Transcribed from the 1883 Stevens and Sons edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
the
HUMOUROUS STORY
of
FARMER BUMPKIN’S LAWSUIT:
by
RICHARD HARRIS,
barrister-at-law,
author of “hints on advocacy,” etc., etc.
SECOND EDITION.
LONDON:
STEVENS AND SONS, 119, CHANCERY LANE,
Law Publishers and Booksellers.
1883.
london:
bradbury, agnew, & co., printers, whitefriars.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Considering the enormous interest which the Public have in “a more efficient and speedy administration of justice,” I am not surprised that a Second Edition of “Mr. Bumpkin’s Lawsuit” should be called for so soon after the publication of the first. If any proof were wanting that I had not overstated the evils attendant on the present system, it would be found in the case of Smitherman v. The South Eastern Railway Company, which came before the House of Lords recently; and judgment in which was delivered on the 16th of July, 1883. The facts of the case were extremely simple, and were as follow:—A man of the name of Smitherman was killed on a level crossing of
the South Eastern Railway Company at East Farleigh, in December, 1878. His widow, on behalf of herself and four children, brought an action against the Company on the ground of negligence on the part of the defendants. The case in due course was tried at the Maidstone Assizes, and the plaintiff obtained a verdict for £400 for herself and £125 for each of the children. A rule for a new trial was granted by the Divisional Court: the rule for the new trial was discharged by the Court of Appeal. The Lords reversed the decision of the Court of Appeal, and ordered a new trial. New trial took place at Guildhall, City of London, before Mr. Baron Pollock; jury again found for the plaintiff, with £700 agreed damages: Company thereby saving £200. Once more rule for new trial granted by Divisional Court: once more rule discharged by Court of Appeal: once more House of Lords reverse decision of Court of Appeal, and order second new trial. So
that after more than four years of harassing litigation, this poor widow and her children are left in the same position that they were in immediately after the accident—except that they are so much the worse as being liable for an amount of costs which need not be calculated. The case was tried by competent judges and special juries; and yet, by the subtleties of the doctrine of contributory negligence, questions of such extreme nicety are raised that a third jury are required to give an opinion upon the same state of facts upon which two juries have already decided in favour of the plaintiff and her children.
Such is the power placed by our complicated, bewildering, and inartistic mode of procedure, in the hands of a rich Company.
No one can call in question the wisdom or the learning of the House of Lords: it is above criticism, and beyond censure; but the
House of Lords itself works upon the basis of our system of Procedure, and as that is neither beyond criticism nor censure, I unhesitatingly ask, Can Old Fogeyism and Pettifoggism further go?
RICHARD HARRIS.
Lamb Building, Temple,
October, 1883.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
When Old Fogeyism is being lowered to his last resting place, Pettifoggism, being his chief mourner, will be so overwhelmed with grief that he will tumble into the same grave. How then to hasten the demise of this venerable Humbug is the question. Some are for letting him die a natural death, others for reducing him gradually by a system of slow starvation: for myself, I confess, I am for knocking him on the head at once. Until this event, so long wished for by all the friends of Enlightenment and Progress, shall have happened, there will be no possibility of a Reform which will lessen the needless expense and shorten the unjustifiable delay which our present system of legal procedure occasions; a system which gives to the rich immeasurable
advantages over poor litigants; and amounts in many cases not only to a perversion of justice but to a denial of it altogether.
Old Fogeyism only tinkers at reform, and is so nervous and incompetent that in attempting to mend one hole he almost invariably makes two. The Public, doubtless, will, before long, undertake the much needed reform and abolish some of the unnecessary business of “judges’ chambers,” where the ingenuity of the Pettifogging Pleader is so marvellously displayed. How many righteous claims are smothered in their infancy at this stage of their existence!
I have endeavoured to bring the evils of our system before the Public in the story of Mr. Bumpkin. The solicitors, equally with their clients, as a body, would welcome a change which would enable actions to be carried to a legitimate conclusion instead of being stifled by the “Priggs” and “Locusts” who will crawl into an honorable profession. It is impossible to keep them out, but it is not impossible to prevent their using the profession to the injury of their clients. All respectable solicitors would
be glad to see the powers of these unscrupulous gentlemen curtailed.
The verses at the end of the story have been so often favourably received at the Circuit Mess, that I thought an amplified version of them in prose would not be unacceptable to the general reader, and might ultimately awaken in the public mind a desire for the long-needed reform of our legal procedure.
RICHARD HARRIS.
Lamb Building, Temple,
July, 1883.
ADVERTISEMENT.
On the 4th of December, 1882, Our Gracious Queen, on the occasion of the opening of the Royal Courts of Justice, said:—
“I trust that the uniting together in one place of the various branches of Judicature in this my Supreme Court, will conduce to the more efficient and speedy administration of justice to my subjects.”
On April 20th, 1883, in the House of Commons, Mr. H. H. Fowler asked the Attorney-General whether he was aware of the large number of causes waiting for trial in the Chancery Division of the High Court, and in the Court of Appeal; and whether the Government proposed to take any steps to remedy the delay and increased cost occasioned to the suitors by the present administration of the Judicature Acts.
The Attorney-General said the number of cases of all descriptions then waiting for trial in the Chancery Division was 848, and in the Court of Appeal 270. The House would be aware that a committee of Judges had been engaged for some time in framing rules in the
hope of getting rid of some of the delay that now existed in the hearing of cases; and until those rules were prepared, which would be shortly, the Government were not desirous of interfering with a matter over which the Judges had jurisdiction. The Government were now considering the introduction of a short Judicature Act for the purpose of lessening the delay.—Morning Post.
[No rules or short Judicature Act at present!] [0a]
On the 13th April, 1883, Mr. Glasse, Q.C., thus referred to a statement made by Mr. Justice Pearson of the Chancery Division: “The citizens of this great country, of which your Lordship is one of the representatives, will look at the statement you have made with respectful amazement.” The statement appears to
have been, that his Lordship had intended to continue the business of the Court in exactly the same way in which it had been conducted by Mr. Justice Fry; but he had been informed that he would have to take the interlocutory business of Mr. Justice Kay’s Court whilst his Lordship was on Circuit; and, as it was requisite that he should take his own interlocutory business before the causes set down for hearing, “all the Causes in the two Courts must go to the wall”!!! His Lordship added, that it would be necessary for him to rise at 3 o’clock every day (not at 3 o’clock in the morning, gentle reader), because he understood he should have to conduct the business of Mr. Justice Kay’s Chambers as well as his own.—Morning Post.
On the 16th April, 1883, Mr. Justice Day, in charging the Grand Jury at the Manchester Spring Assizes, expressed his disagreement with the opinion of the other Judges in favour of the Commission being so altered that the Judge would have to “deliver all the prisoners detained in gaol,” and regarded it as “a waste of the Judge’s time that he should have to try a case in which a woman was indicted for stealing a shawl worth 3s. 9d.; or a prisoner charged with stealing two mutton pies and two ounces of bacon.”—Evening Standard.
“He never suffered his private partiality to intrude into the conduct of publick business. Nor in appointing to employments did he permit solicitation to supply the place of merit; wisely sensible, that a proper choice of officers is almost the whole of Government.”—Burke.
Extract from Notice of the Work in The Saturday Review, September 15th, 1883:—
“He was obviously quite as eager for a good battle in Court as ever was Dandy Dinmont.”
CHAPTER I.
The beauty of a farm yard on a Sabbath day, and what a difference a single letter will sometimes make in the legal signification of a sentence.
It was during the Long Vacation—that period which is Paradise to the Rich and Purgatory to the Poor Lawyer—to say nothing of the client, who simply exists as a necessary evil in the economy of our enlightened system of Legal Procedure: it was during this delightful or dismal period that I returned one day to my old Farm-house in Devonshire, from a long and interesting ramble. My excellent thirst and appetite having been temperately appeased, I seated myself cosily by the huge chimney, where the log was always burning; and, having lighted my pipe, surrendered my whole being to the luxurious enjoyment of so charming a situation. I had scarcely finished smoking, when I fell into a sound and delicious sleep. And behold! I dreamed a dream; and methought:
It was a beautiful Sabbath morning, in the early part of May, 18--, when two men might have been seen leaning over a pigstye. The pigstye was situated in a
farm-yard in the lovely village of Yokelton, in the county of Somerset. Both men had evidently passed what is called the “prime of life,” as was manifest from their white hair, wrinkled brows, and stooping shoulders. It was obvious that they were contemplating some object with great interest and thoughtful attention.
And I perceived that in quiet and respectful conversation with them was a fine, well-formed, well-educated sow of the Chichester breed. It was plain from the number of her rings that she was a sow of great distinction, and, indeed, as I afterwards learned, was the most famous for miles around: her progeny (all of whom I suppose were honourables) were esteemed and sought by squire and farmer. How that sow was bred up to become so polite a creature, was a mystery to all; because there were gentlemen’s homesteads all around, where no such thoroughbred could be found. But I suppose it’s the same with pigs as it is with men: a well-bred gentleman may work in the fields for his living, and a cad may occupy the manor-house or the nobleman’s hall.
The Chichester sow looked up with an air of easy nonchalance into the faces of the two men who smoked their short pipes, and uttered ever and anon some short ejaculation, such as, “Hem!” “Ah!” “Zounds!” and so forth, while the sow exhibited a familiarity with her superiors only to be acquired by mixing in the best society. There was a respectful deference which, while it betrayed no sign of servility, was in pleasing contrast with the boisterous and somewhat unbecoming levity of the other inhabitants of the stye. These people were the last progeny of this illustrious Chichester, and numbered
in all eleven—seven sons and four daughters—honourables all. It was impossible not to admire the high spirit of this well-descended family. That they had as yet received no education was due to the fact that their existence dated only from the 21st of January last. Hence their somewhat erratic conduct, such as jumping, running, diving into the straw, boring their heads into one another’s sides, and other unceremonious proceedings in the presence of the two gentlemen whom it is necessary now more particularly to describe.
Mr. Thomas Bumpkin, the elder of the two, was a man of about seventy summers, as tall and stalwart a specimen of Anglo-Saxon peasantry as you could wish to behold. And while I use the word “peasantry” let it be clearly understood that I do so in no sense as expressing Mr. Bumpkin’s present condition. He had risen from the English peasantry, and was what is usually termed a “self-made man.” He was born in a little hut consisting of “wattle and dab,” and as soon as he could make himself heard was sent into the fields to “mind the birds.” Early in the November mornings, immediately after the winter sowings, he would be seen with his little bag of brown bread round his neck, trudging along with a merry whistle, as happy as if he had been going home to a bright fire and a plentiful breakfast of ham, eggs, and coffee. By degrees he had raised himself to the position of ploughman, and never ploughman drove a straighter or leveller furrow. He had won prizes at the annual ploughing and harrowing matches: and upon the strength of ten and sixpence a week had married Nancy Tugby, to whom he had been engaged off and on for eleven years. Nancy was a frugal housewife, and worked hard, morning, noon and night. She was quite a treasure
to Bumpkin; and, what with taking in a little washing, and what with going out to do a little charing, and what with Tom’s skill in mending cart-harness (nearly all the cart-harness in the neighbourhood was in a perpetual state of “mendin’”), they had managed to put together in a year or two enough money to buy a sow. This, Tom always said, was “his first start.” And mighty proud they both were as they stood together of a Sunday morning looking at this wonderful treasure. The sow soon had pigs, and the pigs got on and were sold, and then the money was expended in other things, which in their turn proved equally remunerative. Then Tom got a piece of land, and next a pet ewe-lamb, and so on, until little by little wealth accumulated, and he rented at last, after a long course of laborious years, from the Squire, a small homestead called “Southwood Farm,” consisting of some fifty acres. Let it not be supposed that the accession of an extra head of live stock was a small matter. Everything is great or little by relation. I believe the statesman himself knows no greater pleasure when he first obtains admission to the Cabinet, than Tom did when he took possession of his little farm. And he certainly experienced as great a joy when he got a fresh pig as any young barrister does when he secures a new client.
Southwood Farm was a lovely homestead, situated near a very pretty river, and in the midst of the most picturesque scenery. The little rivulet (for it was scarcely more) twisted about in the quaintest conceivable manner, almost encircling the cosy farm; while on the further side rose abruptly from the water’s edge high embankments studded thickly with oak, ash, and an undergrowth of saplings of almost every variety. The old house was spacious for
the size of the farm, and consisted of a large living-room, ceiled with massive oak beams and oak boards, which were duly whitewashed, and looked as white as the sugar on a wedding cake. The fireplace was a huge space with seats on either side cut in the wall; while from one corner rose a rude ladder leading to a bacon loft. Dog-irons of at least a century old graced the brick hearth, while the chimney-back was adorned with a huge slab of iron wrought with divers quaint designs, and supposed to have been in some way or other connected with the Roman invasion, as it had been dug up somewhere in the neighbourhood, by whom or when no one ever knew. There was an inner chamber besides the one we are now in, which was used as a kitchen; while on the opposite side was a little parlour with red-tiled floor and a comparatively modern grate. This was the reception room, used chiefly when any of the ladies from “t’Squoire’s” did Mrs. Bumpkin the honour to call and taste her tea-cakes or her gooseberry wine. The thatched roof was gabled, and the four low-ceiled bedrooms had each of them a window in a gable. The house stood in a well-stocked garden, beyond which was a lovely green meadow sloping to the river side. In front was the little farm-yard, with its double-bayed barn, its lean-to cow-houses, its stables for five horses, and its cosy loft. Then there were the pigstyes and the henhouses: all forming together a very convenient and compact homestead. Adjoining the home meadow was a pretty orchard, full of apple, pear, cherry and plum trees; and if any one could imagine that Mr. and Mrs. Bumpkin had no eye or taste for the beautiful, I would have advised that ill-conditioned person to visit those good people of a Sunday morning after “brakfast” when
the orchard was in full blossom. This beautiful picture it was not only Mr. and Mrs. Bumpkin’s special joy to behold, but their great and proud delight to show; and if they had painted the blossoms themselves they could not have felt more intense enjoyment and satisfaction.
There was one other feature about the little farm which I must mention, because it is one of the grandest and most beautiful things in nature, and that is the magnificent “Old Oak” that stood in the corner of one of the home fields, and marked the boundary of the farm in that direction. If the measure of its girth would be interesting to the reader to know, it was just twenty-seven feet: not the largest in England certainly, notwithstanding which the tree was one of the grandest and most beautiful. It towered high into the air and spread its stalwart branches like giant trees in all directions. It was said to be a thousand years old, and to be inhabited by owls and ghosts. Whether the ghosts lived there or not I am unable to say, but from generation to generation the tradition was handed down and believed to be true. Such was Mr. Bumpkin’s home, in my dream: the home of Peace and Plenty, Happiness and Love.
The man who was contemplating Mr. Bumpkin’s pigs on this same Sunday morning was also a “self-made man,” whose name was Josiah Snooks. He was not made so well as Bumpkin, I should say, by a great deal, but nevertheless was a man who, as things go, was tolerably well put together. He was the village coal-merchant, not a Cockerell by any means, but a merchant who would have a couple of trucks of “Derby Brights” down at a time, and sell them round the village by the hundredweight. No doubt he was a very thrifty man, and to the extent, so some people said, of nipping the poor
in their weight. And once he nearly lost the contract for supplying the coal-gifts at Christmas on that account. But he made it a rule to attend church very regularly as the season came round, and so did Mrs. Josiah Snooks; and it will require a great deal of “nipping” to get over that in a country village, I promise you. I did not think Snooks a nice looking man, by any means; for he had a low forehead, a scowling brow, a nobbly fat nose, small eyes, one of which had a cast, a large mouth always awry and distorted with a sneer, straight hair that hung over his forehead, and a large scar on his right cheek. His teeth were large and yellow, and the top ones protruded more, I thought, than was at all necessary. Nor was he generally beliked. In fact, so unpopular was this man with the poor, that it was a common thing for mothers to say to their children when they could not get them in of a summer’s evening, “You, Betsy,” or “You, Jane, come in directly, or old Snooks will have you!” A warning which always produced the desired effect.
No one could actually tell whether Snooks had made money or merely pretended to possess it. Some said they knew he had, for he lived so niggardly; others said the coal trade was not what it was; and there were not wanting people who hinted that old Betty Bodger’s house and garden—which had been given to her years ago by the old squire, what for, nobody knew—had been first mortgaged to Josiah and then sold to him and “taken out in coals.” A very cunning man was Snooks; kept his own counsel—I don’t mean a barrister in wig and gown on his premises—but in the sense of never divulging what was in his sagacious mind. He was known as a universal buyer of everything that he could turn a penny out of; and he sold everybody whenever
he got the chance. Such was the character of old Snooks.
How then came our good guileless friend Bumpkin to be associated with such a man on this beautiful Sunday morning? I can only answer: there are things in this world which admit of no explanation. This, so far as I am concerned, was one.
“They be pooty pork,” said Mr. Bumpkin.
“Middlin’,” rejoined the artful Snooks.
“They be a mighty dale more an middlin’, if you come to thic,” said the farmer.
“I’ve seen a good deal better,” remarked Snooks. This was always his line of bargaining.
“Well, I aint,” returned Bumpkin, emphatically. “Look at that un—why, he be fit for anything—a regler pictur.”
“What’s he worth?” said Snooks. “Three arf crowns?” That was Snooks’ way of dealing.
“Whisht!” exclaimed Bumpkin; “and four arf-crowns wouldn’t buy un.” That was Bumpkin’s way.
Snooks expectorated and gave a roar, which he intended for a laugh, but which made every pig jump off its feet and dive into the straw.
“I tell ’ee what, maister Bumpkin, I doant want un”—that was his way again; “but I doant mind giving o’ thee nine shillings for that un.”
“Thee wunt ’ave un—not a farden less nor ten if I knows it; ye doant ’ave we loike that, nuther—ye beant sellin’ coals, maister Snooks—no, nor buyin’ pigs if I knows un.”
How far this conversation would have proceeded, and whether any serious altercation would have arisen, I know not; but at this moment a combination of
circumstances occurred to interrupt the would-be contracting parties. First, Mrs. Bumpkin, who had been preparing the Sunday dinner, came across the yard with her apron full of cabbage-leaves and potato-peelings, followed by an immense number of chickens, while the ducks in the pond clapped their wings, and flew and ran with as much eagerness as though they were so many lawyers seeking some judicial appointment, and Mrs. Bumpkin were Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain; and they made as much row as a flock of Chancery Barristers arguing about costs. Then came along, with many a grunt and squeak, a pig or two, who seemed to be enjoying a Sunday holiday in their best clothes, for they had just come out of a puddle of mud; then came slouching along, a young man whose name was Joe (or, more correctly speaking, Joseph Wurzel), a young man of about seventeen, well built, tall and straight, with a pleasant country farm-house face, a roguish black eye, even teeth, and a head of brown straight hair, that looked as if the only attention it ever received was an occasional trimming with a reap-hook, and a brush with a bush-harrow.
It was just feeding time; that was why Joe came up at this moment; and in addition to all these circumstances, there came faintly booming through the trees the ding of the old church bell, reminding Mr. Bumpkin that he must “goo and smarten oop a bit” for church. He already had on his purple cord trousers, and, as Joe termed it, his hell-fire waistcoat with the flames coming out of it in all directions; but he had to put on his drab “cooat” and white smock-frock, and then walk half a mile before service commenced. He always liked to be there before the Squire, and see him and his daughters, Miss Judith and Miss Mary, come in.
So he had to leave the question of the “walley” of the pig and attend to the more important interests of his immortal soul. But now as he was going comes the point to which the reader’s special attention is directed. He had got about six yards from the stye, or it may have been a little more, when Snooks cried out:
“I’ve bought un for nine and six.”
To which Mr. Bumpkin replied, without so much as turning his head—
“’Ave ur.”
Now this expression, according to Chitty on Contracts, would mean, “Have you, indeed? Mr. Snooks.” But the extreme cunning of Josiah converted it into “’Ave un,” which, by the same learned authority would signify, “Very well, Mr. Snooks, you can have him.”
CHAPTER II.
The simplicity and enjoyments of a country life depicted.
A quiet day was Sunday on Southwood Farm. Joe used to slumber in the meadows among the buttercups, or in the loft, or near the kitchen-fire, as the season and weather invited. That is to say, until such time as, coming out of Sunday School (for to Sunday School he sometimes went) he saw one of the fairest creatures he had ever read about either in the Bible or elsewhere! It was a very strange thing she should be so different from everybody else: not even the clergyman’s daughters—no, nor the Squire’s daughters, for the matter of that—looked half so nice as pretty Polly Sweetlove, the housemaid at the Vicar’s.
“Now look at that,” said Joe, as he went along the lane on that Sunday when he first beheld this divine creature. “I’m danged if she beant about the smartest lookin o’ any on ’em. Miss Mary beant nothing to her: it’s a dandelion to a toolup.”
So ever since that time Joe had slept less frequently in the hay-loft on a Sunday afternoon; and, be it said to his credit, had attended his church with greater punctuality. The vicar took great notice of the lad’s religious tendencies, and had him to his night-school at the vicarage, in consequence; and certainly no vicar ever
knew a boy more regular in his attendance. He was there waiting to go in ever so long before the school began, and was always the very last to leave the premises.
Often he would peep over the quick-set hedge into the kitchen-window, just to catch a glance of this lovely angel. And yet, so far as he could tell, she had never looked at him. When she opened the door, Joe always felt a thrill run through him as if some extraordinary thing had happened. It was a kind of jump; and yet he had jumped many times before that: “it wasn’t the sort of jump,” he said, “as a chap gits either from bein’ frit or bein’ pleased.” And what to make of it he didn’t know. Then Polly’s cap was about the loveliest thing, next to Polly herself, he had ever seen. It was more like a May blossom than anything else, or a beautiful butterfly on the top of a water-lily. In fact, all the rural images of a rude but not inartistic mind came and went as this country boy thought of his beautiful Polly. As he ploughed the field, if he saw a May-blossom in the hedgerow, it reminded him of Polly’s cap; and even the little gentle daisy was like Polly herself. Pretty Polly was everywhere!
Mr. and Mrs. Bumpkin, on a fine Sabbath afternoon, would take their pastime in the open air. First Mr. Bumpkin would take down his long churchwarden pipe from its rack on the ceiling, where it lay in close companionship with an ancient flint-gun; then he would fill it tightly, so as to make it last the longer, with tobacco from his leaden jar; and then, having lighted it, he and his wife would go out of the back door, through the garden and the orchard, and along by the side of the quiet river. By their side, as a matter of course, came
Tim the Collie (named after Mrs. Bumpkin’s grandfather Timothy), who knew as well as possible every word that was being said. If Mrs. Bumpkin only asked, “Where is Betsy?” (that was the head Alderney cow) Tim would bark and fly across to the meadow where she was; and then, having said to her and to the five other Alderney cows and four heifers, “Why, here’s master and missus coming round to look at you, why on earth don’t you come and see them?” up the whole herd would come, straggling one after the other, to the meadow where Mr. and Mrs. Bumpkin were waiting for them; and all would look over the hedge, as much as to say, “How d’ye do, master, and how d’ye do, missus; what a nice day, isn’t it?” exactly in the same manner as men and women greet one another as often as they meet. And then there was the old donkey, Jack, whom Tim would chaff no matter when or where he saw him. I believe if Tim had got him in church, he would have chaffed him. It was very amusing to see Jack duck his head and describe a circle as Tim swept round him, barking with all his might, and yet only laughing all the while. Sometimes Jack, miscalculating distances—he wasn’t very great at mathematics—and having no eye for situations, would kick out vigorously with his hind legs, thinking Tim was in close proximity to his heels; whereas the sagacious and jocular Tim was leaning on his outstretched fore-feet immediately in front of Jack’s head.
Then there was another sight, not the least interesting on these afternoon rambles: in the far meadow, right under “the lids,” as they were called, lived the famous Bull of Southwood Farm. He was Mrs. Bumpkin’s pet. She had had him from a baby, and used to feed him in
his infant days from a bottle by the kitchen fire. And so docile was he that, although few strangers would be safe in intruding into his presence, he would follow Mrs. Bumpkin about, as she said, “just like a Christian.” The merits of this bull were the theme, on all appropriate occasions, of Mrs. Bumpkin’s unqualified praise. If the Vicar’s wife called, as she sometimes did, to see how Mrs. Bumpkin was getting on, Mrs. Bumpkin’s “baby” (that is the bull) was sure to be brought up—I don’t mean by the nurse, but in conversation. No matter how long she waited her opportunity, Mrs. Goodheart never left without hearing something of the exploits of this remarkable bull. In truth, he was a handsome, well-bred fellow. He had come from the Squire’s—so you may be sure his breed was gentlemanly in the extreme; and his grandmother, on the maternal side, had belonged to the Bishop of Winchester; so you have a sufficient guarantee, I hope, for his moral character and orthodox principles. Indeed, it had been said that no dissenter dared pass through the meadow where he was, in consequence of his connection with the Establishment. Now, on the occasions when Mr. and Mrs. Bumpkin took their walks abroad through the meadows to see their lambkins and their bull skip, this is what would invariably happen. First, Mrs. Bumpkin would go through the little cosy-looking gate in the corner of the meadow, right down by the side of the old boat-house; then Mr. Bumpkin would follow, holding his long pipe in one hand and his ash-stick in the other. Then, away in the long distance, at the far end of the meadow (he was always up there on these occasions), stood “Sampson” (that was the bull), with his head turned right round towards his master and mistress, as
if he were having his photograph taken. Thus he stood for a moment; then down went his huge forehead to the ground; up went his tail to the sky; then he sent a bellow along the earth which would have frightened anybody but his “mother,” and started off towards his master and mistress like a ship in a heavy sea; sometimes with his keel up in the air, and sometimes with his prow under water: it not only was playful, it was magnificent, and anybody unaccustomed to oxen might have been a little terrified by the furious glare of his eyes and the terrible snort of his nostrils as he approached.
Not so Mrs. Bumpkin, who held out her hand, and ejaculated,
“My pretty baby; my sweet pet; good Sampson!” and many other expressions of an endearing character.
“Good Sampson” looked, snorted, danced, plunged and careered; and then came up and let Mrs. Bumpkin stroke and pat him; while Bumpkin looked on, smoking his pipe peacefully, and thinking what a fine fellow he, the bull, was, and what a great man he, Bumpkin, must be to be the possessor of “sich!”
Thus the peaceful afternoon would glide quietly and sweetly away, and so would the bull, after the interesting interview was over.
They always returned in time for tea, and then Mrs. Bumpkin would go to evening service, while Mr. Bumpkin would wait for her on the little piece of green near the church, where neighbours used to meet and chat of a Sunday evening; such as old Mr. Gosling, the market gardener, and old Master Mott, the head gardener to the Squire, and Master Cole, the farmer, and various others, the original inhabitants of Yokelton; discussing
the weather and the crops, the probability of Mr. Tomson getting in again at the vestry as waywarden; what kind of a highway rate there would be for the coming year; how that horse got on that Mr. Sooby bought at the fair; and various other matters of importance to a village community. They would also pass remarks upon any striking personage who passed them on his way to church. Mr. Prigg, for instance, the village lawyer, who, they said, was a remarkably upright and down-straight sort of man; although his wife, they thought, was “a little bit stuck up like” and gave herself airs a little different from Mrs. Goodheart, who would “always talk to ’em jist the same as if she was one o’ th’ people.” So that, on the whole, they entertained themselves very amicably until such time as the “organ played the people out of church.” Then every one looked for his wife or daughter, as the case might be, and wished one another good night: most of them having been to church in the morning, they did not think it necessary to repeat the performance in the evening.
CHAPTER III.
Showing how true it is that it takes at least two to make a bargain or a quarrel.
The day after the events which I have recorded, while the good farmer and his wife were at breakfast, which was about seven o’clock, Joe presented himself in the sitting-room, and said:
“Plase, maister, here be t’ money for t’ pig.”
“Money for t’ pig,” exclaimed Mr. Bumpkin; “what’s thee mean, lad? what pig?”
“Maister Snooks!” said Joe, “there ur be, gwine wi’ t’ pig in t’ barrer.”
Nothing shall induce me to repeat the language of Mr. Bumpkin, as he jumped up from the table, and without hat or cap rushed out of the room, followed by Joe, and watched by Mrs. Bumpkin from the door. Just as he got to the farmyard by one gate, there was Snooks leaving it by another with Mr. Bumpkin’s pig in a sack in the box barrow which he was wheeling.
“Hulloa!” shouted the farmer; “hulloa here! Thee put un down—dang thee, what be this? I said thee shouldn’t ave un, no more thee sha’n’t. I beant gwine to breed Chichster pigs for such as thee at thy own price, nuther.” Snooks grinned and went on his way, saying;
“I bought un and I’ll ’ave un.”
“An I’ll ’ave thee, dang’d if I doant, afore jussices; t’ Squoire’ll tell thee.”
“I doant keer for t’ Squire no more nor I do for thee, old Bumpkin; thee be a cunnin’ man, but thee sold I t’ pig and I’ll ’ave un, and I got un too: haw! haw! haw! an thee got t’ money—nine-and-six—haw! haw! haw!”
Mr. Bumpkin by this time came up to him, but was so much out of breath, or “winded,” that he was unable to carry on the conversation, so he just tapped the bag with his stick as if to be certain the pig was there, and sure enough it was, if you might judge by the extraordinary wriggling that went on inside the bag.
The indomitable Snooks, however, with the largest and most hideous grin I ever saw, pushed on with his barrow, and Mr. Bumpkin having now sufficiently recovered his breath, said,
“Thee see ur tak un, didn’t thee, Joe?”
“Sure did ur,” answered the lad. “I seed un took un clane out o’ the stye, and put un in the sack, and wheeled un away.”
“Ha! so ur did, Joe; stick to that, lad—stick to un.”
“And thee seed I pay th’ money for un, Joe, didn’t thee?” laughed Snooks. “Seed I put un on t’ poast, and thee took un oop—haw! haw! haw! I got t’ pig and thee got t’ money—haw! haw! haw! Thee thowt thee’d done I, and I done thee—haw! haw! haw!”
