My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleybench produced a first-rate row. The Tories became bored with an oration which wasquite exceptionally tedious, and shouted at him: 'Lie down, nanny!' The Labourbenches were at once ablaze with indignation, and it was a little difficult tounderstand the degree of their fury. Afterwards in the smoking-room, Walter Elliott—who apparently once practised medicine in a district where such points were wellunderstood—explained that if the Conservatives had just shouted 'Sit down, nanny' itwould have been accepted as a legitimate mode of address which merely suggestedthat a man looked like a goat. But to shout 'Lie down, nanny' was to address a man asif he was a goat, and that raised the sensitive question of status. Webb himself floatedserenely above all untoward incidents, as when he observed, after accepting the sealsof office from King George V, that he had heard a noise like a first-class railwaycarriage.When he was elevated to the House of Lords with the title of Lord Passfield, his wifecontinued to be called Mrs. Sidney Webb; she minded about such things. BeatriceWebb was a personality, but entirely subjective in her judgment of men and events, aliving caricature of the attitude sometimes described as feminine. She bestowedangels' wings or a tail and horns entirely according to her agreement or disagreementwith the views of the person in question. I received both decorations on differentoccasions. It was Sidney who provided most of the brain and all of the judgment inthat combination.Four other prominent men in the party came from a different world to the normalLabour member. The two Buxtons came as I did from what used to be called thelanded interest, but as they were also Quakers, their attitude and conduct differedconsiderably from the Mosley way of life. Noel Buxton was a tall and distinguishedlookingman with a long lugubrious face and a pointed beard; romantic in appearance,like Montagu Norman. His delicacy of demeanour and sentiment was belied by thetoughness of his experience; he had travelled far and wide, often in difficult anddangerous conditions, and was a considerable authority on foreign affairs and on theremoter regions of the Commonwealth.His brother Charles Roden Buxton was another fine character, a really good man whoyet remained human. He was always sucking a pipe, but never minded when myyouthful impudence rallied him with the remark that this was truly immoral becausethis excess caused by neurosis could impair his intellect and undermine his physique,while more natural indulgences I could indicate might do him good and he would beinclined to stop when he had had enough. The attitude of the Buxtons in this respectrather resembled that of another dear old governess of the party, Susan Lawrence, alsoa Quaker. She said to me in the tea-room one day that she had long known that aspectacular financial crash was coming. The gigantic speculator in question hadruined thousands of shareholders, and I could not conceive how Miss Lawrence hadbeen in the know throughout. Observing my surprise, she added that she had heardlong since he was living with a mistress; that a love affair should lead inevitably to therobbery of shareholders seemed to me a non sequitur.Charles Trevelyan also came from the background of the landed interest; he was anephew of Macaulay and closely related to members of one of our most distinguishedliterary families. With him I formed a much closer friendship and he was my chief,certainly my most intelligent supporter in the Cabinet when it came to the crunch; as182 of 424