Richard Smith, who sat next to me on the occasion of my first dinner in hall, was my earliest experience of Manchester, and indeed if I had never met him I cannot suppose that I should ever have joined the Northern Circuit. He had come to the Temple late in life and was nearing his call. I believe he had already been a bleacher, a dealer in pictures, and a clerk to a public body. I know he had been at
Oxford, because in an unlucky moment on circuit in a heated discussion after dinner he had called in aid of his argument his University degree, and was ever afterwards known as “Smith, B.A.” But for me it was sufficient that he was the only man I ever met in the Temple who could talk lovingly and intelligently about pictures. He had the square face of a lion, wearing in those days a heavy beard. He barked and growled at you in argument and was cocksure he was right. That is a very Manchester virtue. I write of it with jealousy, for it is an attribute I have vainly striven to acquire. You know the story of one of Manchester’s most eminent sons who was always in the right. Some friend remonstrated with him gently, saying, “Why be such an egoist?”
“Egoist!” was the calm reply. “I’m not an egoist—I know!”
And so it was with Dick Smith. He knew! But, Micawber-like, he failed to persuade others to take him at his own valuation. His venture at the Bar was not a fortunate one. I like to remember him, full of hope and enthusiasm spending a day or two with me in the summer, sketching on the Thames at Datchet, or playing chess in the common room in the winter and laying down the law on every conceivable subject in his rough, Manchester tongue. When he left the Temple to start his practice in Manchester, the Middle Temple common room seemed to me for some days “remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.” But this was only a passing
mood. Dick Smith and his pride of Manchester became a fading memory, and I continued to thoroughly enjoy my three years’ work in the Temple.
I cannot help thinking that men make a mistake in rushing up from the University to eat their dinners and getting called to the Bar directly they leave college. Law is, at least, as uncertain and dangerous a science to the patient as medicine, and the student of law should be compelled to “walk” the courts, as the medical student is compelled to “walk” the hospitals. For my part, I attribute what success I had at the Bar to the fact that I worked at the practical business of the profession for three years before I was called. I read in different chambers, and during the last year of student days had the privilege of reading with my Danckwerts, who was and is, no doubt, one of the greatest lawyers of our day. It is curious to remember that in 1884 the gossip of the Temple was concerned in discussing whether Danckwerts or Asquith would succeed R. S. Wright as Treasury “devil,” so blind are the quidnuncs to the throw of the shuttle of fate.
A junior with such a heavy practice as Danckwerts’s cannot do much more than give you the run of his chambers, but that, as Loehnis said, was like “turning a team of asses into a field of oats.” Loehnis devilled for Danckwerts in those days. He was a shrewd, sound lawyer and a kind-hearted senior to our pupil room, and the Bar lost
an honourable and learned brother by his untimely death. Considering the work he did and the hours he worked, it was wonderful how much personal attention Danckwerts gave to his pupils. He would often call one of us into his room and discuss some opinion or pleading we had drawn. I remember on one occasion, having pointed out to me the hopeless errors of the legal opinion I had given, he wound up his remarks by saying: “And suppose, when you are called, you get a case of that kind, what is going to happen to you?”
“When I get a case of that importance,” I replied, “I shall certainly insist on having you as a junior.”
The great man laughingly agreed that I had made a wise resolution.