[33]Lord Eldon, when he was handsome Jack Scott of the Northern Circuit, was about to make a short cut over the sands from Ulverstone to Lancaster at the of the tide, when he was restrained from acting on his rash resolve by the representations of an hotel keeper. "Danger, danger," asked Scott, impatiently—"have you everlostanybody there?" Mine host answered slowly, "Nae, sir, nae body has beenloston the sands,the puir bodies have been found at low water."
[33]Lord Eldon, when he was handsome Jack Scott of the Northern Circuit, was about to make a short cut over the sands from Ulverstone to Lancaster at the of the tide, when he was restrained from acting on his rash resolve by the representations of an hotel keeper. "Danger, danger," asked Scott, impatiently—"have you everlostanybody there?" Mine host answered slowly, "Nae, sir, nae body has beenloston the sands,the puir bodies have been found at low water."
[34]With regard to the customary gifts of white gloves Mr. Foss says:—"Gloves were presented to the judges on some occasions: viz., when a man, convicted for murder, or manslaughter, came and pleaded the king's pardon; and, till the Act of 4 & 5 William and Mary c. 18, which rendered personal appearance unnecessary, an outlawry could not be reversed, unless the defendant came into court, and with a present of gloves to the judges implored their favor to reverse it. The custom of giving the judge a pair of white gloves upon a maiden assize has continued till the present time." An interesting chapter might be written on the ancient ceremonies and usages obsolete and extant, of our courts of law. Here are a few of the practices which such a chapter would properly notice:—The custom, still maintained, which forbids the Lord Chancellor to utter any word or make any sign, when on Lord Mayor's Day the Lord Mayor of London enters the Court of Chancery, and by the mouth of the Recorder prays his lordship to honor the Guildhall banquet with his presence; the custom—extant so late as Lord Brougham's Chancellorship—which required the Holder of the Seals, at the installation of a new Master of Chancery, to install the new master by placing a cap or hat on his head; the custom which in Charles II.'s time, on motion days at the Chancellor's, compelled all barristers making motions to contribute to his lordship's 'Poor's Box'—barristers within the bar paying two shillings, and outer barristers one shilling—the contents of which box were periodically given to magistrates, for distribution amongst the deserving poor of London; the custom which required a newly-created judge to present his colleagues with biscuits and wine; the barbarous custom which compelled prisoners to plead their defence, standing in fetters, a custom enforced by Chief Justice Pratt at the trial of the Jacobite against Christopher Layer, although at the of trial of Cranburne for complicity in the 'Assassination Plot,' Holt had enunciated the merciful maxim, "When the prisoners are tried they should stand at ease;" the custom which—in days when forty persons died of gaol fever caught at the memorable Black Sessions (May, 1759) at the Old Bailey, when Captain Clark was tried for killing Captain Innes in a duel—strewed rue, fennel, and other herbs on the ledge of the dock, in the faith that the odor of the herbage would act as a barrier to the poisonous exhalations from prisoners sick of gaol distemper, and would protect the assembly in the body of the court from the contagion of the disease.
[34]With regard to the customary gifts of white gloves Mr. Foss says:—"Gloves were presented to the judges on some occasions: viz., when a man, convicted for murder, or manslaughter, came and pleaded the king's pardon; and, till the Act of 4 & 5 William and Mary c. 18, which rendered personal appearance unnecessary, an outlawry could not be reversed, unless the defendant came into court, and with a present of gloves to the judges implored their favor to reverse it. The custom of giving the judge a pair of white gloves upon a maiden assize has continued till the present time." An interesting chapter might be written on the ancient ceremonies and usages obsolete and extant, of our courts of law. Here are a few of the practices which such a chapter would properly notice:—The custom, still maintained, which forbids the Lord Chancellor to utter any word or make any sign, when on Lord Mayor's Day the Lord Mayor of London enters the Court of Chancery, and by the mouth of the Recorder prays his lordship to honor the Guildhall banquet with his presence; the custom—extant so late as Lord Brougham's Chancellorship—which required the Holder of the Seals, at the installation of a new Master of Chancery, to install the new master by placing a cap or hat on his head; the custom which in Charles II.'s time, on motion days at the Chancellor's, compelled all barristers making motions to contribute to his lordship's 'Poor's Box'—barristers within the bar paying two shillings, and outer barristers one shilling—the contents of which box were periodically given to magistrates, for distribution amongst the deserving poor of London; the custom which required a newly-created judge to present his colleagues with biscuits and wine; the barbarous custom which compelled prisoners to plead their defence, standing in fetters, a custom enforced by Chief Justice Pratt at the trial of the Jacobite against Christopher Layer, although at the of trial of Cranburne for complicity in the 'Assassination Plot,' Holt had enunciated the merciful maxim, "When the prisoners are tried they should stand at ease;" the custom which—in days when forty persons died of gaol fever caught at the memorable Black Sessions (May, 1759) at the Old Bailey, when Captain Clark was tried for killing Captain Innes in a duel—strewed rue, fennel, and other herbs on the ledge of the dock, in the faith that the odor of the herbage would act as a barrier to the poisonous exhalations from prisoners sick of gaol distemper, and would protect the assembly in the body of the court from the contagion of the disease.
LAWYERS AND SAINTS.