And away went Snooks and away went pig; but Snooks’ laugh remained, and every now and then Snooks turned his head and showed his large yellow teeth and roared again.
The rage of Mr. Bumpkin knew no bounds. There are some things in life which are utterly unendurable; and one is the having your pig taken from you against your will and without your consent—an act which would be described legally as the rape of the pig. This offence,
in Mr. Bumpkin’s judgment, Snooks was guilty of; and therefore he resolved to do that which is considered usually a wise thing, namely, to consult a solicitor.
Now, if I were giving advice—which I do not presume to do—I should say that in all matters of difficulty a man should consult his wife, his priest, or his solicitor, and in the order in which I have named them. In the event of consulting a solicitor the next important question arises, “What solicitor?” I could write a book on this subject. There are numerous solicitors, within my acquaintance, to whom I would entrust my life and my character; there are some, not of my acquaintance, but of my knowledge, into whose hands, if I had one spark of Christian feeling left, I would not see my enemy delivered. There is little difference between one class of men and another as to natural disposition; and whether you take one or another, you must find the shady character. But where the opportunities for mischief are so great as they are in the practice of the Law, it is necessary that the utmost care should be exercised in committing one’s interests to the keeping of another. Had Mr. Bumpkin been a man of the world he would have suspected that under the most ostentatious piety very often lurked the most subtle fraud. Good easy man, had he been going to buy a hay-stack, he would not have judged by the outside but have put his “iron” into it; he could not put his iron into Mr. Prigg, I know, but he need not have taken him by his appearance alone. I may observe that if Mr. Bumpkin had consulted his sensible and affectionate spouse, or a really respectable solicitor, this book would not have been written. If he had consulted the Vicar, possibly another book might have been written; but, as it was, he resolved to consult
Mr. Prigg in the first instance. Now Mrs. Bumpkin, except as the mother of the illustrious Bull, has very little to do with this story. Mr. Prigg is one of its leading characters; but in my description of that gentleman I am obliged to be concise: I must minimize Prigg, great as he is, and I trust that in doing so I shall prospectively minimize all future Priggs that may ever appear on the world’s stage. I do not attempt to pulverize him, that would require the crushing pestle of the legislature; but merely to make him as little as I can, with due consideration for the requirements of my story.
I should be thought premature in mentioning Prigg, but that he was a gentleman of great pretensions in the little village of Yokelton. Gentleman by Act of Parliament, and in his own estimation, you may be sure he was respected by all around him. That was not many, it is true, for his house was the last of the straggling village. He was a man of great piety and an extremely white neck-cloth; attended the parish church regularly, and kept his white hair well brushed upwards—as though, like the church steeple, it was to point the way at all times. He was the most amiable of persons in regard to the distribution of the parish gifts; and, being a lawyer it was not considered by the churchwardens, a blacksmith and a builder, safe to refuse his kind and generous assistance. He involved the parish in a law-suit once, in a question relating to the duty to repair the parish pump; and since that time everyone knew better than to ignore Mr. Prigg. I have heard that the money spent in that action would have repaired all the parish pumps in England for a century, but have no means of ascertaining the truth of this statement.
Mr. Prigg was a man whose merits were not appreciated
by the local gentry, who never asked him to dinner. Virtue is thus sometimes ill-rewarded in this world. And Mrs. Prigg’s virtue had also been equally ignored when she had sought, almost with tears, to obtain tickets for the County Ball.
Mr. Prigg was about sixty years old, methodical in his habits, punctilious in his dress, polite in his demeanour, and precise in his language. He wore a high collar of such remarkable stiffness that his shoulders had to turn with his head whenever it was necessary to alter his position. This gave an appearance of respectability to the head, not to be acquired by any other means. It was, indeed, the most respectable head I ever saw either in the flesh or in marble.
Mr. Prigg had descended from the well-known family of Prigg, and he prided himself on the circumstance. How often was he seen in the little churchyard of Yokelton of a Sunday morning, both before and after service, pointing with family pride to the tombstone of a relative which bore this beautiful and touching inscription:—
here
lie the ashes of
Mr. John Prigg,
of smith street, bristol,
originally of duck green, yokelton,
who under peculiar disadvantages
which to common minds
would have been a bar to any exertions
raised himself from all obscure situations
of birth and fortune
by his own industry and frugality
to the enjoyment of a moderate competency.
he attained a peculiar excellence
in penmanship and drawing
without the instructions of a master,
and to eminence in arithmetic,
the useful and the higher branches of
the mathematics,
by going to school only a year and eight months.
he
died a bachelor
on the 24th day of october, 1807,
in the 55th year of his age;
and without forgetting
relations friends and acquaintances
bequeathed one fifth of his property
to public charity.
reader
the world is open to thee.
“go thou and do likewise.” [22]
It was generally supposed that this beautiful composition was from the pen of Mr. Prigg himself, who, sitting as he did so high on his branch of the Family Tree,
could look
with pride and sympathy
on
the manly struggles
of a humbler member
lower down!
High Birth, like Great Wealth, can afford to condescend!
Mrs. Prigg was worthy of her illustrious consort. She was of the noble family of the Snobs, and in every way did honour to her progenitors. As the reader is aware, there is what is known as a “cultivated voice,” the result of education—it is absolutely without affectation: there is also the voice which, in imitation of the well-trained one, is little more than a burlesque, and is
affected in the highest degree: this was the only fault in Mrs. Prigg’s voice.
Mr. Prigg’s home was charmingly small, but had all the pretensions of a stately country house—its conservatory, its drawing-room, its study, and a dining-room which told you as plainly as any dining-room could speak, “I am related to Donkey Hall, where the Squire lives: I belong to the same aristocratic family.”
Then there was the great heavy-headed clock in the passage. He did not appear at all to know that he had come down in the world through being sold by auction for two pounds ten. He said with great plausibility, “My worth is not to be measured by the amount of money I can command; I am the same personage as before.” And I thought it a very true observation, but the philosophy thereof was a little discounted by his haughty demeanour, which had certainly gone up as he himself had come down; and that is a reason why I don’t as a rule like people who have come down in the world—they are sure to be so stuck up. But I do like a person who has come down in the world and doesn’t at all mind it—much better than any man who has got up in the world from the half-crown, and does mind it upon all occasions.
Mrs. Prigg, apart from her high descent, was a very aristocratic person: as the presence of the grand piano in the drawing-room would testify. She could no more live without a grand piano than ordinary people could exist without food: the grand piano, albeit a very dilapidated one, was a necessity of her well-descended condition. It was no matter that it displaced more useful furniture; in that it only imitated a good many other persons, and it told you whenever you entered the room: “You see
me here in a comparatively small way, but understand, I have been in far different circumstances: I have been courted by the great, and listened to by the aristocracy of England. I follow Mrs. Prigg wherever she goes: she is a lady; her connections are high, and she never yet associated with any but the best families. You could not diminish from her very high breeding: put her in the workhouse, and with me to accompany her, it would be transformed into a palace.”
Mr. Prigg was by no means a rich man as the world counts richness. No one ever heard of his having a “practice,” although it was believed he did a great deal in the way of “lending his name” and profession to impecunious and uneducated men; who could turn many a six-and-eightpence under its prestige. So great is the moral “power of attorney,” as contradistinguished from the legal “power of attorney.”
But Prigg, as I have hinted, was not only respectable, he was good: he was more than that even, he was notoriously good: so much so, that he was called, in contradistinction to all other lawyers, “Honest Lawyer Prigg”; and he had further acquired, almost as a universal title, the sobriquet of “Nice.” Everybody said, “What a very nice man Mr. Prigg is!” Then, in addition to all this, he was considered clever—why, I do not know; but I have often observed that men can obtain the reputation of being clever at very little cost, and without the least foundation. The cheapest of all ways is to abuse men who really are clever, and if your abuse be pungently and not too coarsely worded, it will be accepted by the ignorant as criticism. Nothing goes down with shallow minds like criticism, and the severest criticism is generally based on envy and jealousy.
Mr. Prigg, then, was clever, respectable, good, and nice, remarkably potent qualities for success in this world.
So I saw in my dream that Mr. Bumpkin, whose feelings were duly aroused, turned his eye upon Honest Lawyer Prigg, and resolved to consult him upon the grievous outrage to which he had been subjected at the hands of the cunning Snooks: and without more ado he resolved to call on that very worthy and extremely nice gentleman.
CHAPTER IV.
On the extreme simplicity of going to law.
With his right leg resting on his left, with his two thumbs nicely adjusted, and with the four points of his right fingers in delicate contact with the fingers of his left hand, sat Honest Lawyer Prigg, listening to the tale of unutterable woe, as recounted by Farmer Bumpkin.
Sometimes the good man’s eyes looked keenly at the farmer, and sometimes they scanned vacantly the ceiling, where a wandering fly seemed, like Mr. Bumpkin, in search of consolation or redress. Sometimes Mr. Prigg nodded his respectable head and shoulders in token of his comprehension of Mr. Bumpkin’s lucid statement: then he nodded two or three times in succession, implying that the Court was with Mr. Bumpkin, and occasionally he would utter with a soft soothing voice,
“Quite so!”
When he said “quite so,” he parted his fingers, and reunited them with great precision; then he softly tapped them together, closed his eyes, and seemed lost in profound meditation.
Here Mr. Bumpkin paused and stared. Was Mr. Prigg listening?
“Pray proceed,” said the lawyer, “I quite follow you;—never mind about what anybody else had offered you for the pig—the question really is whether you actually sold this pig to Snooks or not—whether the bargain was complete or inchoate.”
Mr. Bumpkin stared again. “I beant much of a scollard, sir,” he observed; “but I’ll take my oath I never sold un t’pig.”
“That is the question,” remarked the lawyer. “You say you did not? Quite so; had this Joe of yours any authority to receive money on your behalf?”
“Devil a bit,” answered Bumpkin.
“Excuse me,” said Mr. Prigg, “I have to put these questions: it is necessary that I should understand where we are: of course, if you did not sell the pig, he had no right whatever to come and take it out of the sty—it was a trespass?”
“That’s what I says,” said Bumpkin; and down went his fist on Mr. Prigg’s table with such vehemence that the solicitor started as though aroused by a shock of dynamite.
“Let us be calm,” said the lawyer, taking some paper from his desk, and carefully examining the nib of a quill pen, “Let me see, I think you said your name was Thomas?”
“That’s it, sir; and so was my father’s afore me.”
“Thomas Bumpkin?”
“I beant ashamed on him.”
And then Mr. Prigg wrote out a document and read it aloud; and Mr. Bumpkin agreeing with it, scratched his name at the bottom—very badly scratched it was, but well enough for Mr. Prigg. This was simply to retain Mr. Prigg as his solicitor in the cause of Bumpkin v. Snooks.
“Quite so, quite so; now let me see; be calm, Mr. Bumpkin, be calm; in all these matters we must never lose our self-possession. You see, I am not excited.”
“Noa,” said Bumpkin; “but then ur dint tak thy pig.”
“Quite true, I can appreciate the position, it was no doubt a gross outrage. Now tell me—this Snooks, as I understand, is the coal-merchant down the village?”
“That’s ur,” said Bumpkin.
“I suppose he’s a man of some property, eh?”
Mr. Bumpkin looked for a few moments without speaking, and then said:
“He wur allays a close-fisted un, and I should reckon have a goodish bit o’ property.”
“Because you know,” remarked the solicitor, “it is highly important, when one wins a case and obtains damages, that the defendant should be in a position to pay them.”
This was the first time that ever the flavour of damages had got into Bumpkin’s mouth; and a very nice flavour it was. To beat Snooks was one thing, a satisfaction; to make him pay was another, a luxury.
“Yes, sir,” he repeated; “I bleeve he ave, I bleeve he ave.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Wull, fust and foremust, I knows he lent a party a matter of a hundred pound, for I witnessed un.”
“Then he hasn’t got that,” said the lawyer.
“Yes ur ave, sir, or how so be as good; for it wur a morgage like, and since then he’ve got the house.”
Mr. Prigg made a note, and asked where the house was.
“It be widder Jackson’s.”
“Indeed; very well.”
“An then there be the bisness.”
“Exactly,” said the lawyer, “horses and carts, weighing machines, and so on?”
“And the house he live in,” said Bumpkin, “I know as ow that longs to him.”
“Very well; I think that will be enough to start with.” Now, Mr. Prigg knew pretty well the position of the respective parties himself; so it was not so much for his own information that he made these inquiries as to infuse into Bumpkin’s mind a notion of the importance of the case.
“Now,” said he, throwing down the pen, “this is a very serious matter, Mr. Bumpkin.”
This was a comfort, and Bumpkin looked agreeably surprised and vastly important.
“A very serious case,” and again the tips of the fingers were brought in contact.
“I spoase we can’t bring un afore jusseses, sir?”
“Well, you see the criminal law is dangerous; you can’t get damages, and you may get an action for malicious prosecution.”
“I think we ought to mak un pay for ’t.”
“That is precisely my own view, but I am totally at a loss to understand the reason of such outrageous conduct on the part of this Snooks. Now don’t be offended, Mr. Bumpkin, if I put a question to you. You know, we lawyers like to search to the bottom of things. I can understand, if you had owed him any money—”
“Owe un money!” exclaimed Bumpkin contemptuously; “why I could buy un out and out.”
“Ah, quite so, quite so; so I should have supposed from what I know of you, Mr. Bumpkin.”
“Lookee ere, sir,” said the farmer; “I bin a ard workin man all my life, paid my way, twenty shillins in the pound, and doant owe a penny as fur as I knows.”
“And if you did, Mr. Bumpkin,” said the lawyer with a good-natured laugh, “I dare say you could pay.”
“Wull, I bleeve there’s no man can axe me for nothing; and thank God, what I’ve got’s my own; and there aint many as got pootier stock nor mine—all good bred uns, Mr. Prigg.”
“Yes, I’ve often heard your cattle praised.”
“He be a blagard if ur says I owed un money.”
“O, dear, Mr. Bumpkin, pray don’t misunderstand me; he did not, that I am aware, allege that he took the pig because you owed him money; and even if you did, he could not legally have done so. Now this is not a mere matter of debt; it’s a very serious case of trespass.”
“Ay; zo ’t be sir; that was my bleef, might jist as wull a tooked baacon out o’ baacon loft.”
“Just the same. Quite so—quite so!”
“And I want thee, Mr. Prigg, to mak un pay for’t—mak un pay, sir; it beant so much th’ pig.”
“Quite so: quite so: that were a very trifling affair, and might be settled in the County Court; but, in fact, it’s not the pig at all, it’s trespass, and you want to make him answerable in damages.”
“That’s it, sir; you’ve got un.”
“I suppose an apology and a return of the pig would not be enough.”
“I’ll make un know he beant everybody,” said Bumpkin.
“Quite so; now what shall we lay the damages at?”
“Wull, sir, as for that, I doant rightly know; if so be he’d pay down, that’s one thing, but it’s my bleef as you might jist as wull try to dror blood out of a stoane as git thic feller to do what’s right.”
“Shall we say a hundred pounds and costs?”
Never did man look more astonished than Bumpkin. A hundred pounds! What a capital thing going to law must be! But, as the reader knows, he was a remarkably discreet man, and never in the course of his dealing committed himself till the final moment. Whenever anybody made him a “bid,” he invariably met the offer with one form of refusal. “Nay, nay; it beant good enough: I bin offered moore.” And this had answered so well, that it came natural to Bumpkin to refuse on all occasions the first offer. It was not to be wondered at then that the question should be regarded in the light of an offer from Snooks himself. Now he could hardly say “I bin bid moore money,” because the case wasn’t in the market; but he could and did say the next best thing to it, namely:—
“I wunt let un goo for that—’t be wuth moore!”
“Very well,” observed Prigg; “so long as we know: we can lay our damages at what we please.”
Now there was great consolation in that. The plaintiff paused and rubbed his chin. “What do thee think, sir?”
“I think if he pays something handsome, and gives us an apology, and pays the costs, I should advise you to take it.”
“As you please, sir; I leaves it to you; I beant a hard man, I hope.”
“Very good; we will see what can be done. I shall bring this action in the Chancery Division.”
“Hem! I’ve eerd tell, sir, that if ever a case gets into that ere Coourt he niver comes out agin.”
“O, that’s all nonsense; there used to be a good deal of truth in that; but the procedure is now so altered
that you can do pretty much what you like: this is an age of despatch; you bring your action, and your writ is almost like a cheque payable on demand!”
“Wull, I beant no lawyer, never had nothing to do wi un in my life; but I should like to axe, sir, why thee’ll bring this ere case in Chancery?”
“Good; well, come now, I like to be frank; we shall get more costs?”
Mr. Bumpkin again rubbed his chin. “And do I get em?” he asked.
“Well, they go towards expenses; the other side always pays.”
This was a stroke of reasoning not to be gainsaid. But Mr. Prigg had a further observation to make on the subject, and it was this:
“After the case has gone on up to being ready for trial, and the Judges find that it is a case more fitting to be tried in the Common Law Courts, then an order is made transferring it, that is, sending it out of Chancery to be tried by one of the other Judges.”
“Can’t see un,” said Bumpkin, “I beant much of a scollard, but I tak it thee knows best.”
Mr. Prigg smiled: a beneficent, sympathizing smile.
“I dare say,” he said, “it looks a little mysterious, but we lawyers understand it; so, if you don’t mind, I shall bring it in the Chancery Division in the first instance; and nice and wild the other side will be. I fancy I see the countenance of Snooks’ lawyer.”
This was a good argument, and perfectly satisfactory to the unsophisticated mind of Bumpkin.
“And when,” he asked, “will ur come on, think’ee?”
“O, in due time; everything is done very quickly now—not like it used to be—you’d be surprised, we
used to have to wait years—yes, years, sir, before an action could be tried; and now, why bless my soul, you get judgment before you know where you are.”
How true this turned out to be may hereafter appear; but in a dream you never anticipate.
“I shall write at once,” said “Honest Prigg,” “for compensation and an apology; I think I would have an apology.”
“Make un pay—I doant so much keer for the t’other thing; that beant much quonsequence.”
“Quite so—quite so.” And with this observation Mr. Prigg escorted his client to the door.
CHAPTER V.
In which it appears that the sting of slander is not always in the head.
Mr. Prigg lost no time in addressing a letter to the ill-advised Josiah Snooks with the familiar and affectionate commencement of “Dear Sir,’” asking for compensation for the “gross outrage” he had committed upon “his client;” and an apology to be printed in such papers as he, the client, should select.
The “Dear Sir” replied, not in writing, for he was too artful for that, but by returning, as became his vulgar nature, Mr. Prigg’s letter in a very torn and disgusting condition.
To a gentleman of cultivated mind and sensitive nature, this was intolerable; and Mr. Prigg knew that even the golden bridge of compromise was now destroyed. He no longer felt as a mere lawyer, anxious in the interests of his client, which was a sufficient number of horse-power for anything, but like an outraged and insulted gentleman, which was more after the force of hydraulic pressure than any calculable amount of horse-power. It was clear to his upright and sensitive mind that Snooks was a low creature. Consequently all professional courtesies were at an end: the writ was issued and duly served upon the uncompromising Snooks. Now a writ is not a matter to grin at and to treat with
contempt or levity. Mr. Snooks could not return that document to Mr. Prigg, so he had to consider. And first he consulted his wife: this consultation led to a domestic brawl and then to his kicking one of his horses in the stomach. Then he threw a shovel at his dog, and next the thought occurred to him that he had better go and see Mr. Locust. This gentleman was a solicitor who practised at petty sessions. He did not practise much, but that was, perhaps, his misfortune rather than his fault. He was a small, fiery haired man, with a close cut tuft of beard; small eyes, and a pimply nose, which showed an ostentatious disdain for everything beneath it.
Mr. Locust was not at home, but would return about nine. At nine, therefore, the impatient Snooks appeared.
“Yes,” said Mr. Locust, as he looked at the writ, “I see this writ is issued by Mr. Prigg.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did he not write to you before issuing it?—dear me, this is very sharp practice—very sharp practice: the sharpest thing I ever heard of in all my life.”
“Wull, he did write, but I giv un as good as he sent.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Mr. Locust; “I am afraid you have committed yourself.”
“No I beant, sir,” said the cunning Snooks, with a grin, “no I beant.”
“You should never write without consulting a solicitor—bear that in mind, Mr. Snooks; it will be an invaluable lesson—hem!”
“I never writ, sir—I ony sent un his letter back.”
“Ah!” said Locust, “come now, that is better; but still you should have consulted me. I see this claim is for three hundred and fifty pounds—it’s for trespass. Now sit down quietly and calmly, and tell me the facts.”
And then he took pen and paper and placed himself in position to take his retainer and instructions.
“Wull, sir, it is as this: a Sunday mornin—no, a Sunday mornin week—I won’t tell no lie if I knows it—a Sunday mornin week—”
“Sunday morning week,” writes Locust.
“I buyd a pig off this ere man for nine and six: well, o’ the Monday mornin I goes with my barrer and a sack and I fetches the pig and gies the money to his man Joe Wurzel; leastways I puts it on the poast and he takes it up. Then out comes Bumpkin and swears I never bought un at all, gets in a rage and hits the bag wi’ a stick—”
“Now stop,” said the Lawyer; “are you quite sure he did not strike you? That’s the point.”
“Well, sir, he would a’ done if I adn’t a bobbed.”
“Good: that’s an assault in law. You are sure he would have struck you if you hadn’t ducked or bobbed your head?”
“In course it would, else why should I bob?”
“Just so—just so. Now then, we’ve got him there—we’ve got him nicely.”
Snooks’ eyes gleamed.
“Next I want to know: I suppose you didn’t owe him anything?”
“No, nor no other man,” said Snooks, with an air of triumph. “I worked hard for what I got, and no man can’t ax me for a farden. I allays paid twenty shillings in the pound.”
The reader will observe how virtuous both parties were on this point.
“So!” said Locust. “Now you haven’t told me all that took place.”
“Yes, yes; but I suppose there was something said between you—did you have any words—was he angry—did he call you any names or say anything in an angry way?”
“Well, not partickler—”
“Not particular: I will judge of that. Just tell me what was said.”
“When, sir?”
“Well, begin on the Sunday morning. What was first said?”
Then Snooks told the Solicitor all that took place, with sundry additions which his imagination supplied when his memory failed.
“And I member the price wull, becos he said ‘You beant sellin coals, recollect, so you doant ave me.”
“Ho! ho!” exclaimed Locust rubbing his hands, “You are sure he said that?” writing down the words carefully.
“I be.”
“That will do, we’ve got him: we’ve got him nicely. Was anybody present when he said this?”
“Yes, sir. Joe were there, and t’ best o’ my belief, Mrs. Bumpkin.”
“Never mind Mrs. Bumpkin. I don’t suppose she was there, if you come to recollect; it’s quite enough if Joe was present and could hear what was said. I suppose he could hear it?”
“Stood cloase by.”
“Very well—that is slander—and slander of a very gross kind. We’ve got him.”
“Be it?” said Snooks.
“I’ll show you,” said Locust; “in law a man slanders you if he insinuates that you are dishonest; now what
does this Bumpkin do? he says ‘you don’t have me,’ meaning thereby that you don’t trick him out of his pig; and, ‘you are not selling coals,’ meaning that when you do sell coals you do trick people. Do you see?—that you cheat them, in fact rob them.”
Snooks thought Mr. Locust the most wonderful man he had ever come across. This was quite a new way of putting it.
“But ur didn’t say as much,” he said, wondering whether that made any difference.
“Perfectly immaterial in law,” said Mr. Locust: “it isn’t what a man says, it’s what he means: you put that in by an innuendo—”
“A what, sir? begging pardon—”
“It’s what we lawyers call an innuendo: that is to say, making out that a man says so and so when he doesn’t.”
“I zee,” said the artful Snooks, quick at apprehending every point. “Then if he called a chap a devilish honest man and the innu—what d’ye call it, meant he were a thief, you got him?”
“Well,” said Mr. Locust, smiling, “that is going rather far, Mr. Snooks, but I see you understand what I mean.”
“I thinks so, sir. I thinks I has your meanin.”
“It’s a very gross slander,” observed Mr. Locust, “and especially upon a tradesman in your position. I suppose now you have lived in the neighbourhood a considerable time?”
“All my life, sir.”
“Ah! just so, just so—now let me see; and, if I remember rightly, you have a vote for the County.”
“I ave, sir, and allus votes blue, and that’s moore.”
“Then you’re on our side. I’m very glad indeed to hear that; a vote’s a vote, you know, now-a-days.”
Any one would have thought, to hear Mr. Locust, that votes were scarce commodities, whereas we know that they are among the most plentiful articles of commerce as well as the cheapest.
“And you have, I think, a family, Mr. Snooks.”
“Four on em, sir.”
“Ah! how very nice, how laudable to make a little provision for them: as I often say, if a man can only leave his children a few hundreds apiece, it’s something.”
The solicitor watched his client’s face as he uttered this profound truism, and the face being as open and genuine as was Snooks’ character, it said plainly enough “Yes, I have a few hundreds.”
“Well then,” continued Mr. Locust, “having been in business all these years, and being, as times go, tolerably successful, being a careful man, and having got together by honest industry a nice little independency—”
Here the learned gentleman paused, and here, unfortunately, Snooks’ open and candid heart revealed itself through his open and candid countenance.
“I believe,” said Mr. Locust, “I am right?”
“You’re about right, sir.”
“Very charming, very gratifying to one’s feelings,” continued Mr. Locust; “and then, just as you are beginning to get comfortable and getting your family placed in the world, here comes this what shall I call him, I never like to use strong language, this intolerable blackguard, and calls you a thief—a detestable thief.”
“Well, he didn’t use that air word, sir—I wool say that,” said Mr. Snooks.
“In law he did, my good man—he meant it and said
it—he insinuated that you cheated the poor—you serve a good many of the poor, I think?”
“I do, sir.”
“Well, he insinuated that you cheated them by giving short weight and bad coals—that is worse than being a thief, to my mind—such a man deserves hanging.”
“Damn him,” said Snooks, “that’s it, is it?”
“That’s it, my dear sir, smooth it over as you will. I don’t want to make more of it than necessary, but we must look at it fairly and study the consequences. Now I want to ask you particularly, because we must claim special damage for this, if possible—have you lost any customers through this outrageous slander?”
“Can’t say I have, rightly, sir.”
“No, but you will—mark my words, as soon as people hear of this they will cease to deal with you. They can’t deal with you.”
“I hope not, sir.”
“So do I; but let me tell Mr. Bumpkin” (here the learned man shook his forefinger as though it had been the often quoted finger of scorn) “that for every customer you lose we’ll make him answerable in damages. He’ll repeat this slander: take my advice and get some one to look out, and make a note of it—be on your guard!”
Snooks wiped the perspiration from his forehead and then threw his large coloured handkerchief into his hat, which he held by both hands between his knees,
“It be a bad case then, sir?”
“A very bad case for Bumpkin!” replied Mr. Locust; “let me have a list of your customers as soon as you can, and we shall see who leaves you in consequence of this slander. Does my friend, Mr. Overrighteous, deal with you? I think he does?”
“He do, sir, and have for five or six years—and a good customer he be.”
“Ah! now, there’s a man! Whatever you do don’t let Mr. Overrighteous know of it: he would leave you directly: a more particular man than that can’t be. Then again, there is my friend Flythekite, does he deal with you? Of course he does!”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’ll lose him—sure to lose him.”
Judging from Mr. Snooks’ countenance it would have been small damage if he did.
“Ve-ry well,” continued Locust, after a pause, “ve-ry well—just so.” Then he looked at the copy of the writ and perceived that it was dated eighteen hundred and ninety something instead of eighteen hundred and seventy something. So he said that the writ was wrong and they ought not to appear; “by which means,” said he, “we shall let them in at the start for a lot of costs—we shall let them in.”
“And will that stash the action?” asked Snooks.
“It will not stash ours,” said Locust. “I suppose you mean to go on whether he does or not? Your claim is for assault and slander.”
“As you please, sir.”
“No, no, as you please. I have not been called a thief—they haven’t said that I sell short weight and cheat and defraud the poor: my business will not be ruined—my character is not at stake.”
“Let un have it, sir; he be a bad un,” and here he rose to depart. Mr. Locust gave him a professional shake of the hand and wished him good day. But as the door was just about to be closed on his client, he remembered
something which he desired to ask, so he called, “Mr. Snooks!”
“Sir,” said the client.
“Is there any truth in the statement that this Bumpkin beats his wife?”
“I doant rightly know,” said Snooks, in a hesitating voice; “it may be true. I shouldn’t wonder—he’s just the sort o’ man.”
“Just enquire about that, will you?”
“I wool, sir,” said Snooks; and thus his interview with his Solicitor terminated.
Now the result of the enquiries as to the domestic happiness of Bumpkin was this; first, the question floated about in a vague sort of form, “Does Bumpkin beat his wife?” then it grew into “Have you heard that Bumpkin beats his wife?” and lastly, it was affirmed that Bumpkin “really did beat his wife.” And the scandal spread so rapidly that it soon reached the ears of plaintiff himself, who would have treated it with the contempt it deserved, knowing the quarter whence it came, but that it was so gross a calumny that he determined to give the lying Snooks no quarter, and to press his action with all the energy at his command.
After this there could be no compromise.
“I wish,” said Snooks to himself, as he smoked his pipe that evening, “I could a worked one o’ them there innerenders in my trade—I could a made summut on him.”
CHAPTER VI.
Showing how the greatest wisdom of Parliament may be thrown away on ungrateful people.
The first skirmish between the two doughty champions of the hostile forces took place over the misdated writ. Judgment was signed for want of appearance; and then came a summons to set it aside. The Judge set it aside, and the Divisional Court set aside the Judge, and the Court of Appeal set aside the Divisional Court upon the terms of the defendant paying the costs, and the writ being amended, &c. &c. And I saw that when the Judge in Chambers had hesitatingly and “not without grave doubt” set aside the judgment, Mr. Prigg said to Mr. Locust, “What a very nice point!” And Mr. Locust replied:
“A very nice point, indeed! Of course you’ll appeal?” And Mr. Quibbler, Mr. Locust’s pleader, said, “A very neat point!”
