CHAPTER IV
CALLED TO THE BAR
—is it not well that there should be what we call Professions, or Bread-studies (Brodzwecke) pre-appointed us? Here, circling like the gin-horse, for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, the Bread-artist can travel contentedly round and round, still fancying that it is forward and forward, and realise much: for himself victual; for the world an additional horse’s power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of Economic Society.
Carlyle: “Sartor Resartus.”
In 1884 I was appointed by Mr. Justice Mathew to the first legal office I had the honour to hold, and went with him on the Oxford Circuit as judge’s marshal. Mr. Justice Mathew was a very old friend of my father, and was one of the team that prosecuted Arthur Orton for perjury. Of those five, three survivors now remained; Hawkins, Mathew, and Bowen, and all were on the bench. A judge’s marshal has one official duty; he swears in the grand jury. His other duties are to act as the judge’s secretary, to see that everything in the judge’s lodgings runs smoothly, and to suffer admonition gladly if anything goes wrong. At the end of the circuit Mathew said at least this in my favour—that I was the only marshal he had ever had who could carve a chicken and open a soda-water bottle without injuring the carpets.
We went the Oxford Summer Circuit. Butt was our brother judge. It was a delightful and valuable experience. Mathew was an ideal judge in criminal cases, and I have never forgotten a maxim he was very fond of quoting and acting upon: “When the prisoner is undefended the judge must be his advocate.” In altered terms, it is a counsel of perfection for a County Court judge or any magisterial person who has the poor always before him. To see him double the part of prisoner’s advocate and judge was to witness a masterpiece of subtle wit and honesty. There has been much discussion of late about the bias of judges. To my thinking a judge without bias would be a monstrosity. Mathew was an Irishman and a Liberal. But I never remember his bias interfering with a straight delivery; unless, indeed, it was on the trial of an undefended Irish poacher at Oxford. There truly the Liberal disappeared in the judge, but I think the Irishman swerved a little from the true line. Anyhow, Mercy had her way, and the poacher was acquitted.
There were many who regarded Mathew with something like terror, and for the life of me why one with so kindly a heart should have rejoiced on occasion in appearing as a man of wrath I cannot say. Perhaps it was that if he followed on all occasions his humane instincts he felt that discipline would not be maintained, and that he was really, as it were, taking gymnastic moral exercise in working himself into histrionic anger about nothing in particular. There was generally a sense of humour
in these displays which the sufferer was often too agitated to enjoy. I remember on one occasion an unfortunate sheriff had spelt and printed and published Mathew’s name on the calendar with two t’s. The judge sent for him and received him in the drawing-room of our lodgings in grave state. He explained to the High Sheriff, who stood quaking before him in a yeomanry uniform, that the offence he had committed might well be regarded not as petty treason, but as high treason, being in effect an insult through him as Judge of Assize to Her Majesty herself. He sent for Butt and solemnly discussed with him whether he was not in duty bound to fine the unlucky sheriff at least £500. Butt, who was never more delighted than when he could play his part in a jest, for some time seriously agreed with Mathew, and the two discussed whether imprisonment was necessary as well. Then Butt began to think the fun had gone on long enough, and took the sheriff’s side and begged his forgiveness. But Mathew, who was really vexed at slovenliness of this kind, dismissed the sheriff and adjourned his decision until the morning, “for,” said he in Cromwellian phrase and intention, “the fellow must be taught his place.”
But on another and more amusing occasion he caused grave fright to Lister Drummond, my brother marshal. Drummond was an ardent Catholic—a convert, I believe—and of course Mathew belonged to a very old Catholic family. I fear we marshals must have been somewhat of a trial
to our respective judges, and every now and then Mathew would put his foot down. One morning we both arrived at breakfast rather later than usual. Mathew was reading the paper and eating his bacon alone, and looked at us in a very Johnsonian and surly manner, and only grunted a reply to our greetings. Breakfast proceeded in silence until the judge had finished, when he put down his paper and said: