possessed the thought which is communicated to those waxen caricatures of the human face divine.  He is a militia-officer, and the most amusing person in the House.  Can anything be more exquisitely absurd than the burlesque grandeur of his air, as he strides up to the lobby, his eyes rolling like those of a Turk’s head in a cheap Dutch clock?  He never appears without that bundle of dirty papers which he carries under his left arm, and which are generally supposed to be the miscellaneous estimates for 1804, or some equally important documents.  He is very punctual in his attendance at the House, and his self-satisfied ‘He-ar-He-ar,’ is not unfrequently the signal for a general titter.
    This is the gentleman who once actually sent a messenger up to the Strangers’ gallery in the old House of Commons, to inquire the name of an individual who was using an eye-glass, in order that he might complain to the Speaker that the person in question was quizzing him!  On another occasion, he is reported to have repaired to Bellamy’s kitchen—a refreshment-room, where persons who are not Members are admitted on sufferance, as it were—and perceiving two or three gentlemen at supper, who, he was aware, were not Members, and could not, in that place, very well resent his behaviour, he indulged in the pleasantry of sitting with his booted leg on the table at which they were supping!  He is generally harmless, though, and always amusing.
    By dint of patience, and some little interest with our friend the constable, we have contrived to make our way to the Lobby, and you can just manage to catch an occasional glimpse of the House, as the door is opened for the admission of Members.  It is tolerably full already, and little groups of Members are congregated together here, discussing the interesting topics of the day.
    That smart-looking fellow in the black coat with velvet facings and cuffs, who wears his D’Orsay hat so rakishly, is ‘Honest Tom,’ a metropolitan representative; and the large man in the cloak with the white lining—not the man by the pillar; the other with the light hair hanging over his coat collar behind—is his colleague.  The quiet gentlemanly-looking man in the blue surtout, gray trousers, white neckerchief and gloves, whose closely-buttoned coat displays his manly figure and broad chest to great advantage, is a very well-known character.  He has fought a great many battles in his time, and conquered like the heroes of old, with no other arms than those the gods gave him.  The old hard-featured man who is standing near him, is really a good specimen of a class of men, now nearly extinct.  He is a county Member, and has been from time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary.  Look at his loose, wide, brown coat, with capacious pockets on each side; the knee-breeches and boots, the immensely long waistcoat, and silver watch-chain dangling below it, the wide-brimmed brown hat, and the white handkerchief tied in a great bow, with straggling ends sticking out beyond his shirt-frill.  It is a costume one seldom sees nowadays, and when the few who wear it have died off, it will be quite extinct.  He can tell you long stories of Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, and Canning, and how much better the House was managed in those times, when they used to get up at eight or nine o’clock, except on regular field-days, of which everybody was apprised beforehand.  He has a great contempt for all young Members of Parliament, and thinks it quite impossible that a man can say anything worth hearing, unless he has sat in the House for fifteen years at least, without saying anything at all.  He is of opinion that ‘that young Macaulay’ was a regular impostor; he allows, that Lord Stanley may do something one of these days, but ‘he’s too young, sir—too young.’  He is an excellent authority on points of precedent, and when he grows talkative, after his wine, will tell you how Sir Somebody Something, when he was whipper-in for the Government, brought four men out of their beds to vote in the majority, three of whom died on their way home again; how the House once divided on the question, that fresh candles be now brought in; how the Speaker was once upon a time left in the chair by accident, at the conclusion of business, and was obliged to sit in the House by himself for three hours, till some Member could be knocked up and brought back again, to move the adjournment; and a great many other anecdotes of a similar description.
    There he stands, leaning on his stick; looking at the throng of Exquisites around him with most profound contempt; and conjuring up, before his mind’s eye, the scenes he beheld in the old House, in days gone by, when his own feelings were fresher and brighter, and when, as he imagines, wit, talent, and patriotism flourished more brightly too.
    You are curious to know who that young man in the rough great-coat is, who has accosted every Member who has entered the House since we have been standing here.  He is not a Member; he is only an ‘hereditary bondsman,’ or, in other words, an Irish correspondent of an Irish newspaper, who has just procured his forty-second frank from a Member whom he never saw in his life before.  There he goes again—another!  Bless the man, he has his hat and pockets full already.
