STUDENT DAYS
Ah, you have much to learn; we can’t know all things at twenty.
CLOUGH: “The Bothie of Tober-na-vuolich.”
As a great writer says, “I am naturally averse to egotism and hate
self-laudation consumedly,” and yet I must tell this story once again,
for it seems to me the natural motto of my undertaking. I was passing
up Peter Street away from my Court when I heard two railway clerks
discussing a case I had just decided. This was their dialogue, with
formal parts, as we say in the law, omitted.
“1st Clerk: How the ―――― did he get to £5?
“2nd Clerk: I don’t know.
“1st Clerk: I think he’s a ―――― fool.
“2nd Clerk: I think he’s a ―――― fool (a long pause, then as an
afterthought), but I think he did his best.”
In the evening of the day on which I overheard that excellent saying I
was at a public dinner with no reporters present――not that their
absence or presence ever worried me very much, for the Manchester
reporters were all kind friends of mine, and stacked the wild oats of
my after-dinner chatter into very neat sheaves of morning print. The
fact, however, enabled Dean Maclure to be expansive. In proposing my
health, after many sarcastic and amusing allusions to my varied
virtues, he expressed the hope――alas! not fulfilled――that, as he alone
could do justice to the subject, he might live long enough to write my
epitaph.
That was the cue for the story, and I shall never forget the Dean’s
genial roar of laughter as I pictured him unveiling in his beloved
cathedral a little white marble plaque, on which was cut in severe
black letters:――
HE WAS
A ―――― FOOL,
BUT
HE DID HIS BEST.
I remind my readers of this story here at the beginning of things,
because, looking forward to the round unvarnished tale I have to tell,
I am very conscious that I shall convince them of the justice of the
first part of the epitaph, and if I nothing extenuate and set down
naught but what is strictly accurate, I am by no means sure that when
the faculty is applied for in the Ecclesiastical Court to erect that
little marble tribute to my memory someone will not enter an
appearance with these recollections of mine exhibited to an affidavit,
and move to strike out the last line of the epitaph as embarrassing
and irrelevant.
The first foolish thing I did in connection with my twenty-five years
sojourn in Manchester was to come there at all. I remember Henn
Collins――then a leader on the circuit――telling me, with very clean-cut
emphasis, what he thought of my folly only a week after I had settled
down. It was the Peter Street verdict, without the adjective, and this
was repeated to me by very many of the kind friends I made in the
first few months after my arrival. Everyone asked me, “Why had I come
to Manchester?” and for the life of me I could not give them a
coherent and logical answer.
But there I was, a very junior barrister, with a very junior wife and
a still more junior daughter, all desirous of being comfortably
provided for; and to my eternal gratitude and surprise, Manchester
rose to the occasion and not only――to use the slang of the
tables――“saw me,” but “went one better” than my best hopes in
contributing to my career.
What little accidents determine the course of a man’s life! We start
like streams from the mountain source, intending to fight our way down
into the valleys where our fathers have preceded us. But on the upper
slopes at the outset of our career we meet some boulder or bank of
earth and are turned west instead of east, and so away into quite
other valleys and along towards another sea. If anyone had told me
when I was eighteen that I should be County Court Judge of Manchester
within fifteen years I should have put a sovereign on the other way or
given the long odds in a hopeful spirit.
For there was nothing of Manchester in my thoughts when, after my
father’s death, I left King’s College School and gave up for ever
those pleasant journeys in the old underground railway, where we
learned our lessons by inferior gas-light in an atmosphere of sulphur.
Honestly, looking back on that school in the underworld of Somerset
House, I have an uneasy feeling that there was no health in it. But
there were pleasant companions, and, if you cared for such things,
much classical learning and Church doctrine. It did not occur to the
boy mind that light and air were necessary to healthy life, and of
course it had never entered the thoughts of the pastors and masters
responsible for that scholastic warren. Whilst I was there I carried
away with me a few prizes and a broken nose, and a knowledge of those
portions of the Church Catechism which fitted in with the place in
class where I sat of a Monday morning. I was sixteen when I left
school, and for the first time in my life began to seriously consider
the desirability of studying things. I have been some sort of a
student ever since.
