Characteristic and personal sketches of three Irish barristers: Mr.
William Fletcher (afterward chief justice of the Court of Common
Pleas), Mr. James Egan (afterward judge of Dublin county), and Mr.
Bartholomew Hoare, king’s counsel—Lord Yelverton’s dinner party—The
author’s parody—Mr. Egan right by _mistake_!
Mr. William Fletcher, since chief justice of the Common Pleas; Mr. James
Egan, afterward judge of Kilmainham; and Mr. Bartholomew Hoare, one of
the king’s counsel, were certainly the three most _intractable_ men of
their profession, though of characters very dissimilar.
Mr. Fletcher, a very clever man and excellent lawyer, had a surly temper
combined with a kind heart and an honest free-spirited principle, which
never forsook him either in private life or as a public functionary. He
was hard-featured, and although morose in court, disposed to jocularity
in society: his appetites seemed to incline toward _gourmandise_, and in
fact, toward voluptuousness, generally speaking. As a judge, he was
upright, uninfluenced, and humane.
Mr. Egan, a huge, coarse-looking, red-faced, boisterous fellow, to as
tender a heart as ever was enclosed in so rough an outside,[77] added a
number of other good qualities which it would be too much to expect
should exist without some alloy. His manners were naturally gross; and
it was curious to see him, in full-dress, with bag and sword, endeavour
to affect good breeding. He had immense business at the bar at the time
Lord Yelverton presided in the Court of Exchequer; and he executed that
business zealously and successfully, with, however, as occasion served,
a sprinkling of what we term “balderdash.” In fact, he both gave and
received hits and cuts with infinite spirit, and in more ways than one;
for he had fought a good number of duels (one with swords), and had the
good fortune to escape with an unpierced skin. Natural death was his
final enemy, and swept him off long before nature ought to have had any
hand in it. He died judge of Dublin county. His heart was in its right
place; he was an utter stranger to double dealing—and never liked money
except for what _enjoyments_ it could purchase.
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Footnote 77:
They called him the _Venison Pasty_: a coarse, black, hard crust, with
excellent feeding inside of it.
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Bartholomew Hoare was inferior to both. He wrote better, but spoke most
disagreeably;—his harangues being sententious and diffuse, though not
destitute of point. He was ill-tempered, arrogant, and rude, with a
harsh expression of countenance; but withal, what was termed “an able
man.” In point of intellect, indeed, he perhaps exceeded Egan, but in
heart I must rank him inferior. Egan was popular with the most talented
men of his profession: Hoare could never attain professional popularity
in any shape, though he numbered some great men among his friends.
These are merely fugitive sketches of three members of the Irish bar who
(I knew not why) were generally named together, but whose respective
careers terminated very differently. Bartholomew Hoare died in great
distress.
The chief baron, Lord Yelverton, got one day after dinner, at his house
at Fairview, into an argument with Egan, which in truth he always
courted, and _led_ him on in so droll a way as never failed to enhance
the merriment of the company. Hoare never heard an argument in his life
between any two persons, or upon any subject, wherein he did not long to
obtrude; and Fletcher, if he thought he had conceived a good hit, was
never easy till he was delivered of it. On the evening in question, the
trio had united in contesting with their host all manner of subjects,
which he had himself designedly started, to excite them. His lordship
was in high glee, and played them off in a style of the most superior
wit and cleverness, assisted (for he was a first-rate scholar) by much
classic quotation: by successive assaults he upset the three, who were
as less than one in the hands of Yelverton, when he chose to exert
himself. The evening certainly turned out among the pleasantest I ever
passed in society.
Lord Yelverton’s wit and humour had a weight and solidity in it, which
emitted a fervid as well as a blazing light. I opened not my lips:—had I
mingled in their disputation, I should not only have got my full portion
of the _tattooing_ (as they termed it), but also have lost, in becoming
an actor, the gratification of witnessing the scene. At length Lord
Yelverton wrote under the table with a pencil the following words, and
sent the scrap by a servant to me:—“Barrington, these fellows will never
stop!—pray _write something about them_, and send it to me.”—I left the
room, and having written the following parody in a hand to resemble
printing, sent it in to his lordship sealed as a letter:—
_Three_ pleaders, in one _vulgar_ era born,
Mount-Melic, Cork, and Blarney, did adorn:
In solemn _surliness_ the first surpass’d,
The next in _balderdash_—in both the last:
The force of Nature could no further go;
To make a _third_, she join’d the former _two_!
Lord Yelverton, not expecting the lampoon to come in form of a letter,
was greatly diverted; it was read over and over again, amidst roars of
laughter. Every body entertained his own conjecture respecting the
writer, and each barrister appropriated to himself one of the three
characteristics. I was not at all suspected that night, since I had in
nowise interfered, and my brief absence had not been noticed: but next
day in court, it somehow came out. Nobody but Hoare was vexed, and him I
silenced by threatening that I would write another epigram on him
_solus_ if he provoked me. He vowed at first he would make an _example_
of me; and by cutting satire he was well able to do so: but I got him
into good humour before we parted.
Egan, however, professed annoyance at me from some cause or other in the
course of that same day. He was never remarkable for the correctness of
his English. In speaking to some motion that was pending, he used the
word _obdurate_ frequently. I happened to laugh; Egan turned round, and
then addressing himself to the chief baron, “I suppose, my lord,” said
he ironically, “the gentleman laughs at my happening to pronounce the
word _obdurate_ wrong.”
“No, my lord,” replied I, “I only laughed because he _happened_ to
pronounce it _right_!”