THE RIGHT WAY TO SURRENDER.
It is not in my power, to describe to you all the mixture, or the
magnitude, of my feelings, when I entered what our noble
journalists--who choose words, like oysters, by their fatness--call the
"Portals of St. Stephen."
It is superfluous to say, that a policeman met me; the _differentia_ of
that species being to jump up (like the teeth of Cadmus) outside of all
requirement, and to vanish (like Berenice's hair) inside it.
"You can't come in here, young man." He made this remark (looking over
my head, for his stature was six feet four, and his mouth opened
upwards, as all good police-mouths do) in a tone, which conveyed that it
was unofficial, and required some apology for excess of affability.
"Peeler, yes he can though! He have a right in there;" exclaimed a voice
behind me. "He don't look very nobby p'raps, with all that hair, but he
have the same right as I have, Master Bobby. In marches Tommy Upmore,
M.P. Tommy, now won't you shake hands with me? One old friend is worth a
score of new ones. Without me, so help me Sammy, never would you be
here, my boy! But I bears no malice, if your mind is the same. Shake
hands, Tommy. There's worse gen'lemen to be found, than Joseph Cowle,
Esquire, M.P."
Perhaps I have never received, or inflicted, a stronger sensation of
surprise. This may have been, to find my own importance (which must have
been growing too rankly) assaulted by a policeman, and asserted by a
chimney sweep.
"Mr. Cowl?" I asked, while giving him my hand; though his own would not
have been the worse for a "_repetatur haustus_" of the little boiler
engine; "Have you quite recovered from your dreadful cold?"
"All Liberals suffers from throatiness," he replied; "same as Tories
does from cheekiness. M.P. for Chimneystacks now I am, Tommy; with an e
to the tail of my name as well. The missus would have it, with her
education; though beyond me to pronounce it, without 'Cowly.' How you
are going up the tree, hot cockles!"
"And you up the chimney!" I replied, with a glance at his dress, which
was worthy of the first of May. "I never could have guessed who you
were; and how could you recognise me, Mr. Cowly?"
"Come now! Come now!" He spoke, as a groom to a horse cutting too many
capers. "After the print of you, on the title-page of all the leading
magazines--'Head of hair unparalleled outside the Polar regions, 3s. 6d.
per bottle, and then throw away your combs!' Ah, Tommy, dust comes
perfessional to me. We know what sends you into this here crib. Five
hundred a week, and a royalty on sales. Pays better than ledgery
slating!"
I had heard of these absurd reports ere now, and I never hope to hear
the last of them. Is there any credulity, among barbarians, a hundredth
part as wild as that of the British public, in such matters? People of
fair common sense, and with some experience of the world, believed that
I was making an enormous income, by lending my name, and my
countenance--full-front, profile, and three-quarters--to fellows who
advertised hair-oil, balsams, electric, and fifty other sorts of comb,
and even my own father's speciality, soap (such as cured all the
convicts)--not one of whom, I deeply regret to assure you, upon my
honour, as the member for Larkmount, ever paid me a shilling, or even
asked me to dinner!
But one is apt to dwell too much upon such trifles. If I have put a
penny (one per cent., honest) into any enterprising tradesman's pocket,
I make him a present of the honest portion, which would not be worth
legal expenses.
Questions of a thousandfold more importance thronged upon me now, as I
entered the House, under convoy of the Member for Chimneystacks, who
whispered to me, that the Dust-pan Bill was mainly of his own
suggestion.
Having been introduced already, at the end of the Autumnal sitting, I
did not require his services in that way, but found a quiet corner for
my hat, and thought of the time when I put down my trencher some five
years ago in the chapel of _Corpus_.
Then we rushed to hear the Royal Speech, rather like a mob of workmen,
when the bell rings; and Sir Roland, whose strength lay in hurrying
others more than himself, appeared quite at his leisure, and laughed, as
he shook my hand, to find it trembling.
"You'll soon get over that;" he said, as if he had been some fifty
years in Parliament. "But who is your friend with the dark complexion?"
I told him the story; but he did not laugh at all heartily, as I had
expected.