Notwithstanding the close connexion which in old times existed between the Church and the Law, popular sentiment holds to the opinion that the ways of lawyers are far removed from the ways of holiness, and that the difficulties encountered by wealthy travellers on the road to heaven are far greater with rich lawyers than with any other class of rich men. An old proverb teaches that wearers of the long robe never reach paradiseper saltum, but 'by slow degrees;' and an irreverent ballad supports the vulgar belief that the only attorney to be found on the celestial rolls gained admittance to the blissful abode more by artifice than desert. The ribald broadside runs in the following style:—-
"Professions will abuse each other;The priests won't call the lawyer brother;WhileSalkeldstill beknaves the parson,And says he cants to keep the farce on.Yet will I readily supposeThey are not truly bitter foes,But only have their pleasant jokes,And banter, just like other folks.And thus, for so they quiz the law,Once on a time th' Attorney Flaw,A man to tell you, as the fact is,Of vast chicane, of course of practice;(But what profession can we traceWhere none will not the corps disgrace?Seduced, perhaps, by roguish client,Who tempt him to become more pliant),A notice had to quit the world,And from his desk at once was hurled.Observe, I pray, the plain narration:'Twas in a hot and long vacation,When time he had but no assistance.Tho' great from courts of law the distance,To reach the court of truth and justice(Where I confess my only trust is);Though here below the special pleaderShows talents worthy of a leader,Yet his own fame he must support,Be sometimes witty with the courtOr word the passion of a juryBy tender strains, or full of fury;Misleads them all, tho' twelve apostles,While with the new law the judge he jostles,And makes them all give up their powersTo speeches of at least three hours—But we have left our little man,And wandered from our purpos'd plan:'Tis said (without ill-natured leaven)"If ever lawyers get to heaven,It surely is by slow degrees"(Perhaps 'tis slow they take their fees).The case, then, now I fairly state:Flaw reached at last to heaven's high gate;Quite short he rapped, none did it neater;The gate was opened by St. Peter,Who looked astonished when he saw,All black, the little man of law;But charity was Peter's guide.For having once himself deniedHis master, he would not o'erpassThe penitent of any class;Yet never having heard there enteredA lawyer, nay, nor ever venturedWithin the realms of peace and love,He told him mildly to remove,And would have closed the gate of day,Had not old Flaw, in suppliant way,Demurring to so hard a fate,Begg'd but a look, tho' through the gate.St. Peter, rather off his guard,Unwilling to be thought too hard,Opens the gate to let him peep in.What did the lawyer? Did he creep in?Or dash at once to take possession?Oh no, he knew his own profession:He took his hat off with respect,And would no gentle means neglect;But finding it was all in vainFor him admittance to obtain,Thought it were best, let come what will,To gain an entry by his skill.So while St. Peter stood aside,To let the door be opened wide,He skimmed his hat with all his strengthWithin the gate to no small length.St. Peter stared; the lawyer asked him"Only to fetch his hat," and passed him;But when he reached the jack he'd thrown,Oh, then was all the lawyer shown;He clapt it on, and arms akembo(As if he had been the gallant Bembo),Cry'd out—'What think you of my plan?Eject me, Peter, if you can.'"
The celestial courts having devised no process of ejectment that could be employed in this unlooked-for emergency, St. Peter hastily withdrew to take counsel's opinion; and during his absence Mr. Flaw firmly established himself in the realms of bliss, where he remains to this day the black sheep of the saintly family.
But though a flippant humorist in these later times could deride the lawyer as a character who had better not force his way into heaven, since he would not find a single personal acquaintance amongst its inhabitants, in more remote days lawyers achieved the honors of canonization, and our forefathers sought their saintly intercession with devout fervor. Our calendars still regard the 15th of July as a sacred day, in memory of the holy Swithin, who was tutor to King Ethelwulf and King Alfred, and Chancellor of England, and who certainly deserved his elevation to the fellowship of saints, even had his title to the honor rested solely on a remarkable act which he performed in the exercise of his judicial functions. A familiar set of nursery rhymes sets forth the utter inability of all the King's horses and men to reform the shattered Humpty-Dumpty, when his rotund highness had fallen from a wall; but when a wretched market-woman, whose entire basketful of new-laid eggs had been wilfully smashed by an enemy, sought in her trouble the aid of Chancery, the holy Chancellor Swithin miraculously restored each broken shell to perfect shape, each yolk to soundness. Saith William of Malmesbury, recounting this marvellous achievement—"statimque porrecto crucis signo, fracturam omnium ovorum consolidat."
Like Chancellor Swithin before him, and like Chancellor Wolsey in a later time, Chancellor Becket was a royal tutor;[35]and like Swithin, who still remains the pluvious saint of humid England, and unlike Wolsey, who just missed the glory of canonization, Becket became a widely venerated saint. But less kind to St. Thomas of Canterbury than to St. Swithin, the Reformation degraded Becket from the saintly rank by the decision which terminated the ridiculous legal proceedings instituted by Henry VIII. against the holy reputation of St. Thomas. After the saint's counsel had replied to the Attorney-General, who, of course, conducted the cause for the crown, the court declared that "Thomas, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, had been guilty of contumacy, treason and rebellion; that his bones should be publicly burnt, to admonish the living of their duty by the punishment of the dead; and that the offerings made at his shrine should be forfeited to the crown."
After the conclusion of the suit for the saint's degradation—a suit which was an extravagant parody of the process for establishing at Rome a holy man's title to the honors of canonization—proclamation was made that "forasmuch as it now clearly appeared that Thomas Becket had been killed in a riot excited by his own obstinacy and intemperate language, and had been afterwards canonized by the Bishop of Rome as the champion of his usurped authority, the king's majesty thought it expedient to declare to his loving subjects that he was no saint, but rather a rebel and traitor to his prince, and therefore strictly charged and commanded that he should not be esteemed or called a saint; that all images and pictures of him should be destroyed, the festivals in his honor be abolished, and his name and remembrance be erased out of all books, under pain of his majesty's indignation and imprisonment at his grace's pleasure."
But neither St. Swithin nor St. Thomas of Canterbury, lawyers though they were, deigned to take the legal profession under especial protection, and to mediate with particular officiousness between the long robe and St. Peter. The peculiar saint of the profession was St. Evona, concerning whom Carr, in his 'Remarks of the Government of the Severall Parts of Germanie, Denmark, &c.,' has the following passage: And now because I am speaking of Petty-foggers, give me leave to tell you a story I mett with when I lived in Rome. Goeing with a Romane to see some antiquityes, he showed me a chapell dedicated to St. Evona, a lawyer of Brittanie, who, he said, came to Rome to entreat the Pope to give the lawyers of Brittanie a patron, to which the Pope replied, that he knew of no saint but what was disposed to other professions. At which Evona was very sad, and earnestly begd of the Pope to think of one for him. At last the Pope proposed to St. Evona that he should go round the church of St. John de Latera blindfold, and after he had said so many Ave Marias, that the first saint he laid hold of should be his patron, which the good old lawyer willingly undertook, and at the end of his Ave Maryes he stopt at St. Michael's altar, where he layed hold of the Divell, under St. Michael's feet, and cry'd out, this is our saint, let him be our patron. So being unblindfolded, and seeing what a patron he had chosen, he went to his lodgings so dejected, that a few moneths after he died, and coming to heaven's gates knockt hard. Whereupon St. Peter asked who it was that knockt so bouldly. He replied that he was St. Evona the advocate. Away, away, said St. Peter, here is but one advocate in Heaven; here is no room for you lawyers. O but, said St. Evona, I am that honest lawyer who never tooke fees on both sides, or pleaded in a bad cause, nor did I ever set my Naibours together by the ears, or lived by the sins of the People. Well, then, said St. Peter, come in. This newes coming down to Rome, a witty poet wrote on St. Evona's tomb these words:—
'St. Evona un Briton,Advocat non Larron.Hallelujah.'
