Edinburgh Under Sir Walter Scott

by W. T. Fyfe

This gruesome story, incredible as it appears and repulsive in its bare and uncalled-for cruelty, is an attested fact. Lord Cockburn, in referring to the above incident, says: 'Besides general and uncontradicted notoriety, I had the fact from Lord Hermand, who was one of the counsel at the trial, and never forgot a piece of judicial cruelty which excited his horror and anger.'

To pass to a more agreeable subject, there was Lord Meadowbank, who disappeared from the festive party an hour or two after his marriage. Search was made, and the oblivious Benedick was found busily engaged in writing a profound thesis on the subject of 'Pains and Penalties.'

He was a most versatile man, and his fondness for discussion made him often highly diverting. Referring to his power of discovering principles and tracking out their consequences, Jeffrey said that while the other judges gave the tree a tug, Meadowbank not only tore it up by the roots, but gave it a shake which dispersed the earth and exposed all the fibres.

One day Mr. Thomas Walker Baird was, in a dull technical way, stating a dry case to Lord Meadowbank, who was sitting single. This did not please the judge, who thought that his dignity required a grander tone. So he dismayed poor Baird, than whom no man could have less turn for burning in the Forum, by throwing himself back in his chair and saying, 'Declaim, sir, why don't you declaim? Speak to me as if I were a popular assembly.'

In the lively story of Mr. Pleydell and his clerk Driver, Scott has immortalised the convivial habits of the Scottish Bar. The actual incident, as stated in the note, occurred to Dundas of Arniston at the time he was Lord Advocate. How ably the judges comported themselves at the table is well proved in Cockburn's description of Lord Hermand, who, he says, 'had acted in more of the severest scenes of old Scotch drinking than any man at least living. Commonplace topers think drinking a pleasure; with Hermand it was a virtue. It inspired the excitement by which he was elevated, and the discursive jollity which he loved to promote. But beyond these ordinary attractions, he had a sincere respect for drinking, indeed a high moral approbation, and a serious compassion for the poor wretches who could not indulge in it; with due contempt for those who could, but did not. He groaned over the gradual disappearance of the Feriat days of periodical festivity, and prolonged the observance, like a hero fighting amidst his fallen friends, as long as he could. The worship of Bacchus, which softened his own heart, and seemed to him to soften the hearts of his companions, was a secondary duty. But in its performance there was no violence, no coarseness, no impropriety, and no more noise than what belongs to well-bred jollity unrestrained. It was merely a sublimation of his peculiarities and excellences; the realisation of what poetry ascribes to the grape. No carouse ever injured his health, for he was never ill, or impaired his taste for home and quiet, or muddled his head: he slept the sounder for it, and rose the earlier and the cooler. The cordiality inspired by claret and punch was felt by him as so congenial to all right thinking, that he was confident that he could convert the Pope if he could only get him to sup with him. And certainly his Holiness would have been hard to persuade if he could have withstood Hermand about the middle of his second tumbler.'

The Bacchic religion of Lord Hermand sometimes found expression even on the Bench. On one occasion a young man was convicted of culpable homicide. In a wrangle with a friend, with whom he had been drinking all night, he had stabbed him and caused his death. The case being little more than a sad accident, the youth was sentenced to only a short imprisonment. At this Lord Hermand, who regarded the case as a discredit to the cause of drinking, was highly indignant at his colleagues' softness. He would have transported the homicide: 'We are told that there was no malice, and that the prisoner must have been in liquor. In liquor! Why, he was drunk! And yet he murdered the very man who had been drinking with him! They had been carousing the whole night; and yet he stabbed him! after drinking a whole bottle of rum with him! Good God, my Laards, if he will do this when he's drunk, what will he not do when he's sober?'

A somewhat similar case shows Lord Hermand in a different light. His love for children was a great feature in his character. A little English midshipman, being attacked by a much bigger lad in Greenock, defended himself with his dirk, and somehow killed his assailant. 'He was tried for this in Glasgow, and had the good luck to have Hermand for his judge; for no judge ever fought a more gallant battle for a prisoner. The boy appeared at the bar in his uniform. Hermand first refused "to try a child." After this was driven out of him, the indictment, which described the occurrence, and said that the prisoner had slain the deceased "wickedly and feloniously," was read; and Hermand then said, "Well, my young friend, this is not true, is it? Are you guilty or not guilty?" "Not guilty, my Lord." "I'll be sworn you're not!" In spite of all his exertions, his young friend was convicted of culpable homicide; for which he was sentenced to a few days' imprisonment.'

With his mind filled with the sayings and doings of the Braxfields and the Eskgroves, Walter Scott could scarcely nourish many illusions regarding his chosen profession. Fortunately he went 'where his own nature would be leading.'

CHAPTER XXII

Political Lawyers—Politics an 'accident' in Scott's History—Early Days at the Bar—Peter Peebles—The Mountain—Anecdote of Scott and Clerk—The German Class—Friendship with William Erskine—German Romance—Seniors of the Bar—Robert Blair—Greatest of Scottish Judges—Anecdote of Hermand and Henry Erskine.