Harvey’s person was extremely unimposing. He was about five feet four inches in height; and that ancient enemy of all beauty, the small-pox, had shown him no mercy, every feature being sadly crimped thereby. His sharp peaked chin never approached toward a contact with his cravat, but left a thin scraggy throat to give an impoverished hungry cast to the whole contour, by no means adapted to the mien and port of a “commander of the forces.” His scanty hair generally hung in straight flakes, and did not even pretend to be an ornament to his visage; his eye was quick but unmeaning; his figure thin and ill put together; his limbs short, slight, and wabbling; his address cheerful, but tremulous. On the whole, a more unprepossessing or unmartial-like person was never moulded by capricious nature.
Yet Harvey was a very good-tempered friendly man, and a hearty companion. In common life he was extremely well conducted, and in the society of the bar often amusing, and never out of humour.
He was the greatest punster of his profession, and piqued himself on that qualification, in which he often succeeded admirably.[[42]] He had, in short, that sort of partial popularity with his bar contemporaries as rendered them always glad to have him in their society; but it was seldom any one inquired what had become of him when he was out of it. He had an ample store of individual courage; feared not single combat, and fought several duels intrepidly, though I do not think he ever provoked one. He shot Sir Harding Giffard, late Chief Justice of Ceylon, and obtained a very droll name through that achievement, which never forsook him during his lifetime.
[42]. I cannot omit introducing here one of his puns, because he ran a great risk of being shot for making it. A gentleman of the bar, married to a lady who had lost all her front teeth, and squinted so curiously that she appeared nearly blind, happened to be speaking of another lady who had run away from her husband. “Well,” said Harvey, “you have some comfort as to your wife.”
“What do you mean, sir?” said the barrister.
“I mean that if once you should lose Mrs. ——, you will never be able to i-dent-ify her.”
If Mr. —— had cared a farthing for his wife, it would have been impossible to reconcile this joke to him.
The above was an inferior pun, but it was to the point, and created great merriment.