some disgustingly technical point about 'contingent remainders' or
'conveyancing.' On such occasions they evince unbounded contempt for
the court, whose ignorance necessitates their presence. They will
consume a whole day in dull and dry arguments, and send some judges to
sleep, and those who remain awake after counsel's speech know less of
the matter than they knew before; their brains are muddled with the
legal rigmarole they have been listening to. The ecclesiastical counsel,
who flourished in the days before the Probate and Divorce Courts were
established, and from 'doctors' became 'counsel,' when called out into
the general practice of the new system, were like so many owls suddenly
brought into daylight, Sir Cresswell Cresswell so bedevilled them, and
yet did it so politely that they could not complain.
Barristers had a good time of it in those old days of the Ecclesiastical
Courts; the system of appeal was splendidly organized--the pettiest case
could gradually be raised into one of great importance. There were
courts throughout the country--royal, archiepiscopal, episcopal,
decanal, sub-decanal, prebendal, rectorial, vicarial, and manorial. A
case arises in any one of these courts, and the verdict being
unsatisfactory to one of the parties, he appeals to the courts of the
archdeacons and others, where the case is again heard, decided, and
again appealed against. Poor men, who cannot go on for ever, must stop;
but the party who can afford it goes to the Consistorial Court, where
the whole process of hearing, deciding, and appealing is repeated. The
third step is the Chancellor's Court; the fourth the Court of Arches.
If the appellant still has some money left, he may go to the Privy
Council--formerly to the Court of Delegates at Doctors' Commons, now
abolished. This is no mere imaginary case. 'There was a case,' says
Dr. Nicholls, 'in which the cause had originally commenced in the
Archdeacon's Court at Totnes, and thence there had been an appeal to the
Court at Exeter, thence to the Arches, and thence to the Delegates; and
the whole question at issue was simply the question which of two persons
had the right of hanging his hat on a particular peg. Fancy, what an
army of barristers must have grown fat on this oyster!'
Success at the Bar comes to barristers in the most capricious manner.
In this profession, as in many other pursuits, modest merit but slowly
makes its way. Manners make the man, but impudence an advocate; without
this latter quality even high connections and powerful patronage often
seem ineffectual. Earl Camden, the son of Chief Justice Pratt, was
called to the Bar in his twenty-fourth year, and remained a briefless
barrister for nine long years, when he resolved to abandon Westminster
Hall for his College Fellowship; but at the solicitation of his friend
Healey, afterwards Lord Chancellor Northington, he consented once more
to go the Western Circuit, and through his kind offices received a brief
as his junior in an important case. His leader's illness threw the
management of the case into Mr. Pratt's hands; his success was complete,
and, after many years' lucrative practice, he was made Attorney-General,
and three years after, in 1762, raised to the Bench as Chief Justice of
the Common Pleas. In 1766 he was made Lord Chancellor, and raised to
the peerage. The Earl of Eldon was on the point of retiring from the
contest for clients, when fortune unexpectedly smiled upon him, and the
records of the Bar are full of similar instances.
We have spoken of cross-examination. Its legitimate object is not to
produce startling effects, but to elicit facts which will support the
theory intended to be put forward; but in most cases the first is aimed
at, and frequently with success. Counsel, however, must perform this
operation with much discretion. To a barrister who was recklessly
asking a number of questions in the hope of getting at something, Mr.
Baron Alderson said: 'You seem to think that the art of
cross-examination consists in examining crossly.' Judges frequently
give hints to counsel; to one who was terribly long-winded, the judge
said: 'You have stated that before, but you may have forgotten it--it
was so long ago.' Counsel must not allow himself to be carried away by
the fervour of his oratorical powers, and thus overshoot the mark.
Arabin, the Commissioner, a shrewd, quaint little man, uttered
absurdities without knowing he did so. 'I assure you, gentlemen,' he
one day said to the jury, 'the inhabitants of Uxbridge will steal the
very teeth out of your mouth as you walk through the streets. _I know
it from experience_.' When technical expressions are likely to be
brought up in a case before the court, counsel should be careful to get
posted up in them, or he may make a strange and laughable mess of it. A
question of collision between two boats down the river Thames was being
investigated. The master of one of the boats was in the witness-box.
