MY LORDS
“Nay, do not think I flatter:
For what advancement may I hope from thee?”
_Hamlet._
Some years ago the present chronicler and others were staying at
a small hotel in a remote corner of Silesia. After breakfast the
waiter appeared and addressed the linguist of the party. What did the
Herrschaft propose? he should recommend the ascent of the Flaschenberg.
At what hour would the Herrschaft dine?
“What does he call us?” I asked the linguist.
“Herrschaft,” he said: “Their Lordships; _you_ ought to know.”
We were “My Lords”! Probably some Hanoverian monarch had imported the
title from Germany, and had applied it to a Committee of the Privy
Council. Under this sign they conquered. It took the place of the
kingly and editorial WE. It called up a vision of phantasmal, coroneted
heads, shaking a negative, more rarely nodding an affirmative. In
front there might seem to be a Secretary, an Assistant Secretary,
even a clerk: but when the suppliant got as far as “What ho! Arrest
me that agency,” the official vanished, and there was but a voice,
“My Lords regret.” “And so the vision fadeth.” With this weapon they
put to silence inquisitive members of the Opposition, who “wanted to
know” things better unknown: with this they conquered School Boards
and school managers of all denominations: with this they even tried to
intimidate H.M. Inspectors themselves, who well knew that it was no
lion that roared, but only Snug the joiner.
My Lords were but a Parliamentary fiction; in theory composed of the
Lord President, the First Lord of the Treasury, and some Secretaries
of State: in practice they had no existence; but I think the Whitehall
staff had by long “making believe” persuaded themselves that they were
flesh and blood. A newly appointed examiner would go to his immediate
superior with a letter from the School Board of Swaggerby, protesting
against a deduction of one-tenth from the annual grant paid in respect
of the Slum Street Board School: how should he reply?
“Pooh, pooh: it’s Article 32, c. (3): tell them to go to the deuce.”
And the beardless stripling would sit down, and write:--
“Adverting to your letter of the 24th inst., I am directed to inform
you that My Lords regret that They are unable to reconsider Their
decision in the matter. I am to refer you to Art. 32, c. (3) of the
Code; and I am to add that Their Lordships will look for a marked
improvement in the results of the next examination as a condition of
the payment of any further grant.”
The capital letter prefixed to the third personal pronoun always seemed
to me the height of impertinent arrogance. But the examiners enjoyed
it immensely; and I am convinced that, if they ever went to church and
heard the petition in the Litany supplicating wisdom and understanding
for the Lords of the Council, they mentally added, “Meaning US, though
WE are already well supplied.”
The composition of the Education Department was very simple in 1872
when I trod the corridors. At that time elementary education pure and
simple was controlled from Whitehall. Science and art were the care
of another establishment, which we knew as “South Kensington.” The
Montague and Capulet retainers never met; only they bit their thumbs
when the other house was mentioned. When--in the later ’seventies--we
began to clash, science and art were considered pastimes for retired
officers, who had exchanged the sword for an H.B. pencil, and all sorts
of majors and captains used to be mixed up with the study thereof. They
used to examine in drawing, and they conducted examinations in May and
December with a code of regulations of their own composing. They even
invented an envelope with a fastening that reminded one of Rob Roy’s
purse--(“the simplicity of the contrivance to secure a furred pouch,
which could have been ripped open without any attempt on the spring,
&c.”)--and when, as occasionally happened, we were appealed to for
help in superintending their examinations at the training colleges, we
danced in fetters of red-tape.
It used to be told of one of the best known of the Whitehall officials,
F. T. Palgrave, of _Golden Treasury_ fame, that a school manager once
interviewed him on some grievance, and, getting little satisfaction,
enquired whether he might ask whom he had the honour of addressing.
“Oh, certainly,” said he, “my name is Francis Palgrave.”
The visitor thanked him, but explained that he rather wished to know
the official’s rank: for instance, was his opinion final?
“Not at all,” replied Palgrave airily; “I am what they call a Senior
Examiner: above me are the three Assistant Secretaries, Mr. A., Mr. B.,
and Mr. C.: above them is the Secretary, Sir Francis Sandford: above
him the Vice-President, Mr. Forster: above him the Lord President, Lord
Ripon: and above him, _I believe_, the Almighty.”
