“Nay, do not think I flatter:
For what advancement may I hope from thee?”

Hamlet.

Some years ago the present chronicler and others were staying at a small hotel in a remote corner of Silesia. After breakfast the waiter appeared and addressed the linguist of the party. What did the Herrschaft propose? he should recommend the ascent of the Flaschenberg. At what hour would the Herrschaft dine?

“What does he call us?” I asked the linguist.

“Herrschaft,” he said: “Their Lordships; you ought to know.”

We were “My Lords”! Probably some Hanoverian monarch had imported the title from Germany, and had applied it to a Committee of the Privy Council. Under this sign they conquered. It took the place of the kingly and editorial WE. It called up a vision of phantasmal, coroneted heads, shaking a negative, more rarely nodding an affirmative. In front there might seem to be a Secretary, an Assistant Secretary, even a clerk: but when the suppliant got as far as “What ho! Arrest me that agency,” the official vanished, and there was but a voice, “My Lords regret.” “And so the vision fadeth.” With this weapon they put to silence inquisitive members of the Opposition, who “wanted to know” things better unknown: with this they conquered School Boards and school managers of all denominations: with this they even tried to intimidate H.M. Inspectors themselves, who well knew that it was no lion that roared, but only Snug the joiner.

My Lords were but a Parliamentary fiction; in theory composed of the Lord President, the First Lord of the Treasury, and some Secretaries of State: in practice they had no existence; but I think the Whitehall staff had by long “making believe” persuaded themselves that they were flesh and blood. A newly appointed examiner would go to his immediate superior with a letter from the School Board of Swaggerby, protesting against a deduction of one-tenth from the annual grant paid in respect of the Slum Street Board School: how should he reply?

“Pooh, pooh: it’s Article 32, c. (3): tell them to go to the deuce.” And the beardless stripling would sit down, and write:—

The capital letter prefixed to the third personal pronoun always seemed to me the height of impertinent arrogance. But the examiners enjoyed it immensely; and I am convinced that, if they ever went to church and heard the petition in the Litany supplicating wisdom and understanding for the Lords of the Council, they mentally added, “Meaning US, though WE are already well supplied.”

The composition of the Education Department was very simple in 1872 when I trod the corridors. At that time elementary education pure and simple was controlled from Whitehall. Science and art were the care of another establishment, which we knew as “South Kensington.” The Montague and Capulet retainers never met; only they bit their thumbs when the other house was mentioned. When—in the later ’seventies—we began to clash, science and art were considered pastimes for retired officers, who had exchanged the sword for an H.B. pencil, and all sorts of majors and captains used to be mixed up with the study thereof. They used to examine in drawing, and they conducted examinations in May and December with a code of regulations of their own composing. They even invented an envelope with a fastening that reminded one of Rob Roy’s purse—(“the simplicity of the contrivance to secure a furred pouch, which could have been ripped open without any attempt on the spring, &c.”)—and when, as occasionally happened, we were appealed to for help in superintending their examinations at the training colleges, we danced in fetters of red-tape.

It used to be told of one of the best known of the Whitehall officials, F. T. Palgrave, of Golden Treasury fame, that a school manager once interviewed him on some grievance, and, getting little satisfaction, enquired whether he might ask whom he had the honour of addressing.

“Oh, certainly,” said he, “my name is Francis Palgrave.”

The visitor thanked him, but explained that he rather wished to know the official’s rank: for instance, was his opinion final?

“Not at all,” replied Palgrave airily; “I am what they call a Senior Examiner: above me are the three Assistant Secretaries, Mr. A., Mr. B., and Mr. C.: above them is the Secretary, Sir Francis Sandford: above him the Vice-President, Mr. Forster: above him the Lord President, Lord Ripon: and above him, I believe, the Almighty.”

