HE came on one side of farmer stock who had married farmer stock since the invasion of the Saxons, and on the other side of county families who had married county families since the Norman conquest. He was born where the town ended and country life began, educated at a public school, and his father was a judge.
Being designed for a profession he had adopted it, keeping himself in hand, so as not to be unpleasantly professional. For since the time when he was wheeled in perambulators he had never wanted to do anything too much. He had so completely seen the other side of being wheeled in perambulators that he had ever afterwards been loth to put himself in a position which made it needful for him to act with all his heart. His organs were in fact remarkably adjusted. He had not too much head nor too much heart. He had not too much appetite, but he had appetite enough. When asked at lunch of which sweet he would partake, he would answer: “A little of both, thanks”; for nothing seemed to him in life so great a pity as to take one thing to the exclusion of another. The instinct was so founded in the very roots of him that he knew nothing of it; and it was this unconsciousness which lent a simple strength to what might otherwise have seemed an undecided character.
His attitude to women was a guarded one. It was repugnant to him to have too much wife, and yet, not wife enough was also very painful; and so he had devised a way out of his embarrassment by saying to himself: “We two are only married to the extent that we desire to be; we will do exactly as we like.” And he found that by thinking this, and getting his wife, who was a clever woman, to say she thought it too, he remained extremely faithful. With regard to children, it had no doubt been difficult, for—after a year or two—to have children and not to have them had been found impossible. In this dilemma he had considered very seriously what course he should adopt, and having carefully weighed the pro’s and con’s had discovered them to be so very equal that he could come to no conclusion. In consequence of this he had two children; after which he found no difficulty in not wanting to have more.
The question of his residence had occasioned him some pain; for, supposing that he lived in town he missed the country, and supposing that he resided in the country he missed the town. He therefore lived a little in both town and country; so regulating things that when in London he wanted to be out, and when out of London he wanted to be in, which kept him healthy.
A moderate meat diet gave him a hankering after other diets, making him a vegetarian in theory, so that he was in accord with either school. He drank wine at times; at times he drank no wine; he smoked one cigar after every meal—no more, because more made him sick.
His feeling about money was that he ought to have enough, in order to have no feeling about money; and, to attain this vacuum, he mechanically restrained his wants, still more his wife’s—for, not being so beautifully adjusted as himself, when she wanted things, she wanted them.
In matters of religion he would not commit himself to any definite opinions. If asked whether he thought there were a future life, he would say: “I see no reason to believe there is; on the other hand, I see no object in believing that there isn’t; there may be, or there may not be; or, again, there may be a future life for some, no future life for others—a little of both, perhaps.”
Dogma of any sort, of course, he found offensive—you were committed by it, and to be committed was both repulsive and absurd.
Once or twice only in his life had he seriously felt careless, and these were on occasions when he found his carelessness was threatened by some person or event that tried to tie him down.
There was in him a sort of terror of being bound to anything; and when he was returned to Parliament, which happened after he was forty, he felt a natural uneasiness. Was he committed; if so, what was he committed to? Could he still get down on either side; and suppose he did get down, could he at once get up again? And he was happy when he found he could.
It was remarkable how national he was.
Yet he was not entirely conscious of his importance to the State, not recognising perhaps sufficiently how many other men were like him in every walk of life—not recognising that he was, in truth, the solid centre of the nation’s pudding.
There was a word that he had early learnt to spell; it started with a C, the second letter was an O, the third an M, the fourth a P, the fifth an R, the sixth an O, the seventh M, the eighth an I, the ninth an S, the last an E. Once learnt, soon after he escaped from perambulators, that word was never more forgot. He took it to his office, he took it to his church, he took it into bed with him at nights. And now that he had become a public man he took it to the House. But, having a regard, a veneration, for the figure of John Bull—that myth who never modified his views, but held on fast to his ideals in spite of all the dogs of war—he preferred, whenever he was forced to act, to say that he had acted on his principles—and so, in truth, he had, for the deepest of his principles was the intimate belief that there was no such thing as principle.