“Oh dear, yes,” answered Mr. Prigg.
And then Mr. Prigg’s clerk said to Mr. Locust’s clerk—“What a very nice point!” And Mr. Locust’s clerk rejoined that it was indeed a very nice point! And then Mr. Locust’s boy in the office said to Mr. Prigg’s boy in the office, “What a very nice point!” And Mr. Prigg’s boy, a pale tall lad of about five feet six, and of remarkably quiet demeanour, replied—
“A dam nice point!”
Next came letters from the respective Solicitors, suggesting a compromise in such terms that compromise became impossible; each affirming that he was so averse from litigation that almost any amicable arrangement that could be come to would be most welcome. Each required a sum of two hundred pounds and an apology in six morning papers. And I saw at the foot of one of Mr. Prigg’s letters, when the hope of compromise was nearly at an end, these touching words:
“Bumpkin’s blood’s up!”
And at the end of the answer thereto, this very expressive retort:
“You say Bumpkin’s blood is up; so is Snooks’—do your worst!”
As I desire to inform the lay reader as to the interesting course an action may take under the present expeditious mode of procedure, I must now state what I saw in my dream. The course is sinuosity itself in appearance, but that only renders it the more beautiful. The reader will be able to judge for himself of the simple method by which we try actions nowadays, and how very delightful the procedure is. The first skirmish cost Snooks seventeen pounds six shillings and eight-pence. It cost Bumpkin only three pounds seventeen shillings, or one heifer. Now commenced that wonderful process called “Pleading,” which has been the delight and the pride of so many ages; developing gradually century by century, until at last it has perfected itself into the most beautiful system of evasion and duplicity that the world has ever seen. It ranks as one of the fine Arts with Poetry and Painting. A great Pleader is truly a great Artist, and more imaginative than any other. The number of summonses at Chambers is only
limited by his capacity to invent them. Ask any respectable solicitor how many honest claims are stifled by proceedings at Chambers. And if I may digress in all sincerity for the purpose of usefulness, I may state that while recording my dream for the Press, Solicitors have begged of me to bring this matter forward, so that the Public may know how their interests are played with, and their rights stifled by the iniquitous system of proceedings at Chambers.
The Victorian age will be surely known as the Age of Pleading, Poetry, and Painting.
First, the Statement of Claim. Summons at Chambers to plead and demur; summons to strike out; summons to let in; summons to answer, summons not to answer; summonses for all sorts of conceivable and inconceivable objects; summonses for no objects at all except costs. And let me here say Mr. Prigg and Mr. Locust are not alone blameable for this: Mr. Quibbler, Mr. Locust’s Pleader, had more to do with this than the Solicitor himself. And so had Mr. Wrangler, the Pleader of Mr. Prigg. But without repeating what I saw, let the reader take this as the line of proceeding throughout, repeated in at least a dozen instances:—
The Judge at Chambers reversed the Master;
The Divisional Court reversed the Judge;
And the Court of Appeal reversed the Divisional Court.
And let this be the chorus:—
“What a very nice point!” said Prigg;
“What a very nice point!” said Locust;
“What a very nice point!” said Gride (Prigg’s clerk);
“What a d--- nice point!” said Horatio! (the pale boy).
Summons for particulars.—Chorus.
Further and better particulars.—Chorus.
Interrogatories—Summons to strike out.—Chorus.
Summons for further and better answers.—Chorus.
More summonses for more, further, better, and all sorts of things.—Chorus.
All this repeated by the other side, of course; because each has his proper innings. There is great fairness and impartiality in the game. Something was always going up from the foot of this Jacob’s ladder called “the Master” to the higher regions called the Court of Appeal. The simplest possible matter, which any old laundress of the Temple ought to have been competent to decide by giving both the parties a box on the ear, was taken before the Master, from the Master to the Judge, from the Judge to the Divisional Court, and from the Divisional Court to the Court of Appeal, at the expense of the unfortunate litigants; while Judges, who ought to have been engaged in disposing of the business of the country, were occupied in deciding legal quibbles and miserable technicalities. All this I saw in my dream. Up and down this ladder Bumpkin and Snooks were driven—one going up the front while the other was coming down the back. And I heard Bumpkin ask if he wasn’t entitled to the costs which the Court gave when he won. But the answer of Mr. Prigg was, “No, my dear sir, the labourer is worthy of his hire.” And I saw a great many more ups and downs on the ladder which I should weary the reader by repeating: they are all alike equally useless and equally contemptible. Then I thought that poor Bumpkin went up the ladder with a great bundle on his back; and his face seemed quite
changed, so that I hardly knew him, and I said to Horatio, the pale boy—
“Who is that going up now? It looks like Christian in the Pilgrim’s Progress.”
“Oh, no,” said Horatio, “that’s old Bumpkin—it’s a regler sweater for him, ain’t it?”
I said, “Whatever can it be? will he ever reach the top?”
Here Bumpkin seemed to slip, and it almost took my breath away; whereat the pale boy laughed, stooping down as he laughed, and thrusting his hands into his breeches pockets,
“By George!” he exclaimed, “what a jolly lark!”
“I hope he won’t fall,” I exclaimed. “What has he got on his back?”
“A demurrer,” said Horatio, laughing. “Look at him! That there ladder’s the Judicatur Act: don’t it reach a height? There’s as many rounds in that there ladder as would take a man a lifetime to go up if it was all spread out; it’s just like them fire escapes in reaching up, but nobody ever escapes by it.”
“It will break the poor man’s back,” said I, as he was a few feet from the top. And then in my dream I thought he fell; and the fright was so great that I awoke, and found I was sitting in my easy chair by the fire, and the pipe I had been smoking had fallen out of my hand.
* * * * *
“You’ve been dreaming,” said my wife; “and I fear have had a nightmare.” When I was thoroughly aroused, and had refilled my pipe, I told her all my dream.
Then cried she, “I hope good Mr. Bumpkin will get up safely with that great bundle.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said I, “whether he do or not; he will have to bear its burden, whether he take it up or bring it back. He will have to bring it down again after showing it to the gentlemen at the top.”
“What do they want to see it for?” cried she.
“They have no wish to see it,” I replied; “on the contrary, they would rather not. They will simply say he is a very foolish man for his pains to clamber up so high with so useless a burden.”
“But why don’t they check him?”
“Because they have no power; they look and wonder at the folly of mankind, who can devise no better scheme of amusement for getting rid of their money.”
“But the lawyers are wise people, and they should know better.”
“The lawyers,” said I, “do know better; and all respectable lawyers detest the complicated system which brings them more abuse than fees. They see men, permitted by the law, without character and conscience, bring disgrace on an honourable body of practitioners.”
“But do they not remonstrate?”
“They do, but with little effect; no one knows who is responsible for the mischief or how to cure it.”
“That is strange.”
“Yes, but the time will come when the people will insist on a cheaper and more expeditious system. Half-a-dozen solicitors and members of the junior bar could devise such a system in a week.”
“Then why are they not permitted to take it in hand?”
“Because,” said I, “Old Fogeyism has, at present, only got the gout in one leg; wait till he has it in both, and then Common Sense will rise to the occasion.”
“But what,” quoth she, “is this fine art you spoke of?”
“Pleading!”
“Yes; in what consists its great art?”
“In artfulness,” quoth I.
Then there was a pause, and at length I said, “I will endeavour to give you an illustration of the process of pleading from ancient history: you have heard, I doubt not, of Joseph and his Brethren.”
“O, to be sure,” cried she; “did they not put him in the pit?”
“Well, I believe they put him in the pit, but I am not referring to that. The corn in Egypt is what I mean.”
“When they found all their money in their sacks’ mouths?”
“Exactly. Now if Joseph had prosecuted those men for stealing the money, they would simply have pleaded not guilty, and the case would have been tried without any bother, and the defendants have been acquitted or convicted according to the wisdom of the judge, the skill of the counsel, and the common sense of the jury. But now suppose instead thereof, Joseph had brought an action for the price of the corn.”
“Would it not have been as simple?”
“You shall see. The facts would have been stated with some accuracy and a good deal of inaccuracy, and a good many things which were not facts would have been introduced. Then the defendants in their statement of defence would have denied that there was any such place
as Egypt as alleged; [52] denied that Pharaoh was King thereof; denied that he had any corn to sell; denied that the said Joseph had any authority to sell; denied that they or any of them went into Egypt; denied that they ever saw the said Joseph or had any communication with him whatever, either by means of an interpreter or otherwise; denied, in fact, everything except their own existence; but in the alternative they would go on to say, if it should be proved that there was a place called Egypt, a man called Pharaoh, an agent of his called Joseph, and that the defendants actually did go to Egypt, all of which they one and all absolutely deny (as becomes men of honour), then they say, that being large corn-merchants and well known to the said Joseph, the factor of the said Pharaoh, as purchasers only of corn for domestic purposes, and requiring therefore a good sound merchantable article, the said Joseph, by falsely and fraudulently representing that certain corn of which he, the said Joseph, was possessed, was at that time of a good sound and merchantable quality and fit for seed and domestic purposes, by the said false and fraudulent representations he, the said Joseph, induced the defendants to purchase a large quantity thereof, to wit, five thousand sacks; whereas the said corn was not of a good sound and merchantable quality and fit for seed and domestic purposes, but was maggoty from damp, and infected with smut and altogether worthless, as he, the said Joseph, well knew at the time he made the said false representations. The defendants would also further allege
that, relying on the said Joseph’s word, they took away the said corn, but having occasion at the inn to look into the said sacks, they found that the said wheat was worthless, and immediately communicated with the said Joseph by sending their younger brother Simeon down to demand a return of the price of the said corn. But when the said Simeon came to the said Joseph the said Joseph caught him, and kicked him, and beat him with a great stick, and had him to prison, and would not restore him to his brethren, the defendants. Whereupon the defendants sent other messengers, and at length, after being detained a long time at the said inn, the said Joseph came down, and on being shown the said corn, admitted that it was in bad condition. Whereupon the defendants, fearing to trust the said Joseph with the said sacks until they had got a return of their said money, demanded that he, the said Joseph, should put the full tale of every man’s money in the sack of the said man; which thing the said Joseph agreed to, and placed every man’s money in the mouth of his said sack. And when the said man was about to reach forth his hand to take his said money, the said Joseph seized the said hand and held him fast—.”
“Stop, stop!” cried my wife; “the said Joseph had not ten hands. You must surely draw the line somewhere.”
“No, no,” said I, “that is good pleading; if the other side should omit to deny it, it will be taken by the rules of pleading to be admitted.”
“But surely you can’t admit impossibilities!”
“Can’t you, though!” cried I. “You can do almost anything in pleading.”
“Except, it seems to me, tell the truth.”
“You mustn’t be too hard upon us poor juniors,” cried I. “I haven’t come to the Counterclaim yet.”
“O don’t let us have Counterclaims,” quoth she; “they can have no claim against Joseph?”
“What, not for selling them smutty wheat?”
“Nonsense.”
“I say yes; and he’ll have to call a number of witnesses to prove the contrary—nor do I think he will be able to do it.”
“I fail now,” said my wife, “to see how this pleading is a fine art. Really, without joking, what is the art?”
“The art of pleading,” said I, “consists in denying what is, and inducing your adversary to admit what isn’t.”
CHAPTER VII.
Showing that appropriateness of time and place should be studied in our pastimes.
The next night, sitting over the cheerful fire and comfortably resting after the labours of the day, I dreamed again, and I saw that Horatio Snigger was “the Office Boy” of Mr. Prigg. He had been in the employment of that gentleman about two years. He was tall for his money, standing, in his shoes, at least five feet six, and receiving for his services, five shillings and sixpence a week, (that is, a shilling for every foot and a penny for every odd inch), his last rise (I mean in money,) having taken place about a month ago.
Horatio was a lad of as much spirit as any boy I ever saw. I do not believe he had any liking for the profession, but had entered it simply as his first step in life, utterly in the dark as to whither it would lead him. It was, I believe, some disappointment to his father that on no occasion when he interrogated him as to his “getting on,” could he elicit any more cheering reply than “very well.” And yet Horatio, during the time he had been with Mr. Prigg, had had opportunities of studying character in its ever-varying phases as presented by Courts of Justice and kindred places.
“Kindred places!” Yes, I mean “Judges’ Chambers,” where any boy may speedily be impressed with the
dignity and simplicity of the practice of the Law, especially since the passing of the Judicature Act. To my lay readers who may wish to know what “Judges’ Chambers” means, I may observe that it is a place where innumerable proceedings may be taken for lengthening a case, embarrassing the clients, and spending money. It is, to put it in another form, a sort of Grands Mulets in the Mont Blanc of litigation, whence, if by the time you get there you are not thoroughly “pumped out,” you may go on farther and in due time reach the top, whence, I am told, there is a most magnificent view.
But even the beauty of the proceedings at Judges’ Chambers failed to impress Horatio with the dignity of the profession. He lounged among the crowds of chattering boys and youths who “cheeked” one another before that august personage “the Master,” declaring that “Master” couldn’t do this and “Master” couldn’t do that; that the other side was too late or too soon; that his particulars were too meagre or too full; or his answers to interrogatories too evasive or not sufficiently diffuse, and went on generally as if the whole object of the law were to raise as many difficulties as possible in the way of its application. As if, in fact, it had fenced itself in with such an undergrowth of brambles that no amount of ability and perseverance could arrive at it.
From what I perceived of the character of Horatio, I should say that he was a scoffer. He was a mild, good-tempered, well-behaved boy enough, but ridiculed many proceedings which he ought to have reverenced. He was a great favourite with Mr. Prigg, because, if anything in the world attracted the boy’s admiration, it was
that gentleman’s pious demeanour and profound knowledge. But the exuberance of the lad’s spirits when away from his employer was in exact proportion to the moral pressure brought to bear upon him while in that gentleman’s presence. As an illustration of this remark and proof of the twofold character of Horatio, I will relate what I saw after the “Master” had determined that the tail of the 9 was a very nice point, but that there was nothing in it. They had all waited a long time at Judge’s Chambers, and their spirits were, no doubt, somewhat elated by at last getting the matter disposed of.
Horatio heard Mr. Prigg say to Mr. Locust, “What a very nice point!” and had heard Mr. Locust reply, “A very nice point, indeed!” And Mr. Gride, the clerk, say, “What, a very nice point!” and somebody else’s clerk say, “What a very nice point!” And Horatio felt, as a humble member of the profession, he must chime in with the rest of the firm. So, having said to Locust’s boy, “What a dam nice point!” he went back to his lonely den in Bedford Row and then, as he termed it, “let himself out.” He accomplished this proceeding by first taking off his coat and throwing it on to a chair; he next threw but his arms, with his fists firmly clenched, as though he had hardly yet to its fullest extent realized the “niceness” of the point which the Master had determined. The next step which Horatio took was what is called “The double shuffle,” which, I may inform my readers, is the step usually practised by the gentleman who imitates the sailor in the hornpipe on the stage. Being a slim and agile youth, Horatio’s performance was by no means contemptible, except that it was no part of his professional duty to dance a Hornpipe.
Then I saw that this young gentleman in the exuberance of his youthful spirits prepared for another exhibition of his talent. He cleared his throat, once more threw out his arms, stamped his right foot loudly on the floor, after the manner of the Ethiopian dancer with the long shoe, and then to my astonishment poured forth the following words in a very agreeable, and, as it seemed to me, melodious voice,—
“What a very nice point, said Prigg.”
Then came what I suppose would be called a few bars of the hornpipe; then he gave another line,—
“What a very nice point, said Gride.”
(Another part of the hornpipe.) Then he sang the third and fourth lines, dancing vigorously the while:
“It will take a dozen lawyers with their everlasting jaw:
It will take a dozen judges with their ever changing law”—
(Vigorous dancing for some moments), and then a pause, during which Horatio, slightly stooping, placed two fingers of his left hand to the side of his nose, and turning his eyes to the right, sang—
“And”—
Paused again, and finished vehemently as follows:
“Twenty golden guineas to decide!”
Then came the most enthusiastic hornpipe that ever was seen, and Horatio was in the seventh Heaven of delight, when the door suddenly opened, and Mr. Prigg entered!
It was unfortunate for Horatio that his back being towards the door he could not see his master enter; and it need scarcely be said that the noise produced by the dance prevented him from hearing his approach.
Mr. Prigg looked astounded at the sight that presented itself. The whole verse was repeated, and the whole dance gone through again in the sight and hearing of that gentleman. Was the boy mad? Had the strain of business been too much for him?
As if by instinct Horatio at last became aware of his master’s presence. A change more rapid, transformation more complete I never saw. The lad hung his head, and wandered to the chair where his coat was lying. It took him some time to put it on, for the sleeves seemed somehow to be twisted; at length, once more arrayed, and apparently in his right mind, he stood with three-quarter face towards his astonished master.
Mr. Prigg did not turn his head even on this occasion. He preserved a dignified silence for some time, and then spoke in a deep tragic tone:
“Horatio!”
Horatio did hot answer.
“What is the meaning of this exhibition, Horatio?”
“I was only having a little fun, sir,” said the youthful clerk.
“I am not averse to youth enjoying itself,” said Mr. Prigg; “but it must be at proper seasons, and in appropriate places; there is also to be exercised a certain discretion in the choice of those amusements in which youth should indulge. I am not aware what category of recreation your present exhibition may belong to, but I may inform you that in my humble judgment—I may be mistaken, and you may know far better than I—but
as at present advised, I do not see that your late performance is consistent with the duties of a solicitor’s clerk.” And then he muttered to himself, “Quite so.”
After this magnificent rebuke, Mr. Prigg drew out his cambric handkerchief, and most gently applied it to his stately nose.
“Again,” said Mr. Prigg, “I heard language, or thought I heard language, which I should construe as decidedly derogatory to the Profession which you serve and to which I have the honour to belong.”
“I was only in fun, sir,” said Horatio, gathering confidence as Mr. Prigg proceeded.
“Quite so, quite so; that may be, I sincerely hope you were; but never make fun of that by which you live; you derive what I may call a very competent, not to say handsome, salary from the proceedings which you make fun of. This is sad, and manifests a spirit of levity.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, sir.”
“Very well,” said the good man, “I am glad to perceive that you are brought to a proper sense of the impropriety of your conduct. I will not discharge you on this occasion, for the sake of your father, whom I have known for so many years: but never let this occur again. Dancing is at all times, to my mind, a very questionable amusement; but when it is accompanied, as I perceived it was on this occasion, with gestures which I cannot characterize by any other term than disgusting; and when further you take the liberty of using my name in what I presume you intended for a comic song, I must confess that I can hardly repress my feelings of indignation. I hope you are penitent.”
Horatio hung down his head, and said he was very
sorry Mr. Prigg had heard it, for he only intended it for his own amusement.
“I shall take care,” said Mr. Prigg, “that you have less opportunity for such exercises as I have unfortunately witnessed.” And having thus admonished the repentant youth, Mr. Prigg left him to his reflections. I am glad Mr. Prigg did not return while the pale boy was reflecting.
CHAPTER VIII.
The pleasure of a country drive on a summer evening described as enhanced by a pious mind.
It is only fair to the very able solicitors on both sides in the memorable case of Bumpkin v. Snooks to state that the greatest possible despatch was exercised on all occasions. Scarcely a day passed without something being done, as Prigg expressed it, “to expedite matters.” Month after month may have passed away without any apparent advance; but this in reality was not the case. Many appeals on what seemed trifling matters had been heard; so many indeed that Bumpkin v. Snooks had become a household word with the Court of Appeal, and a bye-word among the innumerable loafers about Judge’s Chambers.
“What! Bumpkin v. Snooks again!” the President would say. “What is it now? It’s a pity the parties to this case can’t agree: it seems a very trifling matter.”
“Not so, my lord, as your lordship will quickly apprehend when the new point is brought before your notice. A question of principle is here which may form a precedent for the guidance of future Judges, as did the famous case of Perryman v. Lister, which went to the House of Lords about prosecuting a man for stealing a
gun. This is about a pig, my lord—a little pig, no doubt, and although there is not much in the pig, there is a good deal outside it.”
And often did Prigg say to Locust:
“I say, Locust, whenever shall we be ready to set this case down for trial?”
“Really, my dear Prigg,” Locust would reply, “it seems interminable—come and dine with me.” So the gentle and innocent reader will at once perceive that there was great impatience on all sides to get this case ready for trial. Meanwhile it may not be uninteresting to describe shortly some of the many changes that had taken place in the few short months since the action commenced.
First it was clearly observable by the inhabitants of Yokelton that Mr. Prigg’s position had considerably improved. I say nothing of his new hat; that was a small matter, but not so his style of living—so great an advance had that made that it attracted the attention of the neighbours, who often remarked that Mr. Prigg seemed to be getting a large practice. He was often seen with his lady on a summer afternoon taking the air in a nice open carriage—hired, it is true, for the occasion. And everybody remarked how uncommonly ladylike Mrs. Prigg lay back in the vehicle, and how very gracefully she held her new æsthetic parasol. And what a proud moment it was for Bumpkin, when he saw this good and respectable gentleman pass with the ladylike creature beside him; and Mr. Bumpkin would say to his neighbours, lifting his hat at the same moment,
“That be my loryer, that air be!”
And then Mr. Prigg would gracefully raise his hat, and Mrs. Prigg would lie back perfectly motionless as
became a very languid lady of her exalted position. And when Mr. Prigg said to Mrs. Prigg, “My dear, that is our new client;” Mrs. Prigg would elevate her arched eyebrows and expand her delicate nostrils as she answered,—
“Really, my love, what a very vulgar-looking creechar!”
“Not nearly so vulgar as Locust’s client,” rejoined her husband. “You should see him.”
“Thank you, my love, it is quite enough to catch a glimpse of the superior person of the two.”
Mr. Prigg seemed to think it a qualifying circumstance that Snooks was a more vulgar-looking man than Bumpkin, whereas a moment’s consideration showed Mrs. Prigg how illogical that was. It is the intrinsic and personal value that one has to measure things by. This value could not be heightened by contrast. Mrs. Prigg’s curiosity, however, naturally led her to inquire who the other creechar was? As if she had never heard of Bumpkin v. Snooks, although she had actually got the case on four wheels and was riding in it at that very moment; as if in fact she was not practically all Bumpkin, as a silkworm may be said to be all mulberry leaves. As if she knew nothing of her husband’s business! Her ideas were not of this world. Give her a church to build, she’d harass people for subscriptions; or let it be a meeting to clothe the naked savage, Mrs. Prigg would be there. She knew nothing of clothing Bumpkin! But she did interest herself sufficiently in her husband’s conversation to ask, in answer to his reference to Locust’s disreputable client,
“And who is he, pray?”
“My darling,” said Prigg, “you must have heard of Snooks?”
“Oh,” drawled Mrs. Prigg, “do you mean the creechar who sells coals?”
“The same, my dear.”
“And are you engaged against that man? How very dreadful!”
“My darling,” observed Mr. Prigg, “it is not for us to choose our opponents; nor indeed, for the matter of that, our clients.”
“I can quite perceive that,” returned the lady, “or you would never have chosen such men—dear me!”
“We are like physicians,” returned Mr. Prigg, “called in in case of need.”
“And the healing virtues of your profession must not be confined to rich patients,” said Mrs. Prigg, in her jocular manner.
“By no means,” was the good man’s reply; “justice is as much the right of the poor as the rich—so is the air we breathe—so is everything.” And he put his fingers together again, as was his wont whenever he uttered a philosophical or moral platitude.
So I saw in my dream that the good man and his ladylike wife rode through the beautiful lanes, and over the breezy common on that lovely summer afternoon, and as they drew up on the summit of a hill which gave a view of the distant landscape, there was a serenity in the scene which could only be compared to the serenity of Mr. Prigg’s benevolent countenance; and there was a calm, deeply, sweetly impressive, which could only be appreciated by a mind at peace with itself in particular, and with the world in general. Then came from a neighbouring wood the clear voice of the cuckoo. It
seemed to sing purposely in honour of the good man; and I fancied I could see a ravenous hawk upon a tree, abashed at Mr. Prigg’s presence and superior ability; and a fluttering timid lark seemed to shriek, “Wicked bird, live and let live;” but it was the last word the silly lark uttered, for the hawk was upon him in a moment, and the little innocent songster was crushed in its ravenous beak. Still the cuckoo sang on in praise of Mr. Prigg, with now and then a little note for Mrs. Prigg; for the cuckoo is a very gallant little bird, and Mrs. Prigg was such a heavenly creature that no cuckoo could be conscious of her presence without hymning her praise.
“Listen,” said Mrs. Prigg, “isn’t it beautiful? I wonder where cuckoos go to?”
“Ah, my dear!” said Prigg, enraptured with the clear notes and the beautiful scene; but neither of them seemed to wonder where hawks go to.
“Do you hear the echo, love? Isn’t it beautiful?”
O, yes, it was beautiful! Nature does indeed lift the soul on a quiet evening from the grovelling occupations of earth to bask in the genial sunshine of a more spiritual existence. What was Bumpkin? What was Snooks to a scene like this? Suddenly the cuckoo ceased. Wonderful bird! I don’t know whether it was the presence of the hawk that hushed its voice or the sight of Mr. Prigg as he stood up in the carriage to take a more extended view of the prospect; but the familiar note was hushed, and the evening hymn in praise of the Priggs was over.
So the journey was continued by the beautiful wood of oaks and chestnuts, along by the hillside from which you could perceive in the far distance the little stream
as it wound along by meadow and wood and then lost itself beneath the hill that rose abruptly on the left.
The stream was the symbol of life—probably Bumpkin’s life; all nature presents similes to a religious mind. And so the evening journey was continued with ever awakening feelings of delight and gratitude until they once more entered their peaceful home. And this brings me to another consideration which ought not to be passed over with indifference.
I saw in my dream that a great change had taken place in the home of the Priggs. The furniture had undergone a metamorphosis almost so striking that I thought Mr. Prigg must be a wizard. The gentle reader knows all about Cinderella; but here was a transformation more surprising. I saw that one of Mr. Bumpkin’s pigs had been turned into a very pretty walnut-wood whatnot, and stood in the drawing-room, and on it stood several of the ducks and geese that used to swim in the pond of Southwood farm. They were not ducks and geese now, but pretty silent ornaments. An old rough-looking stack of oats had been turned into a very nice Turkey carpet for the dining-room. Poor old Jack the donkey had been changed into a musical box that stood on a little table made out of a calf. One day Mr. Bumpkin called to see how his case was going on, and by mistake got into this room among his cows and pigs; but not one of them did the farmer know, and when the maid invited him to sit down he was afraid of spoiling something.
Now summonses at Chambers, and appeals, and demurrers, are not at all bad conjuring wands, if you only know how to use them. Two clever men like Prigg and Locust, not only surprise the profession, but alarm the
public, since no one knows what will take place next, and Justice herself is startled from her propriety. Let no clamorous law reformer say that interrogatories or any other multitudinous proceedings at Judge’s Chambers are useless. It is astonishing how many changes you can ring upon them with a little ingenuity, and a very little scrupulosity. Mr. Prigg turned two sides of bacon into an Indian vase, and performed many other feats truly astonishing to persons who look on as mere spectators, and wonder how it is done. Wave your magic wand, good Prigg, and you shall see a hayrick turn into a chestnut mare; and a four-wheeled waggon into a Victoria.
But the greatest change he had effected was in Mr. Bumpkin himself, who loved to hear his wife read the interrogatories and answers. The almanac was nothing to this. He had no idea law was so interesting. I dare say there were two guiding influences working within him, in addition to the many influences working without; one being that inherent British pluck, which once aroused, “doesn’t care, sir, if it costs me a thousand pound, I’ll have it out wi’ un;” the other was the delicious thought that all his present outlay would be repaid by the cunning and covetous Snooks. So much was Bumpkin’s heart in the work of crushing his opponent, that expense was treated with ridicule. I heard him one day say jocularly to Mr. Prigg, who had come for an affidavit:
“Be it a pig, sir, or a heifer?”
“O,” said the worthy Prigg, “we want a pretty good one; I think it must be a heifer.”
All this was very pleasant, and made the business, dull and prosaic in itself, a cheerful recreation.
Then, again, there was a feeling of self-importance
whenever these affidavits came to be sworn. Mr. Bumpkin would put down his ash-stick by the side of the fireplace, and bidding his visitor be seated, would compose himself with satisfaction to listen to the oft-repeated words:
“I, Thomas Bumpkin, make oath, and say—”
Fancy, “I, Bumpkin!” Just let the reader pause over that for a moment! What must “I, Bumpkin,” be whose statement is required on oath before my Lord Judge?
Always, at these words, he would shout. “That be it—now then, sir, would you please begin that agin?”—while, if Mrs. Bumpkin were not too busy, he would call her in to hear them too.
So there was no wonder that the action went merrily along. Once get up enthusiasm in a cause, and it is half won. Without enthusiasm, few causes can succeed against opposition. Then, again, the affidavit described Bumpkin as a Yeoman. What, I wonder, would Snooks the coal-merchant think of that?
So everything proceeded satisfactorily, and the months rolled away; the seasons came in their turn, so did the crops, so did the farrows of pigs, so did the spring chickens, and young ducks (prettiest little golden things in the world, on the water); so did Mr. Prigg, and so did a gentleman (hereafter to be called “the man,”) with whom a very convenient arrangement was made, by which Mr. Bumpkin preserved the whole of his remaining stock intact; had not in fact to advance a single penny piece more; all advances necessary for the prosecution of the action being made by the strange gentleman (whose name I did not catch) under that most convenient of all legal forms, “a Bill of Sale.”
CHAPTER IX.
A farmhouse winter fireside—a morning drive and a mutual interchange of ideas between town and country: showing how we may all learn something from one another.
