The Postmaster General

by Hilaire Belloc

  “Oh, no, old chap,” laughed Williams. “Anyhow, men hate to feel bound, don’t they? Well, he’s got it. You can swear to that.”

  Other things were still troubling Halterton. There was humility in his voice as he pursued their solution.

  “But why on his person? Why in his pocket? And why in his breast-pocket, Jack? Why in his left-hand breast-pocket?”

  Williams sighed gently.

  “On his person, my dear fellow, because it is the only safe way to keep a thing without anyone in the world knowing anything about it. In a pocket, because if you have it sewn on to the inside of your vest, as I have known some do (old Bisher did that with the compromising letter in the Holt case, you remember?). You remember old Bisher, the Lord Chancellor twenty-five years ago?”

  “I remember the name,” said Halterton.

  “Well, I knew the man, and that’s what he did.” But Williams did not also add that he knew the man who got it away from old Bisher, and how much it brought him.

  “The reason I don’t think that McAuley has done that is that he wants it for keeps. They only sew things on to the inside of their vests when they are only wanted for a few days—obviously.”

  “M-m-m, yes,” assented Halterton. “Obviously. Yes … it would be a pocket … yes, you’re right. But why a breast-pocket?”

  “Because,” said Williams a little wearily, as though he were tired of teaching elementary lessons in politics to a fellow-politician, “because it is more difficult to pick a breast-pocket than an outside pocket—as you have discovered by this time.”

  Halterton actually blushed. “Yes, I have, Jack,” he admitted. “You’re right. It was in my side-pocket. Oh, the dirty …”

  “Don’t, Wilfrid, don’t,” said the Home Secretary, putting up a checking hand. “Never get angry with a colleague for playing the game better than you!”

  It is only the greatest men who understand this, and the men who understand it rise, as Williams had risen.

  But Halterton had yet another question to ask.

  “Oh, yes … and why on the left-hand side?”

  “Really—Wilfrid—really—haven’t you noticed that McAuley is a right-handed man?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. I never noticed it particularly. But now I come to think of it … yes … I remember. He writes with his right hand.”

  “Most people do,” said Williams.

  And the next few seconds were spent by the one man in ecstatic admiration of a superior brain; by the other in a rapid review of the things he had learned, and of the further things he had begun to project.

  At the end of the pause Williams turned his chair back towards the end of the table.

  “I must send for Burton,” he said. “I’ve a mass of work to get through, and I shall have to show myself downstairs again before the end of the hour. I shan’t speak, but I must hear what Chillham will be saying. I’ve told you all I can tell you, my dear fellow! McAuley’s got it, and I’ve told you exactly where he’s got it: and what’s more, if I am right about that last little point, as I think I am—I’m pretty sure I am— it will be in the corresponding pocket of whatever coat he is wearing for some little time to come; that is, until he has occasion to make use of it.”

  “To make use of it,” repeated Halterton in a hollow voice, half thinking he was talking to himself. “Make use of it … make use of it. …”

  And he shambled out.

  Chapter V

  Lady Papworthy was the wife of that excellent elderly Lord Papworthy, the Minister for Fine Arts in Mrs. Boulger's second administration, whom we have seen standing up so well for his office against the angry admirer of “Oblongs.”

  Yes, Lady Papworthy was Lord Papworthy's wife ; this affirmation (for which I make myself responsible) is more surprising than it sounds. Indeed, it has to be seen to be believed. For Lord Papworthy is a man of near seventy, with scanty white hair, a beneficent gaze from gooseberry eyes, and a manner kindly in speech and gesture and everything elsesave on very rare private occasions where money is concerned; while Lady Papworthy is not much over twenty, dark, keen, and immediate. Moreover, she is not Lord Papworthy's second wife. Lord Papworthy had never, to human knowledge, been married before.

  Then again, everybody knew who Lord Papworthy was. He was old Papworthy, to be sure, the man who had pottered about with pictures ever since he could potter, and he had begun to potter fifty years ago, before he had come of age. But no one really knew who Lady Papworthy was. And, what was really surprising, nobody cared. They were married. That I know on the word—and, much better, by the attitude—of Harry O'More, his young cousin and heir, who rather foolishly trembled lest another heir should be born. But beyond that I myself know nothing of her—and I don't care to know more than do others.

  There are three men about London, all three bachelors, all three well-to-do, and each witty and vital in his own way, who may be trusted to tell you all there is to know about anyone, however dark; but of Lady Papworthy they told three different stories.

  Limpey said she was a waitress who had caught old Papworthy when he went over to the World Art Conference, when it had been held at Toronto as the most suitable centre for the Art of the whole world to meet in, rather more than two years before.

  Stingey said she was an artist’s model who had caught him in Paris a year earlier and had followed him to Canada.

