Mr. and Mrs. Bunce
It was three o’clock on the Thursday night before Mr. Daubeny’s
speech was finished. I do not think that there was any truth in the
allegation made at the time, that he continued on his legs an hour
longer than the necessities of his speech required, in order that
five or six very ancient Whigs might be wearied out and shrink to
their beds. Let a Whig have been ever so ancient and ever so weary,
he would not have been allowed to depart from Westminster Hall that
night. Sir Everard Powell was there in his bath-chair at twelve,
with a doctor on one side of him and a friend on the other, in some
purlieu of the House, and did his duty like a fine old Briton as he
was. That speech of Mr. Daubeny’s will never be forgotten by any one
who heard it. Its studied bitterness had perhaps never been equalled,
and yet not a word was uttered for the saying of which he could be
accused of going beyond the limits of parliamentary antagonism. It is
true that personalities could not have been closer, that accusations
of political dishonesty and of almost worse than political cowardice
and falsehood could not have been clearer, that no words in the
language could have attributed meaner motives or more unscrupulous
conduct. But, nevertheless, Mr. Daubeny in all that he said was
parliamentary, and showed himself to be a gladiator thoroughly well
trained for the arena in which he had descended to the combat. His
arrows were poisoned, and his lance was barbed, and his shot was
heated red,--because such things are allowed. He did not poison
his enemies’ wells or use Greek fire, because those things are not
allowed. He knew exactly the rules of the combat. Mr. Mildmay sat and
heard him without once raising his hat from his brow, or speaking
a word to his neighbour. Men on both sides of the House said that
Mr. Mildmay suffered terribly; but as Mr. Mildmay uttered no word of
complaint to any one, and was quite ready to take Mr. Daubeny by the
hand the next time they met in company, I do not know that any one
was able to form a true idea of Mr. Mildmay’s feelings. Mr. Mildmay
was an impassive man who rarely spoke of his own feelings, and no
doubt sat with his hat low down over his eyes in order that no
man might judge of them on that occasion by the impression on his
features. “If he could have left off half an hour earlier it would
have been perfect as an attack,” said Barrington Erle in criticising
Mr. Daubeny’s speech, “but he allowed himself to sink into
comparative weakness, and the glory of it was over before the
end.”--Then came the division. The Liberals had 333 votes to 314 for
the Conservatives, and therefore counted a majority of 19. It was
said that so large a number of members had never before voted at any
division.
“I own I’m disappointed,” said Barrington Erle to Mr. Ratler.
“I thought there would be twenty,” said Mr. Ratler. “I never went
beyond that. I knew they would have old Moody up, but I thought
Gunning would have been too hard for them.”
“They say they’ve promised them both peerages.”
“Yes;--if they remain in. But they know they’re going out.”
“They must go, with such a majority against them,” said Barrington
Erle.
“Of course they must,” said Mr. Ratler. “Lord de Terrier wants
nothing better, but it is rather hard upon poor Daubeny. I never saw
such an unfortunate old Tantalus.”
“He gets a good drop of real water now and again, and I don’t pity
him in the least. He’s clever of course, and has made his own way,
but I’ve always a feeling that he has no business where he is.
I suppose we shall know all about it at Brooks’s by one o’clock
to-morrow.”
Phineas, though it had been past five before he went to bed,--for
there had been much triumphant talking to be done among liberal
members after the division,--was up at his breakfast at Mrs. Bunce’s
lodgings by nine. There was a matter which he was called upon to
settle immediately in which Mrs. Bunce herself was much interested,
and respecting which he had promised to give an answer on this very
morning. A set of very dingy chambers up two pairs of stairs at No.
9, Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn, to which Mr. Low had recommended him to
transfer himself and all his belongings, were waiting his occupation,
should he resolve upon occupying them. If he intended to commence
operations as a barrister, it would be necessary that he should have
chambers and a clerk; and before he had left Mr. Low’s house on
Sunday evening he had almost given that gentleman authority to secure
for him these rooms at No. 9. “Whether you remain in Parliament or
no, you must make a beginning,” Mr. Low had said; “and how are you
even to pretend to begin if you don’t have chambers?” Mr. Low hoped
that he might be able to wean Phineas away from his Parliament
bauble;--that he might induce the young barrister to give up his
madness, if not this session or the next, at any rate before a third
year had commenced. Mr. Low was a persistent man, liking very much
when he did like, and loving very strongly when he did love. He would
have many a tug for Phineas Finn before he would allow that false
Westminster Satan to carry off the prey as altogether his own. If he
could only get Phineas into the dingy chambers he might do much!
But Phineas had now become so imbued with the atmosphere of politics,
had been so breathed upon by Lady Laura and Barrington Erle, that
he could no longer endure the thought of any other life than that
of a life spent among the lobbies. A desire to help to beat the
Conservatives had fastened on his very soul, and almost made Mr. Low
odious in his eyes. He was afraid of Mr. Low, and for the nonce would
not go to him any more;--but he must see the porter at Lincoln’s Inn,
he must write a line to Mr. Low, and he must tell Mrs. Bunce that for
the present he would still keep on her rooms. His letter to Mr. Low
was as follows:--
Great Marlborough Street, May, 186--.
MY DEAR LOW,
I have made up my mind against taking the chambers, and am
now off to the Inn to say that I shall not want them. Of
course, I know what you will think of me, and it is very
grievous to me to have to bear the hard judgment of a man
whose opinion I value so highly; but, in the teeth of your
terribly strong arguments, I think that there is something
to be said on my side of the question. This seat in
Parliament has come in my way by chance, and I think it
would be pusillanimous in me to reject it, feeling, as I
do, that a seat in Parliament confers very great honour. I
am, too, very fond of politics, and regard legislation as
the finest profession going. Had I any one dependent on
me, I probably might not be justified in following the
bent of my inclination. But I am all alone in the world,
and therefore have a right to make the attempt. If, after
a trial of one or two sessions, I should fail in that
which I am attempting, it will not even then be too late
to go back to the better way. I can assure you that at any
rate it is not my intention to be idle.
I know very well how you will fret and fume over what I
say, and how utterly I shall fail in bringing you round to
my way of thinking; but as I must write to tell you of my
decision, I cannot refrain from defending myself to the
best of my ability.
Yours always faithfully,
PHINEAS FINN.
Mr. Low received this letter at his chambers, and when he had read
it, he simply pressed his lips closely together, placed the sheet
of paper back in its envelope, and put it into a drawer at his left
hand. Having done this, he went on with what work he had before him,
as though his friend’s decision were a matter of no consequence to
him. As far as he was concerned the thing was done, and there should
be an end of it. So he told himself; but nevertheless his mind was
full of it all day; and, though he wrote not a word of answer to
Phineas, he made a reply within his own mind to every one of the
arguments used in the letter. “Great honour! How can there be honour
in what comes, as he says, by chance? He hasn’t sense enough to
understand that the honour comes from the mode of winning it, and
from the mode of wearing it; and that the very fact of his being
member for Loughshane at this instant simply proves that Loughshane
should have had no privilege to return a member! No one dependent on
him! Are not his father and his mother and his sisters dependent on
him as long as he must eat their bread till he can earn bread of his
own? He will never earn bread of his own. He will always be eating
bread that others have earned.” In this way, before the day was
over, Mr. Low became very angry, and swore to himself that he would
have nothing more to say to Phineas Finn. But yet he found himself
creating plans for encountering and conquering the parliamentary
fiend who was at present so cruelly potent with his pupil. It was not
till the third evening that he told his wife that Finn had made up
his mind not to take chambers. “Then I would have nothing more to say
to him,” said Mrs. Low, savagely. “For the present I can have nothing
more to say to him.” “But neither now nor ever,” said Mrs. Low, with
great emphasis; “he has been false to you.” “No,” said Mr. Low, who
was a man thoroughly and thoughtfully just at all points; “he has not
been false to me. He has always meant what he has said, when he was
saying it. But he is weak and blind, and flies like a moth to the
candle; one pities the poor moth, and would save him a stump of his
wing if it be possible.”
