XI

I HAD not the least expectation of being fortunate enough to see your

Parliament open, having always heard that all the peeresses wanted to go

on that occasion, and knowing how little sitting accommodation you had

for anybody. Americans find nothing more impressive in England than the

difficulty of getting a look at your system of government--our own is so

very accessible to everyone who chooses to study it, and to come and sit

in the general gallery of the House of Congress or the Senate without

making a disturbance. The thing an American tells first, and with

most pride, when he comes home after visiting England, is that he has

attended a sitting of Parliament and seen Mr. Gladstone; if he has heard

your veteran politician speak, he is prouder still. So I had cherished

the hope of somehow getting into the House while Parliament was in

session, and seeing all the people we read so much about at home in

connection with the Irish Question--it was the thing, I believe, I had

set my heart upon doing most; but tickets for the opening of Parliament

from Mr. Mafferton, with a note informing Lady Torquilin that his cousin

had promised to look after us on the occasion, represented more than my

highest aspiration.

Lady Torquilin was pleased, too, though I don't think she intended

to express her pleasure when she said, with an air of philosophical

acceptance of whatever Fate might send, 'Providence only knows, my dear,

how the old man will behave! He may be as agreeable as possible--as

merry as a grig--and he may be in a temper like the------'; and Lady

Torquilin compressed her lips and nodded her head in a way that told me

how her remark would finish if she were not a member of the Church of

England, rather low, and a benefactor to deep-sea fishermen and Dr.

Barnardo, with a strong objection to tobacco in any form. 'We must

avoid subjects that are likely to provoke him: local self-government for

Ireland has given him apoplexy twice; I've heard of his getting awful

tantrums about this last Licensing Bill; and marriage with a deceased

wife's sister, I know, is a thing to avoid!'

Then it dawned upon me that this was Mr. Mafferton's cousin, who was a

lord, and I had a very great private satisfaction that I should see what

he was like.

'I remember,' I said. 'This is the cousin that you said was an old----'

'Brute!' Lady Torquilin finished for me, seeing that I didn't quite like

to. 'So he is, when he's in a rage! I wouldn't be Lady Mafferton, poor

dear, for something! An ordinary "K" and an ordinary temper for me!' I

asked Lady Torquilin what she meant by 'an ordinary K'; and in the next

half-hour I got a lesson on the various distinctions of the English

aristocracy that interested me extremely. Lady Torquilin's 'K,' I may

say, while I am talking about it, was the 'C.M.G.' kind, and not the

'K' sometimes conferred late in life upon illustrious butchers. Lady

Torquilin didn't seem to think much of this kind of 'K,' but I was glad

to hear of it. It must be a great encouragement to honesty and industry

in the humbler walks of life, or, as you would say, among the masses;

and though, I suppose, it wouldn't exactly accord with our theory of

government, I am sorry we have nothing even remotely like it in America.

It was a nice day, a lovely day, an extraordinary day, the February

day Lady Torquilin and I compromised upon a hansom and drove to the

Parliament buildings. A person has such a vivid, distinct recollection

of nice days in London! The drive knocked another of my preconceived

ideas to pieces--the idea that Westminster was some distance off,

and would have to be reached by train--not quite so far, perhaps, as

Washington is from New York, for that would just as likely as not put it

in the sea, but a considerable distance. I suppose you will think that

inexcusable; but it is very difficult to be enough interested in foreign

capitals to verify vague impressions about them, and Westminster is a

large-sounding name, that suggests at least a mayor and a town council

of its own. It was odd to find it about twenty minutes from anywhere

in Loudon, and not to know exactly when you had arrived until the cab

rolled under the shadow of the Abbey, and stopped in the crowd that

waited to cheer the great politicians. Lady Torquilin immediately

asked one of the policemen which way to go--I don't know anybody who

appreciates what you might call the encyclopaedic value of the London

police more that Lady Torquilin--and he waved us on. 'Straight ahead,

madame, and turn in at the 'orseback statyou,' he said, genially, the

distance being not more than two hundred yards from where we stood, and

the turning-in point visible On the way, notwithstanding, Lady Torquilin

asked two other policemen. My friend loves the peace of mind that

follows absolute certainty. Presently we were following the rustling

elegance of two or three tall ladies, whom I at once pronounced to be

peeresses, through the broad, quiet, red corridor that leads to the

House of Lords.