This story put me in mind of Ben Jonson goeing throw a church in Surrey, seeing poore people weeping over a grave, asked one of the women why they wept. Oh, said shee, we have lost our pretious lawyer, Justice Randall; he kept us all in peace, and always was so good as to keep us from goeing to law; the best man ever lived. Well, said Ben Jonson, I will send you an epitaph to write upon his tomb, which was—
'God works wonders now and then,Here lies a lawyer an honest man.'
An important vestige of the close relations which formerly existed between the Law and the Church is still found in the ecclesiastical patronage of the Lord Chancellor; and many are the good stories told of interviews that took place between our more recent chancellors and clergymen suing for preferment. "Who sent you, sir?" Thurlow asked savagely of a country curate, who had boldly forced his way into the Chancellor's library in Great Ormond Street, in the hope of winning the presentation to a vacant living. "In whosenamedo you come, that you venture to pester me about your private affairs? I say, sir—what great lords sent you to bother me in my house?" "My Lord," answered the applicant, with a happy combination of dignity and humor, "no great man supports my entreaty; but I may say with honesty, that I come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts." Pleased by the spirit and wit of the reply, Thurlow exclaimed, "The Lord of Hosts! the Lord of Hosts! you are the first parson that ever applied to me in that Lord's name; and though his title can't be found in the Peerage, by —— you shall have the living." On another occasion the same Chancellor was less benign, but not less just to a clerical applicant. Sustained by Queen Charlotte's personal favor and intercession with Thurlow, the clergyman in question felt so sure of obtaining the valuable living which was the object of his ambition, that he regarded his interview with the Chancellor as a purely formal affair. "I have, sir," observed Lord Thurlow, "received a letter from the curate of the parish to which it is my intention to prefer you, and on inquiry I find him to be a very worthy man. The father of a large family, and a priest who has labored zealously in the parish for many years, he has written to me—not asking for the living, but modestly entreating me to ask the new rector to retain him as curate. Now, sir, you would oblige me by promising me to employ the poor man in that capacity." "My lord," replied Queen Charlotte's pastor, "it would give me great pleasure to oblige your lordship in this matter, but unfortunately I have arranged to take a personal friend for my curate." His eyes flashing angrily, Thurlow answered, "Sir, I cannot force you to take this worthy man for your curate, but I can make him the rector; and by —— he shall have the living, and be in a position to offer you the curacy."
Of Lord Loughborough a reliable biographer records a pleasant and singular story. Having pronounced a decision in the House of Lords, which deprived an excellent clergyman of a considerable estate and reduced him to actual indigence, the Chancellor, before quitting the woolsack, addressed the unfortunate suitor thus:—"As a judge I have decided against you, whose virtues are not unknown to me; and in acknowledgment of those virtues I beg you to accept from me a presentation to a living now vacant, and worth £600 per annum."
Capital also are the best of many anecdotes concerning Eldon and his ecclesiastical patronage. Dating the letter from No. 2, Charlotte Street, Pimlico, the Chancellor's eldest son sent his father the following anonymous epistle:—
"Hear, generous lawyer! hear my prayer,Nor let my freedom make, you stare,In hailing you Jack Scott!Tho' now upon the woolsack placed,With wealth, with power, with title graced,Oncenearer was our lot."Say by what name the hapless bardMay best attract your kind regard—Plain Jack?—Sir John?—or Eldon?Give from your ample store of giving,A starving priest some little living—The world will cry out 'Well done.'"In vain, without a patron's aid,I've prayed and preached, and preached and prayed—Applaudedbutill-fed.Such vainéclatlet others share;Alas, I cannot feed on air—I ask notpraise, butbread."
Satisfactorily hoaxed by the rhymer, the Chancellor went to Pimlico in search of the clerical poetaster, and found him not.
Prettier and less comic is the story of Miss Bridge's morning call upon Lord Eldon. The Chancellor was sitting in his study over a table of papers when a young and lovely girl—slightly rustic in her attire, slightly embarrassed by the novelty of her position, but thoroughly in command of her wits—entered the room, and walked up to the lawyer's chair. "My dear," said the Chancellor, rising and bowing with old-world courtesy, "whoareyou?" "Lord Eldon," answered the blushing maiden, "I am Bessie Bridge of Weobly, the daughter of the Vicar of Weobly, and papa has sent me to remind you of a promise which you made him when I was a little baby, and you were a guest in his house on the occasion of your first election as member of Parliament for Weobly." "A promise, my dear young lady?" interposed the Chancellor, trying to recall how he had pledged himself. "Yea, Lord Eldon, a promise. You were standing over my cradle when papa said to you, 'Mr. Scott, promise me that if ever you are Lord Chancellor, when my little girl is a poor clergyman's wife, you will give her husband a living;' and you answered, 'Mr. Bridge, my promise is not worth half-a-crown, but I give it to you, wishing it were worth more.'" Enthusiastically the Chancellor exclaimed, "You are quite right. I admit the obligation. I remember all about it;" and, then, after a pause, archly surveying the damsel, whose graces were the reverse of matronly, he added, "But surely the time for keeping my promise has not yet arrived? You cannot be any one's wife at present?" For a few seconds Bessie hesitated for an answer, and then, with a blush and a ripple of silver laughter she replied, "No, but I do so wish to besomebody'swife. I am engaged to a young clergyman; and there's a living in Herefordshire near my old home that has recently fallen vacant, and if you'll give it to Alfred, why then, Lord Eldon, we shall marry before the end of the year." Is there need to say that the Chancellor forthwith summoned his Secretary, that the secretary forthwith made out the presentation to Bessie's lover, and that having given the Chancellor a kiss of gratitude, Bessie made good speed back to Herefordshire, hugging the precious document the whole way home?
