Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/473

 when addressing the House from the chair, and having occasion to allude to a member personally, must needs adopt the roundabout style enjoined by the House of Commons' usage. Since the peers represent no one but themselves, this practice would in their House be impossible. Members are accordingly directly alluded to in debate by their ordinary name and style.

In the House of Commons it is the custom for members to wear hats while seated in debate, a fashion which strikes the stranger in the gallery as very odd. In the Lords, the hat is permissible, but its use is exceptional. There is a good and sufficient reason for this variation of custom. Whilst the House of Commons have for centuries been engaged in making history, they have never had a hat-rail made for themselves. It it true there is a cloak-room, half way down the broad staircase that gives entrance to the Lobby. But a hat might almost as well be left at home as planted out there. The Lords have hat and coat rail conveniently set in the hall outside the glorious brass gateway that opens on to their House. Peers in regular attendance have their own hook bearing their honoured name. It is as natural to place their hats there as it is to leave them in the hall of their residence, and they do it accordingly.

Last Session the First Commissioner of Works had his attention called by a despairing member of the House of Commons to this curious omission. Possibly when the new Session opens members may find a House of Commons, for the first time in its history, endowed with a convenient hat-rail.

Whilst members generally wear their hats in the House of Commons, Ministers are distinguished among other things by usually sitting bare headed. This is doubtless owing to the fact that most Ministers have private rooms behind the Speaker's chair, where they can conveniently leave their out-of-door apparel. There are not many members of the present Parliament who ever saw Mr. Gladstone seated on either front bench with his own hat on. Last time he wore his hat in the House was eighteen years ago. In the Session of 1875, he, having in a famous letter confided to Lord Granville his intention to retire from political life, occasionally looked in to see how things were getting on under Lord Hartington's leadership. Always he brought his hat with him and put it on as he sat at the end of the Front Opposition Bench, a quarter usually affected by ex-Under-Secretaries. Also, he wore his gloves and carried his stick, all, perhaps unconsciously, designed to complete the casual character of his visit and the "hope I don't intrude"-ness of his bearing. When news came of the Bulgarian atrocities, hat and gloves and stick were left outside the House, and have never since been seen in the House with the Speaker in the chair.

I said just now that not many members of the present Parliament have seen Mr. Gladstone with his own hat on. The distinction was drawn advisedly, for there is a time of later date when he was seen in the House under someone else's. It happened in the troublous days of the Parliament, 1885. One night business had boiled over in a storm of disorder. The House had been cleared for a division, in which circumstance a member desiring to address the Chair must do so seated, with his hat on. The Premier wished to raise a point of order, but his hat was in his room. Half-a-dozen were proffered for his use. He accepted the loan of that of the colleague who was then Sir Farrer Herschell, Solicitor-General. Mr. Gladstone put it on, to find it was several sizes too small.

Many years have passed since that day, but none who were present can forget the curious effect as, with the inadequate hat comically cocked over his gleaming eye, the Premier addressed the appalled Chairman of Committees.