I served the Department, or Board, in one capacity or another and with some interval for more than thirty-five years. In all that time I never saw a Lord President, and I should often have found it hard to tell the name of the reigning potentate if I had been asked suddenly. He was always a peer: I dimly remember two dukes, two marquises, some earls, and a viscount. Barons were nothing accounted of. It was said that when Greville, the diarist, sometime Clerk of the Council, had attended his first Council meeting, some one asked a Cabinet Minister whether he had noticed that they had a new clerk: and the noble lord replied, “Not I; when the tall footman puts coals on the fire, do you suppose I notice whether it is Charles or James?” And the remark being repeated to Greville induced him to form a low estimate of the statesman.

That was very much our attitude towards the Lord President of the Council. For our master at the Education Department of the Privy Council was master of all the branches of that Vehmegericht, if I may adopt Sir Walter Scott’s spelling. I believe agriculture and public health were our rivals in his affections, and it was often said that the chief knew more about cattle plague than he did about the education code. In actual practice he confined himself (as we understood) to the patronage; that is to say, to the appointment of the indoor staff (examiners) and outdoor staff (inspectors). Sometimes a Lord President would take the same kindly interest in education that his wife might take in the gardens of the family place; liking to see a good show of flowers, and at times venturing to give a hint to the head-gardener, but shrinking back if that magnate showed signs of impatience or resentment. It was even said of one Lord President that he liked to read reports, if type-written, on educational matters; but we were warned, “you mustn’t talk to him about P.T.’s and Article 68 or Circular 321: he dislikes technical details.”

Alas! the Lord President is extinct as the mammoth.

The Vice-President, known in the Office as the V.P., was a much more real person. He was always in the Lower House, and quite often was chosen for some fancied fitness for the post. It was his duty to defend the Office and the Inspectors against the attacks of numerous enemies, and once a year, late in the Session, when the House was getting thin, he was allowed to move the Estimates, and to make a nice long speech. For anything I know to the contrary he may have thought that he both reigned and governed. But the ever watchful Permanent Secretary knew better. Let us hear Susan Nipper on a similar situation.

There was often a good deal of Nipperism in the Secretary when the temporary V.P. wanted to give orders.

The outdoor staff troubled itself very little about the temporaries. Almost every new V.P. came in like a lion, and rumours would reach us from time to time that the new man was giving trouble, and might be expected to produce a new Code. Generally the malady took the form of what we may call Circularitis,[17] and after that the patient experienced relief. When the furthest recesses of our peninsula had been made to tremble at the new policy, the afflicted man began to amend, and the disease yielded to treatment at the hands of the permanent physician. Then he went out like a lamb.

Of all the V.P.’s of my era, the most obtrusive was Mr. Anthony John Mundella. Everyone knows Tacitus’ estimate of Galba, that “by universal consent he was fit for empire, if he had not been an emperor.” But I doubt if even this faint praise could be given to Mundella. He was made Vice-President, we may suppose, to pacify the Birmingham League, to keep the fussy man himself quiet, to satisfy the advanced wing of the party. And it was generally conceded that no man ever in the office was more keenly interested in education; no man more anxious to do and say the right thing. At times he soared above earth, and won admiration for his absence of pretence, and his strenuous endeavours to carry out what he conceived to be the right policy. But no one could have thought him fit to govern. He had never held office before, and neither the manufacture of hosiery, nor the part which he had played in the local politics of Nottingham had fitted him for the difficult and delicate task which fell upon him. Men in the Office said he was a pulpit-cushion thumper, and nothing more: he was incapable of deciding a case submitted to him.

Moreover, as is often the case in similar circumstances, he could not work with men above him, or below him. It was told me by one in the secrets of the Office that the Secretary went one day in subdued fury to the Lord President with a paper in his hand. “Look,” he said, “what Mr. Mundella has said to me.” The noble earl read it, and said soothingly, “I assure you that this is nothing to what he says to me.”

The argument, if it can be so called, is a bad one; for a rude remark to a subordinate differs from a rude remark to a superior. But pity for the helpless chieftain stayed the other’s wrath.

