• MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOISON
INEVER worry overmuch about the happiness of foreign residents in this country. I know that, after the first few aching years of loneliness and bewilderment, they will accept the fact that we are a proud but kindly people, not given to over-emphasis or unnecessary hustle, fond of animals and sweet peas, and wholly unaware that there exist such things as the pleasures of the table. I know that, if they be patient and intelligent, they will come to understand that we are a rural rather than an urban race, and that the standards of our culture are to be judged, not by Shaftesbury Avenue, but by village greens. The people who worry me are those visitors from abroad who come to London for two or three weeks only. It is little use explaining to such people that we are accustomed - to take our pleasures in private rather than in public. In place of the vivid welcoming terraces of Continental cafés, they are faced by the sullen frontages of enormous clubs or reduced, if they desire to sit down, to enter some tea-shop and to place themselves in front of a cold marble table, ringed with the wet circles of their predecessors' cups. It is not surprising that they should regard London as triste, that they should accuse us of taking our pleasures sadly, or that they should form the conviction that we are dull and cold. It was with this sense of utter abandonment that Verlaine composed his denunciation of our capital city :— " Londres fume et crie, 0 quelle ville de la Bible !
Le gaz flambe et nage et les enseignes sont vermeilles Et les maisons, dans leer ratatinement terrible, Epouvantent coname un sent de petites vieilles. Tout l'affreux passd saute, piaule, miaule et glapit Dans le brouillard rose et jaune et sale des Sohos Avec des indeeds et des all rights et des hags. . Non vraiment c'est trop un martyre sans esperance Non -vraiment cela finit trop mal, vraiment c'est triste : 0 le feu du ciel sur cette vile de la Bible ! "
* * • s Had Verlaine been in London in 1916 or 1941 he would have seen his final imprecation all too amply fulfilled; but the agony of his loneliness was not due solely to the memories of Rim- baud' evoked by his return to Howland Street; it was also due to the fact that our reception of foreign visitors is not warm. I seek to comfort and encourage these miserable sojourners by advising them to adopt the attitude of anthropologists visiting the Polynesians. I assure them that there is much interest to be derived from the study of our temperament, our habits and our taboos : and I urge them to pay particular attention to our propensity to pour the wine of our invention into the oldest bottles we can find. I beg them to visit the Law Courts and the House of Lords; I ask them to enquire of their English - acquaintances what actually happens when the Queen pricks the sheriffs; what functions are performed by the Remem- brancer of the City of London, by the Lord Privy Seal, or by the Master of the Rolls; and *hy and how the Lord Chancellor of England can be the Keeper of the Queen's conscience. I sug- gest to them that no, people on this earth have ever possessed so astonishing a capacity for adapting innovations to ancient forms. They shrug their shoulders at this and murmur " Senti- mentality." But I cherish the hope that such researches may warm their visit with a gleam of January sun.
• • I have instanced, but without any marked success, the story of Hansard. On Saturday last vie celebrated the bicentenary of the birth at Norwich of Mr. Luke Hansard, whose name is eternally associated with- our Parliamentary Reports. From 1803 until 1890 the family of Hansard printed and published, with recurrent financial difficulties, `the daily reports of pro- ceedings in the two Houses. In 1891 the name of Hansard ceased to appear on the title-page and in 1909 the whole busi- ness was taken over by the Stationery Office. Yet in 1943, on the recotumendation of a Select Committee of the House of Commons, the name was restored to the title-page, although such an imprint had by that date lost all relation to the facts and was inserted for purely sentimental reasons. Nor is this all. In several Dominions, and even in some of the Crown Colonies, the name of Hansard is used to designate the daily record of proceeding in their Parliaments and Assemblies. Surely this is an excellent illustration of our affection, in spite of the social revolution that we have undergone, for ancient nomenclature and sentimental associations ! I agree that the short word " Hansard " is more convenient than the long words " The official report of Proceedings ": but the return to the old name in 1943 was mainly due to our passion for old bottles, even when these bottles have for long been lying dusty and empty in the cellar bin. What is even stranger is that these archaisms are pleasurable to us all.
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I possess some volumes of the Journals of the House of CommOns as kept in the seventeenth century. These Journals do not, except in rare instances, contain direct transcriptions of the speeches delivered. They mainly record the Acts passed and the resolutions voted. I have before me the volume for 1695, and I open it at random on the debate for " Martis 21 Januarii.VII Gulielmi Tertli." On that day the House of Commons disposed of a varied schedule of business. They received a petition from the West India Merchants complaining that a certain Mr. Stewart, profiting by some obscurity in an Act of James I providing for" the well garbling of spices," had started to garble or dilute ginger, thereby doing damage to the public and the trade. They resolved that the Directors of the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies were guilty of a High Crime and Misdemeanour and be therefore impeached. They ordered that the Dean of Windsor be desired to preach before this House at St. Margaret's, Westminster, upon the 30th of January instant." They agreed to the second reading of a Bill to enable Lord Francis Powlett to charge his estate with provisions for his younger children. And they decided that on the following day the House would resolve itself into a Committee of the whole House " to consider further of the Bill for granting to His Majesty an Aid of four shillings in the Pound, for one year, for carrying on the- war against France." The House then adjourned early in the afternoon to meet the following morning at 9.0 a.m. Things went quicker in those days.
* * * • Then Hansard came. The old habit of summarising speeches in the third person was replaced by that of transcribing the speeches in oratio recta. This does not mean that every single work spoken is recorded verbatim. In my day, after a member had delivered his speech and had resumed his seat a/laid the plaudits of his friends, he would sneak out of thq Chamber and take the lift to the Hansard floor. He would be allowed to see the rough pencil transcript of the shorthand notes taken by the official reporters in the gallery. He would then be assailed by atrocious temptations. How miserable his own speech appears to him when read upon those pencilled sheets ! How easy for him just to add to it a subtle, deft or pungent word ! He may find that each of Ns sentences begins with the phrase, " Mr. Speaker, Sir, what I always say is. . . He is permitted to delete these woras the fifth or sixth times that they occur. But he is not permitted to insert his after-thoughts; no esprit de l'esC alter can accompany him in the lift to the Hansard floor. Since Hansard must remain as Caesar's wife. In former years members were given free copies of Hansard finely bound in calf. Today they are still entitled to free copies,- but the binding has degenerated into a peculiarly disgraceful shade of blue cloth. Our modern legislators, moreover, talk so fre- quently and at such length that their speeches fill volumes a week. Most members, therefore, have discarded the practice of collecting bound Hansards.
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