LORD YELVERTON AND THE BAR.
Characteristic and personal sketches of three Irish barristers: Mr. William Fletcher (afterward chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas), Mr. James Egan (afterward judge of Dublin county), and Mr. Bartholomew Hoare, king’s counsel—Lord Yelverton’s dinner party—The author’s parody—Mr. Egan right by mistake!
Mr. William Fletcher, since chief justice of the Common Pleas; Mr. James Egan, afterward judge of Kilmainham; and Mr. Bartholomew Hoare, one of the king’s counsel, were certainly the three most intractable men of their profession, though of characters very dissimilar.
Mr. Fletcher, a very clever man and excellent lawyer, had a surly temper combined with a kind heart and an honest free-spirited principle, which never forsook him either in private life or as a public functionary. He was hard-featured, and although morose in court, disposed to jocularity in society: his appetites seemed to incline toward gourmandise, and in fact, toward voluptuousness, generally speaking. As a judge, he was upright, uninfluenced, and humane.
Mr. Egan, a huge, coarse-looking, red-faced, boisterous fellow, to as tender a heart as ever was enclosed in so rough an outside,[[77]] added a number of other good qualities which it would be too much to expect should exist without some alloy. His manners were naturally gross; and it was curious to see him, in full-dress, with bag and sword, endeavour to affect good breeding. He had immense business at the bar at the time Lord Yelverton presided in the Court of Exchequer; and he executed that business zealously and successfully, with, however, as occasion served, a sprinkling of what we term “balderdash.” In fact, he both gave and received hits and cuts with infinite spirit, and in more ways than one; for he had fought a good number of duels (one with swords), and had the good fortune to escape with an unpierced skin. Natural death was his final enemy, and swept him off long before nature ought to have had any hand in it. He died judge of Dublin county. His heart was in its right place; he was an utter stranger to double dealing—and never liked money except for what enjoyments it could purchase.
[77]. They called him the Venison Pasty: a coarse, black, hard crust, with excellent feeding inside of it.
Bartholomew Hoare was inferior to both. He wrote better, but spoke most disagreeably;—his harangues being sententious and diffuse, though not destitute of point. He was ill-tempered, arrogant, and rude, with a harsh expression of countenance; but withal, what was termed “an able man.” In point of intellect, indeed, he perhaps exceeded Egan, but in heart I must rank him inferior. Egan was popular with the most talented men of his profession: Hoare could never attain professional popularity in any shape, though he numbered some great men among his friends.
These are merely fugitive sketches of three members of the Irish bar who (I knew not why) were generally named together, but whose respective careers terminated very differently. Bartholomew Hoare died in great distress.
The chief baron, Lord Yelverton, got one day after dinner, at his house at Fairview, into an argument with Egan, which in truth he always courted, and led him on in so droll a way as never failed to enhance the merriment of the company. Hoare never heard an argument in his life between any two persons, or upon any subject, wherein he did not long to obtrude; and Fletcher, if he thought he had conceived a good hit, was never easy till he was delivered of it. On the evening in question, the trio had united in contesting with their host all manner of subjects, which he had himself designedly started, to excite them. His lordship was in high glee, and played them off in a style of the most superior wit and cleverness, assisted (for he was a first-rate scholar) by much classic quotation: by successive assaults he upset the three, who were as less than one in the hands of Yelverton, when he chose to exert himself. The evening certainly turned out among the pleasantest I ever passed in society.
Lord Yelverton’s wit and humour had a weight and solidity in it, which emitted a fervid as well as a blazing light. I opened not my lips:—had I mingled in their disputation, I should not only have got my full portion of the tattooing (as they termed it), but also have lost, in becoming an actor, the gratification of witnessing the scene. At length Lord Yelverton wrote under the table with a pencil the following words, and sent the scrap by a servant to me:—“Barrington, these fellows will never stop!—pray write something about them, and send it to me.”—I left the room, and having written the following parody in a hand to resemble printing, sent it in to his lordship sealed as a letter:—
Three pleaders, in one vulgar era born,
Mount-Melic, Cork, and Blarney, did adorn:
In solemn surliness the first surpass’d,
The next in balderdash—in both the last:
The force of Nature could no further go;
To make a third, she join’d the former two!
Lord Yelverton, not expecting the lampoon to come in form of a letter, was greatly diverted; it was read over and over again, amidst roars of laughter. Every body entertained his own conjecture respecting the writer, and each barrister appropriated to himself one of the three characteristics. I was not at all suspected that night, since I had in nowise interfered, and my brief absence had not been noticed: but next day in court, it somehow came out. Nobody but Hoare was vexed, and him I silenced by threatening that I would write another epigram on him solus if he provoked me. He vowed at first he would make an example of me; and by cutting satire he was well able to do so: but I got him into good humour before we parted.
Egan, however, professed annoyance at me from some cause or other in the course of that same day. He was never remarkable for the correctness of his English. In speaking to some motion that was pending, he used the word obdurate frequently. I happened to laugh; Egan turned round, and then addressing himself to the chief baron, “I suppose, my lord,” said he ironically, “the gentleman laughs at my happening to pronounce the word obdurate wrong.”
“No, my lord,” replied I, “I only laughed because he happened to pronounce it right!”
I never heard him utter the word obdurate afterward.