On the retirement of Sir Francis Sandford, in 1884, Mundella determined to have a secretary after his own heart. Sir Francis had recommended the appointment of one of the ablest of the Inspectorate as his successor, and the Lord President had agreed: but when this was revealed to Mundella, he protested vehemently that the Board Schools would not be safe in such hands, and insisted on the appointment of Mr. Cumin, then an assistant secretary in the Office. The President adhered to his choice, and Mundella straight-way seized a piece of paper, wrote his resignation, and handed it to his superior officer. What could be done? It is easy to say with Dogberry, “Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go, and thank God that you are rid of—an undesirable person.” But the situation was difficult. Mundella would have given his reasons in the House, and would have stirred up the Radicals against the old Whigs: the Birmingham League and the Dissenters in both camps would have supported their Goliath against the Whig David: I think there was no remedy. Cumin was appointed.

It was not a good appointment; but if the new secretary did not justify his patron’s praises, he equally failed to justify his expectations of favouritism. The traditions of the Office require that the permanent staff shall treat all classes and sects of schools with equal hand; and though there were many willing to cast a stone at the Secretary, I cannot remember that he was ever accused of undue partiality to one type. There were times, whoever might be secretary, when the balance seemed to be depressed on one side or the other; but it was always explained by nods, and upheaval of the shoulder that pointed to the V.P.’s room, that THOSE FELLOWS were giving trouble. In the last few months a recently emancipated secretary, who employs his well-earned leisure in theological warfare, has informed us that he “puts Protestantism before politics.” I believe I am correct in saying that during his long period of service in Whitehall no one even suspected him of ecclesiastical prejudices.

This habit of mind Mundella could not understand. In office, as in business, he did not seem to run straight; but when financial troubles caused his downfall, men pitied him, because they thought his errors, there also, were errors of judgment rather than of moral sense.

Of other Vice-Presidents before the arrival of Sir John Gorst, I think Mr. Acland was the most demonstrative. He had been a clergyman in Priest’s Orders, but he “renounced them all,” and entered Parliament, and in 1892 was made Vice-President by Mr. Gladstone. It was said that the Premier was under the impression that his new Minister had never gone beyond Deacon’s Orders, and that, knowing that the abandonment of Priest’s Orders involved excommunication, he would with fuller knowledge have made another choice. Ecclesiastical law is one of the few subjects that I have never examined in, and I repeat the canonical proposition without any warranty. It may be a joke. When Mr. Gladstone is concerned, one must always remember the excellent rule laid down by a critic in the Times, when reviewing a book of Oxford anecdotes: “What one requires of a story (at Oxford) is not that it should be true, but that it should be suitable to the character of the man of whom it is told.” (I quote from memory.) Accepting the story with this reservation, I think it was open to the new Minister to retort that the change from Tory M.P. for Oxford to Radical M.P. for Mid Lothian more richly deserved the greater excommunication.

However that may be, the new V.P. had little sympathy with his former brethren. His zeal for education was great, but whether in Whitehall or in the West Riding it has always been the zeal of the tailless fox yearning to bite the well-tailed little ones. To us inspectors much of this fury was welcome. There were many schools which we had long been anxious to close on account of the defects of their buildings, and always hitherto, whether Tories or Radicals were in power, we were thwarted by My Lords. Now we began to hope. But it was not till November, 1893, that the V.P. succeeded in forging a weapon with which to smite his foes. In that month appeared the famous Circular 321, which demanded full information about the premises of every Public Elementary School, and we spent a busy year in compiling the answers. The mesh was narrow, and if we had been properly supported in Whitehall we should have netted all the offenders. But there never was any backbone to My Lords. Voluntary Schools and Board Schools for once went hand-in-hand: the backstairs of the Office crawled with protestants of all denominations: there ensued consternation, procrastination, prevarication. In some districts we kept the fire banked up, and in a later year, with the help of the Aid Grant,[18] we moved. But it required continual stoking. Excommunicated Mr. Acland may be, but many a child has to thank him for increased health and comfort; and I trust that when he comes to work off his sentence in Purgatory, he may be able to plead these good works as an equitable set off.

