When in his sixty-fifth year he was raised to the Bench, Clerk took the title of Lord Eldin, from his family estate. Some one remarked to him that his title nearly resembled that of the Lord-Chancellor Eldon.
“The difference,” said he, “is all in my eye (i).”
Clerk had a halt in his gait, and when passing along on the street one day, he overheard a lady remark to a friend—“That’s John Clerk, the lame lawyer.”
He was about in a minute.
“No, madam,” said he, “I am a lame man, but not a lame lawyer.”
Quite right; also, but not likewise.
Another out-of-doors story in connection with this witty advocate refers to an occasion when he had been dining rather freely at the house of a friend in Queen Street, Edinburgh. Wending his way homewards “early in the morning, merrily, O,” he failed to discover his own house in Picardy Place, and observing a housemaid busily engaged in cleaning a doorstep—“My good girl,” says he, “can you tell me whaur John Clerk lives?”
“Awa’ wi’ yer nonsense,” exclaimed the astonished girl, “you’re John Clerk himsel’.”
“That’s true enough, lassie,” said he, “but it’s no John Clerk I’m seekin’ for, it’s John Clerk’s house.”