my father’s library, where I was supposed to do my home-work whilst I was at King’s College School. There I read all the great English writers with a larger enjoyment, because, like the Jew who ate the pork chop, I could feel that I was “sinning at the same time.” I think that library and its contents are entirely responsible for my taste in overtime. Shakespeare, Fielding, Smollett, Dickens, Thackeray, Mrs. Opie, and Aphra Behn. I remember the very format of each volume. I do not think there was a single dramatist or novelist of any mark in the English tongue that was unrepresented.
Perhaps my favourite book was Cumberland’s “British Theatre,” with its forty-eight volumes. The stage-directions of the bloodiest of the melodramas were my favourite reading. Their only rival was the brief in some sporting case which lay on the table at which I worked. I would often slip the papers out of their red tape and peruse them far more diligently than I did in after days, when I was paid for doing so. How carefully I read the solicitor’s story of the case. In later years I found that no self-respecting advocate ever studied these lengthy pages, well understanding that under an absurd legal system they are put there merely for the taxing master to appraise and allow in the form of costs.
I remember Nash being amusingly scored off by a well-known solicitor, who rather plumed himself on his frugal literary gifts, and took much pains in the composition of the story of a case. He complained
to Nash that he never read these narratives, and Nash had assured him, out of polite respect to his hobby, that he always made a point of studying them and greatly admired them. Soon afterwards Nash was instructed by the solicitor to defend a client in a criminal case at the assizes, and a fat brief, marked “30 guas” and beginning with a very lengthy narrative, was delivered to counsel. How far Nash read any of it I do not know, but he duly acquitted the prisoner. To Nash’s annoyance and surprise—for the solicitor was a most solvent and respectable person—the fees were not paid. Nash’s clerk made several efforts to solve the mystery, and was told that they had been paid to Mr. Nash at the assizes, but Nash knew that this was not so, and was very indignant with the solicitor about it. A month or two afterwards Nash met the solicitor in Cross Street, and going up to him expressed his views of the solicitor’s conduct very roundly.
“But I paid you at the assizes, Mr. Nash.”
“Nothing of the sort, sir, and you know it.”
“Did you read my story of the case, Mr. Nash?” asked the solicitor.
“Of course, I did. I always read every word of my briefs,” said the unblushing Nash.
“H’m, that’s very curious. I can’t understand it,” said the solicitor, with his head on one side, and his left eye half-closed. “I can’t understand it at all, because on page three of that statement of the case I pinned a cheque for your fees, and—hadn’t
you better go back to chambers, Mr. Nash, and read that brief again?”