I served the Department, or Board, in one capacity or another and with
some interval for more than thirty-five years. In all that time I never
saw a Lord President, and I should often have found it hard to tell the
name of the reigning potentate if I had been asked suddenly. He was
always a peer: I dimly remember two dukes, two marquises, some earls,
and a viscount. Barons were nothing accounted of. It was said that when
Greville, the diarist, sometime Clerk of the Council, had attended his
first Council meeting, some one asked a Cabinet Minister whether he had
noticed that they had a new clerk: and the noble lord replied, “Not I;
when the tall footman puts coals on the fire, do you suppose I notice
whether it is Charles or James?” And the remark being repeated to
Greville induced him to form a low estimate of the statesman.
That was very much our attitude towards the Lord President of the
Council. For our master at the Education Department of the Privy
Council was master of all the branches of that Vehmegericht, if I may
adopt Sir Walter Scott’s spelling. I believe agriculture and public
health were our rivals in his affections, and it was often said that
the chief knew more about cattle plague than he did about the education
code. In actual practice he confined himself (as we understood) to
the patronage; that is to say, to the appointment of the indoor staff
(examiners) and outdoor staff (inspectors). Sometimes a Lord President
would take the same kindly interest in education that his wife might
take in the gardens of the family place; liking to see a good show of
flowers, and at times venturing to give a hint to the head-gardener,
but shrinking back if that magnate showed signs of impatience or
resentment. It was even said of one Lord President that he liked to
read reports, if type-written, on educational matters; but we were
warned, “you mustn’t talk to him about P.T.’s and Article 68 or
Circular 321: he dislikes technical details.”
Alas! the Lord President is extinct as the mammoth.
The Vice-President, known in the Office as the V.P., was a much more
real person. He was always in the Lower House, and quite often was
chosen for some fancied fitness for the post. It was his duty to defend
the Office and the Inspectors against the attacks of numerous enemies,
and once a year, late in the Session, when the House was getting thin,
he was allowed to move the Estimates, and to make a nice long speech.
For anything I know to the contrary he may have thought that he both
reigned and governed. But the ever watchful Permanent Secretary knew
better. Let us hear Susan Nipper on a similar situation.
Oh! bless your heart, Mrs. Richards, temporaries always order
permanencies here, didn’t you know that? Why, wherever was you born,
Mrs. Richards? But wherever you was born, and whenever, and however
(which is best known to yourself), you may bear in mind, please,
that it’s one thing to give orders and quite another thing to take
’em.--(_Dombey._)
There was often a good deal of Nipperism in the Secretary when the
temporary V.P. wanted to give orders.
The outdoor staff troubled itself very little about the temporaries.
Almost every new V.P. came in like a lion, and rumours would reach us
from time to time that the new man was giving trouble, and might be
expected to produce a new Code. Generally the malady took the form
of what we may call Circularitis,[17] and after that the patient
experienced relief. When the furthest recesses of our peninsula had
been made to tremble at the new policy, the afflicted man began to
amend, and the disease yielded to treatment at the hands of the
permanent physician. Then he went out like a lamb.
Of all the V.P.’s of my era, the most obtrusive was Mr. Anthony John
Mundella. Everyone knows Tacitus’ estimate of Galba, that “by universal
consent he was fit for empire, if he had not been an emperor.” But I
doubt if even this faint praise could be given to Mundella. He was
made Vice-President, we may suppose, to pacify the Birmingham League,
to keep the fussy man himself quiet, to satisfy the advanced wing
of the party. And it was generally conceded that no man ever in the
office was more keenly interested in education; no man more anxious to
do and say the right thing. At times he soared above earth, and won
admiration for his absence of pretence, and his strenuous endeavours to
carry out what he conceived to be the right policy. But no one could
have thought him fit to govern. He had never held office before, and
neither the manufacture of hosiery, nor the part which he had played
in the local politics of Nottingham had fitted him for the difficult
and delicate task which fell upon him. Men in the Office said he was a
pulpit-cushion thumper, and nothing more: he was incapable of deciding
a case submitted to him.
Moreover, as is often the case in similar circumstances, he could
not work with men above him, or below him. It was told me by one in
the secrets of the Office that the Secretary went one day in subdued
fury to the Lord President with a paper in his hand. “Look,” he said,
“what Mr. Mundella has said to me.” The noble earl read it, and said
soothingly, “I assure you that this is nothing to what he says to me.”
The argument, if it can be so called, is a bad one; for a rude remark
to a subordinate differs from a rude remark to a superior. But pity for
the helpless chieftain stayed the other’s wrath.
On the retirement of Sir Francis Sandford, in 1884, Mundella determined
to have a secretary after his own heart. Sir Francis had recommended
the appointment of one of the ablest of the Inspectorate as his
successor, and the Lord President had agreed: but when this was
revealed to Mundella, he protested vehemently that the Board Schools
would not be safe in such hands, and insisted on the appointment of Mr.
