The
late Lord Cairns was the first to break through this tradition, and
affect the style of the prosperous stockbroker. Sir Charles Russell is
different, for he dresses in thorough taste; but when one saw him in the
House of Commons in a grey suit and a deep-cut waistcoat, one might have
taken him for a gentleman squire with a taste for study, varied by an
occasional visit to Newmarket.
[Sidenote: Mr. Morley's tweed suit.]
All these observations have been suggested by the portentous fact that
on June 15th Mr. John Morley startled the world of Parliament by
appearing in a very neat, a very well cut, and a very light tweed suit.
If Mr. Morley figures in many Tory imaginations as a modern St. Just,
longing for the music of the guillotine and the daily splash of Tory and
orthodox blood, it is much more due to his clothes than to his writings;
for ordinarily he is dressed after the fashion which one can well
suppose reigned in the days when the men of the Terror were inaugurating
a reign of universal love, brotherhood, and peace through the narrow
opening between the upper and the lower knife of the guillotine. His
coat is blue: so is his waistcoat; and his nether garments are of a
severe drab brown.
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