"An exceedingly dangerous fellow," he exclaimed. "To be sure, I know all
about him now. One of the cleverest of all the Clasts, with the true
pass-word for the Cabinet. An anarchist, a socialist, a communist, and
everything else that rhymes with fist, which is the only tool to meet
them with. Chumps is the man for such fellows; but we shall not have him
here for a fortnight. There now, Faithful Commons, go home. But they
will have no homes to go to, except a common, if all this comes to pass.
And yet, how well it has been made to sound, for people who do not care
for sense!"
I was not of his opinion, upon that point. To my simple mind, plain
English words, mainly of English birth, and showing (one after other)
what they mean, without any tangles or knots in them, are the right
words to move the English heart. Whoever speaks thus, wins all my ears,
and goes a long way towards winning my heart; because he is my brother
Englishman. And even for sound, what power is there, whatever the scowl
of the cloud may be, in long foreign thunder, below the horizon, and
perhaps meaning something, in Italy, or Greece? But the Royal Speech, as
usual, meant nothing anywhere; any more than the poor man, who foretells
the weather.
"A greenhorn like you, Tommy," said Sir Roland, as if he had served at
least through the Long Parliament, "would expect a great fight, and a
smash-up, at once, to follow up that palaver. But Thong, who knows
everything, tells me that nothing, except little Irish rows, will be on
for a fortnight. And we can do a heap more good, he says, by going down
to Silverside, and making Chumps safe, than by hanging about for any
trumpery divisions. It is jolly to see a fellow in his troubles. Suppose
we start to-morrow?"
"With all my heart;" I answered. And in saying this, I had used the
right words, at the right moment. Not that I cared to see Bill in the
straw so much, although it is a pleasant spectacle; but that I did long,
with all my heart, to hear Laura's opinion on politics, with the whole
of Her Majesty's speech cut out, and pasted up--as I had told her to do
it--in the corner of my little room, where I meditated, and had left a
woolly outline of my head against the wall.
Our work was to be at Silverside; where Bill and his father already were
in residence, having taken the front that looked over the porch, on the
High Street side of the "_Bull-and-Mouth Hotel_." William Chumps,
Esquire, had brought down "his lady, a lovely bride of some nineteen
summers," as the _Silverside Constitutional_ described her, though I
could depose that she was four and twenty, being eleven months older
than myself, and no bride of any summer at all, but married to Bill for
three months of the winter. There was no taint of envy in my feelings.
She certainly looked very handsome, and had spent a good lump of her
£12,000 in apparel; and Bill, of course, was mightily proud of her. But
to dream, for a moment, that I was pining, as her melancholy manner
towards me conveyed,--I longed very often to bring my Laura; but a
scene of that kind was not fitted for her! Patriotic sentiments
repressed my private anger; and I worked very hard for Bill; and wrote
him some good posters.
"Now, I am off for the _Towers_," I said to Sir Roland, only two days
before the one fixed for the poll; "I can't stand any more of this, and
Bill cannot want me any longer. I have had the very kindest letters from
your mother; and if you prefer racket to home-life, I don't. I will meet
you in London, any day you may appoint. But I must have a little quiet
first. 'Tis as bad as a boat-race every day; and at Henley once I lost
my nerve, from too much of it, and we got whacked."
"I see;" he replied, as he was fond of doing. "Another man's laurels,
wreathed with orange-blossom, are hard to behold philosophically. Go,
Tommy, go and recruit your roses. But remember our compact. You have won
nothing yet."
He might say what he pleased, when he smiled like Laura; though his
smile was strength, and hers was sweetness. That evening, I arrived
where I was welcome; and the lovely blush, and soft whisper of a kiss,
were worth a world of politics, and Parliament.
The privilege of changing their minds has always been handsomely yielded
to fair ladies; so long as they do not change there with their precious
hearts, and pure affections. I found my Laura in a vastly different
political vein from her previous one. She had taken some peeps into the
newspapers, not at all for the sake of the public, but for mine; and all
the deep warmth of her nature was stirred, by the Radical outrage, to
her country and her home.