A bad but eager sportsman, Lord Eldon used to blaze away at his partridges and pheasants with such uniform want of success that Lord Stowell had truth as well as humor on his side when he observed, "My brother has done much execution this shooting season; with his gun he haskilled a great deal of time." Having ineffectually discharged two barrels at a covey of partridges, the Chancellor was slowly walking to the gate of one of his Encome turnip-fields when a stranger of clerical garb and aspect hailed him from a distance, asking, "Where is Lord Eldon?" Not anxious to declare himself to the witness of his ludicrously bad shot, the Chancellor answered evasively, and with scant courtesy, "Not far off." Displeased with the tone of this curt reply, the clergyman rejoined, "I wish you'd use your tongue to better purpose than you do your gun, and tell me civily where I can find the Chancellor." "Well," responded the sportsman, when he had slowly approached his questioner, "here you see the Chancellor—I am Lord Eldon." It was an untoward introduction to the Chancellor for the strange clergyman who had traveled from the North of Lancashire to ask for the presentation to a vacant living. Partly out of humorous compassion for the applicant who had offered rudeness, if not insult to the person whom he was most anxious to propitiate; partly because on inquiry he ascertained the respectability of the applicant; and partly because he wished to seal by kindness the lips of a man who could report on the authority of his own eyes that the best lawyer was also the worst shot in all England, Eldon gave the petitioner the desired preferment. "But now," the old Chancellor used to add in conclusion, whenever he told the story, "see the ingratitude of mankind. It was not long before a large present of game reached me, with a letter from my new-made rector, purporting that he had sent it to me, becausefrom what he had seen of my shooting hesupposed I must be badly off for game. Think of turning upon me in this way, and wounding me in my tenderest point."
Amongst Eldon's humorous answers to applications for preferment should be remembered his letter to Dr. Fisher of the Charterhouse: on one side of a sheet of paper, "Dear Fisher, I cannot, to-day, give you the preferment for which you ask.—I remain your sincere friend,Eldon.—Turn over;" and on the other side, "I gave it to you yesterday." This note reminds us of Erskine's reply to Sir John Sinclair's solicitation for a subscription to the testimonial which Sir John invited the nation to present to himself. On the one side of a sheet of paper it ran, "My dear Sir John, I am certain there are few in this kingdom who set a higher value on your services than myself, and I have the honor to subscribe," and on the other side it concluded, "myself your obedient faithful servant,Erskine."
[35]Swithin was tutor to Ethelwulf and Alfred. Becket was tutor to Henry II.'s eldest son. Wolsey—who took delight in discharging scholastic functions from the days when he birched schoolboys at Magdalen College, Oxford, till the time when in the plenitude of his grandeur he framed regulations for Dean Colet's school of St. Paul's and wrote an introduction to a Latin Grammar for the use of children—acted as educational director to the Princess Mary, and superintended the studies of Henry VIII.'s natural son, the Earl of Richmond. Amongst pedagogue-chancellors, by license of fancy, may be included the Earl of Clarendon, whose enemies used to charge him with 'playing the schoolmaster to his king,' and in their desire to bring him into disfavor at court used to announce his approach to Charles II. by saying, "Here comes your schoolmaster."
[35]Swithin was tutor to Ethelwulf and Alfred. Becket was tutor to Henry II.'s eldest son. Wolsey—who took delight in discharging scholastic functions from the days when he birched schoolboys at Magdalen College, Oxford, till the time when in the plenitude of his grandeur he framed regulations for Dean Colet's school of St. Paul's and wrote an introduction to a Latin Grammar for the use of children—acted as educational director to the Princess Mary, and superintended the studies of Henry VIII.'s natural son, the Earl of Richmond. Amongst pedagogue-chancellors, by license of fancy, may be included the Earl of Clarendon, whose enemies used to charge him with 'playing the schoolmaster to his king,' and in their desire to bring him into disfavor at court used to announce his approach to Charles II. by saying, "Here comes your schoolmaster."
AT HOME: IN COURT: AND IN SOCIETY.
LAWYERS AT THEIR OWN TABLES.
A long list, indeed, might be made of abstemious lawyers; but their temperance is almost invariably mentioned by biographers as matter for regret and apology, and is even made an occasion for reproach in cases where it has not been palliated by habits of munificent hospitality. In the catalogue of Chancellor Warham's virtues and laudable usages, Erasmus takes care to mention that the primate was accustomed to entertain his friends, to the number of two hundred at a time: and when the man of letters notices the archbishop's moderation with respect to wines and dishes—a moderation that caused his grace to eschew suppers, and never to sit more than an hour at dinner—he does not omit to observe that though the great man "made it a rule to abstain entirely from supper, yet if his friends were assembled at that meal he would sit down along with them and promote their conviviality."
Splendid in all things, Wolsey astounded envious nobles by the magnificence of his banquets, and the lavish expenses of his kitchens, wherein his master-cooks wore raiment of richest materials—thechefof his private kitchen daily arraying himself in a damask-satin or velvet, and wearing on his neck a chain of gold. Of a far other kind were the tastes of Wolsey's successor, who, in the warmest sunshine of his power, preferred a quiet dinner with Erasmus to the pompous display of state banquets, and who wore a gleeful light in his countenance when, after his fall, he called his children and grandchildren about him, and said: "I have been brought up at Oxford, at an Inn of Chancery, at Lincoln's Inn, and in the King's Court—from the lowest degree to the highest, and yet have I in yearly revenues at this present, little left me above a hundred pounds by the year; so that now, if we wish to live together, you must be content to be contributaries together. But my counsel is that we fall not to the lowest fare first; we will not, therefore, descend to Oxford fare, nor to the fare of New Inn, but we will begin with Lincoln's Inn diet, where many right worshipful men of great account and good years do live full well; which if we find ourselves the first year not able to maintain, then will we in the next year come down to Oxford fare, where many great, learned, and ancient fathers and doctors are continually conversant; which if our purses stretch not to maintain neither, then may we after, with bag and wallet, go a-begging together, hoping that for pity some good folks will give us their charity and at every man's door to sing aSalve Regina, whereby we shall keep company and be merry together."