Cumin, then an assistant secretary in the Office. The President adhered
to his choice, and Mundella straight-way seized a piece of paper, wrote
his resignation, and handed it to his superior officer. What could be
done? It is easy to say with Dogberry, “Why, then, take no note of
him, but let him go, and thank God that you are rid of--an undesirable
person.” But the situation was difficult. Mundella would have given his
reasons in the House, and would have stirred up the Radicals against
the old Whigs: the Birmingham League and the Dissenters in both camps
would have supported their Goliath against the Whig David: I think
there was no remedy. Cumin was appointed.
It was not a good appointment; but if the new secretary did not justify
his patron’s praises, he equally failed to justify his expectations of
favouritism. The traditions of the Office require that the permanent
staff shall treat all classes and sects of schools with equal hand;
and though there were many willing to cast a stone at the Secretary,
I cannot remember that he was ever accused of undue partiality to
one type. There were times, whoever might be secretary, when the
balance seemed to be depressed on one side or the other; but it was
always explained by nods, and upheaval of the shoulder that pointed
to the V.P.’s room, that THOSE FELLOWS were giving trouble.
In the last few months a recently emancipated secretary, who employs
his well-earned leisure in theological warfare, has informed us that
he “puts Protestantism before politics.” I believe I am correct in
saying that during his long period of service in Whitehall no one even
suspected him of ecclesiastical prejudices.
This habit of mind Mundella could not understand. In office, as in
business, he did not seem to run straight; but when financial troubles
caused his downfall, men pitied him, because they thought his errors,
there also, were errors of judgment rather than of moral sense.
Of other Vice-Presidents before the arrival of Sir John Gorst, I think
Mr. Acland was the most demonstrative. He had been a clergyman in
Priest’s Orders, but he “renounced them all,” and entered Parliament,
and in 1892 was made Vice-President by Mr. Gladstone. It was said that
the Premier was under the impression that his new Minister had never
gone beyond Deacon’s Orders, and that, knowing that the abandonment
of Priest’s Orders involved excommunication, he would with fuller
knowledge have made another choice. Ecclesiastical law is one of the
few subjects that I have never examined in, and I repeat the canonical
proposition without any warranty. It may be a joke. When Mr. Gladstone
is concerned, one must always remember the excellent rule laid down by
a critic in the _Times_, when reviewing a book of Oxford anecdotes:
“What one requires of a story (at Oxford) is not that it should be
true, but that it should be suitable to the character of the man of
whom it is told.” (I quote from memory.) Accepting the story with this
reservation, I think it was open to the new Minister to retort that the
change from Tory M.P. for Oxford to Radical M.P. for Mid Lothian more
richly deserved the greater excommunication.
However that may be, the new V.P. had little sympathy with his former
brethren. His zeal for education was great, but whether in Whitehall
or in the West Riding it has always been the zeal of the tailless fox
yearning to bite the well-tailed little ones. To us inspectors much
of this fury was welcome. There were many schools which we had long
been anxious to close on account of the defects of their buildings,
and always hitherto, whether Tories or Radicals were in power, we
were thwarted by My Lords. Now we began to hope. But it was not till
November, 1893, that the V.P. succeeded in forging a weapon with which
to smite his foes. In that month appeared the famous Circular 321,
which demanded full information about the premises of every Public
Elementary School, and we spent a busy year in compiling the answers.
The mesh was narrow, and if we had been properly supported in Whitehall
we should have netted all the offenders. But there never was any
backbone to My Lords. Voluntary Schools and Board Schools for once went
hand-in-hand: the backstairs of the Office crawled with protestants
of all denominations: there ensued consternation, procrastination,
prevarication. In some districts we kept the fire banked up, and in
a later year, with the help of the Aid Grant,[18] we moved. But it
required continual stoking. Excommunicated Mr. Acland may be, but many
a child has to thank him for increased health and comfort; and I trust
that when he comes to work off his sentence in Purgatory, he may be
able to plead these good works as an equitable set off.
The last of the V.P.’s, and the only one that I ever saw, was Sir
John Gorst. Nature had not designed him for the position of second
fiddler; but the Lord President, finding that his understudy, when he
got hold of the first fiddle, played out of tune and threw out the
band, insisted on his keeping the lower place. This amused the House of
Commons, and the Duke omitted to stipulate that Sir John never should
“With arms encumbered thus, or thus head shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As, ‘Well, we know’; or, ‘There be, an if there might’;
Or such ambiguous giving out----”
intimate that some people could play fiddles better than others
who had a great name. Then the Secretary asserted that _he_ was
Conductor, whoever was playing first fiddle. It was rumoured that
there was incompatibility of temper in exalted circles. “What odds to
Hippokleides?” we said, we others.