My first idea was to study mathematics with a view to trying for a
scholarship at Cambridge. I wonder if I had followed that stream into
what dead sea it would have carried me. I know as a fact that I was
accounted fairly good at the subject, but that is difficult for me to
believe to-day, for anything more complicated than very simple
addition I always refer in a thankful spirit to the Registrar.
Afterwards I fancied I would be an artist, and joined the Slade School
and drew in the “Antique” for a few months. I got very little
encouragement there. Legros once looked at one of my drawings, and
took up a piece of charcoal as if to show me some of the errors of
line in my work; but his heart failed him. He sighed, shook his head,
grunted a guttural French grunt of despair, and turned on his heel.
However, I can boast that I am a pupil of Legros, and if he treasured
my piece of charcoal it may yet be a valuable lot at Christie’s――who
knows?
At the end of 1881 I had made up my mind that it was time to commence
a career with money in it. I chose the Bar because I knew no other. I
went down to the old courts at Westminster, and, finding one of my
father’s clerks, got him to take me to Sir Henry James, as he then
was. He was a very old friend of my father, and not only signed the
necessary papers with pleasure, but introduced me to Sir Farrer
Herschell, who was sitting next to him, and he signed as well. With
such godfathers, I was cordially received into the ancient house of
the Middle Temple, after satisfying two reverend benchers that I knew
enough Latin and history to make it unwise for them to expose the
amount of their own knowledge of these subjects by asking me further
questions.
Thursday, January 19, 1882! More than thirty years ago. And yet the
memory of my first dinner at the Temple is here to-day, winnowed out
of the myriad happenings of all these years.
I see a thin slip of humanity shrinking among his elders into that
historical Elizabethan hall and asking the old mace bearer with
whispering humbleness where he may sit. Unknowingly, he chooses the
place of captain of a mess――the arbiter of the feast of four――and,
taking courage from the unwonted gown, brazens out his position until
his want of knowledge of the ceremonies concerning the first glass of
wine exposes him as a newcomer.
I know that there was plenty of genial talk and laughter at that
table, but I remember none of it. For in my heart of hearts I was
wondering why I had come there at all, and feeling that the ghosts of
all the great Templars of the past were chuckling among the rafters at
my folly, and that, truly, I was honest food for their mocks. But
among all my hopes and fears and forebodings Manchester certainly had
no place. Yet the “writing on the wall” was there, or, rather, he was
sitting with his back to it on my left-hand side. His name was Smith,
and he came from Manchester.
Richard Smith, who sat next to me on the occasion of my first dinner
in hall, was my earliest experience of Manchester, and indeed if I had
never met him I cannot suppose that I should ever have joined the
Northern Circuit. He had come to the Temple late in life and was
nearing his call. I believe he had already been a bleacher, a dealer
in pictures, and a clerk to a public body. I know he had been at
Oxford, because in an unlucky moment on circuit in a heated discussion
after dinner he had called in aid of his argument his University
degree, and was ever afterwards known as “Smith, B.A.” But for me it
was sufficient that he was the only man I ever met in the Temple who
could talk lovingly and intelligently about pictures. He had the
square face of a lion, wearing in those days a heavy beard. He barked
and growled at you in argument and was cocksure he was right. That is
a very Manchester virtue. I write of it with jealousy, for it is an
attribute I have vainly striven to acquire. You know the story of one
of Manchester’s most eminent sons who was always in the right. Some
friend remonstrated with him gently, saying, “Why be such an egoist?”
“Egoist!” was the calm reply. “I’m not an egoist――I know!”
And so it was with Dick Smith. He knew! But, Micawber-like, he failed
to persuade others to take him at his own valuation. His venture at
the Bar was not a fortunate one. I like to remember him, full of hope
and enthusiasm spending a day or two with me in the summer, sketching
on the Thames at Datchet, or playing chess in the common room in the
winter and laying down the law on every conceivable subject in his
rough, Manchester tongue. When he left the Temple to start his
practice in Manchester, the Middle Temple common room seemed to me for
some days “remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.” But this was only a
passing mood. Dick Smith and his pride of Manchester became a fading
memory, and I continued to thoroughly enjoy my three years’ work in
the Temple.
