(_By Mr. Punch's Own Type-Writer._)
No. III.--THE YOUNG M.P.
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For the proper production of the young M.P. there are many receipts, but
only one is genuine. Take a rickety boy, and provide him with a wealthy
father, slightly flavoured with a good social position and political
tastes. Send him to a public school, having first eliminated as much
youthfulness as is compatible with continued existence. Add some
flattering masters, and a distaste for games. Season with the idea that
he is born for a great career. Let him be, if possible, verbose and
argumentative, and inclined to contradict his elders. Eliminate more
youth and transfer hot to a University. Add more verbosity, and a strong
extract of priggishness. Throw in a degree, and two speeches at the
Union. Set him to simmer for two years in a popular constituency, and
serve him up, a chattering pedant of twenty-four, at Westminster.
In the course of the contest which resulted in his return to the House
of Commons, the young M.P. will have tasted the sweets of advertisement
by seeing his name constantly placarded in huge letters on coloured
posters. He will have been constantly referred to as "Our popular young
Candidate," and he will thus have become convinced that the welfare of
his country imperatively demands his immediate presence and permanent
continuance in Parliament. When the genial butcher who, besides
retailing the carcases of sheep and oxen, sits in the Town Council, and
presides over one of the local political associations, declared, as he
often has at other contests and of other candidates, that never, in the
course of his political career, had he listened to more mature wisdom,
adorned with nobler eloquence, than that which had fallen from "Our
young and popular Candidate," he was merely satisfying a burning desire
for rhetorical expansion, without any particular regard to accuracy of
statement. But the candidate himself greedily gulps that lump of
flattery, and all the praise which is the conventional sauce for every
political gander. On this he grows fat, and being, in addition, puffed
up by a very considerable conceit of his own, he eventually presents an
aspect which is not pleasing, and assumes (towards those who are not
voters in the Constituency) a manner which can scarcely be described as
modest.
The majority of his Constituents regard him simply as an automatic
machine for the regular distribution of large subscriptions. He regards
himself as a being of great importance and capacity, and endowed with
the power of acting as he likes, whilst the local wirepullers look upon
him as a convenient mask, behind which they may the more effectively
carry on their own petty schemes of personal ambition.
As a Candidate, moreover, the young M.P. will have discovered that the
triumph of his party depends not merely or even chiefly upon the due
exposition of those political principles with which he may have lately
crammed himself by the aid of a stray volume of MILL, and a _Compendium
of Political History_, but rather upon the careful observance of local
custom and local etiquette, and the ceaseless effort to trump his
adversary's every trick. He will thus have become the President of the
local Glee Club, the Patron of a Scientific Association, and a local Dog
Show, the Vice-President of four Cricket Clubs and of five Football
Clubs, a Member of the Committee of the Hospital Ball, and of the
Society for Improving the breed of Grey Parrots; to say nothing of the
Guild for Promoting the happiness of Middle-aged Housemaids, and the
local Association for the Distribution of Penny Buns, at cheap prices,
to the deserving poor. Moreover, before he has discovered the true
relation of benefit societies to politics, he will find himself a Member
of the Odd Fellows, the Foresters, the Hearts of Oak, the Druids, and
the Loyal and Ancient Order of Free and Accepted Buffaloes, with the
right, conferred by the last-named Society, of being addressed on lodge
nights as if he were a Baronet, or, at least, a Knight.
Having thus met and shaken hands with the working-man during his hours
of festive relaxation, the young M.P. will be properly qualified for
discussing those social questions which form the chief part of every
aspirant's political baggage. Being gifted with a happy power of
enunciating pompous platitudes with an air of profound conviction, and
of spreading butter churned from the speeches of his leaders on the
bread of political economy, he will be highly thought of at meetings of
political leagues of either sex, or of both combined. It is necessary
that he should catch the eye of the Speaker during his first Session. He
will afterwards talk to his Constituents of the forms of the House in
the tone of one who is familiar with mysteries, and is accustomed to
mingle on terms of equality with the great and famous. He will bring in
a Bill which an M.P. who was once young, has abandoned, and, finding his
measure blocked, will discourse with extreme bitterness of the
obstruction by which the efforts of rising political genius are
oppressed.