The last of the V.P.’s, and the only one that I ever saw, was Sir John Gorst. Nature had not designed him for the position of second fiddler; but the Lord President, finding that his understudy, when he got hold of the first fiddle, played out of tune and threw out the band, insisted on his keeping the lower place. This amused the House of Commons, and the Duke omitted to stipulate that Sir John never should

“With arms encumbered thus, or thus head shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As, ‘Well, we know’; or, ‘There be, an if there might’;
Or such ambiguous giving out——”

intimate that some people could play fiddles better than others who had a great name. Then the Secretary asserted that he was Conductor, whoever was playing first fiddle. It was rumoured that there was incompatibility of temper in exalted circles. “What odds to Hippokleides?” we said, we others.

There came a new Code,[19] that was to put elementary education on a really satisfactory basis. This was so common a phenomenon that we hardly turned our heads to look at it: but to our amazement it was followed by an invitation to attend at the Foreign Office one March day, that we might hear the V.P.’s opinions on his new baby, and on education generally. We assembled from the Solway to the Channel, from the Irish Sea to the German Ocean. Whitehall lay down with South Kensington, and the great Hall of the Foreign Office had a novel congregation. There for the first and only time I saw a V.P. His views on education were pronounced “very crude,” “amateurish,” and so on; but it was a holiday, and the country paid our expenses: I think my bill came to about £4. I lunched with a Treasury clerk, who suggested that the V.P. had not spent all his “Vote,” and wanted to knock down the balance, instead of refunding it to the Treasury. But it is the way of the Treasury to take low views of human motives.

The Lord President and the Vice-President have passed away. It may be that the dual control was unworkable; but there was something to be said for it. The V.P. was not a first-class Minister; the President was not a first-class educationalist. Therefore the V.P. put on the steam, and the other put on the brake. We are now better able to appreciate the value of the arrangement.

There came a change after an Act of 1899. The Education Department of the Privy Council cut the cable, became independent, and took the title of “Board of Education.” My Lords vanished, and the Lord President and Vice-President were transformed into a President and a Parliamentary Secretary. The former may be chosen from either House, but the first to hold office was a noble lord who would have fitly adorned the post of Lord President of the Council. He was followed by a philosophic commoner; and he again by other commoners, whom their friends applauded, and their enemies severely censured for their activity. It may be suggested that a more experienced statesman in the Upper House might have exercised a wholesome restraining influence.

On a former page the Lord President was disrespectfully compared with the tall footman. The permanent secretary occupies the more exalted position of head waiter. It is to the head waiter that the experienced traveller pays court. He controls the loaves and fishes, and without him one may hang on and starve while others wax fat. He arranges the tables, and gives to his chosen friends corner seats by the fire, or choice spots in the bow window commanding a rich prospect; but to the ungodly a draughty place near the door. As the older visitors drop off, it is his to move up those who find favour in his eyes, and to let the runagates continue in scarceness. If he smiles, the understrappers scowl in vain: a word to the great man will do all that is wanted. The directors, the manager who appointed him, pretend to superior dignity, and their emoluments are on a more generous scale: but in their secret hearts they admit that the key to the success of the establishment is in the hands of the maître d’hôtel.

These valuable, if tedious, reflections come to me too late. I never paid court to the great man: I never went near him, unless I wanted something very much. It was sufficient for me to cultivate the goodwill of the waiter at my table, though I was well aware that he would endure but for a time. As soon as I had got to know Rosencrantz he was moved on, and I had to begin again with Guildenstern. I sat in a dark corner and carefully avoided the master eye. But I was very well treated.

Presidents, V.P.’s, secretaries, and all the host that called themselves “My Lords” trouble me no more. I can sit like Amyas Leigh on Lundy and dream of my old friends and foes:

Shadowy presidents and vice-presidents; sturdy Sir Francis with his pleasant smile and rich Doric accent; the grim and cautious head of Cumin; sharp-tongued A., rough-tongued B., double-tongued C., honey-tongued D.

And so I bid them farewell. Requiescant in pace, as they let me do.