I never saw the home of Farmer Bumpkin without thinking what a happy and comfortable home it was. The old elm tree that waved over the thatched roof, seemed to bless and protect it. On a winter’s evening, when Bumpkin was sitting in one corner smoking his long pipe, Mrs. Bumpkin darning her stockings, and Joe on the other side looking into the blazing fire, while the old Collie stretched himself in a snug corner beside his master, it represented a scene of comfort almost as perfect as rustic human nature was capable of enjoying. And when the wind blew through the branches of the elm over the roof, it was like music, played on purpose to heighten the enjoyment. Comfort, thou art at the evening fireside of a farm-house, if anywhere!
You should have seen Tim, when an unusual sound disturbed the harmony of this peaceful fireside. He growled first as he lay with his head resting between his paws, and just turned up his eyes to his master for approval. Then, if that warning was not sufficient, he rose and barked vociferously. Possessed, I believe, of
more insight than Bumpkin, he got into the most tremendous state of excitement whensoever anyone came from Prigg’s, and he cordially hated Prigg. But most of all was he angry when “the man” came. There was no keeping him quiet. I wonder if dogs know more about Bills of Sale than farmers. I am aware that some farmers know a good deal about them; and when they read this story, many of them will accuse me of being too personal; but Tim was a dog of strong prejudices, and I am sure he had a prejudice against money-lenders.
As the persons I have mentioned were thus sitting on this dreary evening in the month of November, suddenly, Tim sprang from his recumbent position, and barked furiously.
“Down, Tim! down, Tim!” said the farmer; “what be this, I wonder!”
“Tim, Tim,” said Mrs. Bumpkin, “down, Tim! hold thee noise, I tell ee.”
“Good Tim!” said Joe; he also had an instinct.
“I’ll goo and see what it be,” said Mrs. Bumpkin; “whoever can come here at this time o’ night! it be summat, Tom.” And she put down her stockings, and lighting a candle went to the front door, whereat there was a loud knocking. Tim jumped and flew and thrust his nose down to the bottom of the door long before Mrs. Bumpkin could get there.
“Quiet, Tim! I tell thee; who be there?”
“From Mr. Prigg’s,” answered a voice.
This was enough for Tim; the name of Prigg made him furious.
“Somebody from Mr. Prigg, Tom.”
“Wull, let un in, Nance; bless thee soul, let un in; may be the case be settled. I hope they ain’t took less
nor a hundred pound. I told un not to.” The door was unbolted and unbarred, and a long time it took, and then stood before Mrs. Bumpkin a tall pale youth.
“I’ve come from Mr. Prigg.”
“Will er plase to walk in, sir?” said Mrs. Bumpkin.
By this time the master had got up from his seat, and advancing towards the youth said:—
“How do, sir; how do, sir; wark in, wark in, tak a seat, I be glad to see thee.”
“I come from Mr. Prigg,” said the youth, “and we want another affidavit.”
“Hem!” said Bumpkin, “be it a pig or a eifer, sir?” He couldn’t forget the old joke.
“We want an affidavit of documents,” said the youth.
“And what be the manin o’ that?—affiday o’ what?”
“Documents, sir,” said the mild youth; “here it is.”
“Oh,” said Bumpkin, “I got to swear un, I spoase, that’s all.”
“That’s it, sir,” said Horatio.
“Well, thee can’t take oaths, I spoase.”
“No, sir, not exactly.”
“Wull then I spoase I must goo to --- in the marnin. And thee’ll stop here the night and mak thyself comfortable. We can gie un a bed, can’t us, Nancy?”
“Two, if ur wishes it,” answered Mrs. Bumpkin.
“Devil’s in it, ur doan’t want two beds, I’ll warrant? Now then, sir, sitten doon and mak theeself comfortable. What’ll thee drink?”
“I’m too young to drink,” said Horatio, with a smile.
Bumpkin smiled too. “I’ll warrant thee be.”
“I’m always too young,” said Horatio, “for every thing that’s nice. Mr. Prigg says I’m too young to
enjoy myself; but if you don’t mind, sir, I’m not too young to be hungry. I’ve walked a long distance.”
“Have ur now?” said Mrs. Bumpkin. “We ain’t got anything wery grand, sir; but there be a nice piece o’ pickle pork and pease-puddin, if thee doan’t mind thic.”
“Bring un out,” said Bumpkin; and accordingly a nice clean cloth was soon spread, and the table was groaning (as the saying is), with a large leg of pork and pease-pudding and home-made bread; to which Horatio did ample justice.
“Bain’t bad pooark,” said Bumpkin.
“Best I ever tasted,” replied Horatio; “we don’t get this sort of pork in London—pork there doesn’t seem like pork.”
“Now look at that,” said Joe; “I fed that air pig.”
“So ur did, Joe,” said the farmer; “I’ll gie thee credit, Joe, thee fed un well.”
“Ah!” said Joe; “and that air pig knowed I as well as I knows thee.”
When Horatio had supped, and the things were removed, Mr. Bumpkin assured the youth that a little drop of gin-and-water would not hurt him after his journey; and accordingly mixed him a tumbler. “Thee doan’t smoke, I spoase?” he said; to which Mrs. Bumpkin added that she “spoased he wur too young like.”
“I’ll try,” answered the courageous youth, nothing daunted by his youngness.
“So thee shall—dang if thee shan’t,” rejoined Mr. Bumpkin; and produced a long churchwarden pipe, and a big leaden jar of tobacco of a very dark character, called “shag.”
Horatio filled his pipe, and puffed away as if he had been a veteran smoker; cloud after cloud came forth,
and when Mr. and Mrs. Bumpkin and Joe looked, expecting that the boy should be ill, there was not the least sign; so Joe observed with great sagacity:
“Look at that now, maister; I bleeve he’ve smoked afoore.”
“Have ur, sir?” asked Mr. Bumpkin.
“A little,” said Horatio.
“Why, I never smoked afoore I wur turned twenty,” said the farmer.
“I believe the right time now is fourteen,” observed the youth; “it used to be twenty, I have heard father say; but everything has been altered by the Judicature Act.”
“Look at that air,” said Joe, “he’ve eeard father say. You knows a thing or two, I’ll warrant, Mr. —.”
Here Joe was baffled, and coming so abruptly to an end of his address, Mr. Bumpkin took the matter up, and asked, if he might make so bold, what the youth’s name might be.
“Horatio Snigger,” answered that gentleman.
“When will this ere case be on, think’ee, sir?” inquired Mr. Bumpkin.
“We expect it to be in the paper every day now,” said the youth; “they’ve tried to dodge us a good deal, but they can’t dodge us much longer—we’re a little too downy for em.”
“It have been a mighty long time about, surely,” said Mr. Bumpkin.
“O, that’s nothing,” said Horatio; “time’s nothing in Law! Why, a suit to administer a Will sometimes takes ’ears; and Bankruptcy, O my eye, ain’t there dodging about that, and jockeying too, eh! Crikey!”
Mr. Bumpkin here winked at his wife, as much as to
say, “Now you hold your tongue, and see me dror un out. I’ll have un.”
“Will ee tak a little more gin-and-water, sir?”
“No, thankee,” said the youth.
“A little more won’t hurt ee—it’ll do thee good.” And again he filled the tumbler; while the pale boy refilled his pipe.
“Now, who’s my counsellor gwine to be?” asked the farmer.
“Oh,” said Horatio, “a regular cruncher—Mr. Catapult.”
“He be a cruncher, be he?”
“I believe you; he turned a man inside out the other day; a money-lender he was.”
“Did ur now?”
“Look at that,” said Joe.
“And we’re going to have Mr. Dynamite for junior; my eye, don’t he make a row!”
“Two an em!” exclaimed Bumpkin.
“Must have two for the plaintiff,” said Horatio; “that’s the law. Why, a Queen’s Counsel ain’t allowed to open a case without a junior starts him—it’s jist like the engine-driver and the guard. You have the junior to shove the leader.”
“Look at that,” said Joe; expectorating into the fire.
Mr. Bumpkin looked again at Nancy, and gave another wink that you might have heard.
“And the tother side?” he asked.
“Ah! I don’t know about them,” said the boy. “They’re artful dodgers, they are.”
“Is ’em now? but artfulness don’t allays win, do ur?”
“No,” said Horatio; “but it goes a long way, and sometimes when it’s gone a long way it beats itself.”
“Look at that,” said Joe; “that’s like that ere—”
“Be quiet, Joe,” said Bumpkin; “let I talk, will ur? You said it beats itself, sir?”
“If the judge gets ’old of him, it’s sure to,” said Horatio. “There ain’t no judge on the Bench as will let artfulness win if he knows it. I’ve sin em watchin like a cat watches a mouse; and directly it comes out o’ the ’ole, down he is on em—like that:” and he slapped his hand on the table with startling effect.
“Good!” said Bumpkin.
“And don’t they know who the solicitor is, eh—that’s all! My word, if he’s a shady one—the judge is down on the case like winkin.”
“And be this ere Locust a shady un?” (Another wink at Mrs. Bumpkin.)
“Ah! I’m too young to know.”
“Thee beest too old, thee meanest,” said Mrs. Bumpkin, laughing.
“Now hold thee tongue, Nancy; I wur gwine to say that myself—dang if I warnt!”
“Now look at thic,” said Joe; “maister were gwine to say thic.”
“So I wur,” repeated Bumpkin. “Jist got the word o’ th’ tip o’ th’ tongue.”
“And be these Queen’s Counsellors,” he asked, “summat grand?”
“I believe you,” said Horatio; “they wears silk gowns.”
“Do em?” said Mrs. Bumpkin, laughing. “Silk gowns—and what kind o’ petticoats?”
“Shut up,” said Bumpkin; “thee be as igorant as a
donkey; these Queen’s Counsellors be made for their larnin and cleverness, beant em, sir?”
“Well,” said Horatio, “nobody ever could make out—some of em are pretty good, and some of em ain’t much—not near so good as the others.”
“But this ere Mr. Catapult be a good un, bean’t he—a regler crunsher?”
“O, I believe you, my boy: his look’s enough for some of em.”
“I spoase he be dear?” (Another wink at Mrs. Bumpkin.)
“They’re all dear,” said Horatio; “some of em are dear because their fees are high; and some of em would be dear at a gift, but I’m too young to know much about it.”
“Now hark at that,” said Joe; “like that air old horse o’ Morris’.”
“Hold thee tongue, Joe, I tell ee, putten thy spoke in; does thee think the Queen ’as old ’orses in her stable? It’s merit, I tell ee—ain’t it, Mr. Jigger?”
“Merit, sir; I believe it’s merit.” And thus in pleasant conversation the evening passed merrily away, until the clock striking nine warned the company that it was time to retire.
A bright, brisk frosty morning succeeded, and a substantial breakfast of bacon, eggs, fresh butter, and home-made bread, at seven o’clock, somewhat astonished and delighted the youthful Horatio; and then the old horse, with plenty of hair about his heels, was brought round with the gig. And Mr. Bumpkin and his guest got up and took their seats. The old Market Town was about seven miles off, and the road lay through the most picturesque scenery of the county. To ride on such
a pleasant morning through such a country almost made one think that swearing affidavits was the most pleasing occupation of life. It was the first time Horatio had ever ridden in a gig: the horse went a good old market pace, and the beautiful sunshine, lovely scenery, and crisp air produced in his youthful bosom a peculiarly charming and delightful sense of exhilaration. He praised the country and the weather and the horse, and asked if it was what they called a thoroughbred.
“Chit!” said Bumpkin, “thoroughbred! So be I thoroughbred—did thee ever see thoroughbred wi’ ’air on his ’eels?’
“Well, he goes well,” said Horatio.
“Gooes well enough for I,” said Bumpkin.
This answer somewhat abashed Horatio, who was unlearned in horses; for some time he remained silent. Then it became Mr. Bumpkin’s turn to renew the conversation:
“I spoase,” said he, “thee be gwine to be a loryer?”
“Not if I know it,” answered Horatio.
“Why not, then?”
“Don’t care for it; I like the country.”
“What wouldst thee like to be then, a farmer?”
“I should—that’s the life for me!”
“Thee likes plenty o’ fresh air?” said the farmer.
“Yes,” answered Horatio, “and fresh butter and fresh eggs.”
“I’ll go to ---, if thee doen’t know what’s good for thee, anyhow. Thee’d ha’ to work ’ard to keep straaight, I can tell thee; thee’d had to plough, and danged if I believe thee could hold plough! What’s thee say to that, lad?”
“I think I could.”
“Devil a bit! now spoase thee’st got plough-handles under thy arms, and the cord in the ’ands, and thee wanted to keep t’colter from jibbin into t’ soil, wouldst thee press down wi’ might and main, or how?”
“Press down with might and main,” said Horatio.
“Right!” exclaimed Bumpkin; “danged if I doant think thee’d make a ploughman now. Dost know what th’ manin o’ mither woiy be?”
This was rather a startling question for the unsophisticated London youth. He had never heard such an expression in his life; and although he might have puzzled his agricultural interrogator by a good many questions in return, yet that possibility was no answer to “mither woiy.”
“I don’t know that, Mr. Bumpkin,” he ingenuously replied.
“No? well, there ain’t a commoner word down ere nor ‘mither woiy,’ and there ain’t a boy arf your age as doan’t know the manin o’t, so thee see thee got summat to larn. Now it mane this—spoase thee got a team o’ horses at dung cart or gravel cart, and thee wants em to come to ee; thee jest holds whip up over to the ed o’ th’ leadin orse like this ere, and says ‘mither woiy,’ and round er comes as natteral as possible.”
“O, that’s it!” said Horatio; “I see.”
“Ah!” said Bumpkin, “I can teach ee summat, can’t I, though thee comes from town, and I be only a country clown farmer?”
“I should just like to come down a month on trial, that’s all, when I have my holiday,” said the youth; “I think it would do me good: ‘mither woiy,’” he said, mimicking his instructor.
“Thee shall come if thee likes,” replied the good-natured
Bumpkin; “Nancy’ll be proud to see thee—thee’s got ‘mither woiy’ to rights.”
“What a very nice public-house!” exclaimed Horatio, as they approached a village green where an old Inn that had flourished in the coaching days still stood, the decaying monument of a past age, and an almost forgotten style of locomotion.
“Be a good house. I often pulls up there on way from market.”
“Did you ever try rum and milk for your cough?” inquired the pale youth.
“Never had no cough,” said Bumpkin.
“What a good thing! But it’s capital, they say, in case you should have one; they say there’s nothing beats rum and milk.”
“Hem!” muttered Bumpkin, giving his horse a tremendous jerk with the reins. “I spoase thee’d like a glass, Mr. Jigger.”
“I don’t care about it for myself,” answered the youth; “but if you like to have one I’ll join you with pleasure.”
“So us wool then;” and up they pulled at the sign of the “Merry-go-round” on Addlehead Green.
“Bain’t bad tackle!” said Mr. Bumpkin, tossing off his glass.
“No,” responded Horatio, “I’ve tasted worse medicine. I quite enjoy my ride, Mr. Bumpkin; I wish we had a dozen more affidavits to swear.”
“I doan’t,” said the client; “I sworn a goodish many on em as it be. I doan’t think that air Snooks can bate un.”
“I don’t think he can,” said Horatio, as they once more climbed into the old-fashioned gig; “but talk
about paper, you should see your brief: that’s a caution and no mistake!”
“Is ur now? In what way, sir?”
“Lor, how I should like a cigar, Mr. Bumpkin, if I’d only got my case with me, but unfortunately—”
“Would ur—then thee shall ’ave one; here, Mr. Ostler, jest goo and fetch one o’ them there what d’ye call ems.”
“O, do they sell them down here? Cigars—cigars,” said Horatio, “I wasn’t aware of that.”
“Now then, sir; what about this ere what d’ye call un—beef?”
Mr. Bumpkin, being a very artful man, was inwardly chuckling at the successful manœuvring by which he was drawing out this pale unsophisticated London youth, and hoped by dint of a little strategy to learn a good deal before they parted company.
“Brief! brief!” said Horatio, laughing.
“Ah! so it wur; thee said he wur a hell of a big un.”
“Yes, and I wrote him myself.”
“Did ur now; then thee knows all about un?”
“From beginning to end—he is a clipper, I can tell you; a regular whacker.”
“I hope he’ll whack thic Snooks then.”
“He’s a beauty!” rejoined Horatio, much to his companion’s surprise; for here was this young man speaking of a brief in the same terms that he (Bumpkin) would use with reference to a prize wurzel or swede. A brief being a beauty sounded somewhat strange in the ears of a farmer who could associate the term with nothing that didn’t grow on the farm.
“I dare say you’ve heard of Macaulay’s England?” asked the lad.
“Macaulay’s.”
“I’ve eerd o’ England, if you mean this ere country, sartainly.”
“You’ve heard of Macaulay’s History, I mean?”
“Can’t say as ever I eerd tell on un.”
“Well, there’s as much in your brief as there is in that book, and that’s saying something, ain’t it?”
“Zo’t be; but what th’ devil be ’t all about?”
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Horatio, holding out his hands and putting the point of his right forefinger on to the point of the forefinger of his left hand. “First: biography of the plaintiff.”
“There now,” said Bumpkin, shaking the reins; “thee med jist as well talk Greek—it’s the same wally (value) to me, for I doan’t understan’ a word—bography, indade!”
“Well then, Mr. Bumpkin, there is first a history of your life.”
“Good lord, what be that for?”
“I’ll tell you presently—then there’s the history of Mrs. Bumpkin from the cradle.” (Mr. Bumpkin uttered an exclamation which nothing shall induce me to put on paper.) “Then”—and here the young man had reached the third finger of the left hand—“then comes a history of the defendant Snooks.”
“Ah!” said Bumpkin, as though they were getting nearer the mark; “that be summut like—that’ll do un—have you put in about the gal?”
“What’s that?” asked the youth.
“Oh! didn’t thee ’ear? Why, thee ’st left out the best part o’ Snooks’ life; he were keepin company wi’ a gal and left her in t’ lurch: but I ’ope thee ’st shown
up ur carater well in other ways—he be the worst man as ever lived in this ’ere country.”
“Well,” said Horatio, travelling towards his little finger; “then there’s the history of the pig.”
“Zounds!” laughed the farmer, “if ever I eerd tell o’ such a thing in my bornd days. What the devil be the good o’ thic?”
“O, a good deal; the longer you make the brief the more money you get—you are paid by the yard. They don’t pay lawyers accordin’ to the value of their services, but the length of ’em.”
“Well, look ee ’ere, if I sells a pig it ain’t wallied by its length, but by its weight.”
“It ain’t so with lawyers then,” rejoined Horatio; “the taxing master takes the length of the pig, and his tail counts, and the longer the tail the better the taxing master likes it; then comes,”—(as the young lad had only four fingers he was obliged to have recourse to his thumb, placing his forefinger thereon)—“then comes about ten pages on the immortality of the soul.”
“That be the tail, I spoase.”
“You got it,” said Horatio, laughing. “O, he’s a stunner on the immortality of the soul.”
“Who be?—Snooks?”
“No—Prigg—he goes into it like winkin’.”
“But what be it to do with thic case?”
“Well, if you only put in a brief what had got to do with the case it would be a poor thing.”
And I saw in my dream that the young man was speaking truthfully: it was a beautifully drawn essay on the immortality of the soul, especially Bumpkin’s.
“By George!” continued the youth, “it’ll cost something—that brief.”
Mr. Bumpkin twitched as if he had touched with ice a nerve of his hollow tooth.
“If I had the money that case’ll cost I wouldn’t do any more work,” said the youth.
“What would’st thee be then?”
“Well, I should try and get an Associate’s place in one of the Courts.”
“Hem! but this ere Snooks ull have to pay, won’t he?”
“Ah!” said Horatio, breathing deeply and indignantly, “I hope so; he’s a mean cuss—what d’ye think? never give Locust’s boy so much as a half-sovereign! Now don’t such a feller deserve to lose? And do you think Locust’s boy will interest himself in his behalf?”
Bumpkin looked slily out of the corners of his eyes at the young man, but the young man was impassive as stone, and pale as if made of the best Carrara marble.
“But tell I, sir—for here we be at the plaace of Mr. Commissioner to take oaths—what need be there o’ this ere thing I be gwine to swear, for I’ll be danged if I understand a word of un, so I tell ee.”
“Costs, my dear sir, costs!”
* * * * *
And I heard Bumpkin mutter to himself that “he’d he danged if this ’ere feller wur so young as he made out—his ’ead wur a mighty dale older nor his body.”
CHAPTER X.
The last night before the first London expedition, which gives occasion to recall pleasant reminiscences.
“I, Bumpkin, make oath and say,” having been duly presented, and the Commissioner having duly placed the Testament in Mr. Bumpkin’s hands, and said to him that to the best of his knowledge and belief the contents of the “I Bumpkin” paper were true, the matter was over, and Mr. Snigger, with the valuable document in his possession, might have returned to London by the next train. But as Horatio afterwards observed to a friend, he “was not quite so green.” It was market day; Mr. Bumpkin was a genial companion, and had asked him to partake of the Market Ordinary. So thither at one o’clock they repaired, and a very fine dinner the pale youth disposed of. It seemed in proportion to the wonderful brief whose merits they had previously discussed. More and more did Horatio think that a farmer’s life was the life for him. He had never seen such “feeding;” more and more would he like that month on trial in the country; more and more inclined was he to throw up the whole blessed law at once and for ever. This partly-formed resolution he communicated to Mr. Bumpkin, and assured him that, but for the case of Bumpkin v. Snooks, he would do so on that very afternoon, and wash his hands of it.
“I don’t want,” said he, “to leave you in the lurch, Mr. Bumpkin, or else I’d cut it at once, and throw this affidavit into the fire.”
“Come, come,” said the farmer, “thee beest a young man, don’t do nowt that be wrong—stick to thy employer like a man, and when thee leaves, leave like a man.”
“As soon as your case is over, I shall hook it, Mr. Bumpkin. And now let me see—you’ll have to come to London in a week or two, for I am pretty nigh sure we shall be in the paper by that time. I shall see you when you come up—where shall you stay?”
“Danged if I know; I be a straanger in Lunnun.”
“Well, now, look ’ere, Mr. Bumpkin, I can tell you of a very nice quiet public-house in Westminster where you’ll be at home; the woman, I believe, comes from your part of the country, and so does the landlord.”
“What be the naame o’ the public ’ouse?” asked Mr. Bumpkin.
“It’s the sign of the ‘Goose,’ and stands just a little way off from the water-side.”
“The Goose” sounded countryfied and homelike, and being near the water would be pleasant, and the landlord and landlady being Somersetshire people would also be pleasant.
“Be it a dear plaace?” he inquired.
“Oh, no; dirt cheap.”
“Ah, that air dirt cheap I doan’t like—I likes it a bit clean like.”
“Oh, yes, clean as a smelt—clean as ever it can be; and I’ll bespeak your lodgings for you if you like, and all.”
“Well, thankee, sir, thankee,” said the farmer, shaking hands with the youth, and giving him a half-sovereign.
“I be proud to know thee.” And thus they parted: Horatio returning to his office, and Mr. Bumpkin driving home at what is called a “shig-shog” pace, reflecting upon all the events that had transpired during that memorable day.
Pretty much the same as ever went on the things at the farm, and the weeks passed by, and the autumn was over, and Christmas Day came and went, and the Assizes came and went, and Bumpkin v. Snooks alone in all the world seemed to stand still. One day in the autumn a friend of Mr. Prigg’s came and asked the favour of a day’s fishing, which was granted with Mr. Bumpkin’s usual cordiality. He was not only to fish on that day, but to come whenever he liked, and make the house his “hoame, like.” So he came and fished, and partook of the hospitality of the homely but plentiful table, and enjoyed himself as often as he pleased. He was a most agreeable man, and knew how to talk. Understood a good deal about agriculture and sheep breeding, and quite enjoyed a walk with Mr. Bumpkin round the farm. This happened five or six times during the autumn. He was reticent when Mr. Bumpkin mentioned the lawsuit, because he knew so little about legal proceedings. Nor could Mr. Bumpkin “draw him out” on any point. Nothing could be ascertained concerning him except that he had a place in Yorkshire, and was in London on a visit; that he had known Mr. Prigg for a good many years, and always “found him the same.” At last, the month of February came, and the long expected letter from Mr. Prigg. Bumpkin and Joe were to be in London on the following day, for it was expected they would be in the paper. What a flutter of preparation there was at the farm! Bumpkin was eager, Mrs. Bumpkin anxious.
She had never liked the lawsuit, but had never once murmured; now she seemed to have a presentiment which she was too wise to express. And she went about her preparations for her husband’s leaving with all the courage she could command. It was, however, impossible entirely to repress her feelings, and now and again as she was packing the flannels and worsted stockings, a tear would force its way in spite of all she could do.
Night came, and the fireside was as cosy as ever. But there was a sense of sadness nevertheless. Tim seemed to understand that something was not quite as it should be, for he was restless, and looked up plaintively in his master’s face, and went to Joe and put his head in his lap; then turned away and stretched himself out on the hearth, winking his eyes at the fire.
It is always a melancholy effort to “keep up the spirits” when the moment of separation is at hand. One longs for the last shake of the hand and the final good-bye. This was the case at Southwood Farm on this memorable evening. Nothing in the room looked as usual. The pewter plates on the shelf shone indeed, but it was like the smile of a winter sun; it lacked the usual cheery warmth. Even the old clock seemed to feel sad as he ticked out with melancholy monotony the parting moments; and the wind, as it came in heavy gusts and howled round the old chimney, seemed more melancholy than need be under the circumstances.
“Thee must be careful, Tom,” said Mrs. Bumpkin; “that Lunnun, as I hear, be a terrible plaace.”
“How be un a terrible plaace?” said Bumpkin, sarcastically. “I bean’t a child, Nancy.”
“No, thee bean’t a child, Tom; but thee bean’t up to
Lunnun ways: there be thieves and murderers, and what not.”
“Thieves and murderers!”
“And Joe, doan’t ee git out o’ nights; if anything ’appened to thee, thy old mother ’ud brak her ’art.”
“Look ee ’ere,” said Joe, “I bean’t got nuthin’ to lose, so I bean’t afeared o’ thieves.”
“No, but thee might git into trouble, thee might be led away.”
“So might thic bull,” said Joe; “but I’d like to zee what ’ud become o’ the chap as led un.”
“Chap as led un!” said Mrs. Bumpkin, laughing.
“I’d gie un a crack o’ the canister,” said Joe.
“Don’t thee git knockin’ down, Joe, unless thee be ’bliged,” said Mrs. Bumpkin; “keep out o’ bad company, and don’t stay out o’ nights.”
“And lookee ’ere, Joe,” said Bumpkin, “when thee comes afore th’ Counsellor wi’ wig on, hold up thee head; look un straight in t’ face and spak oop. Thee needn’t be afeared t’ spak t’ truth.”
“I bean’t afeard,” said Joe; “I mind me when old Morris wur at plough, and I was leadin’ th’ ’orses, Morris says, says he, ‘Now then, cock, let’s see if we can’t git a eend this time;’ so on we goes, and jist afore I gits the ’orses to eend o’ t’ field, Dobbin turns, and then, dash my bootons, the tother turns after un, and me tryin’ to keep em oop, Dobbin gits his legs over the trace. Well, Morris wur that wild, he says, says he, ‘Damme, if yer doan’t look sharp, I’ll gie thee a crack o’ t’ canister wi’ this ’ere whippense presny’” (presently).
“Crack o’ the canister!” laughed Mrs. Bumpkin, “and that’s what Morris called thy head, eh?”
This was a capital hit on Joe’s part, for it set them
thinking of the events of old times, and Joe, seeing the effect of it, ventured upon another anecdote relating to the old carter.
“Thee recollect, master, when that there Mr. Gearns come down to shoot; lor, lor, what a queer un he wur, surely!”
“Couldn’t shoot a hit,” said Bumpkin.
“Not he. Wall, we was carrying wheat, and Morris wur loadin, and jest as we gits the last pitch on t’ load, right through th’ ’orses legs runds a rat. Gearns wi’out more ado oops wi’ his loaded gun and bangs her off right under t’ ’orses legs; up jumps th’ ’orse, and Morris wur wery nigh tossed head fust into th’ yard. Wall, he makes no moore ado, for he didn’t keer, gemman or no gemman—didn’t Morris—”
“No more ur didn’t, Joe,” said Mrs. Bumpkin.
“He makes no moore ado, but he up and said, ‘damme,’ he says, ‘sir, you might as well a said you was gwine to shoot; you might a had me off and broked my neck.’”
“Haw! haw! haw!” laughed Mr. Bumpkin, and “Well done, Morris,” said Mrs. Bumpkin.
“Wall,” said Joe, “this ere gemman says, ‘It wouldn’t er bin much loss,’ he says, ‘if he had!’ ‘Damme,’ roars Morris, ‘it had a bin as much wally to me as yourn, anyhow.’”
They all remembered the story, and even Tim seemed to remember it too, for when they laughed he wagged his tail and laughed with them.
And thus the evening dragged along and bed time came.
In the morning all was in readiness, and the plaintiff with his witness drove away in the gig to the station, where Morris waited to bring the old horse back.
And as the train came into the little country station I awoke.
* * * * *
“I hope,” cried my wife, “that Mr. Prigg is a respectable man.”
“Respectable,” I answered, “I know he is; but whether he is honest is another matter.”
“But don’t you know?”
“I only know what I dream.”
“I have no opinion of him,” said she; “nor of that Locust; I believe they are a couple of rogues.”
“I should be very sorry to suggest such a thing as that,” I answered, “without some proof. Everybody should give credit for the best of motives.”
“But what are all these summonses you speak of?”
“O, they are summonses in the action. You may have as many of them as you can invent occasion for. You may go up to the Court of Appeal about twenty times before you try the action, which means about eighty different hearings before Master and Judges.”
“But how can a poor man endure that? It’s a great shame.”
“He can’t—he may have a perfectly good cause of action against a rich man or a rich company, and they can utterly ruin him before ever his case can come into Court.”
“But will no solicitor take it up for the poor man?”
“Yes, some will, and the only reward they usually get for their pains is to be stigmatized as having brought a speculative action—accused of doing it for the sake of costs; although I have known the most honourable men do it out of pure sympathy for the poor man.”
“And so they ought,” cried she.