  Mangey (whose nickname the ladies soften to “Manguey”—making the G hard, quite against their ordinary custom) frankly owned that he didn’t know. He had begun by saying that she was the daughter of a Communist agitator who had caught old Papworthy on the boat out—but when he found that his informant, himself a Communist from Buda-Pesth, was telling lies, he retracted in his usual straightforward way and frankly admitted his error to everybody. He said that he would try and find out, but he did not succeed, and gave it up. And now, since Mangey doesn’t know, nobody knows, and we’ve all given up betting. She’s fun enough, anyhow.

  Officially she was his secretary whom he had married, but she could not have been his secretary for a very long time, for no one had seen her thirty months ago, and no one (except Harry) was even quite certain where they had married. She spoke of her relatives freely but not frequently. There seemed to be more than one of them: they were usually her cousins: they also seemed to be always travelling, and she often wished that they would come to England—but they never did. She never gave their names.

  She was thoroughly up in things, especially in things literary, so long as they were modern, though she made no profession of knowledge to any language but her own—which by the way was English, spoken without any accent save what those who were perhaps her compatriots could call the “English” accent; and her voice when speaking it was low, restrained and sonorous.

  Her husband called her Joan: so did the greater part of the coterie, a large one, which she ruled almost from the moment that she came to London. For as you may imagine, with such antecedents, or rather, lack of them, she was exactly suited to play her part in the position to which it had pleased herself to call her.

  She did not give big dinners; she did not often give small ones, for that matter. Papworthy had to entertain, on account of his position, but he rarely entertained at his own house except at lunch. Joan Papworthy gave it to be understood that her health forbade her staying up late. She hardly ever went out in the evening herself, and the eccentricity added to her position.

  That position was firmly established, even after so short a time. She knew what to say both to and about the writing men, nearly all of whom had come under her roof at one time or another, many of whom came there continually. And though she did not give many dinners, she gave innumerable cocktails; and she understood that art thoroughly. Nor was Lord Papworthy himself always absent from her re-unions. He would look in to, say, one in three or one in five, and smile and talk quite genially to this fellow or that, and then would happen to go through the door and not come back again. It was understood t
hat he had gone to discuss a picture. They always asked after him on all those numerous hours when her drawing-room was crowded; and when he failed to appear his wife would explain in detail what particular piece of work was keeping him.

  She herself never said a word on the matters in his province. She professed a complete ignorance of it, and spoke of his knowledge with the deference due to one of the first authorities in Europe. On the very rare occasions when he himself spoke at all of things outside that province he was equally respectful to her. He professed to know nothing about writing. Nor was it an affectation in him that he usually got the names of the writers wrong, even after he had met them three or four times.

  When I say that he was Minister for Fine Arts in Mrs. Boulger’s second administration, it should be also remembered that he had been Minister for Fine Arts in her first administration: Under-Secretary for Fine Arts in the administration but one before that: Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Fine Arts (the famous Algernon Cohen) in the Dark Ages. During his second Parliament, before he had come into his title, and even before that, in his first session when his father had put him into the House only a few months after he had come down from Cambridge, he had distinguished himself by asking questions upon the Government’s purchase of pictures. He had kept steadily to that line for years, and, politically, it had been the making of him.

  His complete mastery of the subject was best proved by his equal admiration for all modern painters whatsoever; and his almost equal admiration for all those of the past who were for the moment in the fashion. He had inherited pictures, he had bought pictures, pictures of every sort and kind, pictures that told stories and pictures that merely lied, pictures which were only patterns and pictures which were not even that. It was his delight to stand in front of these pictures, the more recent ones especially, with his head slightly on one side, making movements with his thumb in the air to illustrate his delight in their lines, their values, their planes, their purpose, their colour, their Ubesmachtheit.

  Among Lady Papworthy’s more intimate dozen or so was a certain young man who combined an uncertain literary position in London with a small political one. Butler was his name, but not his nature; for he was tall, thin, black haired, with an unkempt romantic lock falling over his forehead, dreamy, gazing from large, dark, very deep eyes, not without fire in them; he stooped, he occasionally stammered: he sometimes exploded with indignation at this or that; as often he would remain silent when another had spoken to him, not from discourtesy but from abstraction. He would also sometimes interrupt the conversation of others, for he was full of zeal. Though his political position was a minor one, and certain to remain so (for his few friends could securely prophesy that he would never have office of any kind), and though he himself clearly never took any steps towards a career in the House, all that was of his own choice. He felt safe to remain a Member of Parliament as long as he liked—and he always swore that he hated it; his safety lay in his enormous popularity with his constituents in an artisan quarter of a northern industrial town.

  When he emphasized with fervour his devotion to the Anarchist ideal they believed him, and they did right to believe him. They felt certain in their simplicity that they were right to disbelieve the mass of the politicians about him. To him they would never apply what working men now say of pretty well all other politicians: that there is no difference between this party and that—Anarchist or Socialist—it’s all one—they’re all on the make.

  He added to his popularity by proclaiming loudly that he would never spend a penny upon the place, even if he had a penny to spend. And the constituents were the better pleased because the two neighbouring divisions of the town were represented by two millionaires, the one in the Anarchist and the other in the Socialist interest, who ladled out the stuff regardless.

