Westminster Corridors
It is not that I think that I have been more witty than I ought of late that at present I wholly forbear any attempt towards it. I am of the opinion that I should sometimes lay before my Readers plain facts of life at the Club that the World may see I am not Accuser and Judge but merely the observer of inanity, pomposity and every kind of crass behaviour that man could hope to devise.
When the Club was first founded, you will recall, there was appointed a Serjeant at Arms to preserve order and safeguard the very persons of Members. Naturally enough, the appointee was obliged to possess some skill in the martial arts and to carry a sword. He also carried a mace and, some say, a hip flask to boot.
The lovable Admiral Gordon-Lennox, the present incumbent, indeed carries the mace and others say that it is its weight that causes him to walk with a rolling gait. Fie and fiddle ['addle, say I. What nautical man does not have a rolling gait? Besides, the Admiral (well, Rear Admiral actually) has fine shoulders (amply able to sustain most burdens) and is teetotal.
As for his sword, my friend Sir Simon tells me that he carries it not so much like a weapon as a wand (but thenSir Simon is at present very 'into' gnomes and elfs and goblins and the like). For my part, I greatly admire the Admiral's bearing . and demeanour. But ....
Being somewhat bored with life and suffering from a distemper, this Serjeant, this appointee, this hireling, this servant of the Club and therefore of the People, has taken to firing off memoranda (perhaps he is confusing them with referenda) to the Parliamentary Lobby Journalists, those Tribunes of the People and custodians of the Conscience of the Club.
This latter day Captain Bligh has ordained (with what authority I know not) that Scribes have no official status at the Club and must at all times give way to Members. For example, he says, if a Scribe is waiting at the gate for his carriage to arrive and the coachman reins in the horses as the Lobby man prepares to mount, then if at that very moment a Member comes out he may pull the Scribe from the steps of the coach and mount it himself.
Then again, if a Scribe is waiting at a watering place for his glass of October or a jug of ale and a thirsty Member should enter, that Member may (without so much as by-your-leave) commandeer the victuals and the Lobby Men must grovel and cower.
In the Barber's Shop the other day, even as my wig was being powdered, a Ruffian Member burst in and ordered me to vacate the chair that he might be de-loused. That, 11 fear, was the last straw and accordingly I suggested to my peers that if we were no longer welcome in the Club (where every Citizen of these Isles, mark you, has a right of entry) then we had better form our own Club.
The happiness of many of us in devising this ploy was marred only be the election of Mr .John Egan (the Scribes' very own Duke of Plaza Toro) as first life president of the new Club which he deemed should be known as "The Egoists" (a title purloined from my colleague George Meredith) which Egan assumes to be a pun on his own name.
In these troubled times, the only consolation has been the return of Mr Edward Heath, a European, from something known as a factfinding mission to the Iberian Peninsula. So touched was he by my last Paper that he came upon the trot to the Club to offer comfort and solace to all his supporters. (There are now three of us.) On entering the Chamber of the Club. Mr Heath was cheered by one or two Ruffians ( who mistook him for Mr Eric Hefter) and he walked with dignity and purpose to the first seat on the Opposition front row beneath the gangway. There, on the very piece of leather once warmed by Sir Winston Churchill, our new Grand Old Mart of Tory politics parked himself. The Chamber seemed, through my misty eyes, to have grown in stature.
Tom Puzzle
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