'Now,' said counsel, cross-examining him, 'what time was it when the
other boat ran into you, as you say?'
'It was during the dog-watch,' replied the mariner.
'You hear this, gentlemen?' said counsel, turning to the jury.
'According to this man's evidence, a boat, laden with valuable
merchandize, is left in charge of a dog! And, guilty of such
contributory negligence, this man has the impudence to come into court
and claim compensation and damages!' And, turning to the witness again:
'Was your boat attached to a landing-stage?'
'No; to a buoy.'
'A boy! These are curious revelations. A mere boy is made to hold the
boat! And where was the boy?'
'Why, in the water, of course!'
'This is getting more strange every moment. The poor boy is actually
kept standing in the water whilst he is holding the boat! I had no idea
such cruelties were practised in the shipping--shipping interest. The
Legislature should see to this.' Then, fumbling among his papers,
counsel went on: 'You said, when questioned by my learned friend, that
you had gone on shore? Why did you go on shore?'
'To get a man to bleed the buoy. It wanted bleeding very much.'
'You went to get a surgeon, you mean?'
'No; a workman from the yard.'
'What, to bleed a boy! To perform so delicate an operation on a boy,
then standing in the water, and, in the state of health he was in, no
doubt in great pain, whilst holding the boat all the time--shocking
inhumanity!'
Here judge and jury thought it time to interfere. They all knew the
meaning of the technical terms; but as they enjoyed the fun of seeing
counsel getting deeper and deeper into the mire, they allowed him to go
on, and the court being full of sailors, who cheered counsel
vociferously as he stumbled from blunder to blunder, the trial was one
of the most amusing in that court, and gave judge and jury a splendid
appetite for their lunch.
Some counsel are very fond of reminding a witness at every other
question they put to him that he is 'on his oath.' The practice is
absurd, the very reminder sounds sarcastic. This 'taking the oath' is a
relic of ancient barbarism and superstition; for the man who means to
tell the truth it is unnecessary, and on the man who intends to tell a
lie it is no check; he looks on the proceeding as a ridiculous ceremony.
The very official who administers the oath in court, by the way he
rattles it off, shows in what estimation he holds it. Nay, in matters
far more important than the mere stealing of a piece of cheese off a
counter, on occasions when one would expect taking the oath to be
invested with some solemnity, how is it done? I once accompanied an
Italian friend of mine, who was being naturalized in this country, to
the court where he was to take the oath of allegiance. This is how the
official authorized to administer the oath rushed through it: 'I A. B.
do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty
Queen Victoria her heirs and successors according to law so help me God
it will be half a crown.' My friend produced the half-crown, which, I
suppose, stood in place of a seal, and the performance was over. With
the court 'So help me God it will be half a crown' was evidently the
chief point, the crowning glory and confirmation of the allegiance
business.
Swearing children as witnesses leads to very ludicrous scenes, enough to
cover the whole proceeding with contempt, and show its utter futility.
Montagu Williams, Q.C., tells a good story:
At a trial a discussion arose as to whether or no a boy of very tender
age was old enough to be sworn. The judge, at the suggestion of counsel
for the prosecution, interrogated the boy: 'Do you know what will become
of you if you tell an untruth?'
The boy, evidently brought up in the Spurgeon school, replied: 'Hell
fire.'
'What will become of you if you play truant, and do not go to school?'
'Hell fire,' again answered the boy.
'What if you spill the milk?'
'Hell fire.'
His lordship ran through a list of trifling faults; the punishment was
always the same--'Hell fire.'
Counsel then suggested that the boy was scarcely intelligent enough to
be sworn. But the judge thought otherwise, and expected he would grow
up a very good man, seeing he believed that the most trifling error
involved the penalty of hell fire, and the boy was sworn. The boy, of
course, was a fool, through no fault of his, but through that of his
bigoted teachers.
