What the Judge Saw: Being Twenty-Five Years in Manchester by One Who Has Done It

by Sir Edward Abbott Parry

I was naturally rather elated as I walked home along the Embankment with our energetic honorary secretary, J. A. B. B. Bruce—​the Busy Bee, as we called him.

“No doubt, Parry,” he said in his quiet, thoughtful way, “you think you’ve been jolly clever, but what I’m wondering is when Haldane is Lord

Chancellor, and you want a County Court judgeship, will you get it?”

I hope it is not lese-majeste for me to repeat this story to-day, when at length the hopes of the Temple have been fulfilled and the double event which Bruce foresaw has come to pass. It was a commonplace of Temple talk that some day Haldane would be Lord Chancellor, but it required the deep foresight of Bruce to hazard the suggestion that I should ever be in a position to apply for a judgeship of the County Court.

And I cannot look back on those old days without seeing the figure of one dear friend—​the bravest and kindest of men, Archie Stewart. I know this, that no one who came within his sway can have forgotten his memory, and there must yet be many in the Temple who will be glad to recall it. Tall, handsome, broad-shouldered and erect, swinging with a curious gait across the courts of the Temple, one could not but be attracted by his presence. His frank, engaging smile, his cheery voice all alike evidenced the joy of life. And yet when he entered the library and the attendant stepped up to him and lifted off his coat with its heavy cape, you saw at a glance the tragedy that his brave heart never acknowledged. Both his arms were paralysed and deformed from childhood and were practically useless. He could write slowly and with difficulty, pushing the pen by a movement of the shoulder, but in nearly every ordinary movement in life, in eating, dressing, carrying and lifting,

he required assistance. And yet he would start away from Kensington in the morning and come down to the Temple, leaving his servant at home in the knowledge that throughout London he would always find someone to help him. When you got used to his movements you did not seem to notice his deformity, so little did he make of it himself, and so cleverly did he use the little strength and capacity there were in his hands and arms. The things that he could do were wonderful. A light wineglass he could lift with his lips, drink from it and replace it almost gracefully, and he could pick up a weighted chessman—​it was his favourite game, and he played above the ordinary—​in his mouth and hurl it accurately on to any square on the board. His favourite method was to steer the men along with his pipe, but in moments of triumph and enthusiasm he seized them in his lips. He was a constant speaker at the Hardwicke—​clear, shrewd and learned. How he read so much and had conquered his enormous difficulties it is hard to understand. Among other things achieved, he had learned to swim, and he could cast a bowl from his instep with cunning, skill and accuracy. In due course he was called to the Bar, and whenever I came to town I used to turn into our old chambers in Pump Court, and find Stewart smoking like a furnace and laying down the law to some junior in large practice who had come round to have a few words with him about a difficulty. It was curious how many men accounted learned in the law were well pleased to have

their views ratified or reformed by Archie Stewart. I remember hearing him hold at bay a Divisional Court, consisting of Coleridge, C.J., and R. S. Wright, J., with a learned argument about a demand for rent at common law, in which he gave them an interesting dissertation on the legal history and archæology of the matter, with few notes and, of course, without books, for he was unable to hold them. The Court rightly complimented him on his performance, and thinking ahead in those days I used to imagine what a great judge my friend would have made, with his bright logical Scots mind and his deep sympathy with human nature down to the lowest, which he had learned from the respect and kindness shown to his misfortune. He told me that in all his wanderings about London day and night alone no one had ever offered to rob him, though he was in the habit of asking any stranger to take his money out of his pocket to pay railway or other fares. I was not the only one who predicted for Stewart some position of honour in his profession. But it was not to be. Very suddenly one summer holiday he was taken. It was at his home at Rannoch. He belonged to an ancient race of Stewarts, and in his quaint way used to boast that if he were to sue for the Crown in formâ pauperis there would be flutterings in high places. Some years afterwards I made a pious journey to his resting-place. In his ancestral park, on which the blue peak of his beloved Schiehallion looks down, there, surrounded by grey stone walls and tall

fir trees, he lies among cross-legged knights in armour, tall well-limbed warriors of his race, but among them all there is not one who fought the fight with a braver heart than the last comer.

It begins to dawn upon me that all these beckoning shadows and calling shapes which throng into my memory when I begin to write of my student days in the Temple are keeping me too long from the main purpose of my story, but in my next chapter I will at least get called to the Bar, and then, as there will be no work for me in town, I shall have to pack up my bundle and go into the wide, wide world to seek my fortune.