"About the suffrage, and the Constitution, and the Abstinence-cause, I
know nothing, or less than nothing--as gentlemen express it, though I
don't see how there can be less than nothing;" she said to me, the very
day after my arrival. "But about right and wrong, everybody has a right
to some opinion. For poor landowners, what is it but robbery, downright
robbery, to take away their land, and compel them to start afresh to
earn more? But, oh, Tommy, Tommy, it takes all my breath away, to think
of surrendering the English fleet to the bitterest enemies of England!
Oh, come in here, that I may show you something it will strengthen all
your principles to see."
There are few things more impressive to the model British mind--of which
mine is, I am proud to say, a very tidy specimen--than a genuine series
of ancestors in oil, proved (by internal and external evidence)
extraneous to Wardour Street. Monuments perhaps have a still grander
savour, especially recumbent figures of the Knight, and his Lady, on a
slab together, with the little ones that failed to come to harm,
sculpturally coming up, like frogs for the blessing. But these are very
rarely to be found in any Chancel, or Chapel, by the dozen; while the
pictures have an old family habit of keeping together. And to me it
appeared that the Twentifold race were what our dear cousins, (who
supply our slang, after stealing our standards) call "real grit," for
never having driven me, or anybody else, into this caravan of dead
Twentifolds. For my gallery of ancestors was restricted to a photograph
of my dear father, and an ancient daguerreotype of Uncle Bill.
"Oh, Laura," I cried, when I saw them stretching, (like the windows of
a Stop-at-all-Stations-train) for a furlong without any corner; "how can
you look at all these great people, and come down from them, to a nobody
like me?"
"Hush!" she said. "How dare you talk like that? I didn't bring you here,
to be impudent, Tommy."
"But I am astonished," I replied, "astonished, that with all these
looking at you, you can look at me!"
"What is there astonishing in it?" she asked, coming up, and putting
both hands on my shoulders. "It is, because I love you, dear."
At any other time, I must have kissed her, for those simple, and noble
words. It was no thought of all those ancestors that robbed me of that
pleasure; but I could not bear that she should look into my eyes, and
see how full they were of tears. Then I ventured to put my arm round her
waist, and she gave me her left hand, to comfort me.
"Here's the fine old gentleman, I brought you in to look at;" her voice
was quite gay again, to pass the fuss over; "does he look, as if he
would surrender our fleet, to the enemies of England?"
"He looks fitter to make all her enemies surrender. What a resolute
face, and how his foot is planted! Ah, if we had any man to plant his
foot, and shut his mouth in that style, now! All open mouth now--as Roly
says--open mouth, tongue instead of chin, and instead of strong fist,
chattering fingers. A man of that stamp can never have belonged to any
time later than Nelson's. No Government would employ him now, in any of
our trumpery 'demonstrations.' Let me look at him. It does me good."
The picture, being by no well-known artist, would doubtless be called a
daub, by all art-critics rightly flourishing. But to me it seemed full
of life and spirit, not always to be found in mighty masters. An Admiral
of the ancient days, and himself growing ancient, stood at a gangway
before his men, to repel assault of boarders. In his right hand was a
big sword, flashing almost as brightly as his eyes, while his left hand
pointed to the Union-jack, waving through a cloud of smoke above.
"Who was he?" I asked. "He means to do it. I should have been sorry to
board that ship?"
She drew from behind the frame a plate of gilt metal, engraved in red,
"Admiral Sir Rupert Towers-Twentifold, A.D. 1740."
"Yes, he did it;" she answered, with her eyes almost as bright as his;
"He cut three men down, with his own hand, and then leaped on board the
Spanish ship, drove the crew below, and captured it. He was the sixth
back in straight line from Roly; and Roly sometimes looks exactly like
him. That makes it my favourite picture of them all. Though I like Roly
better, when he looks quiet."
"It won't do to look quiet always;" I replied, with the spirit of the
conflict caught; "except for such sweet souls as you. Darling, you make
lovely patchwork. Will you do a little job for me, without a word to any
one?"