    We will try our fortune at the Strangers’ gallery, though the nature of the debate encourages very little hope of success.  What on earth are you about?  Holding up your order as if it were a talisman at whose command the wicket would fly open?  Nonsense.  Just preserve the order for an autograph, if it be worth keeping at all, and make your appearance at the door with your thumb and forefinger expressively inserted in your waistcoat-pocket.  This tall stout man in black is the door-keeper.  ‘Any room?’  ‘Not an inch—two or three dozen gentlemen waiting down-stairs on the chance of somebody’s going out.’  Pull out your purse—‘Are you quite sure there’s no room?’—‘I’ll go and look,’ replies the door-keeper, with a wistful glance at your purse, ‘but I’m afraid there’s not.’  He returns, and with real feeling assures you that it is morally impossible to get near the gallery.  It is of no use waiting.  When you are refused admission into the Strangers’ gallery at the House of Commons, under such circumstances, you may return home thoroughly satisfied that the place must be remarkably full indeed. {1}
    Retracing our steps through the long passage, descending the stairs, and crossing Palace-yard, we halt at a small temporary doorway adjoining the King’s entrance to the House of Lords.  The order of the serjeant-at-arms will admit you into the Reporters’ gallery, from whence you can obtain a tolerably good view of the House.  Take care of the stairs, they are none of the best; through this little wicket—there.  As soon as your eyes become a little used to the mist of the place, and the glare of the chandeliers below you, you will see that some unimportant personage on the Ministerial side of the House (to your right hand) is speaking, amidst a hum of voices and confusion which would rival Babel, but for the circumstance of its being all in one language.
    The ‘hear, hear,’ which occasioned that laugh, proceeded from our warlike friend with the moustache; he is sitting on the back seat against the wall, behind the Member who is speaking, looking as ferocious and intellectual as usual.  Take one look around you, and retire!  The body of the House and the side galleries are full of Members; some, with their legs on the back of the opposite seat; some, with theirs stretched out to their utmost length on the floor; some going out, others coming in; all talking, laughing, lounging, coughing, oh-ing, questioning, or groaning; presenting a conglomeration of noise and confusion, to be met with in no other place in existence, not even excepting Smithfield on a market-day, or a cock-pit in its glory.
    But let us not omit to notice Bellamy’s kitchen, or, in other words, the refreshment-room, common to both Houses of Parliament, where Ministerialists and Oppositionists, Whigs and Tories, Radicals, Peers, and Destructives, strangers from the gallery, and the more favoured strangers from below the bar, are alike at liberty to resort; where divers honourable members prove their perfect independence by remaining during the whole of a heavy debate, solacing themselves with the creature comforts; and whence they are summoned by whippers-in, when the House is on the point of dividing; either to give their ‘conscientious votes’ on questions of which they are conscientiously innocent of knowing anything whatever, or to find a vent for the playful exuberance of their wine-inspired fancies, in boisterous shouts of ‘Divide,’ occasionally varied with a little howling, barking, crowing, or other ebullitions of senatorial pleasantry.
    When you have ascended the narrow staircase which, in the present temporary House of Commons, leads to the place we are describing, you will probably observe a couple of rooms on your right hand, with tables spread for dining.  Neither of these is the kitchen, although they are both devoted to the same purpose; the kitchen is further on to our left, up these half-dozen stairs.  Before we ascend the staircase, however, we must request you to pause in front of this little bar-place with the sash-windows; and beg your particular attention to the steady, honest-looking old fellow in black, who is its sole occupant.  Nicholas (we do not mind mentioning the old fellow’s name, for if Nicholas be not a public man, who is?—and public men’s names are public property)—Nicholas is the butler of Bellamy’s, and has held the same place, dressed exactly in the same manner, and said precisely the same things, ever since the oldest of its present visitors can remember.  An excellent servant Nicholas is—an unrivalled compounder of salad-dressing—an admirable preparer of soda-water and lemon—a special mixer of cold grog and punch—and, above all, an unequalled judge of cheese.  If the old man have such a thing as vanity in his composition, this is certainly his pride; and if it be possible to imagine that anything in this world could disturb his impenetrable calmness, we should say it would be the doubting his judgment on this important point.