Students recalling the social life of England should bear in mind the hours kept by our ancestors in the fourteenth and two following centuries. Under the Plantagenets noblemen used to sup at fiveP.M., and dine somewhere about the breakfast hour of Mayfair in a modern London season. Gradually hours became later; but under the Tudors the ordinary dinner hour for gentlepeople was somewhere about elevenA.M., and their usual time for supping was between fiveP.M.and sixP.M., tradesmen, merchants and farmers dining and supping at later hours than their social superiors. "With us," says Hall the chronicler, "the nobility, gentry, and students, do ordinarily go to dinner at eleven before noon, and to supper at five, or between five and six, at afternoon. The merchants dine and sup seldom before twelve at noon and six at night. The husbandmen also dine at high noon as they call it, and sup at seven or eight; but out of term in our universities the scholars dine at ten." Thus whilst the idlers of society made haste to eat and drink, the workers postponed the pleasures of the table until they had made a good morning's work. In the days of morning dinners and afternoon suppers, the law-courts used to be at the height of their daily business at an hour when Templars of the present generation have seldom risen from bed. Chancellors were accustomed to commence their daily sittings in Westminster at sevenA.M.in summer, and at eightA.M.in winter months. Lord Keeper Williams, who endeavored to atone for want of law by extraordinarily assiduous attention to the duties of his office, used indeed to open his winter sittings by candlelight between six and seven o'clock.
Many were the costly banquets of which successive Chancellors invited the nobility, the judges, and the bar, to partake at old York House; but of all the holders of the Great Seal who exercised pompous hospitality in that picturesque palace, Francis Bacon was the most liberal, gracious, and delightful entertainer. Where is the student of English history who has not often endeavored to imagine the scene when Ben Jonson sat amongst the honored guests of
"England's high Chancellor, the destin'd heir,In his soft cradle, to his father's chair,"
and little prescient of the coming storm, spoke of his host as one
"Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full,Out of their choicest and their whitest wool."
Even at the present day lawyers have reason to be grateful to Bacon for the promptitude with which, on taking possession of the Marble Chair, he revived the ancient usages of earlier holders of the seal, and set an example of courteous hospitality to the bar, which no subsequent Chancellor has been able to disregard without loss of respect andprestige. Though a short attack of gout qualified the new pleasure of his elevation—an attack attributed by the sufferer to his removal "from a field air to a Thames air,"i.e., from Gray's Inn to the south side of the Strand—Lord Keeper Bacon lost no time in summoning the judges and most eminent barristers to his table; and though the gravity of his indisposition, or the dignity of his office, forbade him to join in the feast, he sat and spoke pleasantly with them when the dishes had been removed. "Yesterday," he wrote to Buckingham, "which was my weary day, I bid all the judges to dinner, which was not used to be, and entertained them in a private withdrawing chamber with the learned counsel. When the feast was past I came amongst them and sat me down at the end of the table, and prayed them to think I was one of them, and but a foreman." Nor let us, whilst recalling Bacon's bounteous hospitalities, fail in justice to his great rival, Sir Edward Coke—-who, though he usually held himself aloof from frivolous amusements, and cared but little for expensive repasts, would with a liberal hand place lordly dishes before lordly guests; and of whom it is recorded in the 'Apophthegmes,' that when any great visitor dropped in upon him for pot-luck without notice he was wont to say, "Sir, since you sent me no notice of your coming, you must dine with me; but if I had known of it in due time I would have dined with you."
From such great men as Lord Nottingham and Lord Guildford, who successively kept high state in Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, to fatpuisnesoccupying snug houses in close proximity to the Inns of Court, and lower downwards to leaders of the bar and juniors sleeping as well as working in chambers, the Restoration lawyers were conspicuous promoters of the hilarity which was one of the most prominent and least offensive characteristics of Charles II.'s London. Lord Nottingham's sumptuous hospitalities were the more creditable, because he voluntarily relinquished his claim to £4000 per annum, which the royal bounty had assigned him as a fund to be expended in official entertainments. Similar praise cannot be awarded to Lord Guildford; but justice compels the admission that, notwithstanding his love of money, he maintained theprestigeof his place, so far as a hospitable table and profuse domestic expenditure could support it.
Contrasting strongly with the lawyers of this period, who copied in miniature the impressive state of Clarendon's princely establishments, were the jovial, catch-singing, three-bottle lawyers—who preferred drunkenness to pomp; an oaken table, surrounded by jolly fellows, to ante-rooms crowded with obsequious courtiers; a hunting song with a brave chorus to the less stormy diversion of polite conversation. Of these free-living lawyers, George Jeffreys was a conspicuous leader. Not averse to display, and not incapable of shining in refined society, this notorious man loved good cheer and jolly companions beyond all other sources of excitement; and during his tenure of the seals, he was never more happy than when he was presiding over a company of sharp-witted men-about-town whom he had invited to indulge in wild talk and choice wine at his mansion that overlooked the lawns, the water, and the trees of St. James's Park. On such occasions his lordship's most valued boon companion was Mountfort, the comedian, whom he had taken from the stage and made a permanent officer of the Duke Street household. Whether the actor was required to discharge any graver functions in the Chancellor's establishment is unknown; but we have Sir John Reresby's testimony that the clever mimic and brilliant libertine was employed to amuse his lordship's guests by ridiculing the personal and mental peculiarities of the judges and most eminent barristers. "I dined," records Sir John, "with the Lord Chancellor, where the Lord Mayor of London was a guest, and some other gentlemen. His lordship having, according to custom, drunk deep at dinner, called for one Mountfort, a gentleman of his, who had been a comedian, an excellent mimic; and to divert the company, as he was pleased to term it, he made him plead before him in a feigned cause, during which he aped the judges, and all the great lawyers of the age, in tone of voice and in action and gesture of body, to the very great ridicule, not only of the lawyers, but of the law itself, which to me did not seem altogether prudent in a man in his lofty station in the law; diverting it certainly was, but prudent in the Lord Chancellor I shall never think it." The fun of Mountfort's imitations was often heightened by the presence of the persons whom they held up to derision—some of whom would see and express natural displeasure at the affront; whilst others, quite unconscious of their own peculiarities, joined loudly in the laughter that was directed against themselves.
