THE ENGLISH VON BAUHR.
On the following morning, before breakfast, Felix Graham and Augustus
Staveley prepared themselves for the labours of the coming day by a
walk into the country; for even at Birmingham, by perseverance, a
walk into the country may be attained,--and very pretty country it
is when reached. These congress meetings did not begin before eleven,
so that for those who were active time for matutinal exercise was
allowed.
Augustus Staveley was the only son of the judge who on that day was
to defend the laws of England from such attacks as might be made on
them by a very fat advocate from Florence. Of Judge Staveley himself
much need not be said now, except that he lived at Noningsby near
Alston, distant from The Cleeve about nine miles, and that at his
house Sophia Furnival had been invited to pass the coming Christmas.
His son was a handsome clever fellow, who had nearly succeeded in
getting the Newdegate, and was now a member of the Middle Temple. He
was destined to follow the steps of his father, and become a light
at the Common Law bar; but hitherto he had not made much essential
progress. The world had been too pleasant to him to allow of his
giving many of his hours to work. His father was one of the best men
in the world, revered on the bench, and loved by all men; but he
had not sufficient parental sternness to admit of his driving his
son well into harness. He himself had begun the world with little
or nothing, and had therefore succeeded; but his son was already
possessed of almost everything that he could want, and therefore his
success seemed doubtful. His chambers were luxuriously furnished, he
had his horse in Piccadilly, his father's house at Noningsby was
always open to him, and the society of London spread out for him all
its allurements. Under such circumstances how could it be expected
that he should work? Nevertheless he did talk of working, and had
some idea in his head of the manner in which he would do so. To a
certain extent he had worked, and he could talk fluently of the
little that he knew. The idea of a _far niente_ life would have been
intolerable to him; but there were many among his friends who began
to think that such a life would nevertheless be his ultimate destiny.
Nor did it much matter, they said, for the judge was known to have
made money.
But his friend Felix Graham was rowing in a very different boat; and
of him also many prophesied that he would hardly be able to push his
craft up against the strength of the stream. Not that he was an idle
man, but that he would not work at his oars in the only approved
method of making progress for his boat. He also had been at Oxford;
but he had done little there except talk at a debating society, and
make himself notorious by certain ideas on religious subjects which
were not popular at the University. He had left without taking a
degree, in consequence, as it was believed, of some such notions,
and had now been called to the bar with a fixed resolve to open the
oyster with such weapons, offensive and defensive, as nature had
given to him. But here, as at Oxford, he would not labour on the
same terms with other men, or make himself subject to the same
conventional rules; and therefore it seemed only too probable that he
might win no prize. He had ideas of his own that men should pursue
their labours without special conventional regulations, but should be
guided in their work by the general great rules of the world,--such
for instance as those given in the commandments:--Thou shalt not bear
false witness; Thou shalt not steal; and others. His notions no doubt
were great, and perhaps were good; but hitherto they had not led him
to much pecuniary success in his profession. A sort of a name he
had obtained, but it was not a name sweet in the ears of practising
attorneys.
And yet it behoved Felix Graham to make money, for none was coming
to him ready made from any father. Father or mother he had none, nor
uncles and aunts likely to be of service to him. He had begun the
world with some small sum, which had grown smaller and smaller, till
now there was left to him hardly enough to create an infinitesimal
dividend. But he was not a man to become downhearted on that
account. A living of some kind he could pick up, and did now procure
for himself, from the press of the day. He wrote poetry for the
periodicals, and politics for the penny papers with considerable
success and sufficient pecuniary results. He would sooner do this, he
often boasted, than abandon his great ideas or descend into the arena
with other weapons than those which he regarded as fitting for an
honest man's hand.
Augustus Staveley, who could be very prudent for his friend, declared
that marriage would set him right. If Felix would marry he would
quietly slip his neck into the collar and work along with the team,
as useful a horse as ever was put at the wheel of a coach. But Felix
did not seem inclined to marry. He had notions about that also, and
was believed by one or two who knew him intimately to cherish an
insane affection for some unknown damsel, whose parentage, education,
and future were not likely to assist his views in the outer world.
