"THE BEAR-GARDEN."
THE authors of the guide-books have signally failed to discover the
really interesting parts of Law-land. I have looked through several of
these works and not one of them refers, for example, to the
"Bear-Garden," which is the place where the preliminary skirmishes of
litigation are carried out. The Bear-Garden is the name given to it by
the legal profession, so I am quite in order in using the title. In
fact, if you want to get to it, you _have_ to use that title. The proper
title would be something like "the place where Masters in Chambers
function at half-past one;" but, if you go into the Law Courts and ask
one of the attendants where that is, he will say, rather pityingly, "Do
you mean the _Bear-Garden_?" and you will know at once that you have
lost caste. Caste is a thing you should be very careful of in these
days, so the best thing is to ask for the Bear-Garden straightaway.
It is in the purlieus of the Law Courts and very hard to find. It is up
a lot of very dingy back-staircases and down a lot of very dingy
passages. The Law Courts are like all our public buildings. The parts
where the public is allowed to go are fairly respectable, if not
beautiful, but the purlieus and the basements and the upper floors are
scenes of unimaginable dinginess and decay. The Law Courts' purlieus are
worse than the Houses of Parliament's purlieus, and it seems to me that
even more disgraceful things are done in them. It only shows you the
danger of Nationalisation.
On the way to the Bear-Garden you pass the King's Remembrancer's This is
the man who reminds HIS MAJESTY about people's birthdays; and in a large
family like that he must be kept busy. Not far from the King's
Remembrancer there is a Commissioner for Oaths; you can go into his room
and have a really good swear for about half-a-crown. This is cheaper
than having it in the street--that is, if you are a gentleman; for by
the Profane Oaths Act, 1745, swearing and cursing are punishable by a
fine of one shilling for every day-labourer, soldier or seaman; two
shillings for every other person under the degree of a gentleman; and
five shillings for every person of or above the degree of a gentleman.
This is not generally known. The Commissioner of Oaths is a very
broad-minded man, and there is literally no limit to what you may swear
before him. The only thing is that he insists on your filing it before
you actually say it. This may cause delay; so that if you are feeling
particularly strongly about anything it is probably better to have it
out in the street and risk being taken for a gentleman.
There are a number of other interesting functionaries on the way to the
Bear-Garden; but we must get on. When you have wandered about in the
purlieus for a long time you will hear a tremendous noise, a sort of
combined snarling and roaring and legal conversation. When you hear
that, you will know that you are very near the bears. They are all
snarling and roaring in a large preliminary arena, where the bears
prepare themselves for the struggle; all round it are smaller cages or
arenae, where the struggles take place. If possible you ought to go
early, so that you can watch the animals massing. Lawyers, as I have had
occasion to observe before, are the most long-suffering profession in
the country, and the things they do in the Bear-Garden they have to do
in the luncheon-hour, or rather in the luncheon half-hour, between
half-past one and two.
This accounts perhaps for the extreme frenzy of the proceedings. They
hurry in a frenzy up the back-stairs about 1.25, and they pace up and
down in a frenzy till half-past one. There are all sorts of bears, most
of them rather seedy old bears, with shaggy and unkempt coats. These are
solicitors' clerks, and they all come straight out of DICKENS. They have
shiny little private-school handbags, each inherited, no doubt, through
a long line of ancestral solicitors' clerks; and they all have the
draggled sort of moustache that tells you when it is going to rain.
While they are pacing up and down the arena they all try to get rid of
these moustaches by pulling violently at alternate ends; but the only
result is to make it look more like rain than ever.
Some of the bears are robust old bears, with well-kept coats and loud
roars; these are solicitors' clerks too, only better fed; or else they
are real solicitors. And a few of the bears are perky young
creatures--in barrister's robes, either for the first time, when they
look very self-conscious, or for the second time, when they look very
self-confident. All the bears are telling each other about their cases.
They are saying, "We are a deceased wife's sister suing _in forma
pauperis_," or "I am a discharged bankrupt, three times convicted of
perjury, but I am claiming damages under the Diseases of Pigs Act,
1862," or "You are the crew of a merchant-ship and we are the editor of
a newspaper." Just at first it is rather disturbing to hear snatches of
conversation like that, but there is no real cause for alarm; they are
only identifying themselves with the interests of their clients; and,
when one realises that, one is rather touched.
At long last one of the keepers at the entrance to the small cages
begins to shout very loudly. It is not at all clear what he is shouting,
but apparently it is the pet-names of the bears, for there is a wild
rush for the various cages. Across the middle of the cage a stout
barricade has been erected, and behind the barricade sits the Master,
pale but defiant. Masters in Chambers are barristers who have not got
proper legal faces, and have had to give up being ordinary barristers on
that account; in the obscurity and excitement of the Bear-Garden nobody
notices that their faces are all wrong. The two chief bears rush at the
Master and the other bears jostle round them, egging them on. When they
see that they cannot get at the Master they begin snarling. One of them
snarls quietly out of a long document about the Statement of Claim. He
throws a copy of this at the Master, and the Master tries to get the
hang of it while the bear is snarling; but the other bear is by now
beside himself with rage, and he begins putting in what are called
interlocutory snarls, so that the Master gets terribly confused, though
he doesn't let on.
By-and-by all pretence of formality and order is put aside and the
battle really begins. At this stage of the proceedings the rule is that
no fewer than two of the protagonists must be roaring at the same time,
of which one must be the Master. But the more general practice is for
all three of them to roar at the same time. Sometimes, it is true, by
sheer roar-power the Master succeeds in silencing one of the bears for a
moment, but he can never be said to succeed in cowing a bear. If anybody
is cowed it is the Master. Meanwhile the lesser bears press closer and
closer, pulling at the damp ends of their rainy moustaches and making
whispered suggestions for new devilries in the ears of the chief bears,
who nod their heads emphatically but don't pay any attention.
The final stage is the stage of physical violence, when the chief bears
lean over the barricade and shake their paws at the Master; they think
they are only making legal gestures, but the Master knows very well that
they are getting out of hand; he knows then that it is time he threw
them a bun. So he says a soothing word to each of them and runs his pen
savagely through almost everything on their papers. The bears growl in
stupefaction and rage, and take deep breaths to begin again. But
meanwhile the keeper has shouted for a fresh set of bears, who surge
wildly into the room. The old bears are swept aside and creep out,
grunting. What the result of it all is I don't know. Nobody knows. But
the new bears----
[EDITOR.--I am much bored with this.