    We needn’t tell you all this, however, for if you have an atom of observation, one glance at his sleek, knowing-looking head and face—his prim white neckerchief, with the wooden tie into which it has been regularly folded for twenty years past, merging by imperceptible degrees into a small-plaited shirt-frill—and his comfortable-looking form encased in a well-brushed suit of black—would give you a better idea of his real character than a column of our poor description could convey.
    Nicholas is rather out of his element now; he cannot see the kitchen as he used to in the old House; there, one window of his glass-case opened into the room, and then, for the edification and behoof of more juvenile questioners, he would stand for an hour together, answering deferential questions about Sheridan, and Percival, and Castlereagh, and Heaven knows who beside, with manifest delight, always inserting a ‘Mister’ before every commoner’s name.
    Nicholas, like all men of his age and standing, has a great idea of the degeneracy of the times.  He seldom expresses any political opinions, but we managed to ascertain, just before the passing of the Reform Bill, that Nicholas was a thorough Reformer.  What was our astonishment to discover shortly after the meeting of the first reformed Parliament, that he was a most inveterate and decided Tory!  It was very odd: some men change their opinions from necessity, others from expediency, others from inspiration; but that Nicholas should undergo any change in any respect, was an event we had never contemplated, and should have considered impossible.  His strong opinion against the clause which empowered the metropolitan districts to return Members to Parliament, too, was perfectly unaccountable.
    We discovered the secret at last; the metropolitan Members always dined at home.  The rascals!  As for giving additional Members to Ireland, it was even worse—decidedly unconstitutional.  Why, sir, an Irish Member would go up there, and eat more dinner than three English Members put together.  He took no wine; drank table-beer by the half-gallon; and went home to Manchester-buildings, or Millbank-street, for his whiskey-and-water.  And what was the consequence?  Why, the concern lost—actually lost, sir—by his patronage.  A queer old fellow is Nicholas, and as completely a part of the building as the house itself.  We wonder he ever left the old place, and fully expected to see in the papers, the morning after the fire, a pathetic account of an old gentleman in black, of decent appearance, who was seen at one of the upper windows when the flames were at their height, and declared his resolute intention of falling with the floor.  He must have been got out by force.  However, he was got out—here he is again, looking as he always does, as if he had been in a bandbox ever since the last session.  There he is, at his old post every night, just as we have described him: and, as characters are scarce, and faithful servants scarcer, long may he be there, say we!
    Now, when you have taken your seat in the kitchen, and duly noticed the large fire and roasting-jack at one end of the room—the little table for washing glasses and draining jugs at the other—the clock over the window opposite St. Margaret’s Church—the deal tables and wax candles—the damask table-cloths and bare floor—the plate and china on the tables, and the gridiron on the fire; and a few other anomalies peculiar to the place—we will point out to your notice two or three of the people present, whose station or absurdities render them the most worthy of remark.
    It is half-past twelve o’clock, and as the division is not expected for an hour or two, a few Members are lounging away the time here in preference to standing at the bar of the House, or sleeping in one of the side galleries.  That singularly awkward and ungainly-looking man, in the brownish-white hat, with the straggling black trousers which reach about half-way down the leg of his boots, who is leaning against the meat-screen, apparently deluding himself into the belief that he is thinking about something, is a splendid sample of a Member of the House of Commons concentrating in his own person the wisdom of a constituency.  Observe the wig, of a dark hue but indescribable colour, for if it be naturally brown, it has acquired a black tint by long service, and if it be naturally black, the same cause has imparted to it a tinge of rusty brown; and remark how very materially the great blinker-like spectacles assist the expression of that most intelligent face.  Seriously speaking, did you ever see a countenance so expressive of the most hopeless extreme of heavy dulness, or behold a form so strangely put together?  He is no great speaker: but when he does address the House, the effect is absolutely irresistible.
