_Tuesday, February 5._--House filled once more with bustle of new
Session. Lobby crowded. Corridors, long silent, burst into bustling
life. "Seems to me," says JEMMY LOWTHER, looking on with his
juvenile-veteran air, "that the happiest day in a member's life is the
first of a Session, if indeed the cup of his joy isn't fuller on the
day of prorogation."
For some the jubilation of the hour is toned down by saddened thought.
There is one step that will never more be heard in the lobby, one
familiar face seen here no more, one voice, wont to sway the passions
of the House, that now is still. LYCIDAS is dead, not quite ere his
prime, but in what, had fate been kinder, should have been the fulness
of his rich gifts.
The House knew GRANDOLPH, as he presented himself to its notice from
various points of view. First, an unknown new Member, rising from
bench immediately behind Ministers, a situation which, deliberately
chosen, seemed to observant Whips to indicate pleasurable prospect of
docility. Next, whilst his Party was still in office, he popped up
from front bench below gangway, and pricked at ponderous hide of
SCLATER-BOOTH, pink of respectability, sublimation of
county-gentry-Toryism. Then, with sudden brilliancy and sustained
force, he rose on the firmament below the gangway in Opposition,
tilting almost single-handed at the panoplied host, a majority over a
hundred strong, that seemed to make Mr. G.'s second Administration
invulnerable. For a moment in a famous night in June he was seen
standing jubilant on his seat at the corner of the bench, waving his
hat, shouting himself hoarse with cries of victory. From this
elevation he sprang lightly on to the Treasury Bench, and astonished
Members who, with him, had heard the chimes at midnight and after, by
the quiet dignity of his manner, his unerring tact, his unfailing
skill of management. Never since the time _Prince Hal_, boon companion
of _Falstaff_, became _King Henry the Fifth_, has there been seen such
transformation.
Never was such a sudden scholar made;
Never came reformation in a flood,
With such a heady currance, scouring faults;
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,
As in this king.
The succeeding Session had a fresh surprise. It found our GRANDOLPH,
self-reduced to the ranks, caressing his moustache on the corner seat
behind the Treasury Bench. After a while he wearied of the invidious
position, and went off to the races, to Norway a-fishing, to South
Africa to observe the ways of lions from precarious proximity. But his
heart was, after all, at Westminster. He came back broken in health,
undaunted in spirit. Nothing pluckier, nothing more pathetic seen in
the House than his long stubborn fight against the paralysis that
crept over him even as he stood at the table and tried to weave again
the magic spell by which he once held the House.
He died as he lived, fighting, keeping Death at arm's length for a
full month after the highest authorities had said it was a mistake to
be such an unconscionably long time in dying.
The House of Commons will know GRANDOLPH no more. But it will never
forget one who will through all time rank among the most brilliant of
its sons.
* * *
Something decidedly hysterical about jubilation of the hour. Prevalent
hilarity suggests case of crowded passenger ship, having been in
imminent danger of shipwreck, suddenly steams into comparatively
placid seas.
"If," says WILFRID LAWSON, an authority on Church matters, "it were
customary to commence the Session by singing a hymn I know what SQUIRE
OF MALWOOD would give out. It's the one beginning
And are we still alive
And see each other's face?
Thought it was to be all over before Christmas; Cabinet broken up;
everybody retiring; Parliament dissolved; demoralised Party finally
smashed up at polls; the other side left to settle who was to be who
in best of all Governments. 'Instead of which,' as the Judge said,
here we are in for a long Session, with, as usual, more work on hand
than could be done in two."
"So you haven't resigned after all?" I remarked, getting up on a chair
to have a chat with the SQUIRE OF MALWOOD.
"_Et tu_, TOBY!" he cried. "I thought better of your intelligence. I
welcome re-opening of Session for one thing. Obliged to be in my place
every night. Whilst House is sitting people will see I haven't
resigned. That should--don't know that it will--check to certain
extent what at Derby I ventured distantly to allude to as mendacious
inventions. I have, as you know, had a somewhat troublesome time
during recess. Rarely got up in morning but found by newspapers I had
resigned overnight. Seldom went to bed without conviction derived from
glancing over evening papers that I had upset the Ministerial
coach--I, the mildest mannered man that ever sat in Cabinet Council.
Daresay you remember incident in almost equally troubled career of
LOUIS THE SIXTEENTH. When he was brought back to Paris and lodged in
Tuileries after his flight to Varennes, the _sans-culottes_,
_Messieurs et Madames_, could not sleep in their beds at night from
apprehension that king had again escaped. They used to make up little
family parties, stroll down to Tuileries, mass themselves before the
King's bedroom window, and call upon LOUIS CAPET to show himself. The
King thereupon got out of bed, put on red Cap of Liberty and showed
himself at the window. '_Mes enfants_,' he said, 'you see I am here.'
'_Très bien_,' said _Monsieur_, _Madame_, _et le Bébé_, and trudged
back content to the Faubourg St. Antoine. Now that was all very well
for a King. But you know, TOBY, it can't be expected of me in
so-called holiday times to be constantly attending knocks at the front
door, or even getting up in the dead of night, showing myself at the
window, and saying, 'My good newspaper friends, I have not resigned.'"
_Business done._--Just commenced.
[Illustration: "MR. R-S-B-RY'S" DREAM.
_Mr. R-s-b-ry._ "Hullo! Where's the House of Lords?"
_Spectral Caretaker._ "''Ouse o' Lords,' Sir? Why, it's GONE!!"]
* * * * *
"THE PORTRAIT OF NOBODY."--When the signature "[Greek: Outis]" first
appeared to a pamphlet or an article, people wondered "who 'tis?" and
"'ow 'tis he knows all about it?" The signature appearing again to an
article in _The New Review_, No. 69, suggests that though the author
has an anti-scriptural objection to a single-eyed individual, perhaps
'[Greek: Outis]' simply indicates a person who, with the majority of
us, detests an egotist. Only one would hardly gather this explanation
of the assumption of this classic and poetic signature from the style
of the article.
* * * * *
NOT A GILT-EDGED SECURITY.--The investment of Wei-hai-wei.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "ANIMAL SPIRITS."--No. 3. THE BARN DANCE.]
* * * * *