As pet buffoon of the tories about town, Mountfort was followed, at a considerable distance of time, by Estcourt—an actor who united wit and fine humor with irresistible powers of mimicry; and who contrived to acquire the respect and affectionate regard of many of those famous Whigs whom it was alike his pleasure and his business to render ridiculous. In theSpectatorSteele paid him a tribute of cordial admiration; and Cibber, noticing the marvellous fidelity of his imitations, has recorded, "This man was so amazing and extraordinary a mimic, that no man or woman, from the coquette to the privy counsellor, ever moved or spoke before him, but he could carry their voice, look, mien, and motion instantly into another company. I have heard him make long harangues, and form various arguments, even in the manner of thinking of an eminent pleader at the bar, with every the least article and singularity of his utterance so perfectly imitated, that he was the veryalter ipse, scarce to be distinguished from the original."
With the exception of Kenyon and Eldon, and one or two less conspicuous instances of judicial penuriousness, the judges of the Georgian period were hospitable entertainers. Chief Justice Lee, who died in 1754, gained credit for an adequate knowledge of law by the sumptuousness and frequency of the dinners with which he regaled his brothers of the bench and learned counsellors. Chief Justice Mansfield's habitual temperance and comparative indifference to the pleasures of the table did not cause him to be neglectful of hospitable duties. Notwithstanding the cold formality of Lord Hardwicke's entertainments, and the charges of niggardliness preferred against Lady Hardwicke's domestic system by Opposition satirists, Philip Yorke used to entertain the chiefs of his profession with pomp, if not with affability. Thurlow entertained a somewhat too limited circle of friends with English fare and a superabundance of choice port in Great Ormond Street. Throughout his public career, Alexander Wedderburn was a lavish and delightful host, amply atoning in the opinion of frivolous society for his political falsity by the excellence and number of his grand dinners. On entering the place of Solicitor-General, he spent £8000 on a service of plate; and as Lord Loughborough he gratified the bar and dazzled the fashionable world by hospitality alike sumptuous and brilliant.
Several of the Georgian lawyers had strong predilections for particular dishes or articles of diet. Thurlow was very fanciful about his fruit; and in his later years he would give way to ludicrous irritability, if inferior grapes or faulty peaches were placed before him. At Brighton, in his declining years, the ex-Chancellor's indignation at a dish of defective wall-fruit was so lively that—to the inexpressible astonishment of Horne Tooke and other guests—he caused the whole of a very fine dessert to be thrown out of the window upon the Marine Parade. Baron Graham's weakness was for oysters, eaten as a preparatory whet to the appetite before dinner; and it is recorded of him that on a certain occasion, when he had been indulging in this favorite pre-prandial exercise, he observed with pleasant humor—"Oysters taken before dinner are said to sharpen the appetite; but I have just consumed half-a-barrel of fine natives—and speaking honestly, I am bound to say that I don't feel quite as hungry as when I began." Thomas Manners Button's peculiarpenchantwas for salads; and in a moment of impulsive kindness he gave Lady Morgan the recipe for his favorite salad—a compound of rare merit and mysterious properties. Bitterly did the old lawyer repent his unwise munificence when he read 'O'Donnell.' Warmly displeased with the political sentiments of the novel, he ordered it to be burnt in the servants' hall, and exclaimed, peevishly, to Lady Manners, "I wish I had not given her the secret of my salad." In no culinary product did Lord Ellenborough find greater delight than lobster-sauce; and he gave expression to his high regard for that soothing and delicate compound when he decided that persons engaged in lobster-fishery were exempt from legal liability to impressment. "Then is not," inquired his lordship, with solemn pathos, "the lobster-fishery a fishery, and a most important fishery, of this kingdom, though carried on in shallow water? The framers of the law well knew that the produce of the deep sea, without the produce of the shallow water, would be of comparatively small value, and intended that turbot, when placed upon our tables, should be flanked by good lobster-sauce." Eldon's singular passion for fried 'liver and bacon' was amongst his most notorious and least pleasant peculiarities. Even the Prince Regent condescended to humor this remarkable taste by ordering a dish of liver and bacon to be placed on the table when the Chancellor dined with him at Brighton. Sir John Leach, Master of the Rolls, was however less ready to pander to a depraved appetite. Lord Eldon said, "It will give me great pleasure to dine with you, and since you are good enough to ask me to order a dish that shall test your newchef'spowers—I wish you'd tell your Frenchman to fry some liver and bacon for me." "Are you laughing at me or my cook?" asked Sir John Leach, stiffly, thinking that the Chancellor was bent on ridiculing his luxurious mode of living. "At neither," answered Eldon, with equal simplicity and truth; "I was only ordering the dish which I enjoy beyond all other dishes."
Although Eldon's penuriousness was grossly exaggerated by his detractors, it cannot be questioned that either through indolence, or love of money, or some other kind of selfishness, he was very neglectful of his hospitable duties to the bench and the bar. "Verily he is working off the arrears of the Lord Chancellor," said Romilly, when Sir Thomas Plummer, the Master of the Rolls, gave a succession of dinners to the bar; and such a remark would not have escaped the lips of the decorous and amiable Romilly had not circumstances fully justified it. Still it is unquestionable that Eldon's Cabinet dinners were suitably expensive; and that he never grudged his choicest port to the old attorneys and subordinate placemen who were his obsequious companions towards the close of his career. For the charges of sordid parsimony so frequently preferred against Kenyon it is to be feared there were better grounds. Under the steadily strengthening spell of avarice he ceased to invite even old friends to his table; and it was rumored that in course of time his domestic servants complained with reason that they were required to consume the same fare as their master deemed sufficient for himself. "In Lord Kenyon's house," a wit exclaimed, "all the year through it is Lent in the kitchen, and Passion Week in the Parlor." Another caustic quidnunc remarked, "In his lordship's kitchen the fire is dull, but the spits are always bright;" whereupon Jekyll interposed with an assumption of testiness, "Spits! in the name of common sense I order you not to talk abouthisspits, for nothing turns upon them."
