The House of Commons was, therefore, quite new ground to me, and I was very pleased when the Rising Legislator asked me if I would not dine some night with him in the House and hear a debate afterwards.
The House of Commons is a nice comforting address to give a cabman, and as I drove down Westminster wards I felt that in the eyes of one individual I was that glorious person, an M.P.
But, if my cabman thought I was the member for somewhere or another, he was soon undeceived. We bowled into Palace Yard as if the place belonged to me, and pulled up at an arched door, where a policeman was on guard. I mentioned the Rising Legislator's name, but the policeman, who, though hard-hearted, had excellent manners, could not admit me except on the personal appearance of my host.
"Then where am I to go?" I said, appealing to the better side of that policeman's nature, and he told me to go out of the yard and turn to the right, and I would be admitted at the first door. The cabman, who had been listening, must have been satisfied with the fare I gave him, for he invited me to get into the cab again, and said he would take me round to the right place in a jiffy. Though friendly, there was a distinct familiarity now in the cabman's manner. I had ceased to be an M.P. in his eyes.
The policeman at this other door was not hard-hearted, and directed me up a long lobby, on either side of which were gentlemen of various periods, in very white marble. Every policeman I passed I mentioned the Rising Legislator's name to, just as a guarantee of good faith, and I was passed on to a central lobby, where a small selection of the public, looking very melancholy, were sitting patiently on a stone bench, and where gentlemen of noble appearance--I do not wish to be brought up at the bar of the House for saying anything disrespectful of any member of the House--were in converse with others, whom I took to be influential constituents. Some ladies in evening dress were being shown about by smart gentlemen. There were policemen guarding an entrance, and whenever anybody of the outside crowd approached it they were warned away with a kind of "stand out of the draught" motion. It is, no doubt, some deadly crime to get in the way of an M.P. in his own House.