Phineas, when he had written his letter to Mr. Low, started off for
Lincoln’s Inn, making his way through the well-known dreary streets
of Soho, and through St. Giles’s, to Long Acre. He knew every corner
well, for he had walked the same road almost daily for the last three
years. He had conceived a liking for the route, which he might easily
have changed without much addition to the distance, by passing
through Oxford Street and Holborn; but there was an air of business
on which he prided himself in going by the most direct passage, and
he declared to himself very often that things dreary and dingy to the
eye might be good in themselves. Lincoln’s Inn itself is dingy, and
the Law Courts therein are perhaps the meanest in which Equity ever
disclosed herself. Mr. Low’s three rooms in the Old Square, each of
them brown with the binding of law books and with the dust collected
on law papers, and with furniture that had been brown always, and had
become browner with years, were perhaps as unattractive to the eye of
a young pupil as any rooms which were ever entered. And the study of
the Chancery law itself is not an alluring pursuit till the mind has
come to have some insight into the beauty of its ultimate object.
Phineas, during his three years’ course of reasoning on these things,
had taught himself to believe that things ugly on the outside might
be very beautiful within; and had therefore come to prefer crossing
Poland Street and Soho Square, and so continuing his travels by the
Seven Dials and Long Acre. His morning walk was of a piece with his
morning studies, and he took pleasure in the gloom of both. But now
the taste of his palate had been already changed by the glare of
the lamps in and about palatial Westminster, and he found that St.
Giles’s was disagreeable. The ways about Pall Mall and across the
Park to Parliament Street, or to the Treasury, were much pleasanter,
and the new offices in Downing Street, already half built, absorbed
all that interest which he had hitherto been able to take in
the suggested but uncommenced erection of new Law Courts in the
neighbourhood of Lincoln’s Inn. As he made his way to the porter’s
lodge under the great gateway of Lincoln’s Inn, he told himself that
he was glad that he had escaped, at any rate for a while, from a life
so dull and dreary. If he could only sit in chambers at the Treasury
instead of chambers in that old court, how much pleasanter it would
be! After all, as regarded that question of income, it might well be
that the Treasury chambers should be the more remunerative, and the
more quickly remunerative, of the two. And, as he thought, Lady Laura
might be compatible with the Treasury chambers and Parliament, but
could not possibly be made compatible with Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn.
But nevertheless there came upon him a feeling of sorrow when the
old man at the lodge seemed to be rather glad than otherwise that
he did not want the chambers. “Then Mr. Green can have them,” said
the porter; “that’ll be good news for Mr. Green. I don’t know what
the gen’lemen ’ll do for chambers if things goes on as they’re
going.” Mr. Green was welcome to the chambers as far as Phineas was
concerned; but Phineas felt nevertheless a certain amount of regret
that he should have been compelled to abandon a thing which was
regarded both by the porter and by Mr. Green as being so desirable.
He had however written his letter to Mr. Low, and made his promise to
Barrington Erle, and was bound to Lady Laura Standish; and he walked
out through the old gateway into Chancery Lane, resolving that he
would not even visit Lincoln’s Inn again for a year. There were
certain books,--law books,--which he would read at such intervals of
leisure as politics might give him; but within the precincts of the
Inns of Court he would not again put his foot for twelve months, let
learned pundits of the law,--such for instance as Mr. and Mrs.
Low,--say what they might.
He had told Mrs. Bunce, before he left his home after breakfast, that
he should for the present remain under her roof. She had been much
gratified, not simply because lodgings in Great Marlborough Street
are less readily let than chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, but also because
it was a great honour to her to have a member of Parliament in her
house. Members of Parliament are not so common about Oxford Street as
they are in the neighbourhood of Pall Mall and St. James’s Square.
But Mr. Bunce, when he came home to his dinner, did not join as
heartily as he should have done in his wife’s rejoicing. Mr. Bunce
was in the employment of certain copying law-stationers in Carey
Street, and had a strong belief in the law as a profession;--but he
had none whatever in the House of Commons. “And he’s given up going
into chambers?” said Mr. Bunce to his wife.