“And I trust,” said I, “that hereafter it will be considered honourable to do so. It is quite as honourable, in my judgment, to bring an action when you may never be paid as to bring it when you know you will be.”
“Who was the person referred to as ‘the man?’”
“I don’t know,” said I, “but I strongly suspect he is, in reality, a nominee of Prigg’s.”
“That is exactly my opinion,” said my wife. “And if so, between them, they will ruin that poor man.”
“I can’t tell,” said I, lighting my pipe. “I know no more about the future of my dream than you do; maybe when I sleep again something else will transpire.”
“But can no one do anything to alter this state of things? I plainly perceive that they are all against this poor Bumpkin.”
“Well, you see, in a tinkering sort of way, a good many try their hands at reforming the law; but it’s to no one’s interest, that I can see, to reform it.”
“I hope you’ll write this dream and publish it, so that someone’s eyes may be opened.”
“It may make me enemies.”
“Not among honest people; they will all be on your side, and the dishonest ones, who seem to me to be the only persons benefited by such a dilatory and shocking mode of procedure, are the very persons whose enmity you need not fear. But can the Judges do nothing?”
“No; their duty is merely to administer the law, not to change it. But if the people would only give them full power and fair play, Old Fogeyism would be buried to-morrow. They struggle might and main to break through the fetters, but to no purpose while they are hampered by musty old precedents, ridiculous forms and bad statutes. They are not masters of the situation. I
wish they were for the sake of suitors. I would only make one condition with regard to them. If they were to set about the task of reform, I would not let the Equity Judges reform the Common Law nor the Common Law Judges the Equity.”
“I thought they were fused.”
“No, only transposed.”
CHAPTER XI.
Commencement of London life and adventures.
And I dreamt again, and methought there were three things with reference to London that Joe had learnt at school. First, that there was a Bridge, chiefly remarkable for the fact that Captain Cook, the Navigator, shot his servant because he said he was under London Bridge when he was in the South Pacific Ocean; secondly, that there was a famous Tower, where the Queen’s Crown was kept; thirdly, that there was a Monument built to show where the Great Fire began, and intimately connected in its cause with Guy Faux, whom Joe had helped to carry on the Fifth of November. Now when the young man woke in the morning at “The Goose,” in Millbank Street, Westminster, his attention was immediately attracted by these three historic objects; and it was not till after he had made inquiries that he found that it was not London Bridge that crossed the water in a line with the Horseferry Road, but a very inferior structure called Lambeth Suspension Bridge. Nor was the Tower on the left the Tower of London, but the Lollards’ tower of Lambeth Palace; while the supposed Monument was only the handsome column of Messrs. Doulton’s Pottery.
But they were all interesting objects nevertheless; and so were the huge cranes that were at work opposite the
house lifting the most tremendous loads of goods from the lighters to the wharves. The “Shipping,” too, with its black and copper-coloured sails, gave some idea of the extent of England’s mercantile marine. At all events, it excited the country lad’s wonder and astonishment. But there was another matter that gave quite an agricultural and countrified look to the busy scene, and that was the prodigious quantity of straw that was being unloaded from the barges alongside. While Mr. Bumpkin went to see his solicitor at Westminster Hall, Joe wandered about the wharves looking at the boats and barges, the cranes and busy workmen who drove their barrows from barge to wharf, and ran along with loads on their backs over narrow planks, in the most lively manner. But looking on, even at sights like these, day by day, becomes a wearisome task, and Joe, being by no means an idle lad, occasionally “lent a hand” where he saw an opportunity. London, no doubt, was a very interesting place, but when he had seen Page Street, and Wood Street, and Church Street, and Abingdon Street, and Millbank Prison, and the other interesting objects referred to, his curiosity was gratified, and he began to grow tired of the sameness of the place. Occasionally he saw a soldier or two and the military sight fired his rustic imagination. Not that Joe had the remotest intention of entering the army; it was the last thing he would ever dream of; but, in common with all mankind he liked to look at the smart bearing and brilliant uniform of the sergeant, who seemed to have little else to do than walk about with his cane under his arm, or tap the stone parapet with it as he looked carelessly at some interesting object on the river.
The evenings in the taproom at “The Goose” were among the most enjoyable periods of the lad’s London existence. A select party usually gathered there, consisting chiefly of a young man who never apparently had had anything to do in his life. His name was Harry Highlow, a clever sort of wild young scapegrace who played well at “shove-ha’penny,” and sang a good comic song. Another of the party was a youth who earned a precarious livelihood by carrying two boards on his shoulders advertising a great pickle, or a great singer, as the case might be. Another of the company was a young man who was either a discharged or a retired groom; I should presume the former, as he complained bitterly that the authorities at Scotland Yard would not grant him a licence to drive a cab. He appeared to be a striking instance of how every kind of patronage in this country is distributed by favouritism. There were several others, all equally candidates for remunerative situations, but equally unfortunate in obtaining them: proving conclusively that life is indeed a lottery in which there may be a few prizes, usually going, by the caprice of Fortune, to the undeserving, while the blanks went indiscriminately to all the rest.
Bound together by the sympathy which a common misfortune engenders, these young men were happy in the pursuit of their innocent amusements at “The Goose.” And while, at first, they were a little inclined to chaff the rustic youth on account of his apparent simplicity, they soon learned to respect him on account of his exceedingly good temper and his willingness to fall in with the general views of the company on all occasions. They learnt all about Joe’s business in London, and it was a common greeting when they met
in the evening to ask “how the pig was?” And they would enquire what the Lord Chancellor thought about the case, and whether it wouldn’t be as well to grease the pig’s tail and have a pig-hunt. To all which jocular observations Joe would reply with excellent temper and sometimes with no inappropriate wit. And then they said they would like to see Joe tackle Mr. Orkins, and believed he would shut him up. But chaff never roused his temper, and he laughed at the case as much as any man there. Fine tales he would have to tell when he got back to Yokelton; and pleasant, no doubt, would be in after-life, his recollections of the evenings at “The Goose.”
As a great general surveys the field where the intended action is to be fought, so Mr. Bumpkin was conducted by Horatio to Westminster Hall, and shown the various Courts of Justice, and some of the judges.
“Be this Chancery?” he enquired.
“O my eye, no!” said Horatio; “the cause has been transferred from Chancery to these ’ere Common Law Courts. It was only brought in Chancery because the costs there are upon a higher scale; we didn’t mean to try her there.”
“Where will she be tried then?”
“In one of these Courts.”
“Who be the judge?” whispered Bumpkin.
At this moment there was a loud shout of “Silence!” and although Mr. Bumpkin was making no noise whatever, a gentleman approached him, looking very angry, and enquired if Mr. Bumpkin desired to be committed for contempt of Court.
Mr. Bumpkin thought the most prudent answer was silence; so he remained speechless, looking the gentleman
full in the face; while the gentleman looked him full in the face for at least a minute and a half, as if he were wondering whether he should take him off to prison there and then, or give him another chance, as the judge sometimes does a prisoner when he sentences him to two years imprisonment with hard labour.
Now the gentleman was a very amiable man of about forty, with large brown mutton-chop whiskers, and a very well trained moustache; good-looking and, I should think, with some humour, that is for a person connected with the Courts. He was something about the Court, but in what capacity he held up his official head, I am unable to say. He was evidently regarded with great respect by the crowd of visitors. It was some time before he took his gaze off Mr. Bumpkin; even when he had taken his eyes off, he seemed looking at him as if he feared that the moment he went away Bumpkin would do it again.
And then methought I heard someone whisper near me: “His lordship is going to give judgment in the case of Starling v. Nightingale,” and all at once there was a great peace. I lost sight of Bumpkin, I lost sight of the gentleman, I lost sight of the crowd; an indefinable sensation of delight overpowered my senses. Where was I? I had but a moment before been in a Court of Justice, with crowds of gaping idlers; with prosaic-looking gentlemen in horsehair wigs; with gentlemen in a pew with papers before them ready to take down the proceedings. Now it seemed as if I must be far away in the distant country, where all was calm and heavenly peace.
Surely I must be among the water-lilies! What a lullaby sound as of rippling waters and of distant music
in the evening air; of the eddying and swirl of the mingling currents; of the chime of bells on the evening breeze; of the zephyrs through fir-tops; of woodland whispers; of the cadence of the cathedral organ; of the soft sweet melody of the maiden’s laugh; of her gentlest accents in her sweetest mood; of—but similitudes fail me. In this delicious retreat, which may be compared to the Garden of Eden before the tempter entered, are the choicest flowers of rhetoric. I hear a voice as from the far-off past, and I wonder will that be the voice which will utter the “last syllable of recorded time?”
Then methought the scene changed, and I heard the question—
“Do you move, Mr. Jones?”
O the prosaic Jones!—“don’t you move?”
Yes, he does; he partly rises, ducks his head, and elevates the hinder portion of his person, and his movement ceases. And the question is repeated to Mr. Quick. “Do you move, Mr. Quick?”
Then I saw Mr. Bumpkin again, just as Mr. Quick ducked his head and elevated his back.
And then some gentleman actually moved in real earnest upon these interesting facts:—A farmer’s bull—just the very case for Mr. Bumpkin—had strayed from the road and gone into another man’s yard, and upset a tub of meal; was then driven into a shed and locked up. The owner of the bull came up and demanded that the animal should be released. “Not without paying two pounds,” said the meal-owner. The bull owner paid it under protest, and summoned the meal-owner to the County Court for one pound seventeen shillings and sixpence, the difference between the damage done (which was really about twopence) and the money paid to redeem
the bull. Judgment for the plaintiff. Motion for new trial, or to enter verdict for the defendant, on the ground that the meal man could charge what he liked.
One of the learned Judges asked:
“Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Smiles, that if a man has a bull, and that bull goes into a yard and eats some meal out of a meal-tub, and the damage amounts to twopence, and the owner of the bull says ‘here’s your twopence,’ that the owner of the meal can say, “No, I want a hundred pounds, and shall take your bull damage feasant,” and then takes him and locks him up, and the owner of the bull pays the hundred pounds, he cannot afterwards get the money back?”
“That is so,” says the learned counsel, “such is the law.” And then he cited cases innumerable to prove that it was the law.
“Well,” said the Judge, “unless you show me a case of a bull and a meal-tub, I shall not pay attention to any case—must be a meal-tub.”
Second Judge: “It is extortion, and done for the purpose of extortion; and I should say he could be indicted for obtaining money by false pretences.”
“I am not sure he could not, my lord,” said the counsel; “but he can’t recover the money back.”
“Then,” said the Judge, “if he obtains money by an indictable fraud cannot he get it back?”
“Well,” said Bumpkin, “that be rum law; if it had bin my bull, he’d a gin ’em summat afore they runned him in.”
It was interesting to see how the judges struggled against this ridiculous law; and it was manifest even to the unlettered Bumpkin, that a good deal of old law is very much like old clothes, the worse for wear, and
totally inapplicable to the present day. A struggle against old authorities is often a struggle of Judges to free themselves from the fetters of antiquated dicta and decisions no longer appropriate to or necessary for the modern requirements of civilisation.
In this case precedents running over one hundred and eight years were quoted, and so far from impressing the Court with respect, they simply evoked a smile of contempt.
The learned Judges, after patiently listening to the arguments, decided that extortion and fraud give no title, and thus were the mists and vapours that arose from the accumulated mudbanks of centuries dispelled by the clear shining of common sense. In spite of arguments by the hour, and the pettifogging of one hundred and eight years, justice prevailed, and the amazed appellant was far more damaged by his legal proceedings than he was by the bull. The moral surely is, that however wise ancient judges were in their day, their wisdom ought not to be allowed to work injustice. He may be a wise Judge who makes a precedent, but he is often a much wiser who sweeps it away.
CHAPTER XII.
How the great Don O’Rapley became an usher of the Court of Queen’s Bench and explained the ingenious invention of the round square—how Mr. Bumpkin took the water and studied character from a penny steamboat.
Some years ago there lived in a little village near Bridgewater a young man who was the bowler of his village eleven—one of the first roundhand bowlers in point of time, and by no means the last in point of merit. Indeed, so great was the local fame of this young man that it produced a sensation for miles around when it was announced that Don O’Rapley (such was his name) was going to bowl. All the boys of the village where the match was to take place were in a state of the utmost excitement to see the Don. At times it was even suggested that he was unfairly “smugged in” to play for a village to which he had no pretensions to belong. In process of time the youth became a man, and by virtue of his cricket reputation he obtained a post in the Court of Queen’s Bench. The gentleman whom I have referred to as looking with such austerity at Mr. Bumpkin is that very Don O’Rapley; the requirements of a large family necessitated his abandonment of a profession which, although more to his taste, was not sufficiently remunerative to admit of his indulging it
after the birth of his sixth child. But it was certain that he never lost his love for the relinquished pursuit, as was manifest from his habit when alone of frequently going through a kind of dumb motion with his arm as if he were delivering one of his celebrated “twisters.” He had even been seen in a quiet corner of the Court to go through the same performance in a somewhat modified form. He was once caught by the Judge in the very act of delivering a ball, but found a ready apology in the explanation that he had a touch of “rheumatiz” in his right shoulder.
Now I saw in my dream that Don O’Rapley was in earnest conversation with Horatio, and it was clear Mr. Bumpkin was the subject of it, from the very marked manner in which the Don and the youth turned occasionally to look at him. It may be stated that Horatio was the nephew of Don O’Rapley, and, perhaps, it was partly in consequence of this relationship, and partly in consequence of what Horatio told him, that the latter gentleman rose from his seat under the witness-box and came towards Mr. Bumpkin, shouting as he did so in a very solemn and prolonged tone, “Si-lence!”
Mr. Bumpkin saw him, and, conscious that he was innocent this time of any offence for which he could be committed, stood his ground with a bold front, and firmly held his white beaver with both hands. O’Rapley contemplated him for a few minutes with an almost affectionate interest. Bumpkin felt much as a pigeon would under the gaze of an admiring owl.
At last O’Rapley spoke:—
“Why, it’s never Mr. Bumpkin, is it?”
“It be a good imitation, sir,” said Bumpkin, “and I bean’t asheamed of un.”
“Silence!” cried the Don. “You don’t remember me, I s’pose?”
“Wall, not rightly, I doan’t.”
“I dissay you recollect Don O’Rapley, the demon bowler of Bridgewater?”
“I’ve ’eered tell on ’im,” said Bumpkin.
“I’m that man!” said the Don, “and this is my nephew, Mr. Snigger. He tells me you’ve got a case comin’ on?”
“I be.”
“Just step outside,” said the Don, “we mustn’t talk ’ere.” So they went into Westminster Hall, and the good-natured O’Rapley asked if Mr. Bumpkin would like to look round, and if so he said he would be happy to show him, for he was very pleased to see anyone from the scene of his youthful exploits.
“Thankee, sir—thankee, sir,” answered Bumpkin, delighted to find another “native” among “furriners.” “And this ’ere genleman be thy nevvy, sir?”
“He is, and very proud of him I am; he’s my sister’s son.”
“Seems a nice quiet boy,” said Mr. Bumpkin. “Now how old might he be?”
“Old,” said Mr. O’Rapley, looking deedily at the floor and pressing his hand to his forehead, “why he’ll be seventeen come March.”
“Hem! his ’ed be a good deal older nor thic: his ’ed be forty—it’s my way o’ thinkin’.”
The Don laughed.
“Yes, he has his head screwed on the right way, I think.”
“Why that air lad,” said Bumpkin, “might make a judge.”
O’Rapley laughed and shook his head.
“In old times,” said he, “he might ha’ made a Lord Chancellor; a man as was clever had a chance then, but lor’ blesh you, Mr. Bumpkin, now-a-days it’s so very different; the raw material is that plentiful in the law that you can find fifty men as would make rattlin good Lord Chancellors for one as you could pick out to make a rattlin’ good bowler. But come, we’ll have a look round.”
So round they looked again, and Mr. Bumpkin was duly impressed with the array of wigs and the number of books and the solemnity of the judges and the arguments of counsel, not one word of which was intelligible to him. Mr. O’Rapley explained everything and pointed out where a judge and jury tried a case, and then took him into another court where two judges tried the judge and jury, and very often set them both aside and gave new trials and altered verdicts and judgments or refused to do so notwithstanding the elaborate arguments of the most eloquent and long-winded of learned counsel.
Then the Don asked if Mr. Bumpkin would like to see the Chancery Judges—to which Mr. Bumpkin answered that “he hadn’t much opinion o’ Chancery from all he’d ’eeard, and that when a man got into them there Cooarts maybe he’d never coome out agin, but he shouldn’t mind seein’ a Chancery Judge.”
“Well, then,” said the distinguished bowler, “now-a-days we needn’t go to Chancery, for they’ve invented the ‘Round Square.’”
Mr. Bumpkin stared. Could so great a man as the O’Rapley be joking? No; the Don seldom laughed. He was a great admirer of everything relating to the law, but had a marked prejudice against the new system;
and when he spoke of the “Round Square” he meant, as he afterwards explained, that confusion of Law and Equity which consists in putting Chancery Judges to try common law cases and Common Law Judges to unravel the nice twistings of the elaborate system of Equity; “as though,” said he, “you should fuse the butcher and the baker by getting the former to make bread and the latter to dress a calf.”
Mr. Bumpkin could only stare by way of reply.
“If you want to see Chancery Judges,” added the Don, “come to the Old Bailey!”
CHAPTER XIII.
An interesting gentleman—showing how true it is that one half the world does not know how the other half lives.
“The Old Bailey,” said Mr. Bumpkin, as they crossed Palace Yard on their way to the steamboat pier, “bean’t that where all these ’ere chaps be tried for ship stealin’?” (sheep stealing).
“I don’t know about ship stealing,” said O’Rapley, “but it’s a place where they can cure all sorts of diseases.”
“Zounds!” exclaimed Bumpkin, “I’ve ’eeard tell of un. A horsepital you means—dooan’t want to goo there.”
“Horse or donkey, it don’t matter what,” said Don O’Rapley. “They’ve got a stuff that’s so strong a single drop will cure any disease you’ve got.”
“I wonder if it ’ud cure my old ’ooman’s roomatiz. It ’ud be wuth tryin’, maybe.”
“I’ll warrant it,” replied the Don. “She’d never feel ’em after takin’ one drop,” and he drew his hand across his mouth and coughed.
“I’d like to try un,” said the farmer, “for she be a terrible suffrer in these ’ere east winds. ’As ’em like all up the grine.”
“Ah,” said the Don, “it don’t matter where she ’as ’em, it will cure her.”
“How do ’em sell it—in bottles?”
“No, it isn’t in bottles—you take it by the foot; about nine feet’s considered a goodish dose.”
Mr. Bumpkin looked straight before him, somewhat puzzled at this extraordinary description of a medicine. At length he got a glimmering of the Don’s meaning, and, looking towards, but not quite at him, said:—
“I be up to ’ee, sir!” and the Don laughed, and asked whether his description wasn’t right?
“That be right enough. Zounds! it be right enough. Haw! haw! haw!”
“You never want a second dose,” said the Don, “do you?”
“No, sir—never wants moore ’an one dose; but ’ow comes it, if you please, sir, that these ’ere Chancery chaps have changed their tack; be it they’ve tried ’onest men so long that they be gwine to ’ave a slap at the thieves for a change?”
“Look ’ere,” said the worthy O’Rapley, “you will certainly see the inside of a jail before you set eyes on the outside of a haystack, if you go on like that. It’s contempt of court to speak of Her Majesty’s Judges as ‘chaps’.”
“Beg pardon, sir,” said Bumpkin, “but we must all ’ave a larnin’. I didn’t mane no disruspect to the Lord Judge; but I wur only a axin’ jist the same as you might ax me about anythink on my farm.”
And I saw that they proceeded thus in edifying conversation until they came to the Thames embankment. It was somewhat difficult to preserve his presence of mind as Mr. Bumpkin descended the gangway and stepped on board the boat, which was belching forth its volumes of black smoke and rocking under the influence of the wash of a steamer that had just left the pier.
“I doant much like these ’ere booats,” said he. “Doant mind my old punt, but dang these ’ere ships.”
“There’s no danger,” said the O’Rapley, springing on board as though he had been a pilot: and then making a motion with his arm as if he was delivering a regular “length ball,” his fist unfortunately came down on Mr. Bumpkin’s white hat, in consequence of a sudden jerk of the vessel; a rocking boat not being the best of places for the delivery of length balls.
Mr. Bumpkin looked round quite in the wrong direction for ascertaining what was the cause of the sudden shock to his nervous system and his hat.
“Zounds!” said he, “what were thic?”
“What was what?” asked O’Rapley.
“Summut gie me a crack o’ the top o’ my ’ead like a thunderbolt.”
“I didn’t see anything fall,” said the Don.
“Noa; but I felt un, which I allows wur more’n seein’—lookee ’ere.”
And taking off his huge beaver he showed the dent of Mr. O’Rapley’s fist.
“Bless me,” said the roundhand bowler, “it’s like a crack with a cricket ball.”
But there was no time for further examination of the extraordinary circumstance, for the crowd of passengers poured along and pushed this way and that, so that the two friends were fairly driven to the fore part of the boat, where they took their seats. It was quite a new world to Mr. Bumpkin, and more like a dream than a reality. As he stared at the different buildings he was too much amazed even to enquire what was this or what was that. But when they passed under the Suspension Bridge, and the chimney ducked her head and the smoke
came out of the “stump,” as Mr. Bumpkin termed it, he thought she had struck and broken short off. Mr. O’Rapley explained this phenomenon, as he did many others on their route; and when they came to Cleopatra’s Needle he gave such information as he possessed concerning that ancient work. Mr. Bumpkin looked as though he were not to be taken in.
“I be up to ’ee, sir,” said he. “I s’pose that air thing the t’other side were the needle-case?”
The O’Rapley informed him that it was a shot tower where they made shot.
Mr. Bumpkin laughed heartily at this; he was not to be taken in by any manner of means; was far too sharp for that.
“And I spoase,” said he, “they makes the guns—”
“In Gunnersbury,” said Mr. O’Rapley; it was no use to be serious.
“I thought thee were gwine to say in a gun pit, but I don’t mind thy chaff, Master Rapley, and shall be mighty proud to see thee down at Southood for a day’s shoot-in’: and mind thee bring some o’ these ere shot with thee that be made at yon tower, haw! haw! haw! Thee’ll kill a white-tailed crow then, I shouldn’t wonder; thee knows a white-tailed crow, doan’t thee, Master Rapley, when thee sees un—and danged if I doan’t gie thee a quart bottle o’ pigeon’s milk to tak’ wi’ thee; haw! haw! haw!”
The O’Rapley laughed heartily at these witty sallies, for Bumpkin was so jolly, and took everything in such good part, that he could not but enjoy his somewhat misplaced sarcasms.
“Now you’ve heard of Waterloo, I dare say,” said Mr. O’Rapley.
“Yes, I’ve ’eeard tell on un, and furder, my grand-feather wur out theer.”
“Well, this that we are coming to is Waterloo Bridge.”
“Yes,” said Bumpkin, “it be a bridge, but it bean’t Worterloo more ’an I be my grandfearther—what de think o’ that—haw! haw! haw!”
“Good,” said O’Rapley; “that’s quite right, but this is the bridge named after the battle.”
“Zo’t be neamed artur un because it worn’t named afore un, haw! haw! haw! Good agin, Maister Rapley, thee got it.”
Mr. O’Rapley found that any attempt to convey instruction was useless, so he said:—
“Joking apart, Mr. Bumpkin, you see that man sitting over there with the wideawake hat?”
“D’ye mane near the noase o’ the ship?”
“Well, the nose if you like.”
“I zee un—chap wi’ red faace, blue ’ankercher, and white spots?”
“That’s the man. Well, now, you’d never guess who he is?”
Mr. Bumpkin certainly would have been a sharp man if he could.
“Well,” continued the Don, “that man gets his living by bringing actions. No matter who it is or what, out comes the writ and down he comes for damages.”
“Hem! that be rum, too, bean’t it?”
“Yes, he’s always looking out for accidents; if he hears o’ one, down he comes with his pocket-book, gets ’old o’ some chap that’s injured, or thinks he is, and out comes the writ.”
“A scamp—works in the name of some broken-down attorney, and pays him for the use of it.”
“So he can work the lor like wirout being a loryer?”
“That’s it—and, lor’ bless you, he’s got such a way with him that if he was to come and talk to you for five minutes, he’d have a writ out against you in the morning.”
“Ain’t it rayther cold at this eend o’ the booat,” asked Mr. Bumpkin, “I feel a little chilly loike.”
“No,” said the Don, “we just caught the wind at that corner, that was all.”
But Mr. Bumpkin kept his eye on the artful man, with a full determination to “have no truck wi’ un.”
“As I was saying, this Ananias never misses a chance: he’s on the look-out at this moment; if they was to push that gangway against his toe, down he’d go and be laid up with an injured spine and concussion of the brain, till he got damages from the company.”
“Must be a reg’ler rogue, I allows; I should like to push un overboard.”
“Just what he would like; he isn’t born to be drowned, that man; he’d soon have a writ out against you. There was a railway accident once miles away in the country; ever so many people were injured and some of ’em killed. Well, down he goes to see if he could get hold of anybody—no, nobody would have him—so what does he do but bring an action himself.”
“What for?”
“Why, just the same as if he’d been in the accident.”
“Ought to be hanged.”
“Well, the doctors were very pleased to find that no bones were broken, and, although there were no bruises,
they discovered that there were internal injuries: the spine was wrong, and there was concussion of the brain, and so on.”
“If ever I ’eerd tell o’ sich a thing in my borned days.”
“No, but it’s true. Well, he was laid up a long time under medical treatment, and it was months before he could get about, and then he brings his action: but before it came on he prosecutes his servant for stealing some trumpery thing or other—a very pretty girl she was too—and the trial came on at Quarter Sessions.”
“Where Squoire Stooky sits.”
“I never laughed so in all my life; there was the railway company with the red light, and there was Fireaway, the counsel for the girl, and then in hobbled the prosecutor, with a great white bandage round his head. He was so feeble through the injuries he had received that he could hardly walk. ‘Now then,’ says the counsel, ‘is he sworn?’ ‘Yes,’ says the crier.
“‘He must be sworn on the Koran,’ says Fireaway; ‘he’s a Mommadon.’
“‘Where’s the Jorum?’ says the crier. ‘Must be swore on the Jorum.’
“O dear, dear, you should ha’ heard ’em laugh—it was more like a theayter than a court. It was not only roars, but continnerus roars for several minutes. And all the time the larfter was going on there was this man throwin’ out his arms over the witness-box at the counsel like a madman; and the more he raved the more they laughed. He was changed from a hobblin’ invalid, as the counsel said, into a hathletic pugilist.”
“I ’ope she got off.”
“Got off with flying colours—we’re magnanimous said the jury, ‘not guilty.’”
“Well, I likes upright and down-straight,” said Bumpkin, “it’ll goo furdest in th’ long run.”
“Yes,” said O’Rapley, “and the longer the run the furder it’ll go.”
“So ’t wool; but if you doan’t mind, sir, I’d like to get nearer that ’ere fireplace.”
“The funnel—very well.” And as they moved Mr. O’Rapley, in the exuberance of his spirits, delivered another ball at the chimney, which apparently took the middle stump, for the chimney again broke in half.
“Got him!” said he. “I quite agree, and I’ll tell you for why. You can play a straight ball if you mind what you are about—just take your bat so, and bring your left elbow well round so, and keep your bat, as you say, upright and down-straight, so—and there you are. And there, indeed, Mr. Bumpkin was, on his back, for the boat at that moment bumped so violently against the side of the pier that many persons were staggering about as if they were in a storm.
“Zounds!” said the farmer, as he was being picked up—“these ’ere booats, I doan’t like ’em—gie me the ole-fashioned uns.”
Now came the usual hullabaloo, “Stand back!—pass on!—out of the way! now, then, look sharp there!” and the pushing of the gangway against people’s shins as though they were so many skittles to be knocked over, and then came the slow process of “passing out.”
“There’s one thing,” whispered O’Rapley, “if you do break your leg the company’s liable—that’s one comfort.”
“Thankee, sir,” answered Bumpkin, “but I bean’t a gwine to break my leg for the sake o’ a haction—and mebbee ha’ to pay the costs.”
CHAPTER XIV.
THE OLD BAILEY—ADVANTAGES OF THE NEW SYSTEM ILLUSTRATED.
And I saw in my dream that Don O’Rapley and worthy Master Bumpkin proceeded together until they came to the Old Bailey; that delightful place which will ever impress me with the belief that the Satanic Personage is not a homeless wanderer. As they journeyed together O’Rapley asked whether there was any particular kind of case which he would prefer—much the same as he would enquire what he would like for lunch.
“Well, thankee, sir,” said Bumpkin, “what he there?”—just the same as a hungry guest would ask the waiter for the bill of fare.
“Well,” said Mr. O’Rapley, “there’s no murder to-day, but there’s sure to be highway robberies, burglaries, rapes, and so on.”
“Wall, I thinks one o’ them air as good as anything,” said Bumpkin. “I wur on the jury once when a chap were tried.”
“Did he get off?”
“Got off as clane as a whusle. Not guilty, we all said: sarved her right.”
“It’s rather early in the morning, p’r’aps,” said O’Rapley; “but there’s sure to be something interesting
before lunch—crimes are very pop’lar, and for my own part, I think they’re as nice as anything: divorces, p’r’aps, are as good, and the female intellect prefers ’em as a more digestable food for their minds.”
“As a what, sir!”
“Well, since they did away with crim. cons, there’s nothing left for females but murders and divorces, worth speaking of.”
“Why, how’s that, then?”