It was mentioned above that in the days of Sir Matthew Hale professional
etiquette allowed clients to have interviews with counsel without the
intervention of a solicitor. But gradually, after his time, the public
were deprived of this privilege, and a rigid rule was enforced that all
communications to counsel must be through the solicitor only, a rule
highly detrimental to litigants, since it caused constant
misunderstandings and misleading instructions. It is a roundabout way
of doing business, which would not be tolerated for a day in any
commercial transaction. It was from the first a tyrannical assumption
on the part of the profession that the public should submit to a
restriction, based nominally on professional etiquette, but really on
professional interest. The public have begun to object to the rule, and
in 1888 the Attorney-General (Sir R. Webster), on being asked to express
his views in reference to the occasions when a barrister may advise and
otherwise act for a client without the intervention of a solicitor,
replied that in contentious business, necessitating inquiry into facts,
which could not possibly be undertaken by a barrister, it was essential
that the latter should have the advice of a solicitor. But might this
advice not be given in the presence of the client to exclude the
possibility of misapprehension? As to non-contentious business Sir
Richard allowed of direct communication between counsel and client. My
own rule, whenever it has been my misfortune to be involved in a legal
dispute, has always been to push aside this bogie of professional
etiquette, and insist on telling counsel my own story myself.
The profession, as we hardly need remind the reader, has produced many
distinguished characters; to choose from amongst them those most
deserving of praise would be difficult, and perhaps invidious; still,
the actions of those whose conduct has not imparted to them the mere
splendour of passing meteors, but has conferred permanent benefits on
the country, seem to entitle them to a certain pre-eminence. A man
entitled to such pre-eminence and the grateful remembrance of Englishmen
was Sir Samuel Romilly. His father was a jeweller in Frith Street,
Soho; the boy was first placed with a solicitor, then with a merchant,
and finally articled to one of the sworn clerks of Chancery. At the
expiration of his articles he qualified himself for the Bar, but he had
to wait long before he was rewarded with any practice. But when briefs
came, they came in a flood; his income rose to about L9,000 a year. He
was returned to Parliament in 1806 by the electors of Westminster,
without the expenditure of a shilling on his part--a significant fact of
his merits in those days of bribery and corruption. He was also
appointed Solicitor-General and knighted. He distinguished himself in
the House by his speeches in favour of the abolition of the slave trade,
but his great claims to the gratitude of the nation are the efforts he
made to mitigate the Draconic code of the criminal law, in which nearly
three hundred offences, varying from murder to keeping company with a
gipsy, were punishable with death. The first success he had was the
repeal of the statute of Elizabeth which made it a capital offence to
steal privately from the person of another. He next tried to get several
statutes repealed which made it a capital offence to privately steal
from a house or a shop goods to the value of five shillings. But this
Bill was lost. What bloodthirsty savages the members of the House must
have been in those days! Some of this savagery remains in their blood
now, for when the abolition of training children to become acrobats,
contortionists and similar horrors, the abolition of vivisection and
such-like cruelties, are mooted in the House, the introducer of the Bill
is hooted down. Romilly, as we have seen, did not succeed in all his
humane efforts, but he kept on agitating session after session, and
cleared the way for the modification and mitigation of the ferocious
laws which turned England into human shambles. And what Romilly had
been striving for was a long time in coming. In the first decades of
this century it was no unusual sight to see from a dozen to twenty
criminals, many for slight offences only, hanged in one morning in front
of Newgate. The end of Romilly was sad; it showed the malignity of
fate. He who had spent his life in endeavouring to lighten the lot of
others was terribly stricken himself. In 1818 he lost his wife, whom he
had married twenty years before, and her loss was such a shock to him
that he fell into delirium, and in an unwatched moment he sprang from
his bed, cut his throat, and expired almost instantly.