“Given it up altogether for the present,” said Mrs. Bunce.
“And he don’t mean to have no clerk?” said Mr. Bunce.
“Not unless it is for his Parliament work.”
“There ain’t no clerks wanted for that, and what’s worse, there ain’t
no fees to pay ’em. I’ll tell you what it is, Jane;--if you don’t
look sharp there won’t be nothing to pay you before long.”
“And he in Parliament, Jacob!”
“There ain’t no salary for being in Parliament. There are scores of
them Parliament gents ain’t got so much as’ll pay their dinners for
’em. And then if anybody does trust ’em, there’s no getting at ’em
to make ’em pay as there is at other folk.”
“I don’t know that our Mr. Phineas will ever be like that, Jacob.”
“That’s gammon, Jane. That’s the way as women gets themselves took in
always. Our Mr. Phineas! Why should our Mr. Phineas be better than
anybody else?”
“He’s always acted handsome, Jacob.”
“There was one time he could not pay his lodgings for wellnigh nine
months, till his governor come down with the money. I don’t know
whether that was handsome. It knocked me about terrible, I know.”
“He always meant honest, Jacob.”
“I don’t know that I care much for a man’s meaning when he runs
short of money. How is he going to see his way, with his seat in
Parliament, and this giving up of his profession? He owes us near a
quarter now.”
“He paid me two months this morning, Jacob; so he don’t owe a
farthing.”
“Very well;--so much the better for us. I shall just have a few words
with Mr. Low, and see what he says to it. For myself I don’t think
half so much of Parliament folk as some do. They’re for promising
everything before they’s elected; but not one in twenty of ’em is as
good as his word when he gets there.”
Mr. Bunce was a copying journeyman, who spent ten hours a day in
Carey Street with a pen between his fingers; and after that he would
often spend two or three hours of the night with a pen between his
fingers in Marlborough Street. He was a thoroughly hard-working man,
doing pretty well in the world, for he had a good house over his
head, and always could find raiment and bread for his wife and
eight children; but, nevertheless, he was an unhappy man because he
suffered from political grievances, or, I should more correctly say,
that his grievances were semi-political and semi-social. He had no
vote, not being himself the tenant of the house in Great Marlborough
Street. The tenant was a tailor who occupied the shop, whereas Bunce
occupied the whole of the remainder of the premises. He was a lodger,
and lodgers were not as yet trusted with the franchise. And he had
ideas, which he himself admitted to be very raw, as to the injustice
of the manner in which he was paid for his work. So much a folio,
without reference to the way in which his work was done, without
regard to the success of his work, with no questions asked of
himself, was, as he thought, no proper way of remunerating a man for
his labours. He had long since joined a Trade Union, and for two
years past had paid a subscription of a shilling a week towards its
funds. He longed to be doing some battle against his superiors, and
to be putting himself in opposition to his employers;--not that he
objected personally to Messrs. Foolscap, Margin, and Vellum, who
always made much of him as a useful man;--but because some such
antagonism would be manly, and the fighting of some battle would
be the right thing to do. “If Labour don’t mean to go to the wall
himself,” Bunce would say to his wife, “Labour must look alive, and
put somebody else there.”
