The reader will have noted the Judge’s severity to poor Groffin, the chemist, who had pleaded the danger of his boy mistaking oxalic acid for Epsom salts. Could it be that the Judge’s experience as the son of a provincial doctor, had shown what class of man was before him? Later, unexpectedly, we learn that the Judge was a steady member for fourteen years of the Royal Humane Society, of which institution he was also a Vice-President.
But we now come to a most extraordinary thing—the result of the young author’s telling and most sarcastic portrait of the irascible little judge. It is curious that Forster, while enumerating various instances of Boz’s severe treatment of living persons, as a sort of chastisement for their defects of manner or character, seems not to have thought of this treatment of the judge—and passes it by. Nor did he notice the prompt result that followed on the sketch. The report of the trial appeared in the March number, 1837—and we are told, the luckless judge retired from the Bench, shortly after the end of Hilary Term, that is in April or the beginning of May. We may assume that the poor gentleman could not endure the jests of his confrères or the scarcely concealed tittering of the Barristers, all of whom had of course devoured and enjoyed the number.
We may say that the learned Sergeant Buzfuz was not likely to be affected in any way by his picture; it may indeed have added to his reputation. I confess to some sympathy for the poor old judge who was thus driven from the Bench. Sam Foote was much given to this sort of personal attack, and made the lives of some of his victims wretched. Boz, however, seems to have felt himself called upon to act thus as public executioner on two occasions only. After the fall of the judge in June, 1837, he wanted a model for a tyrannical magistrate in Oliver Twist—and Mr. Laing, the Hatton Garden Magistrate—a harsh, ferocious personage, at once occurred to him. He wrote accordingly to one of his friends that he wished to be smuggled into his office some morning to study him. This “smuggling” of course meant the placing him where he would not be observed—as a magistrate knowing his “sketches” might recognise him. “I know the man perfectly well” he added. So he did, for he forgot that he had introduced him already in Pickwick as Nupkins—whose talk is exactly alike, in places almost word for word to that of “Mr. Fang.”
These palliations, Boz, a young fellow of three and twenty or so, did not pause to weigh. He only saw a testy, red-faced old fellow with goggle eyes, and seventy-four years old, and past his work. His infirmities already made him incapable of carrying through the business of the Court as the mistake, “Is it Daniel Nathaniel or Nathaniel Daniel?” shows. It is curious, however, that this weakness of misapprehending names is described of another judge, Arabin—a strange grotesque. Theodore Hook gives an amusing specimen in his Gilbert Gurney.
From the general description in the text, it is evident Stareleigh was the prey of gouty affections—which swelled him into grotesque shape, and he found himself
unequal to the office. He died two years after his retirement at No. 13, Montagu Place, Russell Square; so that the Judge in Bardell v. Pickwick was living close to Perker the Attorney in the same case. Here we seem to mix up the fictional and the living characters, but this is the law of Pickwick—the confines between the two worlds being quite confused or broken down. The late commander of our forces in China, Sir A. Gaselee, is of this family. It should be remembered, however, when we think of this judge’s frowardness, that judges in those times were dictatorial and carried matters with a high hand. There were often angry conflicts between them, and members of the Bar, and Stareleigh was really not so very tyrannical. He did what so many judges do—took a side from the first, and had decided in his own mind that Mr. Pickwick could not possibly have a case. That curious form of address from the Bench is now no longer heard—“who is with you, Brother Buzfuz?” Judges and sergeants were then common members of the Guild—both wore the “coif.”
THE COURT.
When the swearing of the jury is going on, how good, and how natural is the scene with the unfortunate chemist.
‘Answer to your names, gentlemen that you may be sworn,’ said the gentleman in black. ‘Richard Upwitch.’
‘Here,’ said the greengrocer.
‘Thomas Groffin.’
‘Here,’ said the chemist.
‘Take the book, gentlemen. You shall well and truly try—’
‘I beg this court’s pardon,’ said the chemist, who was a tall, thin, yellow-visaged man, ‘but I hope this court will excuse my attendance.’
‘On what grounds, sir?’ replied Mr. Justice Stareleigh.
‘I have no assistant, my Lord,’ said the chemist.
‘I can’t help that, sir,’ replied Mr. Justice Stareleigh. ‘You should hire one.’
‘I can’t afford it, my Lord,’ rejoined the chemist.
‘Then you ought to be able to afford it, sir,’ said the judge, reddening; for Mr. Justice Stareleigh’s temper bordered on the irritable, and brooked not contradiction.
‘I know I ought to do, if I got on as well as I deserved, but I don’t, my Lord,’ answered the chemist.
‘Swear the gentleman,’ said the judge, peremptorily.
The officer had got no farther than the ‘You shall well and truly try,’ when he was again interrupted by the chemist.
‘I am to be sworn, my Lord, am I?’ said the chemist.
‘Certainly, sir,’ replied the testy little judge.
‘Very well, my Lord,’ replied the chemist in a resigned manner. ‘There’ll be murder before this trial’s over; that’s all. Swear me, if you please, sir;’ and sworn the chemist was, before the judge could find words to utter.
‘I merely wanted to observe, my Lord,’ said the chemist, taking his seat with great deliberation, ‘that I’ve left nobody but an errand boy in my shop. He is a very nice boy, my Lord, but he is not acquainted with drugs; and I know that the prevailing impression on his mind is, that Epsom salts means oxalic acid; and syrup of senna, laudanum. That’s all, my Lord.’ With this, the tall chemist composed himself into a comfortable attitude, and, assuming a pleasant expression of countenance, appeared to have prepared himself for the worst.
One who was born in the same year as Boz, but who was to live for thirty years after him, Henry Russell—composer and singer of “The Ivy Green”—was, when a youth, apprenticed to a chemist, and when about ten years old, that is five years before Bardell v. Pickwick, was left in charge of the shop. He discovered just in time that he had served a customer who had asked for Epsom salts with poison sufficient to kill fifty people. On this he gave up the profession. I have little doubt that he told this story to his friend a dozen years later, and that it was on Boz’s mind when he wrote. Epsom salts was the drug mentioned in both instances.