“O, they’re not considered sufficiently moral, that’s all. You see, Master Bumpkin, we’re getting to be a very moral and good people. They’re doin’ away with all that’s naughty, such as music and dancing, peep-shows and country fairs. This is a religious age. No pictur galleries on a Sunday, but as many public-houses as you like; it’s wicked to look at picturs on a Sunday. And now I’ll tell you another thing, Master Bumpkin, although p’r’aps I ought to keep my mouth closed; but ’ere you’ll see a Chancery Judge as knows everything about land and titles to property, and all that, and never had any training in Criminal Courts, and may be never been inside of one before, you’ll see ’im down ’ere tryin’ burglaries and robberies, and down at the Assizes you’ll see ’im tryin’ men and women for stealing mutton pies and a couple of ounces of bacon; that’s the way the Round Square’s worked, Master Bumpkin; and very well it acts. There’s a moral atmosphere, too, about the Courts which is very curious. It seems to make every crime look bigger than it really is. But as I say, where’s the human natur of a Chancery barrister? How can you get it in Chancery? They only sees human natur in a haffidavit, and although I don’t say you can’t
put a lot of it into a haffidavit, such as perjury and such like, yet it’s so done up by the skill of the profession that you can hardly see it. Learning from haffidavits isn’t like learning from the witness-box, mark my words, Mr. Bumpkin; and so you’ll find when you come to hear a case or two.”
Having thus eloquently delivered himself, Mr. O’Rapley paused to see its effect: but there was no answer. There was no doubt the Don could talk a-bit, and took especial pride in expressing his views on law reform, which, to his idea, would best be effected by returning to the “old style.”
And I saw that they pushed their way through a crowd of people of all sorts and degrees of unwashedness and crime, and proceeded up a winding stair, through other crowds of the most evil-looking indictable persons you could meet with out of the Bottomless Pit.
And amongst them were pushing, with eager, hungry, dirty faces, men who called themselves clerks, evil-disposed persons who traded under such names as their owners could use no longer on their own account. These prowlers amongst thieves, under the protection of the Law, were permitted to extort what they could from the friends of miserable prisoners under pretence of engaging counsel to defend them. Counsel they would engage after a fashion—sometimes: but not unfrequently they cheated counsel, client and the law at the same time, which is rather better than killing two birds with one stone.
And the two friends, after threading their way through the obnoxious crowd, came to the principal Court of the Old Bailey, called the “Old Court,” and a very evil-looking
place it was. All the ghosts of past criminals seemed floating in the dingy atmosphere. Crowds of men, women and children were heaped together in all directions, except on the bench and in a kind of pew which was reserved for such ladies as desired to witness the last degradation of human nature.
Presently came in, announced with a loud cry of “Silence!” and “Be uncovered in Court!” a gorgeous array of stout and berobed gentlemen, with massive chains and purple faces. These, I learned, were the noble Aldermen of the Corporation. What a contrast to the meagre wretches who composed the crowd! Here was a picture of what well-fed honesty and virtue could accomplish for human nature on the one part, as opposed to what hungry crime could effect, on the other. Blessings, say I, on good victuals! It is a great promoter of innocence. And I thought how many of the poor, half-starved, cadaverous wretches who crowded into the dock in all their emaciated wretchedness and rags would, under other conditions, have become as portly and rubicund and as moral as the row of worthy aldermen who sat looking at them with contempt from their exalted position.
The rich man doesn’t steal a loaf of bread; he has no temptation to do so: the uneducated thief doesn’t get up sham companies, because he has no temptation to do so. Temptation and Opportunity have much to answer for in the destinies of men. Honesty is the best policy, but it is not always the most expedient or practicable.
Now there was much arraignment of prisoners, and much swearing of jurymen, and proclamations about “informing my Lords Justices and the Queen’s Attorney-General of any crimes, misdemeanours, felonies, &c., committed
by any of the prisoners,” and “if anybody could so inform my Lords Justices,” &c, he was to come forward and do so, and he would be heard. And then the crowd of prisoners, except the one about to be tried, were told to stand down. And down they all swarmed, some laughing and some crying, to the depths below. And the stout warders took their stand beside the remaining prisoner.
“Now,” said Mr. O’Rapley, “this Judge is quite fresh to the work, and I’ll warrant he’ll take a moral view of the law, which is about the worst view a Judge can take.”
The man left in the dock was a singular specimen of humanity: he was a thin, wizen-looking man of about seventy, with a wooden leg: and as he stood up to plead, leant on two crutches, while his head shook a good deal, as if he had got the palsy. A smile went round the bar, and in some places broke out into a laugh: the situation was, indeed, ridiculous; and before any but a Chancery Judge, methought, there must be an acquittal on the view. However, I saw that the man pleaded not guilty, and then Mr. Makebelieve opened the case for the Crown. He put it very clearly, and, as he said, fairly before the jury; and then called a tall, large-boned woman of about forty into the witness-box. This was the “afflicted widow,” as Makebelieve had called her; and the way she gave her evidence made a visible impression on the mind of the learned Judge. His Lordship looked up occasionally from his note-book and fixed his eyes on the prisoner, whose appearance was that of one trembling with a consciousness of guilt—that is, to one not versed in human nature outside an affidavit.
Mr. Nimble, the prisoner’s counsel, asked if the prisoner might sit down as he was very “infirm.”
“Have you an affidavit of that fact, Mr. Nimble?” asked the Judge.
“No, my lord; it is not usual on such an application to have an affidavit.”
“It is not usual,” said his lordship, “to take notice of any fact not upon affidavit; but in this case the prisoner may sit down.”
The prosecutrix gave her evidence very flippantly, and did not seem in the least concerned that her virtue had had so narrow an escape.
“Now,” asked Mr. Nimble, “what are you?”
The learned Judge said he could not see what that had to do with the question. Could Mr. Nimble resist the facts?
“Yes, my lord,” answered the learned counsel; “and I intend, in the first place, to resist them by showing that this woman is entirely unworthy of credit.”
“Are you really going to suggest perjury, Mr. Nimble?”
“Assuredly, my lord! I am going to show that there is not a word of truth in this woman’s statement. I have a right to cross-examine as to her credit. If your lordship will allow me, I will—”
“Cross-examination, Mr. Nimble, cannot be allowed, in order to make a witness contradict all that she has said in her examination-in-chief; it would be a strange state of the law, if it could.”
Mr. Nimble looked about the desk, and then under it, and felt in his bag, and at last exclaimed in a somewhat petulant tone:
“Where’s my Taylor?”
“What do you want your tailor for?” asked the Judge.
“I wish to point out to your lordship that my proposition is correct, and that I can cross-examine to the credit of a witness.”
Here the clerk of arraigns, who sat just under the learned Judge, and was always consulted on matters of practice when there was any difficulty, was seen whispering to his lordship: after which his lordship looked very blank and red.
“We always consult him, my lord,” said Mr. Nimble, with a smile, “in suits at Common Law.”
Everybody tried not to laugh, and everybody failed. Even the Judge, being a very good-tempered man, laughed too, and said:
“O yes, Taylor on Evidence, Mr. Nimble.”
At last the book, about the size of a London Directory, was handed up by a tall man who was Mr. Nimble’s clerk.
“Now, my lord, at page nineteen hundred and seventy-two your lordship will find that when the credibility of a witness is attacked—”
Judge: “That will be near the end of the book.”
Mr. Nimble: “No, my lord, near the beginning.”
“I shall not stop you,” said the learned Judge; “your question may be put for what it is worth: but now, suppose in answer to your question she says she is an ironer, what then?”
“That’s what I am, my lordship,” said the woman, with an obsequious curtsey.
“There, now you have it,” said the Judge, “she is an ironer; stop, let me take that down, ‘I am an ironer.’”
The cross-examination continued, somewhat in an
angry tone no doubt, and amid frequent interruptions; but Mr. Nimble always thumped down the ponderous Taylor upon any objection of the learned Judge, and crushed it as though it were a butterfly.
Next the policeman gave his evidence, and was duly cross-examined. Mr. Nimble called no witnesses; there were none to call: but addressed the jury in a forcible and eloquent speech, stigmatizing the charge as an utterly preposterous one, and dealing with every fact in a straightforward and manly manner. After he had finished, the jury would undoubtedly have acquitted; but the learned Judge had to sum up, which in this, as in many cases at Quarter Sessions, was no more a summing up than counting ten on your fingers is a summing up. It was a desultory speech, and if made by the counsel for the prosecution, would have been a most unfair one for the Crown: totally ignoring the fact that human nature was subject to frailties, and testimony liable to be tainted with perjury. It made so great an impression upon me in my dream that I transcribed it when I awoke; and this is the manner in which it dealt with the main points:—
“Gentlemen of the Jury,
“This is a case of a very serious character (the nature of the offence was then read from Roscoe), and I am bound to tell you that the evidence is all one way: namely, on the side of the prosecution. There is not a single affidavit to the contrary. Now what are the facts?”
Mr. Nimble: “Would your lordship pardon me—whether they are facts or not is for the jury.”
“I am coming to that, Mr. Nimble; unless contradicted they are facts, or, at least, if you believe them,
gentlemen. If the evidence is uncontradicted, what is the inference? The inference is for you, not for me; I have simply to state the law: it is for you to find the facts. You must exercise your common sense: if the prisoner could have contradicted this evidence, is it reasonable to suppose he would not have done so with so serious a charge hanging over his head?”
“My lord, may I ask how could the prisoner have called evidence? there was no one present.”
“Mr. Nimble,” said his Lordship solemnly, “he might have shown he was elsewhere.”
“Yes, my lord; but the prisoner admits being present: he doesn’t set up an alibi.”
“Gentlemen, you hear what the learned counsel says: he admits that the prisoner was present; that is corroborative of the story told by the prosecutrix. Now, if you find a witness speaking truthfully about one part of a transaction, what are you to infer with regard to the rest? Gentlemen, the case is for you, and not for me: happily I have not to find the facts: they are for you—and what are they? This woman, who is an ironer, was going along a lonely lane, proceeding to her home, as she states—and again I say there is no contradiction—and she meets this man; he accosts her, and then, according to her account, assaults her, and in a manner which I think leaves no doubt of his intention—but that is for you. I say he assaults her, if you believe her story: of course, if you do not believe her story, then in the absence of corroboration there would be an end of the case. But is there an absence of corroboration? What do we find, gentlemen? Now let me read to you the evidence of Police Constable Swearhard. What does he say? ‘I was coming along the Lover’s Lane at nine
twenty-five, and I saw two persons, whom I afterwards found to be the prosecutrix and the prisoner.’ ‘You will mark that, gentlemen, the prisoner himself does not suggest an alibi, that is to say, that he was elsewhere, when this event occurred. Then he was upon the spot: and the policeman tells you—it is for you to say whether you believe the policeman or not; there is no suggestion that he is not a witness of truth—and he says that he heard a scream, and caught the defendant in the act. Now, from whom did that scream proceed? Not from the prisoner, for it was the scream of a woman. From whom then could it proceed but from the prosecutrix? Now, in all cases of this kind, one very material point has always been relied on by the Judges, and that point is this: What was the conduct of the woman? Did she go about her ordinary business as usual, or did she make a complaint? If she made no complaint, or made it a long time after, it is some evidence—not conclusive by any means—but it is some evidence against the truth of her story. Let us test this case by that theory. What is the evidence of the policeman? I will read his words: ‘The moment I got up,’ he says, now mark that, gentlemen, ‘the woman complained of the conduct of the prisoner: she screamed and threw herself in my arms and then nearly fainted.’ Gentlemen, what does all that mean? You will say by your verdict.”
“Consider your verdict,” said the Clerk of Arraigns, and almost immediately the Jury said: “Guilty of attempt.”
“Call upon him,” said the Judge: and he was called upon accordingly, but only said “the prosecutrix was a well-known bad woman.”
Then the Judge said very solemnly:—
“Prisoner at the bar, you have been convicted upon
the clearest possible evidence of this crime: what you say about the character of the prosecutrix the more convinces me that you are a very bad man. You not only assail the virtue of this woman, but, happily prevented in your design, you endeavour to destroy it afterwards in this Court. No one who has heard this case can doubt that you have been guilty of this very grave offence; and in my judgment that offence is aggravated by the fact that you committed it against her will and without her consent. The sentence is that you be sent to prison for eighteen calendar months.”
“Rather warm,” said Mr. O’Rapley.
“Never heeard such a thing in my life,” said Master Bumpkin, “she wur a consentin’ party if ever there wur one.”
“But that makes no difference now-a-days,” said Mr. O’Rapley. “Chancery Judges studies the equity of the thing more. But perhaps, Mr. Bumpkin, you don’t know what that means?”
“No,” said Bumpkin, “I doan’t.”
“You must be quiet,” said Mr. O’Rapley; “recollect you are in a Court of Justice.”
“Be I! It ’ud take moore un thic case to make I believe it; but lookee here: I be hanged if there ain’t that Snooks feller down along there.”
“Who?” enquired O’Rapley.
“That there feller,” said Bumpkin, “be sure to find his way where there’s anything gooin on o’ this ere natur.”
Next an undefended prisoner was placed on trial, and as he was supposed to know all the law of England, he was treated as if he did.
“You can’t put that question, you know,” said the learned Judge; “and now you are making a statement;
it is not time to make your statement yet; you will have ample opportunity by-and-by in your speech to the jury.” And afterwards, when the Judge was summing up, the unhappy prisoner called his lordship’s attention to a mistake; but he was told that he had had his turn and had made his speech to the jury, and must not now interrupt the Court. So he had to be quite silent until he was convicted. Then the two companions went into another court, where a very stern-looking Common Law Judge was trying a ferocious-looking prisoner. And Mr. O’Rapley was delighted to explain that now his friend would see the difference. They had entered the court just as the learned Judge had begun to address the jury; and very careful his lordship was to explain (not in technical language), but in homely, common-place and common-sense English, the nature of the crime with which the prisoner was charged. He was very careful in explaining this, for fear the jury should improperly come to the conclusion that, because they might believe the prisoner had in fact committed the act, he must necessarily be guilty. And they were told that the act was in that case only one element of the crime, and that they must ascertain whether there was the guilty intent or no. Now this old Mr. Justice Common Sense, I thought, was very well worth listening to, and I heartily wished Mr. Justice Technical from the Old Court had been there to take a lesson; and I take the liberty of setting down what I heard in my dream for the benefit of future Justices Technical.
His lordship directed the jury’s attention to the evidence, which he carefully avoided calling facts: not to the verbatim report of it on his note-book as some Recorders do, and think when they are reading it over
they are summing it up; but pointing out statements which, if believed, become facts and if facts, lead to certain inferences of guilt or innocence.
It was while the learned Mr. Justice Common Sense was thus engaged, that the warder in the dock suddenly checked the prisoner with these words:
“You mustn’t interrupt.”
“Why may he not interrupt?” asks Mr. Justice Common Sense. “What do you want to say, prisoner?”
“My lord,” answered the prisoner, “I wanted to say as how that there witness as your lordship speaks on didn’t say as he seen me there.”
“O, didn’t he?” said the Judge. “I thought he did—now let us see,” turning over his notes. “No, you are quite right, prisoner, he did not see you at the spot but immediately after.”
Then his lordship proceeded until there was another interruption of the same character, and the foolish warder again told the prisoner to be quiet. This brought down Mr. Justice Common Sense with a vengeance:
“Warder! how dare you stop the prisoner? he is on his trial and is undefended. Who is to check me if I am misstating the evidence if he does not? If you dare to speak like that to him again I will commit you. Prisoner, interrupt me as often as you think I am not correctly stating the evidence.”
“Thankee, my lord.”
“That be the sort o’ Judge for me,” said Bumpkin; “but I’ve ’ad enough on it, Maister O’Rapley, so if you please, I’ll get back t’ the ‘Goose.’ Why didn’t that air Judge try t’other case, I wonder?”
“Because,” replied the Don, “the new system is to work the ‘Round Square’.”
CHAPTER XV.
Mr. Bumpkin’s experience of London life, enlarged.
On leaving the Old Bailey the two friends proceeded to a neighbouring public-house and partook of some light refreshment at the counter. Now Mr. Bumpkin had never yet examined the viands displayed on a counter. His idea of refreshment, when from home, had always been a huge round of beef smoking at one end of the table and a large leg of mutton smoking at the other, with sundry dishes of similar pretensions between, and an immense quantity of vegetables. When, therefore he saw some stale-looking sandwiches under the ordinary glass cover, he exclaimed: “Wittals must be mighty scarce to clap ’em under a glass case.”
“It’s to keep the flies off;” said his companion.
“They need well keep un off, for there bean’t enough for a couple if they was ony wise ongry like.”
However, our friends made the best of what there was, and Mr. O’Rapley, wishing success to his companion, enquired who was to be his counsel.
“I doan’t rightly know, but I’ll warrant Mr. Prigg’ll have a good un—he knows what he be about; and all I hopes is, he’ll rattle it into that there Snooks, for if ever there wur a bad un it be him.”
“He looks a bad un,” replied O’Rapley. “When do you think the case is likely to come on?”
“Well, it is supposed as it ull be on to-morrer; but I bleeve there’s no sartinty about thic. Now then, just give us a little moore, will ’ee sir?” (this to the waiter).
“I’ll pay for the next,” said O’Rapley, feeling in his pocket.
“Noa, noa, I’ll pay; and thankee, sir, for comin’.”
And then O’Rapley drank his friend’s health again, and wished further success to the case, and hoped Mr. Bumpkin would be sure to come to him when he was at Westminster; and expressed himself desirous to assist his friend in every way that lay in his power—declaring that he really must be going for he didn’t know what would happen if the Judge should find he was away; and was not at all certain it would not lead to some officious member of the House of Commons asking a question of the Prime Minister about it.
Mr. Bumpkin drank his good health, again and again, declaring he was “mighty proud to have met with un;” and that when the case was over and he had returned to his farm, he should be pleased if Mr. O’Rapley would come down and spend a few days with him. “Nancy,” he said, “’ll be rare and pleased to see thee. I got as nice a little farm as any in the county, and as pooty pigs as thee ever clapped eyes on.”
Mr. O’Rapley, without being too condescending, expressed himself highly gratified with making Mr. Bumpkin’s acquaintance, and observed that the finest pigs ever he saw were those of the Lord Chief Justice.
“Dade, sir, now what sort be they?” Mr. O’Rapley was not learned in pigs, and not knowing the name of any breed whatever, was at a loss how to describe them. Mr. Bumpkin came to his assistance.
“Be they smooth like and slim?”
“Yes,” said the Don.
“Hardly any hair?”
“Scarce a bit.”
“They be Chichesters then—the werry best breed as a man ever had in his stye.”
“I never see anything so pretty,” replied Mr. O’Rapley.
“Ah! and they be the smallest-boned pigs as ever could be—they bean’t got a bone bigger nor your little finger.”
“Ha!” said the Don, finishing his glass, “the smaller the bone the more the meat, that’s what I always say; and the Lord Chief Justice don’t care for bone, he likes meat.”
“An’ so do I—the Lud Judge be right, and if he tries my case he’ll know the difference betwixt thic pig as Snooks tooked away and one o’ them there—”
“Jackass-looking pigs,” said O’Rapley, seeing that his friend paused. “I hate them jackass pigs.”
“So do I—they never puts on fat.”
“I must go, really,” said O’Rapley. “What do you make the right time?”
Master Bumpkin pulled out his watch with great effort, and said it was just a quarter past four by Yokelton time.
“Here’s your good health again, Mr. Bumpkin.”
“And yours, sir; and now I think on it, if it’s a fair question Mr. O’Rapley, and I med ax un wirout contempt, when do you think this ’ere case o’ mine be likely to come on, for you ought to know summut about un?”
“Ha!” said the Don, partially closing one eye, and looking profoundly into the glass as though he were
divining the future, “law, sir, is a mystery and judges is a mystery; masters is a mystery and ’sociates is a mystery; ushers is a mystery and counsel is a mystery;—the whole of life (here he tipped the contents of the glass down his throat) is a mystery.”
“So it be,” said Mr. Bumpkin, drawing the back of his hand across his mouth. “So it be sir, but do ’ee think—”
“Well, really,” answered the Don, “I should say in about a couple of years if you ask me.”
“How the h—”
“Excuse me, Master Bumpkin, but contempt follers us like a shadder: if you had said that to a Judge it would have been a year at least: it’s three months as it is if I liked to go on with the case; but I’m not a wicious man, I hope.”
“I didn’t mean no offence,” said the farmer.
“No, no, I dare say not; but still there is a way of doing things. Now if you had said to me, ‘Mr. O’Rapley, you are a gentleman moving in judicial circles, and are probably acquainted with the windings of the,’ &c. &c. &c. ‘Can you inform me why my case is being so unduly prolonged?’ Now if you had put your question in that form I should in all probability have answered: ‘I do not see that it is unduly prolonged, Master Bumpkin—you must have patience. Judges are but human and it’s a wonder to me they are as much as that, seein’ what they have to go through.’”
“But if there be a Court why can’t us get in and try un, Mr. Rapley?”
“Ah, now that is putting it pointedly;” and O’Rapley closed one eye and looked into his tumbler with the other before he answered:
“You see this is how it goes under the continerous
sittings—off and on we sits continerously at Nisy Prisy in London three months in the year. Now that ain’t bad for London: but it’s nothing near so much time as they gives to places like Aylesbury, Bedford, and many others.”
Mr. Bumpkin looked like a terrier dog watching a hole out of which he expected a rat: at present he saw no sign of one.
“Take Aylesbury; well now, if a Judge went there once in seven years he’d find about every other assize enough work to last him till lunch. But in course two Judges must go to Aylesbury four times a year, to do nothing but admire the building where the Courts are held; otherwise you’d soon have Aylesbury marching on to London to know the reason why. P’r’aps the Judges have left five hundred cases untried in London to go to this Aylesbury.”
“Be it a big plaace, sir?”
“Not so big as a good-sized hotel,” said the Don. “Then,” he continued, “there’s Bedford ditto again—septennel would do for that; then comes Northampton—they don’t want no law there at all.” (I leave the obvious pun to anyone who likes to make it). “Then Okeham again—did you ever hear of anyone who came from Okeham? I never did.”
The Don paused, as though on the answer to this question depended his future course.
“Noa,” said Bumpkin, “can’t rightly say as ever I did.”
“And nobody ever did come from there except the Judges. Well, to Okeham they go four times a year, whereas if they was to go about once in every hundred years it wouldn’t pay. Why raly, Mr. Bumpkin, the Judges goes round like travellers arfter orders, and can’t
get none. I’m not talkin’, as you are aware, about great centres like Liverpool, where if they had about fifty-two assizes in the year it wouldn’t be one too many; but I’m talking about circumfrences on the confines of civilization.”
“Oh dear!” sighed Bumpkin. The hole seemed to him too choked up with “larnin’” for the rat ever to come out—he could glean nothing from this highly wrought and highly polished enthusiasm.
“And, notwithstanding and accordingly,” continued the Don, “they do say, goodness knows how true it is, that they’re going to have two more assizes in the year. All that I can say is, Mr. Bumpkin—and, mark my words, there’ll be no stopping in London at all, but it will be just a reg’ler Judge’s merry-go-round.” [138]
Mr. Bumpkin dropped a look into his glass, and the two companions came out of the door and proceeded along under the archway until they came to the corner of Bridge Street, Blackfriars. Exactly at that point a young woman with a baby in her arms came in contact with Mr. Bumpkin, and in a very angry tone said,—
“I tell you what it is, don’t you take them liberties with me or I’ll give you in charge.”
And the young woman passed on with her baby.
Just at that moment, and while Master Bumpkin was meditating on this strange conduct of the young female, he felt a smart tug at his watch, and, looking down, saw the broken chain hanging from his pocket.
“Zounds!” he exclaimed, “I never zeed anything claner than thic; did thee zee thic feller?”
“There he goes,” said O’Rapley.
“There ur gooes,” said Mr. Bumpkin, and, as fast as he could, pursued the thief.
“Stop un!” he cried. “Stop thic there thief; he got my watch.”
But it was a long time before Master Bumpkin’s mandate was obeyed; the value of a policeman, like that of every other commodity, depends upon his rarity. There was no policeman to be found. There was a fire escape in the middle of the street, but that was of no use to Master Bumpkin. Away went thief, and away went Bumpkin, who could “foot it,” as he said, “pooty well, old as he wur.” Nor did either the thief or himself stop until they got nearly to the bridge, when, to Bumpkin’s great astonishment, up came the thief, walking coolly towards him. This was another mystery, in addition to those mentioned by Mr. O’Rapley. But the fact was, that the hue and cry was now raised, and although Master Bumpkin did not perceive it, about a hundred people, men, women, and boys, were in full chase; and when that gentleman was, as Bumpkin thought, coolly coming towards him, he was simply at bay, run down, without hope of escape; and fully determined to face the matter out with all the coolness he could command.
“Take un,” said Bumpkin; “take un oop; thee dam scoundrel!”
“Take care what you’re saying,” said the thief. “I’m a respectable man, and there’s law in the land.”
“Yes, and thee shall have un, too, thee willin; thee stole my watch, thee knows that.”
“You’re a liar,” said the captive.
“Why thee’s got un on, dang if thee bean’t, and a wearin’ on un. Well, this bates all; take un oop, pleeceman.”
At this moment, which is always the nick of time chosen by the force, that is to say, when everything is done except the handcuffs, a policeman with a great deal of authority in his appearance came up, and plunged his hands under his heavy coat-tails, as though he were about to deliver them of the bower anchor of a ship.
“Do you give him in charge?”
“Sure enough do ur,” said Mr. Bumpkin.
So the handcuffs were put on, and the stalwart policeman, like a hero with the captive of his bow and spear, marched him along at a great rate, Bumpkin striding out manfully at the side, amid a great crowd of small boys, with all their heads turned towards the prisoner as they ran, in the highest state of delight and excitement. Even Bumpkin looked as if he had made a good thing of it, and seemed as pleased as the boys.
As they came again to the corner of Ludgate Hill, there stood Mr. O’Rapley, looking very pompous and dignified, as became so great a man.
“You’ve got him then,” said he.
“Ay; come on, Master Rapley, come on.”
“One moment,” said the official; “I must here leave you for the present, Mr. Bumpkin; we are not allowed to give evidence in Criminal Courts any more than Her Majesty’s Judges themselves; we are a part of the Court.
But, besides all that, I did not see what happened; what was it?”
“Well,” said Mr. Bumpkin, “that be rum too, sir; thee see thic feller steal my watch, surely.”
“Indeed, Mr. Bumpkin, it was so quickly done that I really did not see it, if you ask me.”
“Why, he dragged un out o’ thic pocket.”
“No doubt, Master Bumpkin; but it does not follow that I see it.”
“Thee can come and say I wur with thee, anyhow.”
“I can’t give evidence, Mr. Bumpkin, as I told you before; and, besides, I must not appear in this matter at all. You know I was absent to oblige you, and it’s possible I may be of some further service to you yet; but please don’t mention me in this matter. I assure you it will do harm, and perhaps I should lose my place.”
“Well, Master Rapley,” said Bumpkin, taking his hand, “I won’t do thee no harm if I knows it, and there be plenty of evidence.”
“Evidence! You say you found the watch upon him?”
“Sartinly.”
“The case then is clear. You don’t want any evidence besides that.”
“Well, sir, you’re a man o’ larnin’. I bean’t much of a scollard, I’ll tak’ thy advice; but I must get along; they be waitin’ for I.”
“I will see you at Westminster to-morrow, Mr. Bumpkin.”
“All right, zir, all right.”
And with that Mr. O’Rapley proceeded on his way down Fleet Street, and Mr. Bumpkin proceeded on his up Ludgate Hill in the midst of an excited crowd.
CHAPTER XVI.
The coarse mode of procedure in Ahab v. Naboth ruthlessly exposed and carefully contrasted with the humane and enlightened form of the present day.
Here I awoke, and my wife said unto me, “Dear, you have been dreaming and talking in your sleep.”
Now fearing for what I may have said, although of a tolerably clear conscience, I enquired if she could tell me what words I had uttered. She replied that I had mentioned the names of many eminent men: such as Mr. Justice Common Sense.
“Indeed,” quoth I; and then I told my dream. Upon which she observed, that it seemed there must be much exaggeration. To this I made answer that dreams do generally magnify events, and impress them more vividly upon the senses, inasmuch as the imagination was like a microscope: it enabled you to see many things which would escape the naked eye.
“But,” said my partner, “if they are distorted?”
“If they are distorted, they are not reliable; but a clear imagination, like a good lens, faithfully presents its objects, although in a larger form, in order that those who have no time for scientific observation, may see what the scientist desires to direct their attention to. There are creatures almost invisible to the naked eye, which,
nevertheless, cause great irritation to the nerves. So, also, there are matters affecting the body corporate of these kingdoms which the public are blind to and suffer from, but which, if thoroughly exposed, they may be inclined to take a hand in removing.”
“I don’t believe that Mr. O’Rapley,” said she: “he seems a cantankerous, conceited fellow.”
“Why so he is; but cantankerous and conceited fellows sometimes speak the truth. They’re like those cobwebbed, unwholesome-looking bottles which have lain a long time in cellars. You would hardly like to come in contact with them, and yet they often contain a clear and beautiful wine. This Mr. O’Rapley is a worthy man who knows a great deal, and although a bit of a toady to his superiors, expresses his opinions pretty freely behind their backs.”
“And what of this Master Bumpkin—this worthy Master Bumpkin I hear you speak of so often?”
“A very shrewd man in some respects and a silly one in others.”
“Not an unusual combination.”
“By no means.”
And then I told her what I have already related; to which she observed it was a pity some friend had not interposed and stopped the business. I answered, that friends were no doubt useful, but friends or no friends we must have law, and whether for sixpence or a shilling it ought to be readily attainable: that no one would be satisfied with having no other authority than that of friendship to settle our disputes; and besides that, friends themselves sometimes fell out and were generally the most hard to reconcile without an appeal to our tribunals.
“Well, it does seem a pity,” said she, “that judges cannot sit as they did in Moses’ time at all seasons so as to decide expeditiously and promptly between the claims of parties.”
“Why so they do sit ‘continuously,’” quoth I, “but the whole difficulty consists in getting at them. What is called procedure is so circuitous and perplexing, that long before you get to your journey’s end you may faint by the way.”
“Is there no one with good sense who will take this matter up and help this poor man to come by his rights. It must be very expensive for him to be kept away from his business so long, and his poor wife left all alone to manage the farm.”