    The small gentleman with the sharp nose, who has just saluted him, is a Member of Parliament, an ex-Alderman, and a sort of amateur fireman.  He, and the celebrated fireman’s dog, were observed to be remarkably active at the conflagration of the two Houses of Parliament—they both ran up and down, and in and out, getting under people’s feet, and into everybody’s way, fully impressed with the belief that they were doing a great deal of good, and barking tremendously.  The dog went quietly back to his kennel with the engine, but the gentleman kept up such an incessant noise for some weeks after the occurrence, that he became a positive nuisance.  As no more parliamentary fires have occurred, however, and as he has consequently had no more opportunities of writing to the newspapers to relate how, by way of preserving pictures he cut them out of their frames, and performed other great national services, he has gradually relapsed into his old state of calmness.
    That female in black—not the one whom the Lord’s-Day-Bill Baronet has just chucked under the chin; the shorter of the two—is ‘Jane:’ the Hebe of Bellamy’s.  Jane is as great a character as Nicholas, in her way.  Her leading features are a thorough contempt for the great majority of her visitors; her predominant quality, love of admiration, as you cannot fail to observe, if you mark the glee with which she listens to something the young Member near her mutters somewhat unintelligibly in her ear (for his speech is rather thick from some cause or other), and how playfully she digs the handle of a fork into the arm with which he detains her, by way of reply.
    Jane is no bad hand at repartees, and showers them about, with a degree of liberality and total absence of reserve or constraint, which occasionally excites no small amazement in the minds of strangers.  She cuts jokes with Nicholas, too, but looks up to him with a great deal of respect—the immovable stolidity with which Nicholas receives the aforesaid jokes, and looks on, at certain pastoral friskings and rompings (Jane’s only recreations, and they are very innocent too) which occasionally take place in the passage, is not the least amusing part of his character.
    The two persons who are seated at the table in the corner, at the farther end of the room, have been constant guests here, for many years past; and one of them has feasted within these walls, many a time, with the most brilliant characters of a brilliant period.  He has gone up to the other House since then; the greater part of his boon companions have shared Yorick’s fate, and his visits to Bellamy’s are comparatively few.
    If he really be eating his supper now, at what hour can he possibly have dined!  A second solid mass of rump-steak has disappeared, and he eat the first in four minutes and three quarters, by the clock over the window.  Was there ever such a personification of Falstaff!  Mark the air with which he gloats over that Stilton, as he removes the napkin which has been placed beneath his chin to catch the superfluous gravy of the steak, and with what gusto he imbibes the porter which has been fetched, expressly for him, in the pewter pot.  Listen to the hoarse sound of that voice, kept down as it is by layers of solids, and deep draughts of rich wine, and tell us if you ever saw such a perfect picture of a regular gourmand; and whether he is not exactly the man whom you would pitch upon as having been the partner of Sheridan’s parliamentary carouses, the volunteer driver of the hackney-coach that took him home, and the involuntary upsetter of the whole party?
    What an amusing contrast between his voice and appearance, and that of the spare, squeaking old man, who sits at the same table, and who, elevating a little cracked bantam sort of voice to its highest pitch, invokes damnation upon his own eyes or somebody else’s at the commencement of every sentence he utters.  ‘The Captain,’ as they call him, is a very old frequenter of Bellamy’s; much addicted to stopping ‘after the House is up’ (an inexpiable crime in Jane’s eyes), and a complete walking reservoir of spirits and water.
    The old Peer—or rather, the old man—for his peerage is of comparatively recent date—has a huge tumbler of hot punch brought him; and the other damns and drinks, and drinks and damns, and smokes.  Members arrive every moment in a great bustle to report that ‘The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s up,’ and to get glasses of brandy-and-water to sustain them during the division; people who have ordered supper, countermand it, and prepare to go down-stairs, when suddenly a bell is heard to ring with tremendous violence, and a cry of ‘Di-vi-sion!’ is heard in the passage.  This is enough; away rush the members pell-mell.  The room is cleared in an instant; the noise rapidly dies away; you hear the creaking of the last boot on the last stair, and are left alone with the leviathan of rump-steaks.