“Oh, of course,” interrupted Smyly, turning round to the Court with great seriousness. “I have consulted my learned junior, and he agrees with me that the house that Jack built is not set out on the plans, and that the house referred to by the learned judge is in the nature of a literary allusion.”
Lord Esher laughed loud and long, and Bowen’s smile broadened even more benignantly. The appeal was lost, and we went to the House of Lords with no success. Lord Hannen shook his head at me sympathetically, saying, “Of two evils, I had rather have a judge dead against me than strongly in my favour.”
Lord Justice Vaughan Williams, who is now a pillar of the Court of Appeal, used to come on circuit a great deal. He began as a Commissioner, and we
stood greatly in awe of him, for he was a very learned lawyer, and rather insisted on things being done in legal decency and order. Some of the business short cuts of the Northern Circuit he did not appreciate.
I remember winning an important bankruptcy case before Judge Heywood in Manchester. On appeal we came before Vaughan Williams and R.S. Wright, J.J. The other side had Sir Robert Finlay, Q.C., and Yate Lee, afterwards the Stockport judge, a great bankruptcy expert. Sir Horace Davey, Q.C., was to lead me. The case came on in the morning, and Sir Horace Davey was down at the House of Lords. Finlay, seeing his advantage, opened the case in twenty minutes as an obvious mistake in the court below, and Yate Lee said nothing. I was called on to hold the fort against a hostile court until reinforcements in the shape of Sir Horace Davey arrived. I had several cases to quote, but the judges would not have them at any price, and Vaughan Williams kept putting wonderful legal conundrums to me, which I tried to answer or evade as seemed the safer course at the moment.
When Davey came in about half-past three, I think I had won Wright over to see there was something in the points I had raised. Davey told me to sit down, and he started at once. In his thinnest, most arid, and contemptuous tones he explained to the judges that it really did not matter which way they decided, because the case would have to go to the Court of Appeal. Still, it was a more convenient
thing that their lordships should decide rightly, or, in other words for him, in accordance with the authorities.
It is a great and rare gift to be able to talk like that to High Court judges, but I felt we were seeking trouble. Vaughan Williams listened for a while, then looked sternly at Davey, and began very quietly:
“Sir Horace, I have put a proposition to your learned junior which he is utterly unable to answer, and it is this——”
The proposition was put.