“Why, so it is, but then going to law, which means seeking to maintain your rights, is a very expensive thing: a luxury fit only for rich men.”
“Why then do people in moderate circumstances indulge in it?”
“Because they are obliged to defend themselves against oppressive and unjust demands; although I think, under the present system, if a man had a small estate, say a few acres, and a rich man laid claim to it, it would be far better for the small man to give up the land without any bother.”
“But no man of spirit would do that?”
“No, that is exactly where it is, it’s the spirit of resistance that comes in.”
“Resistance! a man would be a coward to yield without a fight.”
“Why so he would, and that is what makes law such a beautiful science, and its administration so costly. Men will fight to the last rather than give in. If Naboth had lived in these times there would have been no need
of his death in order to oust him from his vineyard. Ahab could have done a much more sensible thing and walked in by process of law.”
“In what way?”
“In the first place he could have laid claim to a right of way, or easement as it is called, of some sort: or could have alleged that Naboth had encroached on his land by means of a fence or drain or ditch.”
“Well, but if he hadn’t?”
“If he hadn’t, so much the better for the Plaintiff, and so much the worse for Naboth.”
“I don’t understand; if Naboth had done no wrong, surely it would be far better for him than if he had.”
“Not in the long run, my dear: and for this reason, if he had encroached it would have taken very little trouble to ascertain the fact, and Naboth being a just and honest man, would only require to have it pointed out to him to remedy the evil. Maps and plans of the estate would doubtless have shown him his mistake, and, like a wise man, he would have avoided going to law.”
“I see clearly that the good man would have said, ‘Neighbour Ahab, we have been on neighbourly terms for a long lime, and I do not wish in any way to alter that excellent feeling which has always subsisted between us. I see clearly by these maps and plans which worthy Master Metefield hath shown me that my hedge hath encroached some six inches upon thy domain, wherefore, Neighbour Ahab, take, I pray thee, as much of the land as belongeth unto thee, according to just admeasurement.”
“Why certainly, so would the honest Naboth have communed with Ahab, and there would have been an end of the business.”
“But show me, darling, how being in the wrong was better for good Naboth than being in the right in this business?”
“Most willingly,” said I; “you see, my dear, there was quickly an end of the matter by Naboth yielding to the just demands of neighbour Ahab. But now let us suppose honest Naboth in the right concerning his vineyard, and neighbour Ahab to be making an unjust demand. You have already most justly observed that in that case it would be cowardly on the part of Naboth to yield without a struggle?”
“Assuredly.”
“Well then, that means a lawsuit.”
“But surely,” said my wife, “it ought to be soon seen who is in the wrong. Where is Master Metefield who you said just now was so accurate a surveyor, and where are those plans you spoke of which showed the situation of the estates?”
“Ah, my dear, I see you know very little of the intricacies of the law; that good Master Metefield, instead of being a kind of judge to determine quickly as he did for Master Naboth what were the boundaries of the vineyard, hath not now so easy a task of it, because Ahab being in the wrong he is not accepted by him as his judge.”
“But if the plans are correct, how can he alter them?”
“He cannot alter them, but the question of correctness of boundary as shown, is matter of disputation, and will have to be discussed by surveyors on both sides, and supported and disputed by witnesses innumerable on both sides: old men coming up with ancient memories, hedgers and ditchers, farmers and bailiffs and people of all
sorts and conditions, to prove and disprove where the boundary line really divides Neighbour Naboth’s vineyard from Neighbour Ahab’s park.”
“But surely Naboth will win?”
“All that depends upon a variety of things, such as, first, the witnesses; secondly, the counsel; thirdly, the judge; fourthly, the jury,”
“O,” said my wife, “pray don’t go on to a fifthly—it seems to me poor Naboth is like to have a sorry time of it before he establish his boundary line.”
“Ay, if he ever do so: but he first is got into the hands of his Lawyers, next into the hands of his Counsel, thirdly, into Chancery, fourthly, into debt—”
“Pray, do not let us have a fifthly here either; I like not these thirdlys and fourthlys, for they seem to bring poor Naboth into bad case; but what said you about debt?”
“I say that Naboth, not being a wealthy man, but, as I take it, somewhat in the position of neighbour Bumpkin, will soon be forced to part with a good deal of his little property in order to carry on the action.”
“But will not the action be tried in a reasonable time, say a week or two?”
“I perceive,” cried I, “that you are yet in the very springtide and babyhood of innocence in these matters. There must be summonses for time and for further time; there must be particulars and interrogatories and discoveries and inspections and strikings out and puttings in and appeals and demurrers and references and—”
“O, please don’t. I perceive that poor Naboth is already ruined a long way back. I think when you came to the interrogatories he was in want of funds to carry on the action.”
“A Chancery action sometimes takes years,” said I.
“Years! then shame to our Parliament.”
“I pray you do not take on so,” said I. “Naboth, according to the decree of Fate, is to be ruined. Jezebel did it in a wicked, clumsy and brutal manner. Anyone could see she was wrong, and her name has been handed down to us with infamy and execration. I now desire to show how Ahab could have accomplished his purpose in a gentle, manly and scientific manner and saved his wife’s reputation. Naboth’s action, carried as it would be from Court to Court upon every possible point upon which an appeal can go, under our present system, would effectually ruin him ages before the boundary line could be settled. It would be all swallowed up in costs.”
“Poor Naboth!” said my wife.
“And,” continued I, “the law reports would hand down the cause celebre of Ahab v. Naboth as a most interesting leading case upon the subject of goodness knows what: perhaps as to whether a man, under certain circumstances, may not alter his neighbour’s landmark in spite of the statute law of Moses.”
“And so you think poor Naboth would be sold up?”
“That were about the only certain event in his case, except that Ahab would take possession and so put an end for ever to the question as to where the boundary line should run.”
Here again I dozed.
CHAPTER XVII.
Shewing that lay tribunals are not exactly Punch and Judy shows where the puppet is moved by the man underneath.
It was particularly fortunate for Mr. Bumpkin that his case was not in the list of causes to be tried on the following day. It may seem a curious circumstance to the general reader that a great case like Bumpkin v. Snooks, involving so much expense of time, trouble, and money should be in the list one day and out the next; should be sometimes in the list of one Court and sometimes in the list of another; flying about like a butterfly from flower to flower and caught by no one on the look-out for it. But this is not a phenomenon in our method of procedure, which startles you from time to time with its miraculous effects. You can calculate upon nothing in the system but its uncertainty. Most gentle and innocent reader, I saw that there was no Nisi Prius Court to sit on the following day, so Bumpkin v. Snooks could not be taken, list or no list. The lucky Plaintiff therefore found himself at liberty to appear before that August Tribunal which sits at the Mansion House in the City of London. A palatial and imposing building it was on the outside, but within, so far as was apparent to me, it was a narrow ill ventilated den, full of all unclean people and unpleasant smells. I say full of
unclean people, but I allude merely to that portion of it which was appropriated to the British Public; for, exalted on a high bench and in a huge and ponderous chair or throne sat the Prince of Citizens and the King of the Corporation, proud in his dignity, grand in his commercial position, and highly esteemed in the opinion of the world. There he sat, the representative of the Criminal Law, and impartial, as all will allow, in its administration. Wonderful being is my Lord Mayor, thought I, he must have the Law at his fingers’ ends. Yes, there it is sitting under him in the shape and person of his truly respectable clerk. The Common Law resides in the breasts of the Judges, but it is here at my Lord Mayor’s fingers’ ends. He has to deal with gigantic commercial frauds; with petty swindlers, common thieves; mighty combinations of conspirators; with extradition laws; with elaborate bankruptcy delinquencies; with the niceties of the criminal law in every form and shape. Surely, thought I, he should be one of those tremendous geniuses who can learn the criminal law before breakfast, or at least before dinner! So he was. His lordship seemed to have learned it one morning before he was awake. But it is not for me to criticise tribunals or men: I have the simple duty to perform of relating the story of the renowned Mr. Bumpkin.
After the night charges are disposed of up comes the man through the floor, not Mr. Bumpkin, but Mr. Bumpkin’s prisoner. He comes up through the floor like the imp in the pantomime: and then the two tall warders prevent his going any farther.
He was a pale, intelligent looking creature, fairly dressed in frock coat, dark waistcoat and grey trousers, with a glove on his left hand and another in his right;
looked meekly and modestly round, and then politely bowed to the Lord Mayor. The charge was then read to him and with a smile he indignantly repudiated the idea of theft.
And I saw in my dream that he was represented by a learned Counsel, who at this moment entered the Court, shook hands with the Lord Mayor, and saying, “I appear, my lord, for the prisoner,” took his seat upon the bench, and entered for a minute or so into some private and apparently jocular conversation with his Lordship.
The name of the learned Counsel was Mr. Nimble, whom we have before seen. He was a very goodly-shaped man, with a thin face and brown hair. His eyes were bright, and always seemed to look into a witness rather than at him. His manner was jaunty, good-natured, easy, and gay; not remarkable for courtesy, but at the same time, not unpleasantly rude. I thought the learned Counsel could be disagreeable if he liked, but might be a very pleasant, sociable fellow to spend an hour with—not in the witness-box.
He was certainly a skilful and far-seeing Counsel, if I may make so bold as to judge from this case. And methought that nothing he did or said was said or done without a purpose. Nor could I help thinking that a good many Counsel, young and old, if their minds were free from prejudice, might learn many lessons from this case. It is with this object that, in my waking moments, I record the impressions of this dream. I do not say Mr. Nimble was an example to follow on all points, for he had that common failing of humanity, a want of absolute perfection. But he was as near to perfection in defending a prisoner as any man I ever saw, and the proceedings in
this very case, if carefully analysed, will go a long way towards proving that assertion.
After the interchange of courtesies between his Lordship and Mr. Nimble, the learned Counsel looked down from the Bench on to the top of Mr. Keepimstraight’s bald head and nodded as if he were patting it. Mr. Keepimstraight was the Lord Mayor’s Clerk. He was very stout and seemed puffed up with law: had an immense regard for himself and consequently very little for anybody else: but that, so far as I have been able to ascertain, is a somewhat common failing among official personages. He ordered everybody about except the Lord Mayor, and him he seemed to push about as though he were wheeling him in a legal Bath-chair. His Lordship was indeed a great invalid in respect to matters of law; I think he had overdone it, if I may use the expression; his study must have been tremendous to have acquired a knowledge of the laws of England in so short a time. But being somewhat feeble, and in his modesty much misdoubting his own judgment, he did nothing and said nothing, except it was prescribed by his physician, Dr. Keepimstraight. Even the solicitors stood in awe of Dr. Keepimstraight.
And now we are all going to begin—Walk up!
The intelligent and decent-looking prisoner having been told what the charge against him was, namely, Highway Robbery with violence, declares that he is as “innercent as the unborn babe, your lordship:” and then Mr. Keepimstraight asks, where the Prosecutor is—“Prosecutor!” shout a dozen voices at once—all round, everywhere is the cry of “Prosecutor!” There was no answer, but in the midst of the unsavoury crowd there was seen to be a severe scuffle—whether it was a fight or
a man in a fit could not be ascertained for some time; at length Mr. Bumpkin was observed struggling and tearing to escape from the throng.
“Why don’t you come when you are called?” asks the Junior Clerk, handing him the Testament, as Mr. Bumpkin stood revealed in the witness-box.
And I saw that he was dressed in a light frock, not unlike a pinafore, which was tastefully wrought with divers patterns of needlework on the front and back thereof; at the openings thus embroidered could be seen a waistcoat of many stripes, that crossed and recrossed one another at various angles and were formed of several colours. He wore a high calico shirt collar, which on either side came close under the ear; and round his neck a red handkerchief with yellow ends. His linen certainly did credit to Mrs. Bumpkin’s love of “tidiness,” and altogether the prosecutor wore a clean and respectable appearance. His face was broad, round and red, indicating a jovial disposition and a temperament not easily disturbed, except when “whate” was down too low to sell and he wanted to buy stock or pay the rent: a state of circumstances which I believe has sometimes happened of late years. A white short-clipped beard covered his chin, while his cheeks were closely shaven. He had twinkling oval eyes, which I should say, he invariably half-closed when he was making a bargain. If you offered less than his price the first refusal would come from them. His nose was inexpressive and appeared to have been a dormant feature for many a year. It said nothing for or against any thing or any body, and from its tip sprouted a few white hairs. His mouth, without utterance, said plainly enough that he owed “nobody nothink” and was a thousand pound man every morning
he rose. It was a mouth of good bore, and not by any means intended for a silver spoon.
Such was the Prosecutor as he stood in the witness-box at the Mansion House on this memorable occasion; and no one could doubt that truth and justice would prevail.
“Name?” said Mr. Keepimstraight.
“Bumpkin.”
Down it goes.
“Where?”
After a pause, which Mr. Nimble makes a note of.
“Where?” repeats Keepimstraight.
“Westminister.”
“Where there?”
“‘Goose’ publichouse.”
Down it goes.
“Yes?” says Keepimstraight.
Bumpkin stares.
“Yes, go on,” says the clerk.
“Go on,” says the crier; “go on,” say half-a-dozen voices all round.
“Can’t you go on?” says the clerk.
“Tell your story,” says his Lordship, putting his arms on the elbows of the huge chair. “Tell it in your own way, my man.”
“I wur gwine down thic place when—” “my man” began.
“What time was this?” asks the clerk.
“Arf arter four, as near as I can tell.”
“How do you know?” asks the clerk.
“I heard—”
“I object,” says the Counsel—“can’t tell us what he heard.”
Then I perceived that the Lord Mayor leant forward
towards Mr. Keepimstraight, and the latter gentleman turned his head and leaned towards the Lord Mayor, so that his Lordship could obtain a full view of Mr. Keepimstraight’s eyes.
Then I perceived that Mr. Keepimstraight winked his left eye and immediately turned to his work again, and his Lordship said:
“I don’t think what you heard, witness, is evidence.”
“Can’t have that,” said Mr. Keepimstraight, as though he took his instructions and the Law from his Lordship.
“You said it was half-past four.”
“Heard the clock strike th’ arf hour.”
Here his Lordship leant again forward and Mr. Keepimstraight turned round so as to bring his eyes into the same position as heretofore. And I perceived that Mr. Keepimstraight winked his right eye, upon which his Lordship said:
“I think that’s evidence.”
Clerk whispered, behind his hand, “Can hardly exclude that.”
“Can hardly exclude that,” repeats his Lordship; then—turning to the Learned Counsel—“Can’t shut that out, Mr. Nimble.”
“You seldom can shut a church clock out, my Lord,” replies the Counsel.
At this answer his Lordship smiled and the Court was convulsed with laughter for several minutes.
“Now, then,” said Mr. Keepimstraight, “we must have order in Court.”
“We must have order in Court,” says his Lordship.
“Order in Court,” says the Junior Clerk, and “Order!” shouts the Policeman on duty.
Then Mr. Bumpkin stated in clear and intelligible
language how the man came up and took his watch and ran away. Foolishly enough he said nothing about the woman with the baby, and wisely enough Mr. Nimble asked nothing about it. But what an opportunity this would have been for an unskilful Counsel to lay the foundation for a conviction. Knowing, as he probably would from the prisoner but from no other possible source about the circumstance, he might have shown by a question or two that it was a conspiracy between the prisoner and the young woman. Not so Mr. Nimble, he knew how to make an investment of this circumstance for future profit: indeed Mr. Bumpkin had invested it for him by not mentioning it. Beautiful is Advocacy if you do not mar it by unskilful handling.
When, after describing the robbery, the prosecutor continued:
“I ses to my companion, ses I—”
“I object,” says Mr. Nimble.
And I perceived that his Lordship leant forward once more towards Mr. Keepimstraight, and Mr. Keepimstraight turned as aforetime towards the Lord Mayor, but not quite, I thought, so fully round as heretofore; the motion seemed to be performed with less exactness than usual, and that probably was why the operation miscarried. Mr. Keepimstraight having given the correct signal, as he thought, and the Enginedriver on the Bench having misunderstood it, an accident naturally would have taken place but for the extreme caution and care of his Lordship, who, if he had been a young Enginedriver, would in all probability have dashed on neck or nothing through every obstacle. Not so his Lordship. Not being sure whether he was on the up or down line, he pulled up.
Mr. Keepimstraight sat pen in hand looking at his paper, and waiting for the judicial voice which should convey to his ear the announcement that “I ses, ses I,” is evidence or no evidence. Judge then of Mr. Keepimstraight’s disappointment when, after waiting in breathless silence for some five minutes, he at last looks up and sees his Lordship in deep anxiety to catch his eye without the public observing it. His Lordship leant forward, blushing with innocence, and whispered something behind his hand to Mr. Keepimstraight. And in my dream I heard his Lordship ask:
“Which eye?”
To which Mr. Keepimstraight as coolly as if nothing had happened, whispered behind his hand:
“Left!” and then coughed.
“O then,” exclaimed his Lordship, “it is clearly not evidence.”
“It’s not evidence,” repeated the clerk; and then to the discomfiture of Mr. Nimble, he went on, “You say you had a companion.”
This was more than the learned Counsel wanted, seeing as he did that there was another investment to be made if he could only manage it.
Mr. Bumpkin blushed now, but said nothing.
“Would you excuse me,” said Mr. Nimble; “I shall not cross-examine this witness.”
“O, very good,” says Keepimstraight, thinking probably it was to be a plea of guilty hereafter; “very good. Then I think that is all—is that the watch?”
“It be,” said the witness; “I ken swear to un.”
It certainly would be from no want of metal if Mr. Bumpkin could not identify the timepiece, for it was a ponderous-looking watch, nearly as large as a tea-saucer.
“You say that is your watch, do you?”
“It spakes for itself.”
“I don’t think that’s evidence,” says Mr. Keepimstraight, with a smile.
“That’s clearly not evidence,” says the Lord Mayor, gravely. Whereupon there was another burst of laughter, in which the clerk seemed to take the lead. The remarkable fact, however, was, that his Lordship was perfectly at a loss to comprehend the joke. He was “as grave as a Judge.”
After the laughter had subsided, the learned Keepimstraight leaned backward, and the learned Lord Mayor leaned forward, and it seemed to me they were conversing together about the cause of the laughter; for suddenly a smile illuminated the rubicund face of the cheery Lord Mayor, and at last he had a laugh to himself—a solo, after the band had ceased. And then his Lordship spoke:
“What your watch may say is not evidence, because it has not been sworn.”
Then the band struck up again to a lively tune, his Lordship playing the first Fiddle; and the whole scene terminated in the most humorous and satisfactory manner for all parties—except, perhaps, the prisoner—who was duly committed for trial to the next sittings of the Central Criminal Court, which were to take place in a fortnight.
Mr. Bumpkin naturally asked for his watch, but that request was smilingly refused.
“Bin in our famly forty years,” exclaimed the prisoner.
“Will you be quiet?” said Mr. Nimble petulantly, for it was a foolish observation for the prisoner to make, inasmuch
as, if Mr. Bumpkin had been represented by professional skill, the remark would surely be met at the trial with abundant evidence to disprove it. Mr. Bumpkin at present, however, has no professional skill.
* * * * *
Here something disturbed me, and I awoke. While preparing to enjoy my pipe as was my custom in these intervals, my wife remarked:
“I do not approve of that Master O’Rapley by any means, with his cynicisms and sarcasms and round squares. Did ever anyone hear of such a contradiction?”
“Have patience,” quoth I, “and we shall see how worthy Master O’Rapley makes it out. I conjecture that he means the same thing that we hear of under the term, ‘putting the round peg into the square hole.’”
“But why should such a thing be done when it is easy surely to find a square peg that would fit?”
“Granted; but the master-hand may be under obligations to the round peg; or the round peg may be a disagreeable peg, or a hundred things: one doesn’t know. I am but a humble observer of human nature, and like not these ungracious cavillings at Master O’Rapley. Let us calmly follow this dream, and endeavour to profit by its lessons without finding fault with its actors.”
“But I would like to have a better explanation of that Round Square, nevertheless,” muttered my wife as she went on with her knitting. So to appease her I discoursed as follows:—
“The round square,” said I, “means the inappropriate combination of opposites.”
“Now, not too long words,” said she, “and not too much philosophy.”
“Very well, my dear,” I continued; “Don O’Rapley
is right, not in his particular instance, but in the general application of his meaning. Look around upon the world, or so much of it as is comprised within our own limited vision, and what do you find?”
“I find everything,” said my wife, “beautifully ordered and arranged, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Parish Beadle.”
“What do you find?” I repeated. “Mark the O’Rapley’s knowledge of human nature, you not only find Waterloos won in the Cricket-field of Eton, but Bishopricks and Secretaryships and many other glorious victories; so that you might—”
“Don’t be foolish; Trafalgar was not won in the Cricket-field.”
“No, but it was fought on the Isis or the Cam, I forget which. But carry the O’Rapley’s theory into daily life, and test it by common observation, what do you find? Why, that this round square is by no means a modern invention. It has been worked in all periods of our history. Here is a Vicar with a rich benefice, intended by nature for a Jockey or a Whipper-in—”
“What, the benefice?”
“No, the Vicar! Here is a barrister who ought to have been a curate, and become enthusiastic over worked slippers: there is another thrust into a Government appointment, not out of respect to him, the Minister doesn’t know him, but to serve a political friend, or to place an investment in the hands of a political rival, who will return it with interest on a future day. The gentleman thus provided for at the country’s expense would, if left to himself, have probably become an excellent billiard-marker or pigeon-shooter. Here is another,
who, although a member of Parliament, was elected by no constituency under Heaven or above it; and it is clear he was intended by Nature for a position where obsequiousness and servility meet with their appropriate reward. Another fills the post of some awful Commissioner of something, drawing an immense salary, and doing an immense amount of mischief for it, intended naturally for a secretary to an Autocratic Nobleman, who would trample the rights of the people under foot. Here is another—”
“O pray, my dear, do not let us have another—”
“Only one more,” said I; “here is another, thrust into the Cabinet for being so disagreeable a fellow, who ought to have been engaged in making fireworks for Crystal Palace fêtes.”
“But this is only an opinion of yours; how do you know these gentlemen are not fitted for the posts they occupy? surely if they do the work—”
“The public would have no right to grumble.”
“And as for obsequiousness and servility, I am afraid those are epithets too often unjustly applied to those gentlemen whose courteous demeanour wins them the respect of their superiors.”
“Quite so,” said I; “and I don’t see that it matters what is the distinguishing epithet you apply to them: this courteous demeanour or obsequiousness is no doubt the very best gift Nature can bestow upon an individual as an outfit for the voyage of life.”
“Dear me, you were complaining but just now of its placing men in positions for which they were not qualified.”
“Not complaining, my love; only remarking. I go in for obsequiousness, and trust I shall never be found
wanting in that courteous demeanour towards my superiors which shall lead to my future profit.”
“But would you have men only courteous?”
“By no means, I would have them talented also.”
“But in what proportion would you have the one to the other?”
“I would have the same proportion maintained that exists between the rudder and the ship: you want just enough tact to steer your obsequiousness.”
Here again I dozed.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A comfortable evening at the Goose
When Mr. Bumpkin left the Mansion House, he was in a state of great triumph not to say ecstasy: for it seemed to him that he had had everything his own way. He was not cross-examined; no witnesses were called, and it had only been stated by the prisoner himself, not proved, although he said he should prove it at the trial, that the watch had been in the family for upwards of forty years.
“The biggest lie,” muttered Master Bumpkin, “that ever wur told.” And then he reasoned in this wise: “how could it a bin in his family forty year when he, Bumpkin, only lost it the day afore in the most barefaced manner? He was a pooty feller as couldn’t tell a better story than thic.”
And then methought in my dream, “Ah, Bumpkin, thou may’st triumph now, but little dreamest thou what is in store for thee at the trial. Wait till all those little insignificant points, hardly visible at present, shall rise, like spear-heads against thee at the Old Bailey and thrust thee through and through and make thee curse the advocate’s skill and the thief’s impudence and the inertness of the so-called Public Prosecutor: and mayhap, I know not yet, show thee how wrong and robbery may triumph over right and innocence. Thou
hast raised thyself, good Bumpkin, from the humblest poverty to comparative wealth and a lawsuit: but boast not overmuch lest thou find Law a taskmaster instead of a Protector!
Thus, moralizing in my dream I perceived that Mr. Bumpkin after talking to some men betook himself to a Bus and proceeded on his way to the “Goose” at Westminster, whither he arrived in due time and in high spirits.
The Goose was a nice cosy public-house, situated, as I before observed, near the river side and commanded a beautiful view of the neighbouring wharves and the passing craft. It was a favourite resort of waterside men, carters, carriers, labourers on the wharf and men out of work. The Military also patronized it:—And many were the jovial tales told around the taproom hearth by members of Her Majesty’s troops to admiring and astonished Ignorance.
It was a particularly cold and bleak day, this ninth of March one thousand eight hundred and something. The wind was due East and accompanied ever and anon with mighty thick clouds of sleet and snow. The fireside therefore was particularly comfortable, and the cheery faces around the hearth were pleasant to behold.
Now Mr. Bumpkin, as the reader knows, was not alone in his expedition. He had his witness, named Joseph Wurzel: called in the village “Cocky,” inasmuch as it was generally considered that he set much by his wisdom: and was possessed of considerable attainments. For instance, he could snare a hare as well as any man in the county: or whistle down pheasants to partake of a Buckwheat refection which he was in the habit of spreading for their repast.
A good many fellows who were envious of Joe’s abilities avowed that “he was a regler cunnin’ feller, as ud some day find out his mistake;” meaning thereby that Joe would inevitably be sent to prison. Others affirmed that he was a good deal too cunning for that; that he was a regular artful dodger, and knew how to get round the vicar and all in authority under him. The reader knows that he was a regular attendant at Church, and by that means was in high favour. Nor was his mother behind hand in this respect, especially in the weeks before Christmas; and truly her religion brought its reward even in this world in the shape of Parish Gifts.
No doubt Joe was fond of the chase, but in this respect he but imitated his superiors, except that I believe he occasionally went beyond them in the means he employed.
Assembled in this common room at the Goose on the night in question, were a number of persons of various callings and some of no calling in particular. Most of them were acquainted, and apparently regular customers. One man in particular became a great favourite with Joe, and that was Jacob Wideawake the Birdcatcher; and it was interesting to listen to his conversation on the means of catching and transforming the London Sparrow into an article of Commerce.
Joe’s dress no doubt attracted the attention of his companions when he first made his appearance, for it was something out of the ordinary style: and certainly one might say that great care had been bestowed upon him to render his personal appearance attractive in the witness-box. He wore a wideawake hat thrown back on his head, thus displaying his brown country-looking face to full advantage. His coat was a kind of dark velveteen
which had probably seen better days in the Squire’s family; so had the long drab waistcoat. His corduroy trousers, of a light green colour, were hitched up at the knees with a couple of straps as though he wore his garters outside. His neckerchief was a bright red, tied round his neck in a careless but not unpicturesque manner. Take him for all in all he was as fine a specimen of a country lad as one could wish to meet,—tall, well built, healthy looking, and even handsome.
Now Mr. Bumpkin, being what is called “a close man,” and prone to keep his own counsel on all occasions when it was not absolutely necessary to reveal it, had said nothing about his case before the Lord Mayor; not even Mrs. Oldtimes had he taken into his confidence. It is difficult to understand his motive for such secrecy, as it is impossible to trace in nine instances out of ten any particular line of human conduct to its source.
Acting probably on some vague information that he had received, Mr. Bumpkin looked into the room, and told Joe that he thought they should be “on” to-morrow. He had learned the use of that legal term from frequent intercourse with Mr. Prigg. He thought they should be on but “wur not sartin.”
“Well,” said Joe, “the sooner the better. I hates this ere hangin’ about.” At this Jack Outofwork, Tom Lazyman, and Bill Saunter laughed; while Dick Devilmecare said, “He hated hanging about too; it was wus than work.”
“And that’s bad enough, Heaven knows,” said Lazyman.
Then I saw that at this moment entered a fine tall handsome soldier, who I afterwards learned was Sergeant Goodtale of the One Hundred and twenty-fourth
Hussars. A smarter or more compact looking fellow it would be impossible to find: and he came in with such a genial, good-natured smile, that to look at him would almost make you believe there was no happiness or glory on this side the grave except in Her Majesty’s service—especially the Hussars!
I also perceived that fluttering from the side of Sergeant Goodtale’s cap, placed carelessly and jauntily on the side of his head, was a bunch of streamers of the most fascinating red white and blue you ever could behold. Altogether, Sergeant Goodtale was a splendid sight. Down went his cane on the table with a crack, as much as to say “The Queen!” and he marched up to the fire and rubbed his hands: apparently taking no heed of any human being in the room.
Mr. Bumpkin’s heart leaped when he saw the military sight: his eyes opened as if he were waking from a dream out of which he had been disturbed by a cry of “fire:” and giving Joe a wink and an obviously made-up look, beckoned him out of the room. As they went out they met a young man, shabbily clad and apparently poorly fed. He had an intelligent face, though somewhat emaciated. He might be, and probably was, a clerk out of employment, and he threw himself on the seat in a listless manner that plainly said he was tired of everything.
This was Harry Highlow. He had been brought up with ideas beyond his means. It was through no fault of his that he had not been taught a decent trade: those responsible for his training having been possessed of the notion that manual labour lowers one’s respectability: an error and a wickedness which has been responsible for the ruin of many a promising youth before to-day.
Harry was an intelligent, fairly educated youth, and nothing more. What is to be done with raw material so plentiful as that? The cheapest marketable commodity is an average education, especially in a country where even our Universities can supply you with candidates for employment at a cheaper rate than you can obtain the services of a first-class cook. This young man had tried everything that was genteel: he had even aspired to literature: sought employment on the Press, on the Stage, everywhere in fact where gentility seemed to reign. Nor do I think he lacked ability for any of these walks; it was not ability but opportunity that failed him.
“Lookee ere, Joe,” said Mr. Bumpkin; “harken to me. Don’t thee ’ave nowt to say to that there soger.”
“All right, maister,” said Joe, laughing; “thee thinks I be gwine for a soger. Now lookee ere, maister, I beant a fool.”
