(_By Mr. Punch's Own Type-writer._)
No. IX.--THE ADVERTISING BARRISTER.
[Illustration]
The Advertising Barrister may best be defined as the living and pushing
embodiment of self-assertion and impudence. He is not of those who by a
life of steady and honourable toil attain eventually to the high places
of their profession, whether at the Bar or in Parliament, without losing
the respect and friendship of their fellows. These too in the race of
life must pass many of the feebler runners, and force themselves by
their own merit into places that others would fain have occupied, but
they always run straight, their practice and their performance are
disfigured by no trick, and in the end they bring their honour
untarnished to the goal, and receive the applause even of their
vanquished rivals. With them the Advertising Barrister has no point in
common, save the robes he wears in virtue of his call. For his ambition
is as sordid as the means whereby he attempts to fulfil it are
questionable. He must be credited with the knowledge that his natural
abilities are by themselves insufficient to assure him either fame or
wealth. But he consoles himself by reflecting that if only impudence,
_réclame_, and a taste for the arts of a cadger, be protected by the
hide of a rhinoceros, they are certain to prevail up to a certain point
against the humdrum industry of those inferior beings who hamper
themselves with considerations of honour and good-feeling. It must not
be understood that the Advertiser puffs himself in a literal sense in
the advertising columns of the press. The rules of his profession, to
which even he pays an open deference, forbid this enormity; but in the
subtler methods of gaining a certain attention, and of keeping his name
under the public eye, he has no equal even in the ranks of those who
spend thousands in order that the million may be made happy with soap.
The boyhood and youth of the Advertising Barrister will have been passed
in comparative obscurity. The merchant who relieved the monotony of a
large and profitable wholesale business by treating him as a son,
impressed upon him at an early age the necessity of making the family
history illustrious by soaring beyond commerce to professional
distinction and a fixed income. In furtherance of this scheme the son
was sent to pick up a precarious education at a neighbouring day-school,
where he astonished his companions by his ease in mastering the polite
literature of the ancients and the vulgar fractions of Mr. BARNARD
SMITH, and delighted his masters by the zeal with which he generally
took his stand on the side of authority. Having, however, in the course
of a school examination been detected in the illicit use of a volume of
Bohn's Library, he was called upon for an explanation, and, after
failing to satisfy his examiners that he meant only to reflect credit
upon the school by the accuracy of his translations, he was advised to
leave at the end of the term. After a short interval spent in the
society of a coach, he entered a fast College at one of our ancient
Universities, and, being possessed of a fairly comfortable allowance,
soon distinguished himself by the calculating ardour with which he
affected the acquaintance of young men of rank, and shared in the
fashionable pleasures of the place. Recognising that amidst the careless
and easy-going generosity of undergraduate society, he who has a cool
and scheming head is usually able to tip the balance of good luck in his
own favour, he lost no opportunity of ingratiating himself with those
who might be of service to him. He cultivated a fluent style of
platitudes and claptrap at his college debating society, and at the
Union, to the committee of which he was elected after prolonged and
assiduous canvassing. Having managed to be proctorised in company with
the eldest son of a peer, whom he delighted by the studied impertinence
of his answers to the Proctor, he eventually went down with a pass
degree and a mixed reputation, and, after the orthodox number of
dinners, and the regulation examination, had the satisfaction of seeing
his name published in the list of those who, having acquired a
smattering of Roman and English law, were entitled, for a consideration,
to aid litigants with their counsel.
For the next few years little was heard of him. He read in chambers,
drew pleadings and indictments, and gathered many useful tricks from the
criminal advocate to whom he attached himself like a leech. During this
period he also made the acquaintance of a Solicitor who had retired from
the noon-day glare of professional rectitude to the congenial atmosphere
of shady cases. He also struck up a friendship with two or three
struggling journalists, who were occupied in hanging on to the
paragraphic fringe of their profession, and who might be trusted
afterwards to lend a hand to an intimate engaged in a similar, but not
identical line of business. Helped by a shrewd, and not over-scrupulous
clerk, he gradually picked up a practice, a thing mainly of shreds and
patches, but still a practice of a sort. At the Middlesex Sessions, and
at the Central Criminal Court, his name began to be mentioned; and in a
certain money-lending case it was acknowledged that his astuteness had
prevented the exposure of his client from being as crushing and complete
as the rate of per-centage had seemed to warrant.
Soon afterwards, one of his richer college companions, whose convictions
were stronger than his power of expressing them, was selected as
Candidate for a remote constituency, where speakers were not easily
obtained. The glib Barrister was remembered, and appealed to. At an
immense sacrifice of time and money, he rushed to the rescue, his
travelling and hotel expenses being defrayed by the Candidate. He spoke
much, he spoke triumphantly; he referred, in touching terms, to the ties
of ancient friendship that bound him to the noblest and best of men, the
Candidate; and, when the latter was eventually elected, it was stated in
every Metropolitan evening paper that he owed his success chiefly to the
eloquence and energy of the able Barrister who had pleaded his cause.
Henceforward there was no peace, politically speaking, for the
Barrister. Swifter than swift CAMILLA he scoured the plain facts of
political controversy at meeting after meeting, until they glowed under
the dazzled eyes of innumerable electors. Where Leagues congregated, or
Unions met, or Associations resolved, there he was to be found, always
eager, in the fore-front of the battle. He became the cheap jackal of
the large political lions who roar after their food throughout the
length and breadth of the land, and picked up scraps in the shape of
votes of thanks to chairmen. He figured at political receptions, and
eventually contested a hopeless Constituency, with the assistance of the
party funds. Having, by his complete defeat, established a claim on the
gratitude of his party, he applied successively for a Recordership, a
Police Magistracy, and a County Court Judgeship, but was compelled to be
satisfied temporarily with the post of Revising Barrister. Yet, though
he was disgusted with the base ingratitude of time-serving politicians,
he was by no means disheartened, for he had long since become convinced
that the best method of self-seeking was to seek office, and to clamour
if that should be refused. Finally, after having paid to have his
portrait engraved in a struggling party journal, and having appended to
it a description, in which he compared himself to ERSKINE and the
younger PITT, he became an annoyance to those who were his leaders at
the Bar, or in politics. He was, therefore, appointed Chief Justice of
the Soudan; and after distributing British justice to savages, at a
cheap rate, for several years, he retired upon a pension, and was heard
of no more.
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