One of the earliest cases I attended attracted great attention at the time, owing to the sensational evidence which embroiled Lord Ranelagh in a plot with a Mrs. Borradaile. This was due to the clever and unscrupulous plans of a Madame Rachel Leverson, who successfully obtained money in this way, and who was finally convicted of misdemeanour and obtaining money by false pretences. The case made a considerable furore, because during cross-examination the accused appeared to divulge the fact that the aforesaid lord had bribed her to let him look through the keyhole while her client underwent the process of being made beautiful. The whole affair turned out to be a fabrication.
One of my earliest caricatures for Vanity Fair was that of Mr. Justice Hawkins drawn from memory in 1873. He had the reputation then of being the most good-humoured in the Law Courts and the possessor of the hoarsest voice of any judge. He once said it was worth £500 a year to him. The last time I saw Lord Brampton (for he became eventually a law Lord) was after the opening of a Parliament, when the peers and peeresses were waiting for their carriages, and there was a tremendous downpour of rain. Standing with his peer's robes wound round and round his body, the famous judge made a most grotesque figure, in tight little trousers with his silk hat slightly on one side, an eyeglass in his eye, and a big umbrella over all. He resembled a resplendent hawk.
The Tichborne case gave Hawkins a chance to excel himself, and he proved to be on the winning side. I sketched most of the principal movers in this game of law, which was played round "the claimant," whom I recollect quite plainly as he sat at his table, which had a half circle cut into it for his unduly large stomach to fit in. Of his illiteracy (if poor spelling goes to prove it) I have a personal proof in a letter which ends,
"beleive me,
"Yours truly,
"A. C. Tichborne."
I once sat in the court, watching him, with pencil in hand ready to jot down upon my shirt cuff anything I especially noticed, when he caught my eye, called the usher, and spoke a few words to him. It was duly intimated that my presence was "extremely disturbing to the claimant."
The claimant's counsel, Dr. Edward Kenealy, Q.C. (and the one man on record who was supposed to have ruffled Hawkins's temper), was said to have believed in the claimant to the day of his death. Dr. Kenealy made his name in the Tichborne trial. He was, besides being a lawyer, a writer and poet (and an admirer of Disraeli) before the stupendous case arose to give him a field for his powers. I remember him as a little man with a wig that contrasted strangely with a sweep of beard and a firmly set mouth. When he rose to speak he placed one hand under his gown as though it might have been coat tails and used his right to point emphasis at his opponent.
Some years afterwards, when I was walking near Brighton, I was very much interested to see his tomb in a churchyard there, or rather a very elaborate monument that had been placed there by the late Guilford Onslow.
AUGUSTUS HELDER, M.P. (A Proprietor of the "Graphic".) 1896.