The guide-books have a good deal to say about the Houses of Parliament, but
the people who write guide-books never go to the really amusing places and
never know the really interesting things. For instance they have never yet
explained what it is that the House of Commons smells of. I do not refer to
the actual Chamber, which merely smells like the Tube, but the lofty
passages and lobbies where the statues are. The smell, I think, is a
mixture of cathedrals and soap. It is a baffling but rather seductive
smell, and they tell me that the policemen miss it when they are
transferred to point-duty. Possibly it is this smell which makes
ex-Premiers want to go back there.
But let us have no cheap mockery of the Houses of Parliament, because there
is a lot to be said for them. They are much the best houses for
hide-and-seek I know. The parts which are dear to the public, the cathedral
parts, are no good for that, but behind them and under them and all round
them there are miles and miles of superb secret passages and back
staircases, the very place for a wet afternoon. They are decorated like
second-class waiting-rooms and lead to a lot of rooms like third-class
waiting-rooms; and at every corner there is a policeman; but this only adds
to the excitement. Besides, at any moment you may blunder into some very
secret waiting-room labelled "Serjeant-at-Arms."
If you are seen by the SERJEANT-AT-ARMS you have lost the game, and if you
are seen by a Lord of the Treasury I gather from the policemen that you
would be put in the Tower. Or you may start light-heartedly from the
Refreshment Department of the House of Commons and find yourself suddenly
in the bowels of the House of Lords, probably in the very passage to the
LORD CHANCELLOR'S Secretary's Room.
Still, there is no other way for Private Secretaries to take exercise and
at the same time avoid their Members without actually leaving the building,
so risks of that sort have to be faced.
While the Private Secretary is playing hide-and-seek in the passages and
purlieus his Member waits for him in the Secretaries' Room. The
Secretaries' Room is the real seat of legislation in this country, and it
is surprising that Mr. BAGEHOT gave it no place in his account of the
Constitution. It is also surprising, in view of its importance, that it
should be such a dismal, ill-furnished and thoroughly mouldy room. It is a
rotten room. Mr. ASQUITH, when a Private Secretary, is reported to have
said of it, "In the whole course of my political career I can recall no
case of administrative myopia at all parallel to the folly or ineptitude
which has condemned the authors of legislation in His Majesty's Parliament
to discharge their functions in this grotesque travesty of a legislative
chamber, this sombre and obscure repository of mouldering archives and
forgotten records, where the constructive statesmen of to-morrow are
expected to shape their Utopias in an atmosphere of disillusion and decay,
in surroundings appointed to be the shameful sepulchre of the nostrums of
the past." If that is what Mr. ASQUITH said, I agree with him; if he didn't
say it, I wish he had.
The room is pitch-dark always, and it is full of tables and tomes. The
tables are waiting-room tables and the tomes are as Mr. ASQUITH has
described them. It is divided into two by a swing-door. One part is the
female Private Secretary part, the other is the male Private Secretary
part, and it is lamentable to record that no romance has ever occurred
between a male Private Secretary and a female one.
The room is plentifully supplied with House of Commons' stationery, which
disappears at an astonishing rate. This is because the Members come in and
remove it by the gross, knowing full well that the SERJEANT-AT-ARMS will
suspect the Private Secretaries. It is a hard world.
However, this is where the Members come to their Private Secretaries for
instructions. They come there nominally to dictate letters to their
constituents, but really they come to be told what amendments to move and
what questions to ask and what the Drainage Bill is about, and whether they
ought to support the Dentist Qualification (Ireland) (No. 2) Bill, or not.
It is awful to think that if the Private Secretaries downed tools the whole
machinery of Parliament would stop. No questions would be asked and no
amendments moved and no speeches made. The Government would have things all
their own way. Unless, of course, the Government's Private Secretaries
struck too. But of course the Government's Private Secretaries never would,
the dirty blacklegs!
After the Secretaries' Room perhaps the most interesting thing in the two
Houses is the House of Lords sitting as the Supreme Court. Everybody ought
to see that. There is a nice old man sitting in the middle in plain clothes
and several other nice old men in plain clothes sitting about on the
benches, with little card-tables in front of them. Two or three of them
have beards, which is against the best traditions of the Law. But they are
very jolly old men, and now and then one of them sits up and moves his
lips. You can see then that he is putting a sly question to the barrister
who is talking at the counter, though you can't hear anything because they
all whisper. While the barrister is answering, another old man wakes up and
puts a sly question, so as to confuse the barrister. That is the game. The
barrister who gets thoroughly annoyed first loses the case.
They have quite enough to annoy them already. They are all cooped up in a
minute pen about eight feet square. There are eight of them, four K.C.'s
and four underlings. They have nowhere to put their papers and nowhere to
stretch their legs. They sit there getting cramp, or they stand at the
counter talking to the old men. In either position they grow more and more
annoyed. Four of them are famous men, earning thousands and thousands. Why
do they endure it? Because lawyers, contrary to the common belief, are the
most long-suffering profession in the world. That is why they are the only
Trade Union whose members have only half-an-hour for lunch. Well, it is
their funeral; but if I were a K.C. sitting in that pen, with the whole of
the House of Lords empty in front of me, I should get over the counter and
walk about. Then the LORD CHANCELLOR might have a fit; and that alone would
make it worth while.
The only other interesting place in the Houses of Parliament is the
Strangers' Dining Room. This is interesting because the Members there are
all terrified lest you should hear what they are going to say. They never
know who may be at the next table--a journalist or a Bolshevist or a
landowner--and they talk with one eye permanently over their shoulder. It
must be very painful.
But of course the best time to visit the House is when it is not sitting,
because then, if you are lucky, you may sit with impunity on the Front
Bench and put your feet up on the table. If you are unlucky you will be
shot at dawn.