Some said that he was educating this damsel for his wife,--moulding
her, so that she might be made fit to suit his taste; but Augustus,
though he knew the secret of all this, was of opinion that it would
come right at last. "He'll meet some girl in the world with a hatful
of money, a pretty face, and a sharp tongue; then he'll bestow his
moulded bride on a neighbouring baker with two hundred pounds for her
fortune;--and everybody will be happy."
Felix Graham was by no means a handsome man. He was tall and thin,
and his face had been slightly marked with the small-pox. He stooped
in his gait as he walked, and was often awkward with his hands and
legs. But he was full of enthusiasm, indomitable, as far as pluck
would make him so, in contests of all kinds, and when he talked on
subjects which were near his heart there was a radiance about him
which certainly might win the love of the pretty girl with the sharp
tongue and the hatful of money. Staveley, who really loved him, had
already selected the prize, and she was no other than our friend,
Sophia Furnival. The sharp tongue and the pretty face and the hatful
of money would all be there; but then Sophia Furnival was a girl who
might perhaps expect in return for these things more than an ugly
face which could occasionally become radiant with enthusiasm.
The two men had got away from the thickness of the Birmingham smoke,
and were seated on the top rung of a gate leading into a stubble
field. So far they had gone with mutual consent, but further than
this Staveley refused to go. He was seated with a cigar in his mouth.
Graham also was smoking, but he was accommodated with a short pipe.
[Illustration: The English Von Bauhr and his pupil.]
"A walk before breakfast is all very well," said Staveley, "but I
am not going on a pilgrimage. We are four miles from the inn this
minute."
"And for your energies that is a good deal. Only think that you
should have been doing anything for two hours before you begin to
feed."
"I wonder why matutinal labour should always be considered as so
meritorious. Merely, I take it, because it is disagreeable."
"It proves that the man can make an effort."
"Every prig who wishes to have it believed that he does more than his
neighbours either burns the midnight lamp or gets up at four in the
morning. Good wholesome work between breakfast and dinner never seems
to count for anything."
"Have you ever tried?"
"Yes; I am trying now, here at Birmingham."
"Not you."
"That's so like you, Graham. You don't believe that anybody is
attending to what is going on except yourself. I mean to-day to take
in the whole theory of Italian jurisprudence."
"I have no doubt that you may do so with advantage. I do not suppose
that it is very good, but it must at any rate be better than our own.
Come, let us go back to the town; my pipe is finished."
"Fill another, there's a good fellow. I can't afford to throw away my
cigar, and I hate walking and smoking. You mean to assert that our
whole system is bad, and rotten, and unjust?"
"I mean to say that I think so."
"And yet we consider ourselves the greatest people in the world,--or
at any rate the honestest."
"I think we are; but laws and their management have nothing to do
with making people honest. Good laws won't make people honest, nor
bad laws dishonest."
"But a people who are dishonest in one trade will probably be
dishonest in others. Now, you go so far as to say that all English
lawyers are rogues."
"I have never said so. I believe your father to be as honest a man as
ever breathed."
"Thank you, sir," and Staveley lifted his hat.
"And I would fain hope that I am an honest man myself."
"Ah, but you don't make money by it."
"What I do mean is this, that from our love of precedent and ceremony
and old usages, we have retained a system which contains many of
the barbarities of the feudal times, and also many of its lies. We
try our culprit as we did in the old days of the ordeal. If luck
will carry him through the hot ploughshares, we let him escape
though we know him to be guilty. We give him the advantage of every
technicality, and teach him to lie in his own defence, if nature has
not sufficiently so taught him already."
"You mean as to his plea of not guilty."
"No, I don't; that is little or nothing. We ask him whether or no he
confesses his guilt in a foolish way, tending to induce him to deny
it; but that is not much. Guilt seldom will confess as long as a
chance remains. But we teach him to lie, or rather we lie for him
during the whole ceremony of his trial. We think it merciful to give
him chances of escape, and hunt him as we do a fox, in obedience to
certain laws framed for his protection."
"And should he have no protection?"
"None certainly, as a guilty man; none which may tend towards the
concealing of his guilt. Till that be ascertained, proclaimed, and
made apparent, every man's hand should be against him."
"But if he is innocent?"
"Therefore let him be tried with every possible care. I know you
understand what I mean, though you look as though you did not. For
the protection of his innocence let astute and good men work their
best, but for the concealing of his guilt let no astute or good man
work at all."
