Alice Lorraine: A Tale of the South Downs

by R. D. Blackmore

Mr. Malahide’s set of chambers was perhaps the best to be found in Equity Walk, Inner Temple. His pupils—ten in number always, because he would accept no more, and his high repute insured no less—these worthy youths had the longest room, facing with three whitey-brown windows into “Numa Square.” Hence the view, contemning all “utilitarian edifices,” freely ranged, across the garden’s classic walks of asphodel, to the broad Lethean river on whose wharves we are such weeds. For “Paper Buildings,” named from some swift sequence of suggestion, reared no lofty height as yet to mar the sedentary view.

All who have the local key will enter into the scene at once; so far, at least, as necessary change has failed to operate. But Mr. Malahide’s pupils scarcely ever looked out of the windows. None, however, should rashly blame them for apathy as to the prospect. They seldom looked out of the windows, because they were very seldom inside them.

In the first place, their attendance there was voluntary and precarious. They paid their money, and they took their choice whether they ever did anything more. Each of them paid—or his father for him—a fee of a hundred guineas to have the “run of the chambers,” and most of them carried out their purpose by a runaway from them. The less they came, the less trouble they caused to Mr. Glanvil Malahide; who always gave them that much to know, when they paid their fee of entrance. “If you mean to be a lawyer,” he said, “I will do my best to make you one. If you only come for the name of it, I shall say but little more to you.” This, of course, was fair enough, and the utmost that could be expected of him: for most of his pupils were young men of birth, or good position in the English counties, to whom in their future condition of life a little smattering of law, or the credit of owning such smattering, would be worth a few hundred guineas. Common Law, of course, was far more likely to avail them, in their rubs of the world, than equity; but of that fine drug they had generally taken their dose in Pleaders’ Chambers, and were come to wash the taste away in the purer shallows of equity.

Hilary, therefore, might be considered, and certainly did consider himself, a remarkably attentive pupil, for he generally was to be found in chambers four or even five days of the week, coming in time to read all the news, before the five o’clock dinner in Hall. Whereas the Honourable Robert Gumption, and Sir Francis Kickabout, two of his fellow-pupils, had only been seen in chambers once since they paid their respective fees; and the reason of their attendance then was that they found the towels too dirty to use at the billiard-rooms in Fleet Street. The clerks used to say among themselves, that these young fellows must be dreadful fools to pay one hundred guineas, because any swell with the proper cheek might easy enough have the go of the chambers, and nobody none the wiser; for they wouldn’t know him, nor the other young gents, and least of all old “horsewig.”

However, there chanced to be two or three men who made something more than a very expensive lounge of these eminent chambers. Of these worthy fellows, Rice Cockles was one (who had been senior wrangler two years before, and from that time knew not one good night’s rest, till the Woolsack broke his fall into his grave), and another was Gregory Lovejoy. Cockles was thoroughly conscious—as behoves a senior wrangler—of possessing great abilities; and Lovejoy knew, on his own behalf, that his mother at least was as sure as could be of all the wonders he must do.

Hilary could not bear Rice Cockles, who was of a dry sarcastic vein; but he liked young Lovejoy more and more, the more he had to defend him. Youths who have not had the fortune to be at a public school or a college seldom know how to hold their tongues, until the world has silenced them. Gregory, therefore, thought no harm to boast opportunely one fine May morning (when some one had seen a tree blossoming somewhere) of the beauty of his father’s cherry-trees. How noble and grand they must be just now, one sheet of white, white, white, he said, as big as the Inner and the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn, all put together! And then how the bees were among them buzzing, knowing which sorts first to milk; and the tortoiseshell butterflies quite sure to be out, for the first of their summering. But in the moonlight, best of all, when the moon was three days short of full, then was the time an unhappy Londoner must be amazed with happiness. Then to walk among them was like walking in a fairy-land, or being lost in a sky of snow, before a flake begins to fall. A delicate soft world of white, an in-and-out of fancy lace, a feeling of some white witchery, and almost a fright that little white blossoms have such power over one.

“Where may one find this grand paradise?” asked Rice Cockles, as if he could scarcely refrain his feet from the road to it.

“Five miles the other side of Sevenoaks,” Gregory answered, boldly.

“I know the country. Does your father grow cherries for Covent Garden market?”

“Of course he does. Didn’t you know that!” Thenceforth in chambers Lovejoy was always known as “Cherry Lovejoy.” And he proudly answered to that name.