Very different was the temper of Erskine, who spent money faster than Kenyon saved it, and who died in indigence after holding the Great Seal of England, and making for many years a finer income at the bar than any of his contemporaries not enjoying crown patronage. Many are the bright pictures preserved to us of his hospitality to politicians and lawyers, wits, and people of fashion; but none of the scenes is more characteristic than the dinner described by Sir Samuel Romilly, when that good man met at Erskine's Hampstead villa the chiefs of the opposition and Mr. Pinkney, the American Minister. "Among the light, trifling topics of conversation after dinner," says Sir Samuel Romilly, "it may be worth while to mention one, as it strongly characterizes Lord Erskine. He has always expressed and felt a strong sympathy with animals. He has talked for years of a bill he was to bring into parliament to prevent cruelty towards them. He has always had some favorite animals to whom he has been much attached, and of whom all his acquaintance have a number of anecdotes to relate; a favorite dog which he used to bring, when he was at the bar, to all his consultations; another favorite dog, which, at the time when he was Lord Chancellor, he himself rescued in the street from some boys who were about to kill it under the pretence of its being mad; a favorite goose, which followed him wherever he walked about his grounds; a favorite macaw, and other dumb favorites without number. He told us now that he had got two favorite leeches. He had been blooded by them last autumn when he had been taken dangerously ill at Portsmouth; they had saved his life, and he had brought them with him to town, had ever since kept them in a glass, had himself every day given them fresh water, and had formed a friendship for them. He said he was sure they both knew him and were grateful to him. He had given them different names, 'Home' and 'Cline' (the names of two celebrated surgeons), their dispositions being quite different. After a good deal of conversation about them, he went himself, brought them out of his library, and placed them in their glass upon the table. It is impossible, however, without the vivacity, the tones, the details, and the gestures of Lord Erskine, to give an adequate idea of this singular scene." Amongst the listeners to Erskine, whilst he spoke eloquently and with fervor of the virtues of his two leeches, were the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Grenville, Lord Grey, Lord Holland, Lord Ellenborough, Lord Lauderdale, Lord Henry Petty, and Thomas Grenville.
WINE.
From the time when Francis Bacon attributed a sharp attack of gout to his removal from Gray's Inn Fields to the river side, to a time not many years distant when Sir Herbert Jenner Fust[36]used to be brought into his court in Doctors' Commons and placed in the judicial seat by two liveried porters, lawyers were not remarkable for abstinence from the pleasures to which our ancestors were indebted for the joint-fixing, picturesque gout that has already become an affair of the past. Throughout the long period that lies between Charles II.'s restoration and George III.'s death, an English judge without a symptom of gout was so exceptional a character that people talked of him as an interesting social curiosity. The Merry Monarch made Clarendon's bedroom his council-chamber when the Chancellor was confined to his couch bypodagra. Lord Nottingham was so disabled by gout, and what the old physicians were pleased to call a 'perversity of the humors,' that his duties in the House of Lords were often discharged by Francis North, then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; and though he persevered in attending to the business of his court, a man of less resolution would have altogether succumbed to the agony of his disease and the burden of his infirmities. "I have known him," says Roger North, "sit to hear petitions in great pain, and say that his servants had let him out, though he was fitter for his chamber." Prudence saved Lord Guildford from excessive intemperance; but he lived with a freedom that would be remarkable in the present age. Chief Justice Saunders was a confirmed sot, taking nips of brandy with his breakfast, and seldom appearing in public "without a pot of ale at his nose or near him." Sir Robert Wright was notoriously addicted to wine; and George Jeffreys drank, as he swore, like a trooper. "My lord," said King Charles, in a significant tone, when he gave Jeffreys theblood-stonering, "as it is a hot summer, and you are going the circuit, I desire you will not drink too much."
Amongst the reeling judges of the Restoration, however, there moved one venerable lawyer, who, in an age when moralists hesitated to call drunkenness a vice, was remarkable for sobriety. In his youth, whilst he was indulging with natural ardor in youthful pleasures, Chief Justice Hale was so struck with horror at seeing an intimate friend drop senseless, and apparently lifeless, at a student's drinking-bout, that he made a sudden but enduring resolution to conquer his ebrious propensities, and withdraw himself from the dangerous allurements of ungodly company. Falling upon his knees he prayed the Almighty to rescue his friend from the jaws of death, and also to strengthen him to keep his newly-formed resolution. He rose an altered man. But in an age when the barbarous usage of toast-drinking was in full force, he felt that he could not be an habitually sober man if he mingled in society, and obeyed a rule which required the man of delicate and excitable nerves to drink as much, bumper for bumper, as the man whose sluggish system could receive a quart of spirits at a sitting and yet scarcely experience a change of sensation. At that time it was customary with prudent men to protect themselves against a pernicious and tyrannous custom, by taking a vow to abstain from toast-drinking, or even from drinking wine at all, for a certain stated period. Readers do not need to be reminded how often young Pepys was under a vow not to drink; and the device by which the jovial admiralty clerk strengthened an infirm will and defended himself against temptation was frequently employed by right-minded young men of his date. In some cases, instead ofvowingnot to drink, theyboundthemselves not to drink within a certain period; two persons, that is to say, agreeing that they would abstain from wine and spirits for a certain period, and eachbindinghimself in case he broke the compact to pay over a certain sum of money to his partner in the bond. Young Hale saw that to effect a complete reformation of his life it was needful for him to abjure the practice of drinking healths. He therefore vowednever againto drink a health; and he kept his vow. Never again did he brim his bumper and drain it at the command of a toast-master, although his abstinence exposed him to much annoyance; and in his old age he thus urged his grandchildren to follow his example—"I will not have you begin or pledge any health, for it is become one of the greatest artifices of drinking, and occasions of quarrelling in the kingdom. If you pledge one health you oblige yourself to pledge another, and a third, and so onwards; and if you pledge as many as will be drunk, you must be debauched and drunk. If they will needs know the reason of your refusal, it is a fair answer, 'that your grandfather that brought you up, from whom, under God, you have the estate you enjoy or expect, left this in command with you, that you should never begin or pledge a health.'"
Jeffrey'sprotégé, John Trevor, liked good wine himself, but emulated the virtuous Hale in the pains which he took to place the treacherous drink beyond the reach of others—whenever they showed a desire to drink it at his expense. After his expulsion from the House of Commons, Sir John Trevor was sitting alone over a choice bottle of claret, when his needy kinsman, Roderic Lloyd, was announced. "You rascal," exclaimed the Master of the Rolls, springing to his feet, and attacking his footman with furious language, "you have brought my cousin, Roderic Lloyd, Esquire, Prothonotary of North Wales, Marshal to Baron Price, up my back stairs. You scoundrel, hear ye, I order you to take him this instant down myback stairs, and bring him up myfront stairs." Sir John made such a point of showing his visitor this mark of respect, that the young barrister was forced to descend and enter the room by the state staircase; but he saw no reason to think himself honored by his cousin's punctilious courtesy, when on entering the room a second time he looked in vain for the claret bottle.
