The Division of Stoneleigh, which had hitherto done me the honour of
returning me as its Member of Parliament, is a triangular tract of
country in the north of England.
At the apex of the triangle lies Stoneleigh itself, a township whose
chief assets are an ancient cathedral at one end, and a flourishing
industry, proclaiming to the heavens its dependence upon Hides and
Tallow, at the other. The base of the triangle runs along the sea-coast,
and is dotted with fishing villages. Most of the intervening area is
under cultivation.
It will be seen, then, that the character of my constituency varied in a
perplexing manner, and while I could usually depend upon what I may call
the Turnip interest, I could not always count with absolute certainty on
the whole-hearted support of the Fish or Hides-and-Tallow.
To this delectable microcosm my household and I migrated one bleak day
in February, to commence what promised to be an arduous and thoroughly
uncomfortable electoral campaign.
The Government had gone out at last, more from inanition than over any
definite question of policy; and we were going to the country to face
what is paradoxically termed "the music." It would be a General Election
in every sense of the word, for there was no particular question of the
hour--this was before the days of Passive Resistance and Tariff
Reform--and our chief bar to success would undoubtedly be our old and
inveterate enemy, "the pendulum." Of course we were distributing
leaflets galore, and blazoning panegyrics on our own legislative
achievements over every hoarding in the country--especially where our
opponents had already posted up scathing denunciations of the same--and
of course we declared that we were going to come again, like King
Arthur; but I think most of us realised in our hearts that the great
British Public, having decided in its ponderous but not altogether
unreasonable way that any change of government must be for the better,
was now going to pull us down from the eminence to which we had been
precariously clinging for five years, and set up another row of
legislative Aunt Sallies in our stead.
However, we were far from admitting this. We wore our favours, waved our
hats, and celebrated our approaching triumph with as great an appearance
of optimism as the loss of seven consecutive by-elections would permit.
Our party--Kitty, Phillis, Dolly, and myself: Dilly and Dicky were to
follow, and Robin had preceded us by two days--was met at the station by
an informal but influential little deputation, consisting of Mr Cash, my
agent, a single-minded creature who would cheerfully have done his best
to get Mephistopheles returned as member if he had been officially
appointed to further that gentleman's interests; old Colonel Vincey, who
would as cheerfully have voted for the same candidate provided he wore
Conservative colours; Mr Bugsley, a leading linen-draper and ex-Mayor of
the town, vice-chairman of our local organisation; Mr Winch--locally
known as Beery Bill--the accredited mouthpiece of the Stoneleigh liquor
interest; and the Dean, who came, I was uncharitable enough to suspect
even as he wrung my hand, on business not unconnected with the
unfortunate deficit in the fund for the restoration of the North
Transept. There were also present one or two reporters, and a _posse_ of
the offscourings of Stoneleigh small-boydom.
We drove in state to the hotel. Previous to this I shook hands warmly
with the Station-master, who scowled at me--he was a Home-Ruler and a
Baptist--and gave four porters half-a-crown apiece for lifting our
luggage on to the roof of a cab. I also handed a newsboy sixpence for a
copy of the local bi-weekly organ which supported our cause, and
tendered half-a-sovereign in payment for a bunch of violets and
primroses--our party colours in this district were purple and
gold--which were proffered me outside the station by an ancient
flower-selling dame who, Cash hissed into my ear, happened to be the
mother of four strapping and fully-enfranchised sons; and presented an
unwashed stranger who was holding open the cab door for us with a token
of affection and esteem which could readily be commuted into several
hours' beer.
On arriving at the hotel I handed the cabman a fare roughly equivalent
to the cash value of the cab, and then proceeded to distribute largesse
to a crowd of menials who kindly undertook the task of lifting the
luggage from the roof and conveying it to our rooms. The horse, having
no vote, received no pecuniary return for its labours, but was rewarded
for its devotion to Conservative principles by a lump of sugar, which
Phillis had been tightly holding in a moist hand ever since Cash had
handed it to her at the station--a pretty and thoughtful act of
disinterested kindness which was duly noted in the _Stoneleigh Herald_
next morning, and effectually secured the votes of several elusive but
sentimental wobblers on polling day.
After this unostentatious entry into my constituency I duly established
myself in my apartments, where I spent most of the afternoon writing
cheques. The restoration of the North Transept proved to be in an even
more deplorable state of backwardness than I had feared; but the Dean
ultimately left me with the utmost expressions of goodwill, promising to
reassure the most exacting spirits in Cathedral society as to my
soundness on the questions of (1) Disestablishment and (2) Secular
Education in Elementary Schools.