We were among the very first, and had our choice of the long, narrow

seats that run along the wall in a terrace on each side of the Chamber.

Fortunately, Lady Torquilin had attended other openings of Parliament,

and knew that we must sit on the left; otherwise we might just as likely

as not have taken our places on the other side, where there were only

two or three old gentlemen with sticks and silk hats--which, I reflected

afterwards, would have been awful. But, as it happened, we sat down very

decorously in our proper places, and I tried to realise, as we looked at

the crowded galleries and the long, narrow, solemn crimson room with the

throne-chair at one end, that I was in the British House of Lords. Our

Senate, just before the opening of Congress, is so very different. Most

of the senators are grey-haired, and many of them are bald, but they all

walk about quite nimbly, and talk before the proceedings begin with

a certain vivacity; and there are pages running round with notes and

documents, and a great many excited groups in the lobbies, and a general

air of crisp business and alacrity everywhere. The only thing I could

feel in the House of Lords that morning was a concentrated atmospheric

essence of Importance. I was thinking of a thing Senator Ingalls said to

me two years ago, which was what you would call 'comic,' when the idea

struck me that it was almost time for Parliament to open, and not a

single peer had arrived. So I asked Lady Torquilin when the lords might

be expected to come in. Up to this time we had been discussing the

millinery by which we were surrounded.

'I daresay there won't be many to-day,' said Lady Torquilin. 'Certainly

very few so far!'

'Are there any here?' I asked her.

'Oh, yes--just opposite, don't you see, child! That wellset-up man with

the nice, wholesome face, the third from the end in the second row from

the bottom--that's Lord Rosebery; and next him is the great beer-man--I

forget his title; and here is Lord Mafferton now--don't look--coming

into the first row from the bottom, and leaning over to shake hands with

Lord Rosebery.'

'Tell me when I can look,' I said, 'because I want to awfully. But, Lady

Torquilin, are those peers? They look very respectable and nice, I'm

sure, but I did expect more in the way of clothes. Where are their

flowing mantles, and their chains and swords and things?'

'Only when the Queen opens Parliament in person,' said Lady Torquilin.

'Then there is a turn-out! Now you can look at Lord Mafferton--the rude

old man! Fancy his having the impudence to sit there with his hat on!'

I looked at Lord Mafferton, who certainly had not removed his hat--the

large, round, shiny silk hat worn by every gentleman in England, and

every commercial traveller in America. Under the hat he was very pink

and fat, with rather a snubby nose, and little twinkling blue eyes, and

a suggestion of white whisker about the place where his chin and his

cheek disappeared into his neck. He wore lavender-kid gloves, and was

inclined to corpulency. I should not have trusted this description of

a peer of your realm if it had come from any other American pen than

my own--I should have set it down as a gross exaggeration, due to envy,

from the fact that we can neither produce peers in our own country nor

keep them there for any length of time; but I was obliged to believe

my own eyes, and that is the way they reported Lord Mafferton from the

other side of your Upper House. There were other gentlemen in the rows

opposite--gentlemen all in black, and gentlemen in light waistcoats,

bearded and clean-shaven, most of them elderly, but a few surprisingly

middle-aged--for your natural expectation is to see a peer

venerable--but I must say there was not one that I would have picked out

to be a peer, for any particular reason, in the street. And it seemed

to me that, since they are constitutional, as it were, there ought to

be some way of knowing them. I reasoned again, however, that perhaps

my lack of discrimination was due to my not being accustomed to seeing

peers--that possibly the delicate distinctions and values that make up a

peer would be perfectly evident to a person born, so to speak, under the

shadow of the aristocracy. And in the meantime the proceedings began

by everybody standing up. I don't know whether I actually expected a

procession and a band, but when I discovered that we were all standing

while four or five gentlemen in red gowns walked to the other end of

the room and took chairs, my emotions were those of blank surprise.

