Serjeants' Inn, originally designed for serjeants alone, is now open to all students, though it still more especially affects the Freres Serjens, or Fratres Servientes, who derived their name originally from being the lower grade or servitors of the Knights Templars. Serjeants still address each other as "brother," and indeed, as far as Cain and Abel go, the brotherhood of lawyers cannot be disputed. The old formula at Westminster, when a new serjeant approached the judges, was, "I think I see a brother."
One of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims was a "serjeant of law." This inn dates back as early as the reign of Henry IV., when it was held under a lease from the Bishop of Ely. In 1442 a William Antrobus, citizen and taylor of London, held it at the rent of ten marks a year. In the hall windows are emblazoned the arms of Lord Keeper Guildford (1684). The inn was rebuilt, all but the old dining-hall, by Sir Robert Smirke, in the years 1837-38.
OLD SERJEANTS' INN
The humours of Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, have been admirably described by Hazlitt, and are well condensed by a contemporaneous writer, of whose labours we gratefully avail ourselves.
"In 1820 a ray of light strikes the Buildings, for one of the least popular, but by no means the least remarkable, of the Charles Lamb set came to lodge at No. 9, half-way down on the right-hand side as you come from Holborn. There for four years lived, taught, wrote, and suffered that admirable essayist, fine-art and theatrical critic, thoughtful metaphysician, and miserable man, William Hazlitt. He lodged at the house of Mr. Walker, a tailor, who was blessed with two fair daughters, with one of whom (Sarah) Hazlitt, then a married man, fell madly in love. He declared she was like the Madonna (she seems really to have been a cold, calculating flirt, rather afraid of her wild lover). To his 'Liber Amoris,' a most stultifying series of dialogues between himself and the lodging-house keeper's daughter, the author appended a drawing of an antique gem (Lucretia), which he declared to be the very image of the obdurate tailor's daughter. This untoward but remarkably gifted man, whom Lamb admired, if he did not love, and whom Leigh Hunt regarded as a spirit highly endowed, usually spent his evenings at the 'Southampton;' as we take it, that coffee-house on the left hand, next the Patent Office, as you enter the Buildings from Chancery Lane. It is an unpretending public-house now, with the quiet, bald-looking coffee-room altered, but still one likes to wander past the place and think that Hazlitt, his hand still warm with the grip of Lamb's, has entered it often. In an essay on 'Coffee-House Politicians,' in the second volume of his 'Table Talk,' Hazlitt has sketched the coterie at the 'Southampton,' in a manner not unworthy of Steele. The picture wants Sir Richard's mellow, Jan Steen colour, but it possesses much of Wilkie's dainty touch and keen appreciation of character. Let us call up, he says, the old customers at the 'Southampton' from the dead, and take a glass with them. First of all comes Mr. George Kirkpatrick, who was admired by William, the sleek, neat waiter (who had a music-master to teach him the flageolet two hours every morning before the maids were up), for his temper in managing an argument. Mr. Kirkpatrick was one of those bland, simpering, self-complacent men, who, unshakable from the high tower of their own self-satisfaction, look down upon your arguments from their magnificent elevation. 'I will explain,' was his condescending phrase. If you corrected the intolerable magnifico, he corrected your correction; if you hinted at an obvious blunder, he was always aware what your mistaken objection would be. He and his clique would spend a whole evening on a wager as to whether the first edition of Dr. Johnson's 'Dictionary' was quarto or folio. The confident assertions, the cautious ventures, the length of time demanded to ascertain the fact, the precise terms of the forfeit, the provisoes for getting out of paying it at last, led to a long and inextricable discussion. Kirkpatrick's vanity, however, one night led him into a terrible pitfall. He recklessly ventured money on the fact that The Mourning Bride was written by Shakespeare; headlong he fell, and ruefully he partook of the bowl of punch for which he had to pay. As a rule his nightly outlay seldom exceeded sevenpence. Four hours' good conversation for sevenpence made the 'Southampton' the cheapest of London clubs.
HAZLITT