FUNNYMEN IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. T HERE is something melancholy
in watching the de- velopment of a "funny man" in the House of Commons. It is not that one need anticipate for a moment the coming of a day when the House will cease to laugh at his jokes. On the contrary, what we have to look forward to with a kind of shiver is the approach of a day when the House will begin to laugh before he has pro- nounced a single sentence, so eager is that " paradise of bores," as Mr. Augustine Birrell called it the other day, for a chance of laughing even that mirthless laugh with which people themselves destitute of humour prepare themselves to do homage to a recognised jester. The present writer can recall even the reign of Mr. Bernal Osborne as the jester of the House of Commons. Latterly, the House roared before he had well opened his mouth, and continued to do so at his most commonplace witticisms. He was a witty man of a rather conventional type, an after-dinner sort of humourist, who knew only too well how willing men are in a dull Assembly to be encouraged to put off the attitude of grave attention and to put on that of careless amuse- ment. If Mr. Bernal Osborne did but refer to those Members of " broad beam " who find the seats of the House of Commons a little too narrow for their convenience, the House was convulsed at once, not because the joke was so good, but because they were so anxious for the signal to laugh, and felt grateful to Mr. Bernal Osborne for making his joke so plain that they had no occasion to ask each other for the point. The pathos of the situation was that the jester, who had really plenty of conventional wit in him, found it so easy to economise it that latterly he hardly condescended to be genuinely witty at all. Why should he be, when he got just as much glory by looking fanny as he ever had got by being so ? That will be the fate of Mr. Bowles, if he does not take the greatest care to talk sense,—and nothing but sense,—twice out of every three times that he addresses the House. He is already well-advanced on the downward path, and it is a pity, for he has the elements of a humourist in him, though he should avoid the bad habit of relying on the contrast afforded by solemn associations for the enhance- ment of his jokes. His speech on Monday was just one of those which mark the point where a jester begins to strain at jesting, and would make reflective hearers sad, though he made the House of Commons roar. He did not begin so badly when he warned Mr. Balfour not to follow the example of Rehoboam in listening to reckless young men as counsellors, and, therefore, punishing the House, though older advisers would have counselled him to " caress " it, even while he asked it to give up its privileges. But when he got to Joseph and the land of Egypt, he began to manufacture analogies which did not exist, and to depend chiefly on the flippant use of Old Testament traditions for his wit. If he goes on like that he will soon become the "funny man " of the House of Commons, and lose the command of those happy touches which he showed, for instance, in his speech of February 24th, when he first resisted Mr. Balfour's proposal for applying the new rules to Supply. We began to despair of Mr. Bowles after his speech of Monday last, but it is not yet too late for him to draw in. If he will take a little pains to be serious and dull, if he will master, say, one or two of the technical questions so abundant in connection with Sir William Harcourt's Estate-duty, and discuss them in a businesslike way without even exciting a smile, and give himself a. good Lenten fast from the dearly loved jocosities of his round- about mind, he might perhaps recover his power of amusing the House without aspiring to be the wearer of its cap and bells. Let him emulate Mr. Augustine Birrell, who does not lust after making the House laugh, but when he does feel inclined to laugh himself, just lets the House into his confidence. That speech of his on February 27th about the great orators of the House " who had repartees to reduce into writing," and who intervened in debate just when they could introduce these repartees in the most effective manner, and were not obliged to make them " on the spur of the moment,—wbich was something quite out of character with the nature of repartees,"—was a model of genuine and restrained humour, and we venture to hope that he will be quite too wise even to aspire to be the funny man of the House of Commons, though he might easily succeed if he did not dread and despise so sad a fate. But Mr. T. G. Bowles, if he does not pull himself together, will go the melancholy way of other political jesters with- out even having the one serious holdfast,—which has just saved Sir Wilfrid Lawson from the Inferno of funny men,—namely, a single earnest belief.
As a rule the humourists of the House of Commons would do well to be either good lawyers, or serious econo- mists, or at all events masters of some solid technical acquirement of which they have reason to be proud. That will be their best security against the too often depraving effect of a capacity for jocularity. The best humourists of the House of Commons have always been either experts in statesmanship, like Lord Palmerston, or good scholars and historians, like Mr. Lowe, or thorough lawyers, like Mr. Sergeant Dowse (afterwards Baron Dowse) or Lord. Morris The fine brogue and humorous countenances of the two last-mentioned Irish lawyers would have ruined them and degraded them to mere funny men if they had not kept a firm grasp of their legal knowledge. We remember no humourist in the House of Commons who ever suc- ceeded so well in delighting the House, and yet completely avoiding the disastrous fate of funny men, as Mr. Sergeant Dowse, who, when he first took his seat in the House of Commons, looking like broad comedy in the flesh, an- nounced himself, to the great amusement of the House, with a twinkle of delighted extravagance upon his broad features, as an "incarnate complaint" against the Irish Society. He was deeply involved in all the highly technical debating upon the first Irish Land Bill,—that of 1870.—which he thoroughly understood, but he enlivened it by constantly introducing humorous sallies against the Conservative lawyers, whom it was his duty to oppose, and who, as he declared, were as jealous lest Ireland should be basely deprived of her " poor tenants," as they had been lest she should lose, as she had lost, her Estab- lished Church. It was his genial sagacity and his thorough legal training which protected Baron Dowse from falling into that bottomless pit in which the funny men of the House of Commons eventually disappear. But nothing could exceed the humour with which, when he really had a lively subject to deal with, he tossed it about to the exquisite enjoyment of the House. We remember an occasion on which he and the late Lord Coleridge were, as they seldom were, opposed to each other,—in a debate on women's rights. Sir John Coleridge, as he was then, had been using his silver tongue to extol the political capacities of women, had referred slightly to Semiramis and Zenobia, had panegyrised "great Eliza" and the golden time in which she reigned, had referred to the Augustan age of Queen Anne, and had even dwelt learnedly on the able Ranees of modern India. Mr. Sergeant Dowse, his shrewd, Socratic features brimming over with laughter, rose to reply, and began by observing that "he had listened to the speech of his honourable and learned friend because it was so easy to answer it," a charming Irish bull which set the House laughing at once, and he then went on to assure Sir John Coleridge that he quite admitted the brilliant literary achievements of Queen Anne's reign, but he did not quite see how they were due to the fact that Queen Anne was a woman. Further, he gravely informed the English Solicitor- General that though it was called the Augustan age of English literature, it was not so called after any woman of the name of Augusta, but after a Roman Emperor called Augustus. Finally, he insisted that if Sir John Coleridge's argument had any weight at all it pointed to the desirability of having female Members of the House of Commons, a female Chief Justice and a female Prime Minister. And all this excellent fooling, adorned with a broad brogue, produced double the effect from the strong contrast it presented to the suave Oxford manner and the thin, silvery eloquence of the English Solicitor-General. We would say, then, to all Members of the House of Commons with any gift of humour and power of amusing the House, " Cling with all your strength to some solid branch of political learning, and make your humorous of speeches in the House Commons few and terse lest you tempt the melancholy fate of losing yourselves in the deadly limbo of House of Commons funny men."
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