price-a mere matter of form, for I had already ascertained it. He named twice the proper sum. I expostulated. He fell to making calculations with the scratchiest of pens upon the thinnest and dingiest paper. Watching him, I observed that he multiplied by the simple process of putting the sum down over and over again and then adding it up. His addition was imperfect. I ventured to draw his fatigued attention to the fact. Önce more he smiled at me sweetly out of those tired eyes of his. "It is always sufficiently difficult, le calcul," he remarked blandly, as though stating an axiom. said. "It is not an affair of a To hold oneself on end is so fatiguing." I sat on that chair for a good ten minutes, and at the end found him regarding his still unfinished masterpiece with his eternal weary smile. The ink in his pen was dry. I got my ticket in the end, but, like Thomas à Kempis of old, I began to perceive that "patience is highly necessary to me." Finally, with a sort of inert despair, though the emotion I do not for one moment working in him appeared to suppose that my friend in the be too feeble to deserve that bathing-machine was in any name, he accepted my figures, sort typical of the French clerk and opening a book of forms of Saigon, but I know of no in counterfoil began to pre- other country in Asia where a pare my ticket. He had to white man would be entrusted fill in my name, the name of with such purely mechanical the ship, my destination, the duties, nor have I met in all number of the voyage, the the East any white man so amount paid, and one or two feebly and amiably inefficient. similar details. His method What I have written reads, I of writing reminded me of am aware, like gross exaggerhis arithmetic. He did not ation, yet I am relating only write so much as draw-draw facts. How this man ever each letter with extraordinary obtained employment, and how, painstaking slowness, and by having been employed, he their aid build up very gradu- escaped immediate dismissal, ally each individual word. I are problems which baffle soluwatched my name creep into tion, unless, indeed, men speak being in this strange fashion; truly when they declare that then he looked up at me once the French colonies are the more with that tired plaintive last resort of the proved insmile. efficient, the incompetent, the "This will take time," he wastrel, and the "dead-head." THE LIGHTER SIDE OF MY OFFICIAL LIFE. BY SIR ROBERT ANDERSON, K.C.B. II. WORK AND PLAY AT THE HOME OFFICE. As already intimated, the Secret Service Department, which was organised in London after the Clerkenwell explosion, was intended to be temporary, and in fact it lasted only for three months. Though my sojourn in London had proved an interesting and enjoyable episode in my life, I was eagerly looking forward to returning to the Irish Bar, when I learned that the Government wished still to retain my services at Whitehall. Mr Gathorne Hardy invited me to take charge of Irish business at the Home Office, and Lord Mayo put pressure on me to comply. I had an intelligent aversion to the Civil Service-an aversion which my experience of it has not quenched. And when asked to come to London I laid the matter before the Irish Attorney-General, and received his assurance that, so far from injuring my professional prospects, my mission would give me further claims upon him for preferment. And shortly afterwards he proved the sincerity of his words by appointing me to a Crown Prosecutorship on my circuit. I referred to him again, therefore, at this juncture; and again he urged me to under take the duties required of me, telling me in confidence that he expected shortly to have in his gift a principal Prosecutorship on the circuit, and that I should be remembered in connection with it. This decided my course, and in April 1868 I moved from the Irish Office to Whitehall. But though Mr Warren was one of the most honourable of men, his promise was not ful filled. When the appointment in question became vacant, he wrote to me that he could not ignore pressure put upon him against recalling me to Ireland. A typical Treasury letter had just been received, remonstrating against the cost of retaining me in London; and on this letter Mr Hardy had placed the laconic minute, "Mr Anderson's services are indispensable." I therefore resigned myself to the situation, and decided to remain until I could get called to the English Bar. Most people will be surprised to hear that, according to the Act of Union and the theory of the Constitution, Ireland is under the Home Office, and that the Home Secretary is the Minister responsible to Parliament for Irish affairs. What, then, it not choose as companions for a wet day in a villa house. And I have known men even in high positions to whom a like remark would apply. But with such chiefs as Mr Hardy, Mr Liddell, and Sir James Ferguson at the Home Office, and Lord Mayo and Sir Thomas Larcom at Dublin Castle, my position was an enviable one. And with the Home Office staff my relations were friendly and pleasant. will be asked, is the position of the Chief Secretary for Ireland? The answer is that, strictly speaking, there is no such office. The Minister who is thus popularly designated is "Chief Secretary to the LordLieutenant"; and all official communications are supposed to pass between the LordLieutenant and the Secretary of State. In theory the "Irish Office" is merely a branch of the Chief Secretary's Office in Dublin Castle-a pied-à-terre for the Irish officials while in London. All this is now practically changed; but the theory remains, and the change has taken place within recent years. Forty years ago all important papers relating to Ireland were transmitted to the Home Office the prescribed form of letter being, "I am directed by the LordLieutenant to transmit to you," &c., &c. The proposed scheme was that, instead of this cumbersome system, official papers should be "minuted" to me, and that I should, as it were, represent the Irish Office at Whitehall, and Whitehall at the Irish Office. Mr Hardy suggested that I should be called "Assistant Secretary for Irish business," but to this Lord Mayo objected as trenching on his preserves. Unless a man be so degraded as to like office work for its own sake, the charm of life in a Government department largely depends on the personnel. Practice at the Bar brings one into