EIGHTH ENTRY.
Since my call to the Bar, have been treating myself to rather a long roll abroad. Now, however, the time has come to devote myself to the work of the profession, which seems to mean studying practical law with some discreet and learned Barrister.
Met a few nights ago, at dinner, a very entertaining fellow. Full of legal anecdotes. Told that it was DICK FIBBINS, a Barrister, "and rather a rising one." DICK (why not RICHARD?) talked about County Courts with condescending tolerance; even the High Court Judges seemed (according to his own account) to habitually quail before his forensic acumen.
Mentioned to FIBBINS that I had just been "called," and was "thinking of reading in a Barrister's chambers;" and he seemed to take the most friendly and generous interest in me at once—asked me, indeed, to call on him any day I liked at his chambers in Waste Paper Buildings, which I thought extremely kind, as I was a complete stranger.
Go next day. Clerk, with impressive manner, receives me with due regard to his principal's legal standing. (Query—has a rising Barrister any standing?) Ushered into large room, surrounded with shelves containing, I imagine, the Law Reports from the Flood downwards. Just thinking what an excellent "oldest inhabitant" METHUSELAH would have made in a "Right of Way" case, when DICK FIBBINS rises from the wooden arm-chair on which he has been sitting at a table crowded with papers, and bundles tied up in dirty red tape, and shakes hands heartily.
"What's your line of country?" he asks—"Equity or Common Law?"
I admit that it's Common Law. Have momentary feeling that Equity sounds better, Why Common Law?
"Quite right," he says, encouragingly; "much the best branch. I am a Common-Law man too." Refers to it as if it were a moral virtue on his—and my—part to have avoided Equity. Wonder if Equity men talk in this way about "Common" Lawyers? If so, oughtn't there to be more esprit de corps in the Profession?
"Been before old PROSER, Queen's Bench Division, to-day," he proceeds. "Do you ever sit in Court?"
I reluctantly confess that I have not made an habitual point of doing so.
"Ah," he says, finding that I can't contradict him as to what did really happen in old PROSER's Court to-day; "you should have been there just now. Had BLOWHARD, the great Q.C., opposed to me. But, bless you, he couldn't do anything to speak of against my arguments. PROSER really hardly would listen to him once or twice. Made BLOWHARD quite lose his temper, I assure you."
"So he lost his case, too, I suppose?" I remark, humorously.
"Um," replies FIBBINS, sinking into despondency, "not exactly. PROSER didn't quite like to decide against BLOWHARD, you know; so he—so he—er—decided for him, in fact. Of course we appeal. It won't," goes on FIBBINS, more cheerfully, "do BLOWHARD's clients a bit of good. Only run their bill up. I'm safe to win before the Court of Appeal. Lord Justice GRILL a first-rate lawyer—sure to reverse old PROSER. I can," he ends with conscious pride, "twist GRILL round my finger, so to speak."
The idea of twisting a Lord Justice round one's finger impresses me still more with DICK FIBBINS's legal genius. How lucky I am to have made his acquaintance! Feel impelled to ask, as I do rather nervously, not knowing if a bitter disappointment does not await me.
"Do you—er—take legal pupils ever?"
I feel that I've put it in a way that sounds like asking him if he indulges in drink. But FIBBINS evidently not offended. He answers briskly, with engaging candour.
"Well, to tell you the truth, though I've often been asked to—quite pestered about it, in fact—I've never done so hitherto. The Solicitors don't like it quite—makes 'em think one is wasting the time which ought to be given to their briefs on one's own pups—I mean pupils."
Perhaps, after all, FIBBINS will dash my hopes (of becoming his "pup!" Query, isn't the word infra dig.—or merely "pleasantly colloquial?") to the ground.
"I was," I say boldly, "going to ask you if you would let me read with you."
"Were you?" replies DICK, apparently intensely astonished at the idea; "By Jove! I should be really sorry to disappoint you. Yes," he goes on in a burst of generosity, "I will make room for you—there!"
This is really kind of DICK FIBBINS. We finally arrange that I am to come in two days' time—at the usual, and rather pretentious, fee of one hundred guineas for a year's "coaching"—and begin work.
"You'll see some good cases with me—good fighting cases," FIBBINS remarks, as I take my leave. "When there are no briefs, why, you can read up the Law Reports, you know. My books are quite at your disposal."
"But," I remark, a little surprised at that hint about no briefs—I thought DICK FIBBINS had more than he knew what to do with—"I suppose—er—there's plenty of business going on here?"
"Oh, heaps," replies FIBBINS, hastily. Then, as if to do away with any bad impression which his thoughtless observation about no briefs might have occasioned in my mind, he says, heartily,—
"And, when I take old PROSER up to the Court of Appeal, you shall come too, and hear me argue!"
I express suitable gratitude—but isn't it rather "contempt of Court" on FIBBINS's part to talk about "taking up" a Judge?—and feel, as I depart, that I shall soon see something of the real inner life of the Profession.