Thereafter I received the captain of the local football team, who begged
to remind me that my subscription of five guineas, as Honorary
Vice-President of the club, was now due, and further requested that I
would do himself and colleagues the honour of kicking-off in the match
against the Scrappington Hotstuffs on Saturday week. (Saturday next, I
heard afterwards, had been reserved for my rival.) He finally departed
with my cheque in his pocket, and, I expect, his tongue in his cheek.
Robin next let in upon me a sub-section of the General Purposes
Committee of the Municipal Library, who begged that I would kindly
consent to open the new wing thereof, jointly with the rival Candidate,
at three o'clock next Wednesday; and intimated as an afterthought that
the oak bookcase in the eastern alcove was still unpaid for. They
departed calling down blessings upon my head. (Five pounds ten.)
Next, after a brief call from a gentleman in a blue ribbon, who came to
solicit a guinea for the Band of Hope, and who left in exchange one
hundred copies of a picture of the interior of a drunkard's stomach,
executed in three colours, came Beery Bill, to whom the reader has
already been introduced. He had not come to talk Politics, he said, but
just to have a quiet chat with one whom he hoped he could regard as a
personal friend. (I got out my fountain pen.) The chat materialised
presently into an intimation that the Licensed Victuallers Benevolent
Something-or-Other was short of cash; and my visitor suggested that a
trifle in support of the charities of that most deserving institution
would come gracefully from my pocket. On handing me the receipt he
informed me that the brewing trade was in a bad way, and that he looked
to me to do something for it if he used his influence on my behalf at
the Election.
The next visitor was an eccentric but harmless old gentleman who eked
out a precarious livelihood as a Herbalist--whatever that may be--in the
most plebeian quarter of the town. He inhabited a small and stuffy shop
up a discreet alley, suffered much from small boys, sold curious drugs
and potions of his own composition, and prescribed for persons whose
means or modesty precluded them from consulting an orthodox
practitioner.
He was threatened, it appeared, with the penalties of the law. He had
sold a "love-philtre" (pronounced infallible for recalling errant
_fiancés_ to a sense of duty) to an amorous kitchen-maid who was seeking
to rekindle the sacred flame in the bosom of an unresponsive policeman.
The damozel had mingled the potion in a plate of beefsteak pudding, and
had handed the same out of the scullery window to her peripatetic swain;
with the sole result that that limb of the law had been immediately and
violently sick, and, the moment he felt sufficiently recovered to do so,
had declared the already debilitated match at an end. The kitchen-maid,
rendered desperate, had told him the whole truth; and consequently my
esteemed caller was now wanted by the police.
The catastrophe of the pie, he explained, was in no way to be attributed
to the love-philtre (which was composed of sifted sugar and cinnamon),
but was due to the fact that instead of the philtre he had inadvertently
handed his fair client a packet out of the next drawer, which contained
ready-made-up doses of tartaric acid for immediate use in the case of
small boys who had swallowed sixpences. _Hinc lacrymcoe_. In spite of
his complete consciousness of his own innocence, he now found himself
compelled in a few days' time to defend his conduct in a court of law.
The proceedings would cost money, of which he of course possessed little
or none. He had called, he said, confident in the hope that I would
assist him to defray the expense of vindicating his integrity as a
high-class Herbalist by purchasing six bottles of his world-renowned
specific for neuralgia, from which dread malady he had been
informed--quite incorrectly, by the way--that I occasionally suffered.
The thirty shillings thus subscribed, together with a few odd coins
which he himself had contrived to scrape together during a long life of
thrift, would secure the services of a skilled advocate, who would
doubtless be able to prove to the satisfaction of justice that no
high-class Herbalist would ever dream, save in the way of kindness, of
putting tartaric acid into a policeman's beefsteak pudding.
He added, rather inconsequently, that he had voted Conservative at the
last three elections, and had moreover persuaded all the other members
of the Royal and Ancient Brotherhood of High-class Herbalists to do the
same. (One pound ten.)
My last visitor was a seedy individual in corduroys, who asked for a
private interview with the Candidate, and, on this favour being granted,
informed me in a confidential and husky whisper that he knew of ten good
men and true, fully qualified voters, who were prepared to go to the
poll on my behalf for the trifling fee of two pound ten a-head and no
questions asked. He was politely but firmly shown into the street. One
has to be on the look-out against persons of this type.
I concluded the afternoon by a rather unsatisfactory interview with Mr
Cash. He was by nature a boisterous and optimistic person, but on this
occasion I found him inclined to be reticent and gloomy. He announced
with a shake of the head that my rival was a very strong candidate; and
finally, after a certain amount of pressing, admitted that I was not
altogether as universally acceptable to my own side as I might have
been.
"You are not violent enough, Mr Inglethwaite," he said. "You sympathise
too much with the point of view of the opposite side. That's fatal."