"And you would leave the poor victim in the dock without defence?"
"By no means. Let the poor victim, as you call him,--who in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is a rat who has been preying in
our granaries,--let him, I say, have his defender,--the defender of
his possible innocence, not the protector of his probable guilt. It,
all resolves itself into this. Let every lawyer go into court with
a mind resolved to make conspicuous to the light of day that which
seems to him to be the truth. A lawyer who does not do that--who does
the reverse of that, has in my mind undertaken work which is unfit
for a gentleman and impossible for an honest man."
"What a pity it is that you should not have an opportunity of
rivalling Von Bauhr at the congress!"
"I have no doubt that Von Bauhr said a great deal of the same nature;
and what Von Bauhr said will not wholly be wasted, though it may not
yet have reached our sublime understandings."
"Perhaps he will vouchsafe to us a translation."
"It would be useless at present, seeing that we cannot bring
ourselves to believe it possible that a foreigner should in any
respect be wiser than ourselves. If any such point out to us our
follies, we at once claim those follies as the special evidences of
our wisdom. We are so self-satisfied with our own customs, that we
hold up our hands with surprise at the fatuity of men who presume
to point out to us their defects. Those practices in which we most
widely depart from the broad and recognised morality of all civilised
ages and countries are to us the Palladiums of our jurisprudence.
Modes of proceeding which, if now first proposed to us, would be
thought to come direct from the devil, have been made so sacred by
time that they have lost all the horror of their falseness in the
holiness of their age. We cannot understand that other nations look
upon such doings as we regard the human sacrifices of the Brahmins;
but the fact is that we drive a Juggernaut's car through every assize
town in the country, three times a year, and allow it to be dragged
ruthlessly through the streets of the metropolis at all times and
seasons. Now come back to breakfast, for I won't wait here any
longer." Seeing that these were the ideas of Felix Graham, it is
hardly a matter of wonder that such men as Mr. Furnival and Mr. Round
should have regarded his success at the bar as doubtful.
"Uncommon bad mutton chops these are," said Staveley, as they sat at
their meal in the coffee-room of the Imperial Hotel.
"Are they?" said Graham. "They seem to me much the same as other
mutton chops."
"They are uneatable. And look at this for coffee! Waiter, take this
away, and have some made fresh."
"Yes, sir," said the waiter, striving to escape without further
comment.
"And waiter--"
"Yes, sir;" and the poor overdriven functionary returned.
"Ask them from me whether they know how to make coffee. It does not
consist of an unlimited supply of lukewarm water poured over an
infinitesimal proportion of chicory. That process, time-honoured in
the hotel line, will not produce the beverage called coffee. Will you
have the goodness to explain that in the bar as coming from me?"
"Yes, sir," said the waiter; and then he was allowed to disappear.
"How can you give yourself so much trouble with no possible hope of
an advantageous result?" said Felix Graham.
"That's what you weak men always say. Perseverance in such a course
will produce results. It is because we put up with bad things that
hotel-keepers continue to give them to us. Three or four Frenchmen
were dining with my father yesterday at the King's Head, and I had to
sit at the bottom of the table. I declare to you that I literally
blushed for my country; I did indeed. It was useless to say anything
then, but it was quite clear that there was nothing that one of them
could eat. At any hotel in France you'll get a good dinner; but we're
so proud that we are ashamed to take lessons." And thus Augustus
Staveley was quite as loud against his own country, and as laudatory
with regard to others, as Felix Graham had been before breakfast.
And so the congress went on at Birmingham. The fat Italian from
Tuscany read his paper; but as he, though judge in his own country
and reformer here in England, was somewhat given to comedy, this
morning was not so dull as that which had been devoted to Von Bauhr.
After him Judge Staveley made a very elegant, and some said, a very
eloquent speech; and so that day was done. Many other days also wore
themselves away in this process; numerous addresses were read, and
answers made to them, and the newspapers for the time were full of
law. The defence of our own system, which was supposed to be the most
remarkable for its pertinacity, if not for its justice, came from Mr.
Furnival, who roused himself to a divine wrath for the occasion. And
then the famous congress at Birmingham was brought to a close, and
all the foreigners returned to their own countries.