Mrs. Bunce was a comfortable motherly woman, who loved her husband
but hated politics. As he had an aversion to his superiors in the
world because they were superiors, so had she a liking for them for
the same reason. She despised people poorer than herself, and thought
it a fair subject for boasting that her children always had meat for
dinner. If it was ever so small a morsel, she took care that they had
it, in order that the boast might be maintained. The world had once
or twice been almost too much for her,--when, for instance, her
husband had been ill; and again, to tell the truth, for the last
three months of that long period in which Phineas had omitted to pay
his bills; but she had kept a fine brave heart during those troubles,
and could honestly swear that the children always had a bit of
meat, though she herself had been occasionally without it for days
together. At such times she would be more than ordinarily meek to
Mr. Margin, and especially courteous to the old lady who lodged in
her first-floor drawing-room,--for Phineas lived up two pairs of
stairs,--and she would excuse such servility by declaring that there
was no knowing how soon she might want assistance. But her husband,
in such emergencies, would become furious and quarrelsome, and would
declare that Labour was going to the wall, and that something very
strong must be done at once. That shilling which Bunce paid weekly to
the Union she regarded as being absolutely thrown away,--as much so
as though he cast it weekly into the Thames. And she had told him so,
over and over again, making heart-piercing allusions to the eight
children and to the bit of meat. He would always endeavour to explain
to her that there was no other way under the sun for keeping Labour
from being sent to the wall;--but he would do so hopelessly and
altogether ineffectually, and she had come to regard him as a lunatic
to the extent of that one weekly shilling.
She had a woman’s instinctive partiality for comeliness in a man, and
was very fond of Phineas Finn because he was handsome. And now she
was very proud of him because he was a member of Parliament. She
had heard,--from her husband, who had told her the fact with much
disgust,--that the sons of Dukes and Earls go into Parliament, and
she liked to think that the fine young man to whom she talked more
or less every day should sit with the sons of Dukes and Earls. When
Phineas had really brought distress upon her by owing her some thirty
or forty pounds, she could never bring herself to be angry with
him,--because he was handsome and because he dined out with Lords.
And she had triumphed greatly over her husband, who had desired to be
severe upon his aristocratic debtor, when the money had all been paid
in a lump.
“I don’t know that he’s any great catch,” Bunce had said, when the
prospect of their lodger’s departure had been debated between them.
“Jacob,” said his wife, “I don’t think you feel it when you’ve got
people respectable about you.”
“The only respectable man I know,” said Jacob, “is the man as earns
his bread; and Mr. Finn, as I take it, is a long way from that yet.”
Phineas returned to his lodgings before he went down to his club, and
again told Mrs. Bunce that he had altogether made up his mind about
the chambers. “If you’ll keep me I shall stay here for the first
session I daresay.”
“Of course we shall be only too proud, Mr. Finn; and though it mayn’t
perhaps be quite the place for a member of Parliament--”
“But I think it is quite the place.”
“It’s very good of you to say so, Mr. Finn, and we’ll do our very
best to make you comfortable. Respectable we are, I may say; and
though Bunce is a bit rough sometimes--”
“Never to me, Mrs. Bunce.”
“But he is rough,--and silly, too, with his radical nonsense, paying
a shilling a week to a nasty Union just for nothing. Still he means
well, and there ain’t a man who works harder for his wife and
children;--that I will say of him. And if he do talk politics--”
“But I like a man to talk politics, Mrs. Bunce.”
“For a gentleman in Parliament of course it’s proper; but I never
could see what good it could do to a law-stationer; and when he talks
of Labour going to the wall, I always ask him whether he didn’t get
his wages regular last Saturday. But, Lord love you, Mr. Finn, when a
man as is a journeyman has took up politics and joined a Trade Union,
he ain’t no better than a milestone for his wife to take and talk to
him.”
After that Phineas went down to the Reform Club, and made one of
those who were buzzing there in little crowds and uttering their
prophecies as to future events. Lord de Terrier was to go out. That
was certain. Whether Mr. Mildmay was to come in was uncertain. That
he would go to Windsor to-morrow morning was not to be doubted; but
it was thought very probable that he might plead his age, and decline
to undertake the responsibility of forming a Ministry.
“And what then?” said Phineas to his friend Fitzgibbon.
“Why, then there will be a choice out of three. There is the Duke,
who is the most incompetent man in England; there is Monk, who is the
most unfit; and there is Gresham, who is the most unpopular. I can’t
conceive it possible to find a worse Prime Minister than either of
the three;--but the country affords no other.”
“And which would Mildmay name?”
“All of them,--one after the other, so as to make the embarrassment
the greater.” That was Mr. Fitzgibbon’s description of the crisis;
but then it was understood that Mr. Fitzgibbon was given to
romancing.