Presently I felt Lady Torquilin give an emphatic tug to my skirt. 'Sit

down, child!' she said. 'Everybody else has! Do you want to make a

speech?'--and I sat down quickly. Then I observed that a gentleman in

black, also in fancy dress, was reading something indistinctly to the

four or five red-gowned gentlemen, who looked very solemn and stately,

but said nothing. It was so difficult for a stranger to understand, that

I did not quite catch what was said to another gentleman in black with

buckled shoes, but it must have been to the purport of 'Go and fetch

it!' for he suddenly began to walk out backwards, stopping at every few

steps to bow with great deference to them of the red gowns, which must

have been very trying, for nobody returned the bows, and he never could

tell who might have come in behind him. 'I suppose he has gone out for a

minute to get something,' I said to Lady Torquilin; and then she told me

what, of course, I ought to have known if I had refreshed myself with

a little English history before starting--that he was the Usher of

the Black Rod, and had been sent to bring the members of the other

Parliament. And presently there was a great sound of footsteps in the

corridors outside, and your House of Commons came hurrying to the 'bar,'

I believe it is called, of your House of Lords. It was wonderfully

interesting to look at, to a stranger, that crowd of members of your

Lower House as it came, without ceremony, to the slender brass rod and

stopped there, because it could come no farther--pressing against it,

laying hands upon it, craning over it, and yet held back by the visible

and invisible force of it. Compared with the well-fed and well-groomed

old gentlemen who sat comfortably inside, these outsiders looked lean

and unkempt; but there were so many of them, and they seemed so much

more in earnest than the old gentlemen on the benches, that the power

of the brass rod seemed to me extraordinary. I should not have been an

American if I had not wondered at it, and whether the peers in mufti

would not some day be obliged to make a habit of dressing up in their

mantles and insignia on these occasions to impress the Commoners

properly with a sense of difference and a reason for their staying

outside.

Then, as soon as they were all ready to pay attention, the

Vice-Chancellor read the Queen's letter, in which Her Majesty, so far as

I could understand, regretted her inability to be present, told them

all a good deal about what she had been doing since she wrote last,

and closed by sending her kind regards and best wishes--a very pleasant

letter, I thought, and well-written. Then we all stood up again while

the gentlemen in red, the Lord Chancellor, and the others walked out;

after which everybody dispersed, and I found myself shaking hands with

Lord Mafferton in a pudgy, hearty way, as he and Lady Torquilin and I

departed together.

Original 'So this is our little Yankee!' said Lord Mafferton, with his fat round chin stretched out sideways, and his hands behind his back. Now I am quite five-feet eight, and I do not like being called names, but I found a difficulty in telling Lord Mafferton that I was not their little Yankee; so I smiled, and said nothing. 'Well, well! Come over the "duckpond"--isn't that what you call the Atlantic Ocean?--to see how fast old England is going to pieces, eh?'

'Oh!' said Lady Torquilin, 'I think Miss Wick is delighted with England,

Lord Mafferton.'

'Yes,' I said, 'I am. Delighted with it! Why should anybody think it is

going to pieces?'

'Oh, it's a popular fancy in some quarters,' said Lord

Mafferton. Being a lord, I don't suppose he winked at Lady Torquilin,

but he did something very like it.

'I should call it a popular fallacy,' I declared; at which Lord

Mafferton laughed, and said, 'It was all very well, it was all very

well,' exactly like any old grandpapa. 'Miss Wick would like a look over

the place, I suppose,' he said to Lady Torquilin. 'You think it would

be safe, eh? No explosives concealed about her--she doesn't think of

blowing us up?' And this very jocular old peer led the way through a

labyrinth of chambers and corridors of which I can't possibly remember

the locality or the purpose, because he went so fast.

'No doubt you've heard of Cromwell,' he said beside one door. I should

have liked to know why he asked me, if there was no doubt of it; but I

suppose a lord is not necessarily a logician. 'This is the room in which

he signed the death-warrant of Charles the First.'

'Dear me,' I said. 'The one that he's holding a copy of on his lap at

Madame Tussaud's?'

'I dare say! I dare say!' said Lord Maflerton. 'But not so fast, my

dear young lady, not so fast! You mustn't go in, you know. That's not

allowable!' and he whisked us away to the Library. 'Of course, Miss Wick

understands,' he said to Lady Torquilin, 'that every word spoken here

above a whisper means three days in a dungeon on bread and water!' By

this time my ideas of peers had become so confused that I was entirely

engaged in trying to straighten them out, and had very little to say of

any sort; but Lord Mafferton chatted continually as we walked through

the splendid rooms, only interrupting himself now and then to remind me

of the dungeon and the penalty of talking. It was very difficult getting

a first impression of the English House of Parliament and an English

peer at the same time--they continually interrupted each other. It was

in the Royal Banqueting Hall, for instance, where I was doing my best

to meditate upon scenes of the past, that Lord Mafferton stated to Lady

Torquilin his objection to the inside of an omnibus, and this in itself

was distracting. It would never occur to anybody in America to think of

a peer and an omnibus together. The vestibule of the House of Commons

was full of gentlemen walking about and talking; but there was a great

deliberateness about the way it was done--no excitement, and every man

in his silently-expressive silk hat. They all seemed interested in each

other in an observing way, too, and whether to bow or not to bow; and

when Lord Mafferton recognised any of them, he was usually recognised

back with great cordiality. You don't see so much of that when Congress

opens. The members in the lobby are usually a great deal too much

wrapped up in business to take much notice of each other. I observed,

too, that the British Government does not provide cuspidores for its

legislators, which struck me as reflecting very favourably upon the

legislative sense of propriety here, especially as there seemed to be no

obvious demand for such a thing.

'Bless you, my dear young lady, you mustn't go in there!' exclaimed Lord

Mafferton at the door of the House, as I stepped in to take a perfectly

inoffensive look at it. 'Out with you quick, or they'll have you off to

the Tower before you can say George Washington!'

'But why?' I asked, quite breathless with my sudden exit.

'Young people should never ask "why?"' said Lord Mafferton,

serio-comically. 'Thank your American stars that Salisbury or any of

those fellows were not about!'

This peer evidently thought I was very, very young--about twelve; but I

have noticed since that not only peers, but all agreeable old gentlemen

in England, have a habit of dating you back in this way. It is a kindly,

well-meant attitude, but it leaves you without very much to say.

I thought feminine privileges in your House of Commons very limited

indeed then, but considerably more so when I attended a sitting with

Lady Torquilin a week later, and disarranged my features for life trying

to look through the diamonds of the iron grating with which Parliament

tries to screen itself from the criticism of its lady relations.

Lord Mafferton came up that day with us, and explained that the grating

was to prevent the ladies from throwing themselves at the heads of the

unmarried members--a singular precaution. The only other reason I could

hear why it should not be taken down was that nobody had done it since

it was put up--a remarkably British reason, and calculated, as most

things seem to be in this country, to last.

And I saw your Prince that afternoon. He came into the Peers' Gallery

in a light overcoat, and sat down with two or three friends to watch his

people governing their country below. He seemed thoroughly interested,

and at times, when Mr. O'Brien or Mr. O'Connor said something that

looked toward the dismemberment of his empire, amused. And it was an

instructive sight to see your future king pleased and edified, and

unencumbered by any disagreeable responsibilities, looking on.