There came a new Code,[19] that was to put elementary education on a
really satisfactory basis. This was so common a phenomenon that we
hardly turned our heads to look at it: but to our amazement it was
followed by an invitation to attend at the Foreign Office one March
day, that we might hear the V.P.’s opinions on his new baby, and on
education generally. We assembled from the Solway to the Channel,
from the Irish Sea to the German Ocean. Whitehall lay down with South
Kensington, and the great Hall of the Foreign Office had a novel
congregation. There for the first and only time I saw a V.P. His views
on education were pronounced “very crude,” “amateurish,” and so on; but
it was a holiday, and the country paid our expenses: I think my bill
came to about £4. I lunched with a Treasury clerk, who suggested that
the V.P. had not spent all his “Vote,” and wanted to knock down the
balance, instead of refunding it to the Treasury. But it is the way of
the Treasury to take low views of human motives.
The Lord President and the Vice-President have passed away. It may be
that the dual control was unworkable; but there was something to be
said for it. The V.P. was not a first-class Minister; the President was
not a first-class educationalist. Therefore the V.P. put on the steam,
and the other put on the brake. We are now better able to appreciate
the value of the arrangement.
There came a change after an Act of 1899. The Education Department of
the Privy Council cut the cable, became independent, and took the title
of “Board of Education.” My Lords vanished, and the Lord President and
Vice-President were transformed into a President and a Parliamentary
Secretary. The former may be chosen from either House, but the first
to hold office was a noble lord who would have fitly adorned the post
of Lord President of the Council. He was followed by a philosophic
commoner; and he again by other commoners, whom their friends
applauded, and their enemies severely censured for their activity. It
may be suggested that a more experienced statesman in the Upper House
might have exercised a wholesome restraining influence.
On a former page the Lord President was disrespectfully compared with
the tall footman. The permanent secretary occupies the more exalted
position of head waiter. It is to the head waiter that the experienced
traveller pays court. He controls the loaves and fishes, and without
him one may hang on and starve while others wax fat. He arranges the
tables, and gives to his chosen friends corner seats by the fire, or
choice spots in the bow window commanding a rich prospect; but to the
ungodly a draughty place near the door. As the older visitors drop off,
it is his to move up those who find favour in his eyes, and to let the
runagates continue in scarceness. If he smiles, the understrappers
scowl in vain: a word to the great man will do all that is wanted. The
directors, the manager who appointed him, pretend to superior dignity,
and their emoluments are on a more generous scale: but in their secret
hearts they admit that the key to the success of the establishment is
in the hands of the _maître d’hôtel_.
These valuable, if tedious, reflections come to me too late. I never
paid court to the great man: I never went near him, unless I wanted
something very much. It was sufficient for me to cultivate the goodwill
of the waiter at my table, though I was well aware that he would endure
but for a time. As soon as I had got to know Rosencrantz he was moved
on, and I had to begin again with Guildenstern. I sat in a dark corner
and carefully avoided the master eye. But I was very well treated.
Presidents, V.P.’s, secretaries, and all the host that called
themselves “My Lords” trouble me no more. I can sit like Amyas Leigh on
Lundy and dream of my old friends and foes:
“And I saw him sitting in his cabin like a valiant gentleman of Spain,
and his officers were sitting round him with their swords upon the
table at the wine. And the prawns and the crayfish, and the rockling
they swam in and out above their heads....”
Shadowy presidents and vice-presidents; sturdy Sir Francis with his
pleasant smile and rich Doric accent; the grim and cautious head
of Cumin; sharp-tongued A., rough-tongued B., double-tongued C.,
honey-tongued D.
“She lies in fifteen fathoms at the edge of the rocks, upon the sand,
and her men are lying all around her, asleep until the Judgment Day.”
And so I bid them farewell. Requiescant in pace, as they let me do.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Circularitis: the symptoms of this distressing complaint are
eruptions of Circulars, Memoranda, and Instructions addressed to
the servants of the Department, or to School Boards, or other local
authorities, and often producing great local irritation. It is said
that the disease is almost wholly confined to Whitehall.
[18] Aid Grant: the Voluntary School Act, 1897, gave an ‘aid grant’ not
exceeding 5_s._ per scholar, &c., to Voluntary schools. This enabled
the managers to increase the teachers’ salaries, or to improve the
buildings and furniture.
[19] Code: every year the Board issue a Code of regulations for Public
Elementary Schools. This directs the course of instruction and fixes
the annual Government grant.