  In the House itself Reginald Butler was despised but half popular. It was amusing to hear his passionate appeals for “the Poor.” He was unpopular when he went out crusading against what he called scandals— his favourite and harmless game.

  He always failed, of course, and after failing he would denounce the white-washing committee which had frustrated his efforts, making some bombastic speech which the newspapers were careful to report briefly or not at all and to forget.

  His colleagues forgave him, and waited eagerly till he should begin again, for they believed from long experience that he would never cross the boundary of the things that really matter. It cannot be denied that they got fun out of it—even those who were for the moment involved. They knew he would never hurt anyone, and they didn’t think he meant to.

  Yet, if ever a hunter of mares’-nests seemed earnest for the purity of public life it was this young man. No unfortunate Parliamentarian could interest himself in a new Company without Butler’s scenting South Sea Bubbles. No salaried post ever fell to the most blameless dunderhead without his most distant connection with a Minister being ferreted out. In his crazy world public men would have had to live on air, and every investment by them was a crime.

  It was inept, but it had a tinsel of romance about it, and Joan Papworthy was devoted to him. Of all the literary crowd which she sampled week by week and sometimes for two or three days following, in her drawing-room, Reginald Butler was the one she seemed to have known the longest. She already felt as though she had known him all her life. And he for his part certainly wished to know her all his life.

  His verse, she had been told by some, was exceptional. She tried to read it, so as to be able to quote bits of it to him, but she got the words wrong. He forgave her—but her only—for such slips. His political excitements she was the only hostess in London of standing to sympathize with—for women are less tolerant of folly than men—and he was grateful for that sympathy. He found in her the one soul who understood his abortive indignations. All through the Crude Oil1 affair when, for once, he really did feel himself isolated, she stuck to him: and what is more, she spurred him on. Then, after the Committee had reported and the two men whom he had most vigorously attacked had been given, the one a first-class Embassy and the other the Exchequer, she consoled him during the grey days when he was creeping back to his half-tolerated position.

  As for Lord Papworthy, he cared for none of these things. He had been reproached—perhaps some of my readers have reproached him—for his complete indifference to that business side of public life which is its chief interest for the more active minds.

  Just as he had never sold a picture, so he had never bought a share, the trustees of that great estate were enough for him, and after half a dozen futile attempts made by his colleagues in the House to interest him in this or that commercial venture he had been given up as hopeless.

  I for my part do not blame him. If a man of great fortune (always over fifty thousand a year even in bad times), long lineage, no children, and with no taste for hazard, who happens to have one passion and to be able to satisfy it in office—if such a man choose not to take the financial opportunities which Parliament offers, but to remain cold to the movements of the market, I hold that he is perfectly free to indulge that eccentricity, and I think none the worse of him.

  Lord Papworthy was not and is not alone in such an attitude; I doubt whether the Prime Minister herself, Mrs. Boulger, could have given you the price of more than three or four leading stocks, I should not even wonder if the same were not true of her husband— at least, since he took that bad tumble over Burgher’s Deeps. But that was years ago—and anyhow the Boulger money was mainly Trustee money also.

  The story of the now very important department of State which Lord Papworthy filled is an interesting one.

  Until some years after the Great European War no one had dreamed of having in England a Ministry of Fine Arts; indeed, the term had a frenchified sound about it which rendered it ridiculous. The Latins had always had Ministries of Fine Arts, and later on, even the more virile nations—the Germans of the Reich, the Danes and the people of Iceland—came to appoint statesmen
to similar functions; but the thing long remained alien to the sturdy breed of this country.

  It so happened, however, that when Dotty D. (that is what everybody called her) the old Duchess, Dorothy, the Duke’s widow, had put her boy into the Government (it was she who had most to say about it) the young man insisted on being a Secretary of State for Fine Arts, or nothing.

  He had imprudently been allowed to travel. His bear-leader had introduced him to strange cliques in foreign studios, and he had sunk up to the neck in oils and clay. He had been plasticine in his mother’s hands as to everything else; but when she begged him, at twenty-five, to enter public life, he stuck to his bargain. Therefore was the new Ministry created, and people soon got accustomed to it.

  After all, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and it at least had the advantage of providing a number of new jobs out of the taxes for those who deserved well of their country at Westminster, for their dependants, their friends, their relatives, and those whom they might have cause to fear.

  The young Duke at once established a custom in the Department, of which it is difficult to say whether it was good or bad for the country, but which took root and became a permanent institution. He bought largely. Not content to spend the money which was allocated to the purchase of works of art, and to occasional public exhibitions, he made his department the only one under a modern Government the head of which became expected, by custom, to spend more than he received.

  The things—bronzes and marbles, paintings and etchings—that he bought, sometimes after passing through his own hands, sometimes without even that, were given to the National collections. The public had grown familiar with the little tab “Given by the Secretary of State for Fine Arts” stuck on to one picture after another in the great public galleries.

  As I say, this new custom may have had advantages: just as had the old idea that an Ambassador in a foreign capital should spend more than his salary had certain national advantages: but it made the post very difficult to fill.