Nowadays briefless barristers utilize their legal knowledge as
financiers and company promoters; before those two honest pursuits had
been invented they had to turn their attention to other specs. Thus
Francis Forcer the younger, the son of Francis Forcer, a musician, had
received a liberal education, and, on leaving Oxford, entered Gray's
Inn, and was afterwards called to the Bar, where he practised for a
short time. He was very gentlemanly in his manners, and in person
remarkably tall and athletic. In 1735, having been disturbed by legal
interference, or some other cause, he petitioned Parliament for a
license for Sadler's Wells, which application, we are told, was rejected
at first, but in the end it must have been granted, for we are informed
that he was the first who exhibited there the diversions of rope-dancing
and tumbling, and performances on the slack wire. It is doubtful
whether the speculation paid, for at the time of his death (he died in
1743) he directed by his will that the lease of the premises, together
with the scenery, implements, stock, furniture, household stuff and
things thereunto belonging, should be sold for the purpose of paying his
debts, which direction was carried out soon after his decease. This
seems as if the refreshment bar, for which Mr. Forcer had left the legal
Bar, had not proved very remunerative; perhaps he had better have stuck
to the litigation oyster, than to the native he dispensed at Sadler's
Wells.
*XVIII.*
*THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS AND THE
KIT-KAT AND ROTA CLUBS.*
The last two centuries were very prolific in the production of clubs,
founded to gratify rational purposes or fanciful whims. In those days,
as soon as a set of men found themselves agree in any particular, though
ever so trivial, they immediately formed themselves into a fraternity
called a club. The Apollo Club, which held its meetings at the Devil
tavern in Fleet Street, comprised all the wits of Ben Jonson's day; the
Cauliflower in Butcher Hall Lane was the sober symposium of Paternoster
Row booksellers. Humdrum clubs were composed of peaceable nobodies, who
used to meet at taverns, sit and smoke and say nothing. A few of these
latter clubs survive. But Addison, who knew something of the club life
of his day, said: 'All celebrated clubs were founded on eating and
drinking, which are points wherein most men agree, and in which the
learned and the illiterate, the dull and the airy, the philosopher and
the buffoon can all of them bear a part.' Just so, though not every
club would acknowledge it; but the Beefsteakers boldly proclaimed their
object in the name they assumed; theirs was the worship of beef-steaks.
Now, chops and steaks are relics of barbarism, of ages when men, having
not as yet invented cooking apparatus, made a fire between some stones,
and laid their slices of raw meat on the top, and ate them when half
burnt and blackened. Steaks done on a gridiron are antediluvian enough,
but mutton chops diffusing, when undergoing this roasting process,
throughout the room the stench of a tallow candle just blown out, are
enough to turn the stomach, not of the refined _gourmet_ only, but of
the untutored savage. It is only custom which enables the visitor to
the grill-room to stand its effluvium, and to eat the food placed before
him. Steaks are not so bad, because they have not the sickening smell
of the chop, and so they actually found a set of worshippers, who formed
themselves into a society to pay due adoration to their idol. Of
course, in this age of higher culture and more widely diffused
intelligence, such a proceeding must appear to us not only childish, but
somewhat degrading; it was, however, a phase of the convivial life and
tendency of the Georgian era, and as such merits a record; but lest we,
in producing it, should be suspected of sympathizing with it, we deem it
necessary to preface it with the above remarks.
The Beefsteak Club[#] was founded in the reign of Anne, and was composed
of the 'chief wits and great men of the nation,' who were, however,
silly enough to wear suspended from the neck by a green silk ribbon a
small gridiron of gold, the badge of the club. Dick Estcourt the
player, and landlord of a tavern called the Bumper, in Covent Garden,
was made caterer of the club. He was, we are told, a man of good
manners and of infinite wit, or of what in those days passed for wit,
though much of it at the present time would be declined by the editor of
the poorest comic paper. Steele, however, grows quite enthusiastic over
him. The club first established itself at the sign of the Imperial
Phiz, just opposite the famous conventicle in the Old Jewry; here the
superintendent of the kitchen was wont to provide several nice specimens
of their beef-steak cookery. Eventually the boys of Merchant Taylors'
School were accustomed to regale the club on its nights of meeting with
uproarious shouts of 'Huzza, Beefsteak!' But these attentions in course
of time became irksome, and the club withdrew to more quiet quarters,
but its final fate is left in the dark. Ned Ward, in his 'Secret
History of Clubs,' from whom we get our chief information concerning the
Beefsteak Club, simply says: 'So that now, whether they have healed the
breach, and are again returned into the Kit-Kat community, whence it is
believed, upon some disgust, they at first separated ... I shan't
presume to determine, ... but, though they are much talked of, they are
difficult to be found.'
