the hon. member: mr. speaker, mr. speaker! is the hon. member in order in calling me an insolent swine?
(see hansard passim)
a distinguished literary man has composed and perhaps will shortly publish a valuable poem the refrain of which is "i like the sound of broken glass."
this concrete instance admirably illustrates one of the most profound of human appetites: indeed, an appetite which, to the male half of humanity, is more than an appetite and is, rather, a necessity: the appetite for rows.
it has been remarked by authorities so distant and distinct, yet each so commanding, as aristotle and confucius, that words lose their meanings in the decline of a state.
[pg 57]
absolutely purposeless phrases go the rounds, are mechanically repeated; sometimes there is an attempt by the less lively citizens to act upon such phrases when society is diseased! and so to-day you have the suburban fool who denounces the row. sometimes he calls it ungentlemanly—that is, unsuitable to the wealthy male. if he says that he simply cannot know what he is talking about.
if there is one class in the community which has made more rows than another it is the young male of the wealthier classes, from alcibiades to my lord tit-up. when men are well fed, good-natured, fairly innocent (as are our youth) then rows are their meat and drink. nay, the younger males of the gentry have such a craving and necessity for a row that they may be observed at the universities of this country making rows continually without any sort of object or goal attached to such rows.
sometimes he does not call it ungentlemanly, but points out that a row is of no effect, by which he means that there is no money in it.[pg 58] that is true, neither is there money in drinking, or breathing, or sleeping, but they are all very necessary things. sometimes the row is denounced by the suburban gentleman as unchristian; but that is because he knows nothing about human history or the faith, and plasters the phrase down as a label without consideration. the whole history of christendom is one great row. from time to time the christians would leap up and swarm like bees, making the most hideous noise and pouring out by millions to whang in their christianity for as long as it could be borne upon the vile persons of the infidel. more commonly the christians would vent their happy rage one against the other.
the row is better fun when it is played according to rule: it sounds paradoxical, and your superficial man might conceive that the essence of a row was anarchy. if he did he would be quite wrong; a row being a male thing at once demands all sorts of rules and complications. otherwise it would be no fun. take, for instance, the oldest and most solid of our national[pg 59] rows—the house of commons row. everybody knows how it is done and everybody surely knows that very special rules are observed. for instance, there is the word "traitor." that is in order. it was decided long ago, when mr. joseph chamberlain, of birmingham, called mr. dillon a traitor. but i have heard with my own ears the word "party-hack" ruled out. it is not allowed.
by a very interesting decision of the chair, pointing is ruled out also. if a member of the house suddenly thrusts out his arm with a long forefinger at the end of it and directs this instrument towards some other member, the chair has decided the gesture to be out of order. it is, as another member of the chamberlain family has said, "no class." throwing things is absolutely barred. nor may you now imitate the noise of animals in the chamber itself. this last is a recent decision, or rather it is an example of an old practice falling into desuetude. the last time a characteristic animal cry was heard in the house of commons was when a[pg 60] very distinguished lawyer, later lord chief justice of england, gave an excellent rendering of a cock-crow behind the speaker's chair during a difference of opinion upon the matter of home rule—but this was more than twenty years ago.
it is a curious thing that englishmen no longer sing during their rows. the fine song about the house of lords which had a curse in it and was sung some months ago by two drunken men in pall mall to the lasting pleasure of the clubs, would come in very well at this juncture; or that other old political song now forgotten, the chorus of which is (if my memory serves me), "bow wow wow!"
no one has seized the appetite for a row more fully than the ladies who demand the suffrage. the "disgraceful scenes" and "unwomanly conduct" which we have all heard officially denounced, were certainly odd, proceeding as they did from great groups of middle-class women as unsuited to exercises of this sort as a cow would be to following hounds,[pg 61] but there is no doubt that the men enjoyed it hugely. it had all the fun of a good football scrimmage about it, except when they scratched. and to their honour be it said they did not stab with those murderous long pins about which the americans make so many jokes.
before leaving this fascinating subject of rows, we will draw up for the warning of the reader a list of those to whom rows are abhorrent. luckily they are few. money-lenders dislike rows; political wire-pullers dislike rows; very tired men recovering from fevers must be put in the same category, and, finally, oddly enough, newspaper proprietors.
why on earth this last little band—there are not a couple of dozen of them that count in the country—should have such a feature in common, heaven only knows, but they most undoubtedly have; and they compel their unfortunate employees to write on the subject of rows most amazing and incomprehensible nonsense. there is no accounting for tastes!