contact with many people whom one would The Chief Clerk, indeed, resented my presence; but his influence was a negligible quantity. He was a man of private fortune, who used the Home Office as a pastime. With exemplary regularity he took his two months' annual leave every autumn, and he did comparatively little during the other ten. This indeed was quite characteristic of the Home Office in those days. One of the the senior clerks, with whom I struck up a friendship, remonstrated with me for my activity and zeal. On his first joining the department, as he told me, the then Chief Clerk impressed on him that the way to get on in the Civil Service was to do as little as possible, and to do it as quietly as possible. And he himself prospered by acting on that excellent advice, for in due course he rose to the top; and I may add that his tenure of the Chief Clerkship made it clear that the office was unnecessary, and it was abolished when he retired on a pension. Forty years ago work in the Home Office was light, battle-royal was raging in and it was left to an indus- the Registry, and a tape-tied trious minority of the staff. bundle of official papers, aimed Not a few of the clerks were at the head of a "pal," went habitual idlers. The Office through the window, and hours were from 11 to 5. It barely missed bonneting the was a nominal 11 and a Secretary of State as he punctual 5, and much of the passed out on his way to intervening time was devoted the House of Commons. This to luncheon, gossip, and the occurred at 12 o'clock on newspapers. Matters of pub- Wednesday, and the delinquent lic interest also claimed at- Nubbles was our pet name tention, such as, for instance, the future of public men who happened to be then coming into notice. Whether Sir George Trevelyan or Sir Charles Dilke was destined to be the future leader of the Liberal party was a frequent subject of discussion. And as a relief from had gone home. such grave questions, bets were made as to whether more vehicles would pass up the street or down the street within a specified time, or as to the colour of the horses. The room assigned to me at first was a Private Secretary's room, adjoining that of the Secretary of State, upon the main floor. But after the change of Government, Lord Macduff (now the Duke of Fife) came in as Assistant Private Secretary, and Mr Bruce asked me to make way for him. It was while thus temporarily occupying a room upstairs among the clerks that I became free of what might be called the club life of the Office. What I then heard of past escapades prepared me for experiences that followed. One of these many stories recurs to me. One day in Sir George Grey's time & for him-forthwith took refuge in one of the smallest apartments in the building, and there he hid himself, a prey to the gloomiest forebodings, until six hours afterwards he was induced to open the door on hearing that "the House was up," and that the Chief One of the older men, whose room was opposite mine, spent half his time in dodging his duns. He was in a chronic state of impecuniosity, and toward the end of the month, when the pay - dockets were due, he had such a succession of visitors that official work was impossible. At times, indeed, he had to keep in hiding. This that rabbit-warren of a building, especially as he had an ally in the messenger on our floor, an old man of pompous manners, who had been butler in the house of a previous Secretary of State. The style in which this man played with was easy in the unfortunate creditors was a comedy worthy of the stage. Shortly afterwards our friend was discharged with a pension. He commuted his pension for a lump sum, and immediately bolted to America, without venturing to pay even a flying visit to the Office. A search of his room brought to light a number of draft wills, written of course official paper, by which he made liberal provision for his special chums on the staff! 66 on The ways of the place reminded me of my school days. On my arrival one morning I found a note from Sir James Ferguson's Private Secretary - his intimates called him Creeper"-announcing that at 3 o'clock precisely an old hat, lately the property of the Chief Clerk, would be kicked off from the end of the corridor, and requesting the favour of my presence. When Big Ben struck three I heard "Creeper's" cheery voice ring out, "All on side: Play." We all turned out, and the game began. On emerging from an unusually hot "scrimmage," I became conscious of the presence of a stranger at my side, a timid little Frenchman, who meekly inquired, "Is dis de office for de naturalisation?" It was! There were escapades also of another kind. During a smallpox epidemic at this time a supply of lymph reached the Home Office, for in those days the Home Office dealt with all matters of that kind. One of the clerks-he afterwards succeeded to 8 peerage at once "requisitioned" for a new eraser, and proceeded to vaccinate himself and all whom he could induce to be to be operated on. The after-condition of his VOL. CLXXXVI.—NO. MCXXIX, victims I was not of the number-gave proof that the lymph was good! "Making hay" in a man's room was one of the stock amusements. On coming back from luncheon one day I found every movable article of every kind which my room contained piled up on my table, and Lord Granville's Private Secretary-Mr (afterwards Sir Robert) Meade-standing in the middle of the floor surveying the pyramid. He had called on some important Foreign Office business. This was too much for me. I told no tales, but I represented to the Chief that I found it very inconvenient to be upstairs, and a room on the main floor was again assigned to me. or My pen might run on indefinitely in this vein, but the foregoing may suffice to indicate what life in the Home Office was like a generation ago. In those days there were no "lower division clerks "Civil Service writers." And no one of the sub-departments even was housed under the same roof as the Secretary of State until after we moved into the new edifice in August 1875. We had the place to ourselves. Some little historic interest attaches to the old building on account of its connection with the ancient palace of Whitehall, on the site of which it stands. The room I first occupied looked out on a small yard which must have been within the palace, and in that yard was an iron cistern which bore 2 s |