In the 1886 Parliament, Mr. Akers-Douglas, now Lord Chilston, was Chief Conservative Whip and he was singularly fortunate in his Assistant Whips.  Sir William Walrond, now Lord Waleran, Sir Herbert Maxwell, and the late Sidney Herbert, afterwards fourteenth Earl of Pembroke, formed a wonderful trio, for Nature had bestowed on each of them a singularly engaging personality.  The strain put on Members of the Opposition was very severe; our constant attendance was demanded, and we spent practically our whole lives in the precincts of the House.  However much we longed for a little relaxation and a little change, it was really impossible to resist the blandishments of the Assistant Whips.  They made it a sort of personal appeal, and a test of personal friendship to themselves, so grudgingly the contemplated visit to the theatre was abandoned, and we resigned ourselves to six more hours inside the over-familiar building.

Sir William Hart-Dyke had been Chief Conservative Whip in the 1868-1873 Parliament.  He married in May 1870, in the middle of the session at a very critical political period.  He most unselfishly consented to forego his honeymoon, or to postpone it, and there were rumours that on the very evening of his wedding-day, his sense of duty had been so strong that he had appeared in the House of Commons to “tell” in an important Division.  When Disraeli was asked if this were true, he shook his head, and said, “I hardly think so.  Hart-Dyke was married that day.  Hart-Dyke is a gentleman; he would never kiss and ‘tell.’” As a pendant to this, there was another Sir William, a baronet whose name I will suppress.  With execrable taste, he was fond of boasting by name of his amatory successes.  He was always known as “William Tell.”

In 1886 the long hours in the House of Commons hung very heavily on our hands, once the always voluminous daily correspondence of an M.P. had been disposed of.  My youngest brother and I, both then well under thirty, used to hire tricycles from the dining-room attendants, and have races up and down the long river terrace, much to the interest of passers-by on Westminster Bridge.  We projected, to pass the time, a “Soulful Song-Cycle,” which was frankly to be an attempt at pulling the public’s leg.  Our Song-Cycle never matured, though I did write the first one of the series, an imaginative effort entitled “In Listless Frenzy.”  It was, and was intended to be, utter nonsense, devoid alike of grammar and meaning.  I quoted my “Listless Frenzy” one night to an “intense” and gushing lady, as an example of the pitiable rubbish decadent minor poets were then turning out.  It began—­

    “Crimson wreaths of passionless flowers
    Down in the golden glen;
    Silvery sheen of autumnal showers;
    When, my beloved one, when?”

She assured me that the fault lay in myself, not in the lines; that I was of too material a temperament to appreciate the subtle beauty of so-and-so’s work.  I forget to whom I had attributed the verses, but I felt quite depressed at reflecting that I was too material to understand the lines I had myself written.