I cannot help thinking that men make a mistake in rushing up from the
University to eat their dinners and getting called to the Bar directly
they leave college. Law is, at least, as uncertain and dangerous a
science to the patient as medicine, and the student of law should be
compelled to “walk” the courts, as the medical student is compelled to
“walk” the hospitals. For my part, I attribute what success I had at
the Bar to the fact that I worked at the practical business of the
profession for three years before I was called. I read in different
chambers, and during the last year of student days had the privilege
of reading with my Danckwerts, who was and is, no doubt, one of the
greatest lawyers of our day. It is curious to remember that in 1884
the gossip of the Temple was concerned in discussing whether
Danckwerts or Asquith would succeed R. S. Wright as Treasury “devil,”
so blind are the quidnuncs to the throw of the shuttle of fate.
A junior with such a heavy practice as Danckwerts’s cannot do much
more than give you the run of his chambers, but that, as Loehnis said,
was like “turning a team of asses into a field of oats.” Loehnis
devilled for Danckwerts in those days. He was a shrewd, sound lawyer
and a kind-hearted senior to our pupil room, and the Bar lost an
honourable and learned brother by his untimely death. Considering the
work he did and the hours he worked, it was wonderful how much
personal attention Danckwerts gave to his pupils. He would often call
one of us into his room and discuss some opinion or pleading we had
drawn. I remember on one occasion, having pointed out to me the
hopeless errors of the legal opinion I had given, he wound up his
remarks by saying: “And suppose, when you are called, you get a case
of that kind, what is going to happen to you?”
“When I get a case of that importance,” I replied, “I shall certainly
insist on having you as a junior.”
The great man laughingly agreed that I had made a wise resolution.
Bertram Cox was undoubtedly the ablest pupil in my time. He neglected
an ordinary career at the Bar and specialised on heavy public legal
work, and was rightly rewarded by being appointed legal Under-Secretary
to the Colonial Office――a position which I believe Mr. Chamberlain
invented in order that the office might have the benefit of his
services. He is now the solicitor to the Inland Revenue. Another pupil
was Bartle Frere, who is a legal luminary at Gibraltar. Danckwerts
seemed to instil into his pupils the capacity to arrive. Frere was one
of the merriest fellows in the world, always doing some careless and
amusing thing, on the strength of which Cox and I built up apocryphal
stories about him which we insisted upon as traditions of the pupil
room. Thus it was asserted to be Frere who, after carefully studying
the papers in an action for seduction, had drafted a defence of
contributory negligence. I believe, however, there was some foundation
for the story that in his early days he wrote an opinion to the effect
that, as every step taken up to date on behalf of the plaintiff was
useless, the best thing he could do was to drop his present action and
commence an action for negligence against his solicitor.
“Excellent advice, no doubt,” said Danckwerts dryly, “but you seem to
forget that we are advising the solicitor.”
The last time I met Frere was in Norwich, about 1896. I had gone to
sit as judge for Addison, and took my seat in the old Castle Court
with great dignity, bowing to the Bar, when I looked up and my eye
caught Frere’s.
“Good heavens, it’s Parry!” he cried out in an audible voice, and
laughed heartily at the idea of finding me on the bench. The Court did
not hear the interruption, but Parry did, and enjoyed it hugely. We
dined at the Maid’s Head that evening, and had a pleasant crack
together, recalling many stories of the old pupil room in New Court.
No doubt memory brightens o’er the past, but certainly no youngsters
ever learned their business under pleasanter auspices than we did.
