It must not be thought that Russell was only rude to his juniors. Let us remember with pleasure that he was the advocate who, when asked by a Law Lord for some authority for a proposition, called out in his most rasping voice, “Usher! Go into the library and bring me any elementary book on common law.”
But just as Russell’s manner cannot be reproduced in print because it was unprintable, so the charm of Gully’s presence eludes you in words that give an effect of weakness and softness which was not really his quality.
I once heard a Lancaster juryman coming out of court say “I likes Mr. Gully, he speaks so gentlemanlike.” This word does not quite convey its meaning in the printed form, you want the burr of the North Country in its pronunciation and the affectionate tone in which it was uttered, and the smile of content that lighted up the speaker’s face as he thought of Gully. One secret of Gully’s success as an advocate was conscience. I doubt if any advocate is worth his salt without a highly developed conscience. With Gully it was not only there, but it worked automatically, and he never argued with it. He did the straight thing naturally. And Gully was like Charley McKeand, a great comrade. He had a high ideal of circuit life, as those who went the circuit under his leadership can testify. I think of him as a gentleman in the real old English sense of the word, such as Master Izaak Walton knew in the friend he
describes as “learned and humble, valiant and inoffensive, virtuous and communicable.”
I went into the corridors of the Strangeways Courts the other day, and ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my early days. Very few were the familiar faces. I have no doubt the old circuit is as full of laughter and good fellowship as ever it was, but to me it is a memory, and in the foreground of the memory stand the figures of two dear comrades, Gully and Charley McKeand.
CHAPTER X
ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS
Whether in the biography of a nation, or of a single person, it is alike impossible to trace it steadily through successive years.
Ruskin: “Praeterita.”