I have already spoken of the kindness of my first friends in Manchester, from which sprang many other pleasant friendships. No end of folk seemed to take an interest in our small household. I think some came to look at us out of curiosity. The impertinence and absurdity of an unfledged stranger settling down among them in this way seemed to amuse them. I remember taking in to dinner the wife of an eminent professor who made it her duty to know the inner household affairs of all those
tenements and hereditaments situated or adjacent to the Oxford Road, between Nelson Street in the north and the White Lion in the south.
Turning to me as the cloth was removed, she said in a tone half of entreaty, half of command, “Tell me, Mr. Parry—I have heard so many different accounts and I really must know—what did you marry on?”
I had the presence of mind to answer, “Nothing, madam, absolutely nothing!”
The romance of it touched her tender heart, dear soul, and she was for ever asking us to dinner under the firm belief that we were starving.
Certainly no strangers ever had a kinder reception than we had in the north, and it seemed to make the months of waiting for those first briefs pass very smoothly and pleasantly. And what made life more joyous than anything I had experienced was the professional comradeship of those among whom one’s work had to be done. There were still many circuit wanderers domiciled in London who followed her Majesty’s judges when they went their rounds, but there were also a large number of local barristers who dominated the Quarter Sessions and did the work in the County Courts. All those were, of course, members of the Northern Circuit, and in the absence of the assizes, upheld in their daily struggles the spirit of sympathy and good-fellowship for which the Northern Circuit is justly famous. Even the Chancery men who made vast fortunes in the Palatine Court joined
the circuit, and became less sterilised and better humanised under the fragrant influences of Bar mess.
How curious it is that the common law mind always thinks of a Chancery man with pity mingled with a certain distaste. Pity which is sworn servant unto love springs from our admiration of the Chancery man as a human person; the distaste is engendered spontaneously, and arises, I fancy, out of and in the course of his occupation. He wears to all appearances a similar gown, his wig is of the same iron grey, he quotes from somewhat fatter and duller books perhaps, but they are written in much the same joyless jargon—I never met a jolly, breezy, merry, law book—and yet there is something in the flavour of him that you find in professors and schoolmasters, the drier sort of vicars and policemen. Is this shrinking from the Chancery man some prejudice atavistically reproduced from the days of “Jarndyce v. Jarndyce,” or a manifestation of eugenic instinct? It is difficult to say, but I know that it is not a merely personal prepossession. The old court-keeper at Strangeways acknowledged to the feeling, and he saw more of the Chancery men than he did of the common law men, for the Palatine Court he had always with him. I asked him once to explain to me the reason of it, but it was beyond his powers of analysis. He had the same instinct about Chancery men that was inspired in the mind of Tom Brown by the late Dr. Fell, but the reason why he could not tell. I discovered this quite accidentally and it became a bond of union between us. It happened in this way.
A small light and air case had—like some seedling weed—got blown into the assize list from across the corridor where the Palatine Court droned along, and with it came Astbury. Yes, Astbury—even Astbury was once a junior and sat in the back row. I was against him. I think it was the fault of Stephen, J., who did not understand plans, or the superior cunning of Astbury, who built up a model of the buildings with volumes of “Barnewall and Alderson,” and by the kindergarten methods of Froebel captured the judgment of the Court; or maybe, as I told my client afterwards, we never had a leg to stand upon, and Astbury had the right end of the stick—he was often attached to that end. Be all that as it may, Chancery defeated Common law utterly and with costs.
I can see our good janitor’s gloomy face as he leaned over the carved end of the seats and gazed wearily at us. We were the last non-jury of the assizes, and he was waiting with the charwomen in ambush to do the washing up. “Eh! Mr. Parry,” he said with a deep sigh, almost a groan, “and to think of you being beat—and by a Chancery man.” It seemed a thing hard to bear at the time and likely to be fraught with ruin, but it was forgotten, and now I recall it more as a story of misfortune than disgrace. For it is easier to remember the ill turns of fortune’s wheel than the lucky ones. How meanly we bluster over memories of ill-luck, and never give a thought to the briefs that leaped the bunkers and the points of law that