Outside the pupil room there were lectures to attend, scholarships to
be read for, dinners in the old hall, and debating clubs meeting on
several evenings in the week. Mindful of my father’s advice, I had
always kept in touch with an old boys’ debating club at King’s College
School, and now I joined the Hardwicke and a very pleasant and more
social club, the Mansfield. The Hardwicke was a conservative
institution, and I remember startling the ancients of our benches by
raising a debate on the effect of the Pre-Raphaelite movement on the
art of the country. Everyone spoke on it, and the frank expressions of
dogmatic ignorance and the enthusiastic denunciations of the works of
the school were thoroughly healthy and entertaining. Still, we
mustered a stalwart minority, and a little later gained a practical
victory over the Philistines. I was elected on the committee of the
Hardwicke, on which Clavell Salter――now a K.C. and M.P. for the
Basingstoke division――was an important official. The society was in
funds, and we resolved to spend them in creature comforts; not in
olive draperies and sunflowers, perhaps, but in reasonable luxuries.
Our meeting room was at that time floored with boards, the door
opening from the road banged violently whenever anyone entered, and
the uncovered gas-jets in the centre glared and hissed at you
distressingly during your oration. Without a word of our purpose to
the general body of members we adorned the room with a carpet, a
screen to hide the door, and some glass globes for the gas. Incensed
with indignation and breathing fire and war, the hosts of the Old
Bailey came down upon us in wrath. Geoghan the eloquent, Cagney the
persuasive, and the subtle Burnie closured our debate, carried the
suspension of the standing orders, and on a motion to surcharge the
upstart members of the committee rent the air with denunciations of
our malversation of the funds and our want of patriotism in destroying
the ancient amenities of their beloved Hardwicke. It was with
difficulty that our side continued the debate, which was of an earnest
and fiery nature, until the hour of the adjournment. By next week we
whipped up our supporters, who were base enough to prefer comfort to
tradition, and we remained in office. The prophecies of decadence and
disaster came to naught. The Hardwicke survives in prosperity. Long
may it flourish.
This habit of debate and discussion naturally led us to desire to try
our strength in a wider field of battle. Some took one side and some
another, but for myself, from hereditary example perhaps, I have
always been fond of belonging to a minority; and now that I have been
a total abstainer from politics for many years, I may freely admit
that in the eighties I was an ardent Radical, and, naturally, a
disciple of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who in that day was preaching the
reforms that Mr. Lloyd George is now putting on the Statute Book. I
was a member of the Eighty Club, then a Whig institution, and as
Radical speakers were greatly in demand I got many opportunities of
political speaking all over the country. As a very young Radical in a
minority among many superior persons, it was, of course, part of my
duty to criticise my elders and betters whenever I got the
opportunity. As an artist friend said of me, I had an unfortunate
habit of “getting out of drawing,” even outside the studio, and I
remember very well an instance of this at a dinner given in the autumn
of 1895 to Trevelyan. It was the custom of the club for a senior to
propose and a junior to second a vote of thanks to our guest. On this
occasion Haldane was the senior and I was the junior. I had made up an
eloquent little speech, but in accordance with my usual habit――then
and now――I made another. Haldane had――as I thought rather
unnecessarily――made a great many allusions to the “nephew of Lord
Macaulay,” as though Trevelyan bore no other claim to fame. When my
turn came I got a round of applause for welcoming our guest as
himself, a personality far more interesting to the working politician
of to-day than the mere nephew of a Whig peer. Trevelyan himself
seemed to enjoy the joke, and wound up the proceedings by an appeal to
the younger members for missionary work, in which he referred very
pleasantly to some of my father’s Radical fights of old days, and
congratulated me on belonging to the true faith.
I was naturally rather elated as I walked home along the Embankment
with our energetic honorary secretary, J. A. B. B. Bruce――the Busy
Bee, as we called him.
“No doubt, Parry,” he said in his quiet, thoughtful way, “you think
you’ve been jolly clever, but what I’m wondering is when Haldane is
Lord Chancellor, and you want a County Court judgeship, will you get
it?”
