desolation inhabited almost entirely by silk hats. The current use
of cards to secure seats came later. There were yards and yards of
empty green benches with hats and hats and hats distributed along
them, resolute-looking top hats, lax top hats with a kind of shadowy
grin under them, sensible top bats brim upward, and one scandalous
incontinent that had rolled from the front Opposition bench right to
the middle of the floor. A headless hat is surely the most soulless
thing in the world, far worse even than a skull…
At last, in a leisurely muddled manner we got to the Address; and I
found myself packed in a dense elbowing crowd to the right of the
Speaker's chair; while the attenuated Opposition, nearly leaderless
after the massacre, tilted its brim to its nose and sprawled at its
ease amidst its empty benches.
There was a tremendous hullaboo about something, and I craned to see
over the shoulder of the man in front. ''Order, order, order!"
"What's it about?" I asked.
The man in front of me was clearly no better informed, and then I
gathered from a slightly contemptuous Scotchman beside me that it
was Chris Robinson had walked between the bonourable member in
possession of the house and the Speaker. I caught a glimpse of him
blushingly whispering about his misadventure to a colleague. He was
just that same little figure I had once assisted to entertain at
Cambridge, but grey-haired now, and still it seemed with the same
knitted muffler he had discarded for a reckless half-hour while he
talked to us in Hatherleigh's rooms.
It dawned upon me that I wasn't particularly wanted in the House,
and that I should get all I needed of the opening speeches next day
from the TIMES.
I made my way out and was presently walking rather aimlessly through
the outer lobby.
I caught myself regarding the shadow that spread itself out before
me, multiplied itself in blue tints of various intensity, shuffled
itself like a pack of cards under the many lights, the square
shoulders, the silk hat, already worn with a parliamentary tilt
backward; I found I was surveying this statesmanlike outline with a
weak approval. "A MEMBER!" I felt the little cluster of people that
were scattered about the lobby must be saying.
"Good God!" I said in hot reaction, "what am I doing here?"
It was one of those moments infinitely trivial in themselves, that
yet are cardinal in a man's life. It came to me with extreme
vividness that it wasn't so much that I had got hold of something as
that something had got hold of me. I distinctly recall the rebound
of my mind. Whatever happened in this Parliament, I at least would
attempt something. "By God!" I said, "I won't be overwhelmed. Iam
here to do something, and do something I will!"
But I felt that for the moment I could not remain in the House.
I went out by myself with my thoughts into the night. It was a
chilling night, and rare spots of rain were falling. I glanced over
my shoulder at the lit windows of the Lords. I walked, I remember,
westward, and presently came to the Grosvenar Embankment and
followed it, watching the glittering black rush of the river and the
dark, dimly lit barges round which the water swirled. Across the
river was the hunched sky-line of Doulton's potteries, and a kiln
flared redly. Dimly luminous trams were gliding amidst a dotted
line of lamps, and two little trains crawled into Waterloo station.
Mysterious black figures came by me and were suddenly changed to the
commonplace at the touch of the nearer lamps. It was a big confused
world, I felt, for a man to lay his hands upon.
I remember I crossed Vauxhall Bridge and stood for a time watching
the huge black shapes in the darkness under the gas-works. A shoal
of coal barges lay indistinctly on the darkly shining mud and water
below, and a colossal crane was perpetually hauling up coal into
mysterious blacknesses above, and dropping the empty clutch back to
the barges. Just one or two minute black featureless figures of men
toiled amidst these monster shapes. They did not seem to be
controlling them but only moving about among them. These gas-works
have a big chimney that belches a lurid flame into the night, a
livid shivering bluish flame, shot with strange crimson streaks…
On the other side of Lambeth Bridge broad stairs go down to the
lapping water of the river; the lower steps are luminous under the
lamps and one treads unwarned into thick soft Thames mud. They seem
to be purely architectural steps, they lead nowhere, they have an
air of absolute indifference to mortal ends.
Those shapes and large inhuman places-for all of mankind that one
sees at night about Lambeth is minute and pitiful beside the
industrial monsters that snort and toil there-mix up inextricably
with my memories of my first days as a legislator. Black figures
drift by me, heavy vans clatter, a newspaper rough tears by on a
motor bicycle, and presently, on the Albert Embankment, every seat
has its one or two outcasts huddled together and slumbering.
"These things come, these things go," a whispering voice urged upon
me, "as once those vast unmeaning Saurians whose bones encumber
museums came and went rejoicing noisily in fruitless lives."…
Fruitless lives!-was that the truth of it all?…
Later I stood within sight of the Houses of Parliament in front of
the colonnades of St Thomas's Hospital. I leant on the parapet