[#] Not to be confounded with the 'Sublime Society of Steaks,' founded a
few years after the club, and of which we shall speak more fully
presently as the more important of the two associations.
The Beefsteak Society, or the 'Sublime Society of Beefsteaks,' as they
chose to designate themselves, whilst severely objecting to be called a
club, originated with George Lambert, the scene-painter of Covent Garden
Theatre during Rich's management (1735), where Lambert often dined from
a steak cooked on the fire in his painting-room, in which he was
frequently joined by his visitors. This led to the foundation of the
society in a room in the theatre. Afterwards the place of meeting was
at the Shakespeare tavern in the Piazza, and subsequently at the Lyceum,
and on its destruction by fire (1830), at the Bedford Hotel, and on its
being rebuilt in 1834, at the theatre again. The members used to meet
on Saturdays, from November to the end of June, to partake of a dinner
of beefsteaks. The room in which they met was appropriately fitted up,
the doors, wainscoting and roof, of English oak, being ornamented with
gridirons; Lambert's original gridiron, saved from two fires, formed the
chief ornament in the centre of the ceiling.
Among the members of this society, restricted to twenty-five, were
George, Prince of Wales, and his brothers, the Dukes of York and Sussex,
Sheridan, Lord Sandwich, Garrick, John Wilkes, the Duke of Argyle, the
Duke of Leinster, Alderman Wood, and many other men of note. The club
had its president and vice-president, its bishop, who said grace, and
its 'boots,' as the steward was called; the Dukes of Sussex and Leinster
in their turn discharged the office of 'boots.' Its festivals were of a
somewhat bacchanalian character; the chief liquors consumed were port
and punch, and fun, the more rampant the more relished, followed the
feast. They had their bard, or laureate, Captain Morris, who had been
in the Life Guards. Here is a stanza of one of his songs:
'Like Britain's island lies our steak,
A sea of gravy bounds it;
Shallots, confusedly scattered, make
The rockwork that surrounds it.
Your isle's best emblem there behold,
Remember ancient story;
Be, like your grandsires, first and bold,
And live and die with glory.'
Now what can we think of the literary taste then prevailing in the
highest quarters, when we are told that this song rendered Morris so
great a favourite with the Prince of Wales that he adopted him in the
circle of his intimate friends, and made him his constant guest both at
Carlton House and the Pavilion at Brighton? Truly, in those days fame
and distinction were lightly earned! But does not our own time admire,
or pretend to admire, the jerky platitudes of a Tennyson, and the jejune
prose, cut up into measured lines, of a Browning as poetry? By the
society Morris was presented with an elegant silver bowl for his
'pottery.'
In the decline of life and fortune Morris was handsomely provided for by
his fellow-steak, the Duke of Norfolk, who conferred upon him a charming
retreat at Brockham in Surrey, which he lived to enjoy until the year
1838, surviving his benefactor by twenty-three years, whilst hundreds of
men of real merit were left to fight the battle of life unaided and
unrewarded. But those who amuse the idle hours of fools with foolish
nonsense are always more highly thought of than those who instruct and
impart useful knowledge. There is more money spent at a State or
Municipal banquet in one evening than would suffice for maintaining a
scientific institution for a whole year. What did the Queen's Jubilee
cost the nation, and what lasting benefit has this extravagant
expenditure conferred on the nation? Of all this firework, what remains
but the sticks and the burnt-out cartridge tubes? Carlyle, with whom we
agree in few things, was right in what he said about the aggregate of
fools. But return we to the 'sublime' Beefsteakers. The epithet they
assumed reminds us that there is indeed but one step from the sublime to
the ridiculous. When a society, formed for the mere purpose of gorging
and swilling, and howling drinking songs, the most stupid of all songs,
calls itself 'sublime,' may we not ask, Where are the 'Lofty
Taters-all-'ot' and the 'Exalted Tripe and Onioners?'