This it was that gave him his pre-eminence in politics, for, seated in the very centre of the seesaw, being the first to feel and answer to, he was the least affected by, its motion. By shifting just a little, and instinctively, he kept the whole machine together, having all the time a quiet contempt for the two ends that would keep swinging to the skies or bumping on the ground. Nothing could be done without him in that House, because he was so plentiful; and very little with him.
He had a sense of humour, and devoted it to seeing all the fun there was in “cranks,” and in extravagance of every kind. Never was he more amused than when he saw a person really give himself to anything; he would sit, sometimes with his hat on and sometimes with it off, watching with a quiet smile to see the fellow bump; and the bigger the bump was, the funnier he found it! But for such as smiled at careful men he had a feeling that you could not take them seriously; it was their little joke, and not a very good one; and especially he wondered how people could be found foolish enough to place these persons in an Institution where care was of the essence of the atmosphere. Confident, however, that their want of care would soon undo them, he did not trouble much.
Phrases such as “There is no middle policy” sometimes carried him away for quite five minutes; but he invariably came back in time to find there was. It had, in fact, long been a fixed and firm belief with him that he could make omelettes without breaking eggs, and though he clearly made no omelettes, on the other hand he broke no eggs. Nor did he ever fracture his belief that he was just about to make an omelette. And after all, an omelette, even if you made it, what did it amount to? There it was! You ate it, and had to make another! Better far to fix an omelette in your mind, and keep it there unmade. But discussion on the omelette’s composition he was always ready to encourage; and, sitting with his eye cocked at the ingredients, he would talk them over very carefully, and now and then break off a sprig of parsley, so that the omelette really did advance—but not too fast. Sometimes he was even known to contemplate the omelette all the night, but this he only did because he was so very much afraid that if he left it somebody would cook the thing; and he would go home in the early morning to his wife, complaining rather bitterly that with a little care all this excessive cooking in the House might be avoided.
Take him for all in all, he was not original in mind, and yet he was no flunkey, serving mortal masters; he served a nobler one than they—the great god Opportunity. But it was not safe to tell him this, for though there was no reason in the world why he should dislike its being known that he acted in accordance with his nature, somehow he did not like it. This was, no doubt, an instance of his care.
Hardly any social measure could be brought to his attention with which he did not feel a certain meed of sympathy. If, for instance, somebody proposed a scheme of Old-Age Pensions, he would give a careful nod, and wait, because he knew that when somebody got up and said that this was dangerous, he should agree with him; or, again, if it were suggested that children should be made less hungry out of the public rates, he approved, but not too much, because he felt that to approve too much would interfere with his approval of the plan that they should not be fed out of the public rates. “A little bit of both,” would be his thought, and by this masterly decision, which was often called his commonsense, he infallibly secured possession to the children of a little bit of neither; but, as he very justly said, to grant the first was too progressive; to grant the second, retrograde. And so with every other measure.
His leaders on both sides had learned from long experience the daintiness of his digestion; how very sensitive it was to motion; how, if jolted, it revolted; and so they did not try too hard to jolt it now, for they naturally hated to be cast into the air. They appreciated, too, his sterling worth—without him they felt the country would improve too fast.
And those leaders of his would look at him. With his eyelids lowered, but his eyes a little anxious, with his lips pinched in, and yet half-smiling, in an overcoat of medium weight, put on or taken off according to the weather, he sat, not very often opening his mouth. Behind his grey and unobtrusive figure they saw the masses of grey, unobtrusive, careful men, and a little shiver would run down their spines.
Too often had they awakened from their dreams and seen him sitting there, under a tall grey tower with a clock that faced all ways, bench upon bench, row after row, by day, by night, one eye of him on one side, and one eye on the other, and his nose between them in the middle.