“No, thee beant, Joe. I knowed thee a good while, and thee beant no fool.”
Joe laughed. It was a big laugh was Joe’s, for his mouth was somewhat large, and a grin always seemed to twist it. On this occasion, so great was his surprise that his master should think he would be fool enough to enlist for a “soger,” that his mouth assumed the most irregular shape I ever saw, and bore a striking resemblance to a hole such as might be made in the head of a drum by the heel of a boot.
“I be up to un, maister.”
“Have no truck wi’ un, I tell ee; don’t speak to un. Thee be my head witness, and doant dare goo away; no, no more un if—”
“No fear,” said Joe. “’Taint likely I be gwine to
listen to ee. I knows what he wants; he’s arter listin chaps.”
“Look ee ere, Joe, if ur speaks to thee, jist say I beant sich a fool as I looks; that’ll ave un.”
“Right,” says Joe; “I beant sich a fool as I looks; that’ll ave un straight.”
“Now, take heed; I’m gwine into the parlour wi’ Landlord.”
Accordingly, into the little quiet snuggery of Mr. Oldtimes, Mr. Bumpkin betook himself. And many and many an agreeable evening was passed with Mr. and Mrs. Oldtimes during the period when Mr. Bumpkin was waiting for his trial. For Mr. and Mrs. Oldtimes being Somersetshire people knew many inhabitants of the old days in the village of Yokelton, where Mr. Bumpkin “were bred and born’d.”
Meanwhile the “head witness” had returned to the cheerful scene in the taproom, and sat leering out of the corners of his eyes upon the Sergeant, as though he expected every moment that officer would make a spring at him and have him upon the floor. But the Sergeant was not a bullying, blustering sort of man at all; his demeanour was quiet in the extreme. He scarcely looked at anyone. Simply engaged in warming his hands at the cheerful fire, no one had cause to apprehend anything from him.
But a man, Sergeant or no Sergeant, must, out of common civility, exchange a word now and then, if only about the weather; and so he said, carelessly,—
“Sharp weather, lads!”
Now, not even Joe could disagree with this; it was true, and was assented to by all; Joe silently acquiescing. After the Sergeant had warmed his hands and
rubbed them sufficiently, he took off his cap and placed it on a little shelf or rack; and then took out a meerschaum pipe, which he exhibited without appearing to do so to the whole company. Then he filled it from his pouch, and rang the bell; and when the buxom young waitress appeared, he said,—
“My dear, I think I’ll have a nice rump steak and some onions, if you please.”
“Yes, sir,” said the maid.
Now I observed that two or three matters were noteworthy at this point. First, Joe’s mouth so watered that he actually went to the fireplace and expectorated. Secondly, he was utterly amazed at the familiar manner in which the Sergeant was permitted to address this beautiful young person, who seemed to be quite a lady of quality. Thirdly, he was duly impressed and astounded with the luxurious appetite of this Sergeant of Hussars!
Then the young woman came back and said,—“Would you like to have it in the parlour, sir?”
“O no, my dear,” said the Sergeant; “I would rather have it here. I hate being alone.”
As he said this, he slightly glanced at Dick Devilmecare. Dick, flattering himself that the observation was addressed particularly to him, observed that he also hated being alone.
Then the Sergeant lighted his pipe; and I suppose there was not one in the company who did not think that tobacco particularly nice.
Next, the Sergeant rang again, and once more the pretty maid appeared.
“Lucy,” said he, “while my steak is getting ready, I
think I’ll have three of whiskey hot, with a little lemon in it.”
At this there was an involuntary smacking of lips all round, although no one was conscious he had exhibited any emotion. The Sergeant was perfectly easy and indifferent to everything. He smoked, looked at the fire, sipped his grog, spread out his legs, folded his arms; then rose and turned his back to the fire, everyone thinking how thoroughly he enjoyed himself.
“That smells very nice, Sergeant,” said Harry.
“Yes, it’s very good,” said the Sergeant; “it’s some I got down at Yokelton, Somersetshire.”
Here Joe looked up; he hadn’t been home for a week, and began to feel some interest in the old place, and everything belonging to it.
“I comes from that ere place, Mr. Sergeant,” said he.
“Indeed, sir,” said the Sergeant, in an off-hand manner.
“Did thee buy un at a shop by the Pond, sir?”
“That’s it,” replied the Sergeant, pointing with his pipe, “to the right.”
“The seame plaace,” exclaimed Joe. “Why my sister lives there sarvant wi that ooman as keeps the shop.”
“Indeed!” said Sergeant Goodtale; “how very curious!”
And Jack said, “What a rum thing!”
And Bill said, “That is a rum thing!”
And Harry said it was a strange coincidence. In short, they all agreed that it was the most remarkable circumstance that ever was.
CHAPTER XIX.
The subject continued.
As soon as the conversation on the remarkable circumstance recorded in the last chapter had drifted into another subject no less remarkable, and the Sergeant had finished his pipe, the beautiful being appeared with the rump steak and onions, a snowy white cloth having been previously spread at the end of one of the tables. When all was ready, it looked as nice and appetizing as could well be conceived. The most indifferent man there seemed the Sergeant himself, who, instead of rushing to the chair provided for him, walked as coolly up to the table as though he were going into action. Then he took the knife, and seeing it had not quite so sharp an edge as he liked, gave it a touch or two on the stone hearth.
The smell of that tobacco from Yokelton had been sweet; so had the perfume from the whiskey toddy and the lemon; but of all the delicious and soul-refreshing odours that ever titilated human nostrils, nothing surely could equal that which proceeded from the rump steak and onions. The fragrance of new mown hay, which Cowper has so beautifully mentioned, had palled on Joe’s senses; but when would the fragrance of that dish pall on the hungry soul?
The Sergeant took no notice of the hungry looks of
the company; he was a soldier, and concentrated his mind upon the duties of the moment. Sentimentality was no part of his nature. He was a man, and must eat; he was a soldier, and must perform the work as a duty irrespective of consequences.
“Do you mind my smoke?” asked Harry.
“Oh dear, no,” said the Sergeant; “I like it.”
Joe stared and watched every bit as the Sergeant cut it. He looked admiringly on the soldier and so lovingly at the steak, that it almost seemed as if he wished he could be cut into such delicious morsels and eaten by so happy a man. What thoughts passed through his mind no one but a dreamer could tell; and this is what I saw passing through the mind of Wurzel.
“O, what a life! what grub! what jollyness! no turmut oeing; no dung-cart; no edgin and ditchin; no five o’clock in the mornin; no master; no bein sweared at; no up afore the magistrates; no ungriness; rump steaks and inguns; whiskey and water and bacca; if I didn’t like that air Polly Sweetlove, danged if I wouldn’t go for a soger to-morrer!”
Then said Joe, very deferentially and as if he were afraid of being up afore the magistrate, “If you please, sir, med I have a bit o’ that there bacca?”
“Of course,” said the Sergeant, tossing his pouch; “certainly; help yourself.”
Joe’s heart was softened more and more towards the military, which he had hitherto regarded, from all he could hear, as a devil’s own trap to catch Sabbath breakers and disobedient to parents.
And methought, in my dream, I never saw men who were not partakers of a feast enjoy it more than the onlookers of that military repast.
“Well, Sergeant, I’m well-nigh tired of my life, and I’ve come here to enlist.”
“Just wait a bit,” said the Sergeant; “I’m not a man to do things in a hurry. I never allow a man to enlist, if I know it, in Her Majesty’s service, honourable and jolly as it is, without asking him to think about it.”
“Hear, hear!” said Lazyman; “that’s good, I likes that; don’t be in a hurry, lad.”
“Hear, hear!” says Outofwork, “don’t jump into a job too soon, yer medn’t like it.”
“Hear, hear!” says the Boardman, “walk round a-bit.”
“But,” said Harry, “I have considered it. I’ve just had education enough to prevent my getting a living, and not enough to make a man of me: I’ve tried everything and nobody wants me.”
“Then,” said Sergeant Goodtale, “do you think the Queen only wants them that nobody else’ll have. I can tell you that ain’t the Queen of England’s way. It might do for Rooshia or Germany, or them countries, but not for Old England. It’s a free country. I think, lads, I’m right—”
Here there was tremendous hammering on the table by way of assent and applause; amidst which Joe could be observed thumping his hard fist with as much vehemence as if he had got a County Magistrate’s head under it.
“This is a free country, sir,” said the Sergeant, “no man here is kidnapped into the Army, which is a profession for men, not slaves.”
“I’m going to join,” said Harry, “say what you like.”
“Wait till the morning;” said the Sergeant, “and meanwhile we’ll have a song.”
At this moment Mr. Bumpkin put in an appearance; for although he had been enjoying himself with Mr. and Mrs. Oldtimes, he thought it prudent to have a peep and see how “thic Joe wur gettin on.”
CHAPTER XX.
Mr. Bumpkin sings a good old song—the Sergeant becomes quite a convivial companion and plays dominoes.
The Sergeant, having finished his repast, again had recourse to his pipe, and was proceeding to light it when Mr. Bumpkin appeared in the room.
“We be gwine to have a song, maister,” said Joe.
“Give us a song, governor,” said half-a-dozen voices.
“Ay, do, maister,” says Joe; “thee sings a good un, I knows, for I ha eerd thee often enough at arvest oames: gie us a song, maister.”
Now if there was one thing Mr. Bumpkin thought he was really great at besides ploughing the straightest and levellest furrow, it was singing the longest and levellest song. He had been known to sing one, which, with its choruses, had lasted a full half hour, and then had broken down for lack of memory.
On the present occasion he would have exhibited no reluctance, having had a glass or two in the Bar Parlour had he not possessed those misgivings about the Sergeant. He looked furtively at that officer as though it were better to give him no chance. Seeing, however, that he was smoking quietly, and almost in a forlorn manner by himself, his apprehensions became less oppressive.
Invitations were repeated again and again, and with such friendly vehemence that resistance at last was out of the question.
“I aint sung for a good while,” said he, “but I wunt be disagreeable like, so here goes.”
But before he could start there was such a thundering on the tables that several minutes elapsed. At length there was sufficient silence to enable him to be heard.
“This is Church and Crown, lads.”
“Gie me the man as loves the Squire,
The Parson, and the Beak;
And labours twelve good hours a day
For thirteen bob a week!”
“Hooroar! hooroar! hooroar!” shouted Lazyman. “What d’ye think ’o that?”
“O, my eye,” said Outofwork, “aint it jolly?”
“Well done! bravo!” shrieked the Boardman. “I’ll carry that ere man through the streets on my shoulders instead o’ the boards, that I will. Bravo! he ought to be advertized—this style thirteen bob a week!”
“Thirteen bob a week!” laughed Harry; “who’d go for a soldier with such a prospect. Can you give us a job, governor?”
“Wait a bit, lads,” said Mr. Bumpkin, “there be another werse and then a chorus.”
“Hooray!” they shouted, “a chorus! let’s have the chorus—there ought to be a chorus—thirteen bob a week!”
“Now, gentlemen, the chorus if you please,” said Harry; “give it mouth, sir!”
Then sang Bumpkin—
“O ’edgin, ditchin, that’s the geaam,
All in the open air;
The poor man’s health is all his wealth,
But wealth without a care!
Chorus.
Then shout hurrah for Church and State
Though ’eretics may scoff,
The devil is our head Constable,
To take the willins off.
Give me the man that’s poor and strong,
Hard working and content;
Who looks on onger as his lot,
In Heaven’s wise purpose sent.
Who looks on riches as a snare
To ketch the worldly wise;
And good roast mutton as a dodge,
To blind rich people’s eyes.
Chorus.
Give me the man that labours hard
From mornin’ until night,
And looks at errins as a treat
And bacon a delight.
O ’edgin, ditchin, diggin drains,
And emptyin pool and dyke,
It beats your galloppin to ’ounds,
Your ball-rooms and the like.
Chorus.
Gi’ me the man that loves the Squire
With all his might and main;
And with the taxes and the rates
As never racks his brain.
Who loves the Parson and the Beak
As Heaven born’d and sent,
And revels in that blessed balm
A hongry sweet content.
Chorus.
Gie me the good Shaksperan man
As wants no other books,
But them as he no need to spell,
The ever runnin brooks:
As feeds the pigs and minds the flocks,
And rubs the orses down;
And like a regler lyal man,
Sticks up for Church and Crown.”
Chorus.
At the termination of this pastoral song there was such a hullabaloo of laughter, such a yelling, thumping, and, I grieve to say, swearing, that Mr. Bumpkin wondered what on earth was the occasion of it. At the Rent dinner at the Squire’s he had always sung it with great success; and the Squire himself had done him the honour to say it was the best song he had ever heard, while the Clergyman had assured him that the sentiments were so good that it ought to be played upon the organ when the people were coming out of church. And Farmer Grinddown, who was the largest gentleman farmer for miles around, had declared that if men would only act up to that it would be a happy country, and we should soon be able to defy America itself.
Mr. Bumpkin, hearing such shouts of laughter, thought perhaps he might have a patch of black on his face, and put his hand up to feel. Then he looked about him to see if his dress was disarranged; but finding nothing amiss, he candidly told them he “couldn’t zee what there wur to laugh at thic fashion.”
They all said it was a capital song, and wondered if he had any more of the same sort, and hoped he’d leave them a lock of his hair—and otherwise manifested tokens of enthusiastic approbation.
Mr. Bumpkin, however, could not quite see their
mirth in the same light, so he turned on his heel and, beckoning to Joe, left the room in high dudgeon, not to say disdain.
“Mind Joe—no truck wi un.”
“Why, maister, he knows my sister.”
“Damn thee sister, Joe; it be a lie.”
“Be it? here’s some o’ the bacca he brought up from Okleton, I tell ee.”
“I tell thee, have nowt to do wi un; we shall be on t’morrer, we be tenth in the list.”
“Ay,” said Joe, “we bin igher in list un thic, we bin as near as eight; I shall be mighty glad when it be over.”
“An get back to pigs, aye, Joe?”
“Aye, maister.”
“Nothin like oame, Joe, be there?” and Mr. Bumpkin turned away.
“No,” said Joe; “no, maister, if so be” (and this was spoken to himself) “if so be you got a oame.”
Then I saw that Joe rejoined his companions, amongst whom a conversation was going on as to the merits of the song. Some said one thing and some another, but all condemned it as a regular toading to the Parson and the Squire: and as for the Beak, how any man could praise him whose only duty was to punish the common people, no one could see. The company were getting very comfortable. The Sergeant had called for another glass of that delectable grog whose very perfume seemed to inspire everyone with goodfellowship, and they all appeared to enjoy the Sergeant’s liquor without tasting it.
“What do you say to a game of dominoes?” said Harry.
“They won’t allow em ere,” said Lazyman.
“Won’t they,” answered Outofwork. “I’ll warrant if the Sergeant likes to play there’s no landlord’ll stop him, ay, Sergeant?”
“Well, I believe,” said the Sergeant, “as one of the Queen’s servants, I have the privilege of playing when I like.”
“Good,” said Harry, “and I’ll be a Queen’s man too, so out with the shilling, Sergeant.”
“Wait till the morning,” said the Sergeant.
“No,” said Harry. “I’ve had enough waiting. I’m on, give me the shilling.”
The Sergeant said, “Well, let me see, what height are you?” and he stood up beside him.
“Ah!” he said, “I think I can get you in,” saying which he gave him a shilling; such a bright coin, that it seemed to have come fresh from the Queen’s hand.
Then the Sergeant took out some beautiful bright ribbons which he was understood to say (but did not say) the Queen had given him that morning. Then he rang the bell, and the buxom waitress appearing he asked for the favour of a needle and thread, which, the radiant damsel producing, with her own fair fingers she sewed the ribbons on to Harry’s cap, smiling with admiration all the while. Even this little incident was not without its effect on the observant “head witness,” and he felt an unaccountable fascination to have the same office performed by the same fair hands on his own hat.
Then, without saying more, a box of dominoes was produced, and Joe soon found himself, he did not know how, the Sergeant’s partner, while Lazyman and Outofwork were opposed to them.
“Is it pooty good livin in your trade, Mr. Sergeant?” asked Joe.
“Not bad,” said the Sergeant; “that is five-one, I think”—referring to the play.
“Rump steaks and ingons aint bad living,” said Outofwork.
“No,” said the Sergeant, “and there’s nothing I like better than a good thick mutton chop for breakfast—let me see, what’s the game?”
“Ah!” said Joe, smacking his lips, “mutton chops is the best thing out; I aint had one in my mouth, though, for a doocid long time; I likes em with plenty o’ fat an gravy loike.”
“You see,” said the Sergeant, “when you’ve been out for a two or three mile ride before breakfast in the fresh country air, a chap wants something good for breakfast, and a mutton chop’s none too much for him.”
“No,” answered Joe, “I could tackle three.”
“Yes,” said Sergeant Goodtale, “but some are much larger than others.”
“So em be,” agreed Joe.
“What’s the game,” enquired the Sergeant.
“Two-one,” said Joe.
“One’s all,” said the soldier.
“I tell ee what,” remarked Joe, “if I was going to list, there’s no man as I’d liefer list wi than you, Mr. Sergeant.”
“Domino!” said the Sergeant, “that’s one to us, partner!”
Then they shuffled the dominoes and commenced again. But at this moment the full figure of Mr. Bumpkin again stood in the doorway.
“Joe!” he exclaimed angrily, “I want thee, come ere thirecly, I tell ee!”
“Yes, maister; I be comin.”
“You stoopid fool!” said Mr. Bumpkin in a whisper, as Joe went up to him, “thee be playin with thic feller.”
“Well, maister, if I be; what then?” Joe said this somewhat angrily, and Mr. Bumpkin replied:—
“He’ll ha thee, Joe—he’ll ha thee!”
“Nay, nay, maister; I be too old in the tooth for he; but it beant thy business, maister.”
“No,” said Bumpkin, as he turned away, “it beant.”
Then Joe resumed his play. Now it happened that as the Sergeant smacked his lips when he took his occasional sip of the fragrant grog, expressive of the highest relish, it awakened a great curiosity in Wurzel’s mind as to its particular flavour. The glass was never far from his nose and he had long enjoyed the extremely tempting odour. At last, as he was not invited to drink by Sergeant Goodtale, he could contain himself no longer, but made so bold as to say:—
“Pardner, med I jist taste this ere? I never did taste sich a thing.”
“Certainly, partner,” said the Sergeant, pushing the tumbler, which was about three-parts full. “What’s the game now?”
“Ten-one,” said Outofwork.
“One’s all, then,” said the Sergeant.
Joe took the tumbler, and after looking into it for a second or two as though he were mentally apostrophizing it, placed the glass to his lips.
“Don’t be afraid,” said the Sergeant.
No one seemed more courageous than Wurzel, in respect of the act with which he was engaged, and before he took the glass from his lips its contents had disappeared.
“I’m mighty glad thee spoke, Maister Sergeant, for if
thee hadn’t I should a drunk un all wirout thy leave. I never tasted sich tackle in my life; it’s enough to make a man gie up everything for sogering.”
“Domino!” said the Sergeant. “I think that’s the game!”
* * * * *
“My dear,” said my wife, “you have been talking again in your sleep.”
“Really,” said I, “I hope I have not compromised myself.”
“I do not understand you,” cried she.
“No more do I, for I am hardly awake.”
“You have been talking of Joe Wurzel again.”
“O, to be sure. What about him?”
“Then you mentioned Mr. Outofwork and Mr. Lazyman and Mr. Devilmecare, and another whose name I did not catch.”
“Ah,” I asked, “did they go for soldiers?”
“At present, no, except Harry, for whom I was heartily sorry, he seemed such a nice disappointed lad. But pray who is this Sergeant Goodtale?”
“He is on recruiting service, a very fine, persuasive fellow.”
“But he didn’t seem to press these people or use any arts to entice them: I like him for that. He rather seemed to me to discourage them from enlisting. He might have been sure poor Harry meant it, because, as I take it, he was half-starved, and yet he desired him to wait till the morning.”
“I think,” said I, “his conduct was artful if you examine it with reference to its effect on the others; but he is an extraordinary man, this Sergeant Goodtale—was never known to persuade any one to enlist, I believe.”
“But he seemed to get along very well.”
“Very; I thought he got along very comfortably.”
“Then there was one Lucy Prettyface!”
“Ah, I don’t remember her,” cried I, alarmed lest I might have said anything in my dream for which I was not responsible.
“Why she was the girl who sewed the colours on and somebody called ‘my dear.’”
“I assure you,” I said, “it was not I: it must have been the Sergeant; but I have no recollection—O yes, to be sure, she was the waitress.”
“You remember her now?”
“Well,” said I, determined not to yield if I could possibly help it, “I can’t say that I do. I know there was a person who sewed colours on and whom the Sergeant called ‘my dear,’ but further than that I should not like to pledge myself. Yes—yes—to be sure,” and here I went on talking, as it were, to myself, for I find it is much better to talk to yourself if you find it difficult to carry on a conversation with other persons.
“She was pretty, wasn’t she?” said my wife with an arch look.
I gave her a look just as arch, as I replied,
“Really I hardly looked at her; but I should say not.” I make a point of never saying any one is pretty.
“Joe thought her so.”
“Did he? Well she may have been, but I never went in for Beauty myself.”
“You shocking man,” said my wife, “do you perceive what you are saying?”
“Why, of course; but you take me up so sharply: if you had not cut me off in the flower of my speech you would have been gratified at the finish of my sentence.
I was going to say, I never went in for Beauty, but once. That, I think, gives the sentence a pretty turn.”
“Well, now, I think these dreams and this talking in your sleep indicate that you require a change; what do you say to Bournemouth?”
“You think I shall sleep better there?”
“I think it will do you good.”
“Then we’ll go to Bournemouth,” cried I, “for I understand it’s a very dreamy place.”
“But I should like to know what becomes of this action of Mr. Bumpkin, and how all his people get on? You may depend upon it that Sergeant will enlist those other men.”
“I do not know,” I remarked, “what is in the future.”
“But surely you know what you intend. You can make your characters do anything.”
“Indeed not,” I said. “They will have their own way whether I write their history or any one else.”
“That Sergeant Goodtale will have every one of them, my dear; you mark my words. He’s the most artful man I ever heard of.”
Of course I could offer no contradiction to this statement as I was not in the secrets of the future. How the matter will work out depends upon a variety of circumstances over which I have not the least control. For instance, if Bill were to take the shilling, I believe Dick would follow: and if the Sergeant were to sing a good song he might catch the rest. But who can tell?
CHAPTER XXI.
Joe electrifies the company and surprises the reader.
“Suppose we have another song,” said Sergeant Goodtale.
“And spoase we has some moore o’ that there stuff,” answered Joe.
“Aye,” said Harry, “we will too. I’ll spend my shilling like a man.”
Saying which he rang the bell and ordered a glass for himself and one for Joe.
“Now, then,” said the latter, “I can’t sing, but I’ll gie thee summut as I larned.”
“Hooray!” said Harry, “summut as he larned!”
“Bravo!” said the Boardman, “summut as he larned?”
“Here’s at un,” said Joe.
And then with a mighty provincialism he repeated without a break:—
DR. BRIMSTONE’S SERMON,
as put into verse by gaffer ditcher.
I bin to Church, I ha’, my boy,
And now conwarted be;
The last time I wur ever there
War eighteen farty-three!
And ’ow I knows it is as this,
I didn’t goo to pray,
Nor ’ear the Word, but went becorse
It wur my weddin day!
Zounds! wot a blessed sarmon twur
I ’eeard the Sabbath morn;
’Ow I a woful sinner wur
Or ever I wur born.
You sees them wilful igorant pigs
In mud a wollorin;
Well, like them pigs, but ten times wus,
We wollers in our sin.
We’re coated o’er wi’ sinful mud,—
A dreadful sight we be;
And yet we doant despise ourselves—
For why?—We doant zee!
I thinks I had yer there, my boy,
For all your sniggerin’ jeers;
Thee’re in t’ mud, I tell ’ee, lad,
Rightoover ’ed an’ ears.
Zounds! what a orful thing it be
That love should blind us so!
Why, them there bloomin rosy cheeks
Be ony masks o’ woe!
The reddest on ’em thee could kiss
Aint ’ardly wuth the pains;
At best it’s but the husk o’ bliss,
It’s nuther wuts nor banes.
There aint a pleasure you can name,
From coourtin down to skittles,
But wot there’s mischief in the same,
Like pisen in your wittles.
The Reverend Brimstone says, “Beloved,
Be allays meek an umble;
A saint should never ax for moor,
An never larn to grumble.”
We ain’t to tork o’ polleticks
An’ things as don’t consarn us,
And wot we wornts to know o’ lor
The madgistret will larn us.
We ain’t to drink wi’ Methodists,
No, not a friendly soop;
We ain’t to tork o’ genteel folks
Onless to praise un oop.
We ain’t to ’ear a blessed word
Agin our betters said;
We’re got to lay the butter thick
Becorse they’re sich ’igh bred!
We got to say “Ha! look at he!
A gemman tooth and nail!”
You morn’t say, “What a harse he’d be
If he’d a got a tail!”
For why? becorse these monied gents
Ha’ got sich birth an’ breedin’;
An’ down we got to ’old our ’eads,
Like cattle, when they’re feedin’.
The parson put it kindly like—
He sed, says he, as ’ow
We’re bean’t so good as them there grubs
We turns up wi’ the plow.
There’s nowt more wretcheder an we,
Or worthier an the rich,
I praises ’em for bein’ born,
An’ ’eaven for makin’ sich.
So wile we be, I daily stares
That earthquakes doan’t fall,
An’ swaller up this unconwinced
Owdashus earthly ball!
An’ wen I thinks of all our sins—
Lay down, says I, my boys,
We’re fittin’ only for manoor,
So don’t let’s make a noise.
Let’s spred us out upon the ground
An’ make the turmuts grow,
It’s all we’re good for in this world
O’ wickedness an’ woe!
And yet we’re ’llow’d to brethe the air
The same as gents from town;
And ’llow’d to black their ’appy boots,
And rub their ’orses down!
To think o’ blessins sich as these,
Is like ongrateful lust;
It stuffs us oop wi’ worldly pride,
As if our ’arts would bust!
But no, we’re ’umble got to be,
Though privileged so ’igh:
Why doan’t we feed on grass or grains,
Or leastways ’umbly die!
We got to keep our wicked tongue
From disrespeckful speakin’,
We han’t a got to eat too much,
Nor yet goo pleasure seekin’.
Nor kitch a rabbit or a aire,
Nor call the Bobby names,
Nor stand about, but goo to church,
And play no idle games:
To love paroshial orficers,
The squire, and all that’s his,
And never goo wi’ idle chaps
As wants their wages riz.
So now conwarted I ha’ bin
From igorance and wice;
It’s only ’appiness that’s sin,
And norty things that’s nice!
Whereas I called them upstart gents
The wust o’ low bred snobs,
Wi’ contrite ’art I hollers out
“My heye, wot bloomin’ nobs!”
I sees the error o’ my ways,
So, lads, this warnin’ take,
The Poor Man’s path, the parson says,
Winds round the Burnin’ Lake.
They’ve changed it since the days o’ yore,
Them Gospel preachers, drat un;
They used to preach it to the poor,
An’ now they preach it at un.
Every one was amazed at the astonishing memory of this country lad: and the applause that greeted the reciter might well be calculated to awaken his latent vanity. It was like being called before the curtain after the first act by a young actor on his first appearance. And I believe every one understood the meaning of the verses, which seemed to imply that the hungry prodigal, famishing for food, was fed with husks instead of grain. Contentment with wretchedness is not good preaching, and this was one lesson of Dr. Brimstone’s sermon. As soon as Harry could make himself heard amidst the general hubbub, which usually follows a great performance, he said:—
“Now, look here, lads, it’s all very well to be converted with such preaching as that; but it’s my belie it’s more calculated to make hypocrites than Christians.”
“Hear! hear!” said Lazyman. “That is right.” Anything but conversion for Lazyman.
“Now,” continued Harry, “I’ve heard that kind of preaching a hundred times: it’s a regular old-fashioned country sermon; and, as for the poor being so near hell, I put it in these four lines.”
“Hear, hear!” cried the company; “order!”
And they prepared themselves for what was to come with as great eagerness as, I venture to say, would
always be shown to catch the text, if it came at the end, instead of the beginning, of a sermon.
“Shut up,” says Lazyman; “let’s ’ear this ’ere. I knows it’s summut good by the look an him.”
“Don’t make a row,” retorts the Boardman; “who can hear anything while you keeps on like that?”
And there they stood, actually suspending the operation of smoking as they waited the summing up of this remarkably orthodox “preaching of the word.” The sergeant only was a spectator of the scene, and much amused did he seem at the faces that prepared for a grin or a sneer as the forthcoming utterance should demand. Then said Harry solemnly and dramatically:—
“In Want full many a vice is born,
And Virtue in a Dinner;
A well-spread board makes many a Saint,
And Hunger many a sinner.”
From the explosion which followed this antidote to Mr. Brimstone’s sermon, I should judge that the more part of the company believed that Poverty was almost as ample a virtue as Charity itself. They shook their heads in token of assent; they thumped the table in recognition of the soundness of the teaching; and several uttered an exclamation not to be committed to paper, as an earnest of their admiration for the ability of Mr. Highlow, who, instead of being a private soldier, ought, in their judgment, to be Lord Mayor of London. After this recital every one said he thought Mr. Highlow might oblige them.
“Well, I’m no singer,” said Harry.
“Try, Harry!” exclaimed Lazyman: he was a rare one to advise other people to try.
“Trying to sing when you can’t,” answered Harry, “I should think is a rum sort of business; but I’ll tell you what I’ll do if you like. When I was down at Hearne Bay I heard an old fisherman tell a story which—”
“That’s it!” thumped out Joe, “a story. I likes a good story, specially if there be a goast in it.”
“I don’t know what there is in it,” said Harry, “I’ll leave you to make that out; but I tell you what I did when I heard it, I made a ballad of it, and so if you like I’ll try and recollect it.”
“Bravo!” they said, and Harry gave them the following