I hope it is not lese-majeste for me to repeat this story to-day, when
at length the hopes of the Temple have been fulfilled and the double
event which Bruce foresaw has come to pass. It was a commonplace of
Temple talk that some day Haldane would be Lord Chancellor, but it
required the deep foresight of Bruce to hazard the suggestion that I
should ever be in a position to apply for a judgeship of the County
Court.
And I cannot look back on those old days without seeing the figure of
one dear friend――the bravest and kindest of men, Archie Stewart. I
know this, that no one who came within his sway can have forgotten his
memory, and there must yet be many in the Temple who will be glad to
recall it. Tall, handsome, broad-shouldered and erect, swinging with a
curious gait across the courts of the Temple, one could not but be
attracted by his presence. His frank, engaging smile, his cheery voice
all alike evidenced the joy of life. And yet when he entered the
library and the attendant stepped up to him and lifted off his coat
with its heavy cape, you saw at a glance the tragedy that his brave
heart never acknowledged. Both his arms were paralysed and deformed
from childhood and were practically useless. He could write slowly and
with difficulty, pushing the pen by a movement of the shoulder, but in
nearly every ordinary movement in life, in eating, dressing, carrying
and lifting, he required assistance. And yet he would start away from
Kensington in the morning and come down to the Temple, leaving his
servant at home in the knowledge that throughout London he would
always find someone to help him. When you got used to his movements
you did not seem to notice his deformity, so little did he make of it
himself, and so cleverly did he use the little strength and capacity
there were in his hands and arms. The things that he could do were
wonderful. A light wineglass he could lift with his lips, drink from
it and replace it almost gracefully, and he could pick up a weighted
chessman――it was his favourite game, and he played above the
ordinary――in his mouth and hurl it accurately on to any square on the
board. His favourite method was to steer the men along with his pipe,
but in moments of triumph and enthusiasm he seized them in his lips.
He was a constant speaker at the Hardwicke――clear, shrewd and learned.
How he read so much and had conquered his enormous difficulties it is
hard to understand. Among other things achieved, he had learned to
swim, and he could cast a bowl from his instep with cunning, skill and
accuracy. In due course he was called to the Bar, and whenever I came
to town I used to turn into our old chambers in Pump Court, and find
Stewart smoking like a furnace and laying down the law to some junior
in large practice who had come round to have a few words with him
about a difficulty. It was curious how many men accounted learned in
the law were well pleased to have their views ratified or reformed by
Archie Stewart. I remember hearing him hold at bay a Divisional Court,
consisting of Coleridge, C.J., and R. S. Wright, J., with a learned
argument about a demand for rent at common law, in which he gave them
an interesting dissertation on the legal history and archæology of the
matter, with few notes and, of course, without books, for he was
unable to hold them. The Court rightly complimented him on his
performance, and thinking ahead in those days I used to imagine what a
great judge my friend would have made, with his bright logical Scots
mind and his deep sympathy with human nature down to the lowest, which
he had learned from the respect and kindness shown to his misfortune.
He told me that in all his wanderings about London day and night alone
no one had ever offered to rob him, though he was in the habit of
asking any stranger to take his money out of his pocket to pay railway
or other fares. I was not the only one who predicted for Stewart some
position of honour in his profession. But it was not to be. Very
suddenly one summer holiday he was taken. It was at his home at
Rannoch. He belonged to an ancient race of Stewarts, and in his quaint
way used to boast that if he were to sue for the Crown _in formâ
pauperis_ there would be flutterings in high places. Some years
afterwards I made a pious journey to his resting-place. In his
ancestral park, on which the blue peak of his beloved Schiehallion
looks down, there, surrounded by grey stone walls and tall fir trees,
he lies among cross-legged knights in armour, tall well-limbed
warriors of his race, but among them all there is not one who fought
the fight with a braver heart than the last comer.
It begins to dawn upon me that all these beckoning shadows and calling
shapes which throng into my memory when I begin to write of my student
days in the Temple are keeping me too long from the main purpose of my
story, but in my next chapter I will at least get called to the Bar,
and then, as there will be no work for me in town, I shall have to
pack up my bundle and go into the wide, wide world to seek my fortune.