MY HAT.
"The morning was a gloomy one, and no doubt the weather had something to do with the solemn tone of the proceedings. A collection of briefless barristers, irritated jurymen, and wet umbrellas in dark corridors is not enlivening; and when you arrive, to find the Court crowded, and you happen to be, like me, considerably under the medium height, and rather broad in proportion, it is difficult to come up at all, much less smiling, to the feet of justice. Here is a subject for a Punch puzzle. The defendant—how is he to get into Court? It is a mystery to me how I managed to squeeze myself through. I stuck to my hat, and my hat pulled me through (alas, a new one!). The hat was more rubbed the wrong way by the trial than was its wearer; but it is an item in the expense of legal warfare that ought not to be forgotten by the taxing master. However, I found myself sitting next my consulter and friend, the 'sage of Ely Place,' in good time. Although a case is down to be tried in a particular Court, it may be transferred to another Court at a moment's notice. This is bewildering to the parties interested and, from what I saw, irritating to the legal fraternity. Tomkins v. Snooks is down for trial, Court 2. The legal call-boys bustle in the counsel and others engaged. Mr. Buzfuz, Q.C., pushes his way into Court, surrounds himself with briefs and other documents, when some mysterious harlequin of the Law Courts changes Tomkins v. Snooks to Court 4, and calls upon Brown v. Jones, who are packed away in Court 3, waiting their turn. Buzfuz gets very angry, and bustles off to Court 4. In fact, getting your case into Court reminded me forcibly of that amusing toy, so popular then, called 'Pigs in Clover'—wigs in clover, I was nearly writing. I apologise at once for the mere thought. We were transferred from one Court to another, and our friends sat out a case in the Court advertised to try ours, wondering what on earth 'The Prince of Journalists' and I had to do with 'chops and tomato sauce.' What followed has been pretty fully reported, so I need not dwell upon it. Indeed, I could not live in the frightful atmosphere of those Courts, and would gladly pay twice five pounds to be allowed to sit on the roof if ever I find myself a defendant again.
THE PLAINTIFF.
THE EDITOR OF PUNCH
SUPPORTS ME.
"According to the reports, 'the plaintiff was supported by his wife, and the defendant by the editor of Punch.' The solemn occasion demanded a certain amount of gravity, which was particularly difficult for me to retain, as my 'supporter,' although fully alive to the tremendous bearings of the case and the importance of the issues, failed to hide in his expression those 'happy thoughts' that flow ceaselessly through his fertile brain. The outward effect was a see-saw antic with his imposing eyebrows—a proof to me that his sense of the ridiculous had got the better of his gravity. 'Put on your gloves at once,' he whispered impressively to me. 'Why?' I asked. 'Because you may then leave the court with clean hands!' (The 'putting on the gloves' must not be taken in a double sense.) But this is a digression. You merely ask for sketches in Court. Well, I send you my recollection of Mr. Kemp, Q.C., trying to be very angry with me; of my 'brother caricaturist' (vide reports), Mr. Lockwood, struggling to be very angry with Mr. Kemp, and pointing to the defendant, 'That miscreant! (note the effect upon me), and the Judge very serious with everybody. As an antidote, I was spoiling a beautiful sheet of white blotting-paper by drawing recollections of the donkey I was studying in the country when I was summoned to town to take my trial. I am anxious to make this public, as I now remember that I left that sheet of sketches in the court; and who can tell? Some one may yet 'invest those sketches with an almost European importance,' and the number of five pounds I shall be called upon to dole out all round will be something appalling.
SIR F. LOCKWOOD AND MYSELF.
"A propos of this truly great trial, the Observer remarked, in its leader upon it, that 'future treatises on the law of libel will, if properly and picturesquely indexed, be enriched with this entry, "Art critic, statement held to be a libel upon, see Toes." Indeed, the antics of the law of libel ought to be written, edited, let me suggest, by Mr. George Lewis, and illustrated by the genius of Mr. Frank Lockwood. I will supply a footnote."