"It neither hindered nor helped. He was at the English Bar and that was enough."
I come back to Sir Francis Jeune. He was the friend and legal adviser of Lord Beaconsfield, whose will he drew. A Conservative, of course. His practice at the Bar was never of a showy kind. But if you put yourself into his hands you felt sure he would do the right and wise thing. His mind was of the sort known as legal. When he came to the Bench it was seen to be judicial also. I suppose the general public has never understood why Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty should be united in one division of the Supreme Court. No two subjects could be more unlike than Divorce and Admiralty. But a judge is supposed to have taken all legal knowledge to be his province, and to be equally capable of dealing with all the mysteries of the law in all its relations to all parts of life. It is true that on the Admiralty side assessors are called in. An assessor is a kind of expert. A retired sea-captain, for example, who has never commanded anything but a sailing ship, is supposed to be competent to advise on the most intricate questions of modern steamship navigation. The result is sometimes astounding, as in the case of the Campania, condemned by Mr. Justice Gorell Barnes to pay for the loss of the bark Embolton, by collision, solely because she was steaming nine knots. It was proved that this was the safest speed for her and for all comers; that she was under better control at nine knots than at any less speed. But the court said: "If people will build ships which are safest at nine knots they must be responsible for the consequences."
Sir Francis Jeune had no part in the trial of this famous cause and I am sure had too much sense to agree with the judgment. Good sense was, perhaps, the predominant trait in his character. He showed it pre-eminently in the Divorce Court. There he was helped, no doubt, by his social experiences. He knew London as few men know it. He had, in such matters, almost feminine instincts. But he ruled in his court as all strong English judges rule, and as strong American judges do not. In America we say of an advocate: "He tried such and such a case." In England the phrase is never used of the barrister. It is the judge who "tries" the cause, as it ought to be. Sir Francis "tried" the causes that came before him. He knew the law. He mastered facts easily. He was not easily misled and he had the sagacity which led him quickly to right conclusions. Since his death there have been contrasts on which I will not dwell.
CHAPTER XXXIX
MRS. JEUNE, LADY JEUNE, AND LADY ST. HELIER
The interesting people are the exceptional people; not those cast in a mould common to others, not those whose lives run in a groove but those who fashion their own lives in obedience to the dictates of a nature which is their own. Among the women of London it would be easy to choose those of higher rank or greater position than Lady St. Helier, but I choose her because she is Lady St. Helier.
Whether the marriage of Mrs. Stanley to Mr. Francis Jeune, in 1881, was or was not considered a social event of the first importance I cannot say. I was not then in London. But that it became important in no long time is clear. It was first as Mrs. Jeune and then as Lady Jeune that the present Lady St. Helier achieved her great distinction as a hostess. She was not content to do what other ladies of position were in the habit of doing. She struck out a line for herself. I said lately that London was a world in which everything of the first rank in many differing ranks and professions met at times beneath the same roofs. That was not always true. It was very far from being true.
If you go back no further than the eighteenth century you find in England a society consisting of perhaps three hundred or four hundred persons. If we may judge by the memoirs and memories that have come down to us it was a very brilliant society, perhaps more brilliant, though less varied, than the society of to-day. But it was not comprehensive, still less was it cosmopolitan. It was a caste. The hereditary principle prevailed. It was a society into which you had to take the precaution to be born. If you were not born into it you never found your way in. There was no effort to keep people outside of it. None was required. The people who were outside did not dream of forcing themselves in. There was no reason why this little clique should be on the defence. The Climbers did not then exist, as an aggressive body, or as a force of any kind. If you read Boswell's Life, or Walpole's Letters, or the Life of Selwyn, or any political memoirs of the time, it is clear that the dividing line between those who were in society and those who were not was a broad one, and was all but impassable.