In London Society the young M.P. may be recognised by an air of
conscious importance as of one who carries the burden of the State upon
his shoulders, and desires to impress the fact upon others. He may be
flattered by being consulted as to the secret intentions of foreign
Cabinets or the prospects of party divisions. He will then speak at
length of his leaders as "we," and will probably announce, in a voice
intended not so much for his immediate neighbours as for the thoughtless
crowd beyond, that "we shall smash them in Committee," and that
"AKERS-DOUGLAS" (or ARNOLD MORLEY, as the case may be) "has asked me to
answer the fellows on the other side to-morrow. I am not sure I shall
speak," the MS. of his speech being already complete. On the following
day he will speak during the dinner-hour to an audience of four, and,
having escaped being counted out, will be greatly admired by his
Constituents. He will assiduously attend all social functions, and will
not object to seeing his name in the paragraphs of Society papers. It is
not absolutely necessary that the young M.P. should be bald, but it is
essential that he should wear a frock-coat. It is well, also, that his
dress should be neat, but not ostentatiously spruce, lest the more
horny-handed of his supporters should take umbrage at an offensive
assumption of superiority over those whose votes keep him in place.
Custom demands that the young M.P. should travel extensively, and that
he should enlighten his home-staying Constituents as to the designs of
Barataria, the labour question in Lilliput, and the prospects of
federation in Laputa, by means of letters addressed to the local
newspaper. He will also interview foreign potentates and statesmen, and
cause the fact to be published through the medium of REUTER. On his
return, he will write a book, and deliver a lecture before the Mutual
Improvement Society of the town he represents. He will then marry, in
order that he may attend Mothers' meetings by deputy, and cause his wife
to make lavish purchases at a local bazaar, which he will have opened.
Shortly afterwards he will select an unpopular fad, which certain
members of his own party approve, and will take a vigorous stand against
it on principle, thus earning the commendation of all parties as a man
of independent views, and unswerving rectitude.
If, at a subsequent election, he should chance to be rejected at the
poll, he will publicly profess that he is delighted to be relieved of an
uncongenial burden, whilst assuring his friends in private that the
country in which able and honest men are neglected must be in a very bad
way. He will, however, publish an address to the electors, in which he
will claim a moral victory, and will assure them that it will ever be
one of his proudest memories to have been connected with their
constituency. He will spend his period of retirement on the stump, and,
unless he be speedily furnished with another Constituency, will
entertain doubts as to the sanity of his party leaders. Subsequently he
will find himself again in the House of Commons, and, having been spoken
of as a young man for about a quarter of a century, will at last become
an Under-Secretary of State, and a grandfather, in the same year.
* * * * *
MASTER SINGERS.--Sir,--In accordance with your request, I visited the
Meistersingers' Club (an institution which, seemingly from its name, has
been established as a memorial to WAGNER), where a "dramatic
performance" was given last week that had many points of interest to the
languid pleasure-seeker, wearily thirsting for fresh sources of
amusement. The evening's entertainment commenced with a play obligingly
described by the author as a farce, which was followed by a new and
original operetta, containing some very pretty music by Mr. PERCY REEVE,
with the exquisitely droll title of _The Crusader and the Craven_. The
one lady and two gentlemen who took part in this were, from a prompter's
point of view, nearly perfect. Mr. R. HENDON as _Sir Rupert de
Malvoisie_ (the Crusader) suggested, by his accent and gestures, that he
must have come from the East--how far East, it boots not to inquire.
Miss FLORENCE DARLEY was a good _Lady Alice_, and Mr. J. A. SHALE an
efficient "Craven." Later on an operatic performance is threatened. If
the thrilling series of arrangements on the back of the Programme is to
be accepted as authentic, the members of the Club will be invited to
have _Patience_. It would be difficult to find a more appropriate
accessory to a Night with the Meistersingers. No one asked me to have
any supper, Yours, A HAND AT CLUBS.
* * * * *
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