On another occasion Sir John Trevor's official residence afforded shelter to the same poor relation when the latter was in great mental trouble. "Roderic," saith the chronicler, "was returning rather elevated from his club one night, and ran against the pump in Chancery Lane. Conceiving somebody had struck him, he drew and made a lunge at the pump. The sword entered the spout, and the pump, being crazy, fell down. Roderic concluded he had killed his man, left, his sword in the pump, and retreated to his old friend's house at the Rolls. There he was concealed by the servants for the night. In the morning his Honor, having heard the story, came himself to deliver him from his consternation and confinement in the coal-hole."
Amongst the eighteenth century lawyers there was considerable difference of taste and opinion on questions relating to the use and abuse of wine. Though he never, or very seldom, exceeded the limits of sobriety, Somers enjoyed a bottle in congenial society; and though wine never betrayed him into reckless hilarity, it gave gentleness and comity to his habitually severe countenance and solemn deportment—if reliance may be placed on Swift's couplet—
"By force of wine even Scarborough is brave,Hall grows more pert, and Somers not so grave."
A familiar quotation that alludes to Murray's early intercourse with the wits warrants an inference that in opening manhood he preferred champagne to every other wine; but as Lord Mansfield he steadily adhered to claret, though fashion had taken into favor the fuller wine stigmatized as poison by John Home's famous epigram—
"Bold and erect the Caledonian stood;Old was his mutton, and his claret good.'Let him drink port,' an English statesman cried:He drunk the poison and his spirit died."
Unlike his father, who never sinned against moderation in his cups, Charles Yorke was a deep drinker as well as a gourmand. Hardwicke's successor, Lord Northington, was the first of a line of port-wine-drinking judges that may at the present time be fairly said to have come to an end—although a few reverend fathers of the law yet remain, who drink with relish the Methuen drink when age has deprived it of body and strength. Until Robert Henley held the seals, Chancellors continued to hold after-dinner sittings in the Court of Chancery on certain days of the week throughout term. Hardwicke, throughout his long official career, sat on the evenings of Wednesdays and Fridays hearing causes, while men of pleasure were fuddling themselves with fruity vintages. Lord Northington, however, prevailed on George III. to let him discontinue these evening attendances in court. "But why," asked the monarch, "do you wish for a change?" "Sir," the Chancellor answered, with delightful frankness, "I want the change in order that I may finish my bottle of port at my ease; and your majesty, in your parental care for the happiness of your subjects, will, I trust, think this a sufficient reason." Of course the king's laughter ended in a favorable answer to the petition for reform, and from that time the Chancellor's evening sittings were discontinued. But ere he died, the jovial Chancellor paid the penalty which port exacts from all her fervent worshippers, and he suffered the acutest pangs of gout. It is recorded that as he limped from the woolsack to the bar of the House of Lords, he once muttered to a young peer, who watched his distress with evident sympathy—"Ah, my young friend, if I had known that these legs would one day carry a Chancellor, I would have taken better care of them when I was at your age." Unto this had come the handsome legs of young Counsellor Henley, who, in his dancing days, stepped minuets to the enthusiastic admiration of thebellesof Bath.
Some light is thrown on the manners of lawyers in the eighteenth century by an order made by the authorities of Barnard's Inn, who, in November, 1706, named two quarts as the allowance of wine to be given to each mess of four men by two gentlemen on going through the ceremony of 'initiation.' Of course, this amount of wine was an 'extra' allowance, in addition to the ale and sherry assigned to members by the regular dietary of the house. Even Sheridan, who boasted that he could drink anygivenquantity of wine, would have thought twice before he drank so large a given quantity, in addition to a liberal allowance of stimulant. Anyhow, the quantity was fixed—a fact that would have elicited an expression of approval from Chief Baron Thompson, who, loving port wine wisely, though too well, expressed at the same time his concurrence with the words, and his dissent from the opinion of a barrister, who observed—"I hold, my lord, that after a good dinner a certain quantity of wine does no harm." With a smile, the Chief Baron rejoined—"True, sir; it is theuncertainquantity that does the mischief."
The most temperate of the eighteenth-century Chancellors was Lord Camden, who required no more generous beverage than sound malt liquor, as he candidly declared, in a letter to the Duke of Grafton, wherein he says—"I am, thank God, remarkably well, but your grace must not seduce me into my former intemperance. A plain dish and a draught of porter (which last is indispensable), are the very extent of my luxury." For porter, Edward Thurlow, in his student days, had high respect and keen relish; but in his mature years, as well as still older age, full-bodied port was his favorite drink, and under its influence were seen to the best advantage those colloquial powers which caused Samuel Johnson to exclaim—"Depend upon it, sir, it is when you come close to a man in conversation that you discover what his real abilities are; to make a speech in a public assembly is a knack. Now, I honor Thurlow, sir; Thurlow is a fine fellow: he fairly puts his mind to yours." Of Thurlow, when he had mounted the woolsack, Johnson also observed—"I would prepare myself for no man in England but Lord Thurlow. When I am to meet him, I would wish to know a day before." From the many stories told of Thurlow and ebriosity, one may be here taken and brought under the reader's notice—not because it has wit or humor to recommend it, but because it presents the Chancellor in company with another port-loving lawyer, William Pitt, from whose fame, by-the-by, Lord Stanhope has recently removed the old disfiguring imputations of sottishness. "Returning," says Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, a poor authority, but piquant gossip-monger, "by way of frolic, very late at night, on horseback, to Wimbledon, from Addiscombe, the seat of Mr. Jenkinson, near Croydon, where the party had dined, Lord Thurlow, the Chancellor, Pitt, and Dundas, found the turnpike gate, situate between Tooting and Streatham, thrown open. Being elevated above their usual prudence, and having no servant near them, they passed through the gate at a brisk pace, without stopping to pay the toll, regardless of the remonstrances and threats of the turnpike man, who running after them, and believing them to belong to some highwaymen who had recently committed some depredation on that road, discharged the contents of his blunderbuss at their backs. Happily he did no injury."
Throughout their long lives the brothers Scott were steady, and, according to the rules of the present day, inordinate drinkers of port wine. As a young barrister, John Scott could carry more port with decorum than any other man of his inn; and in the days when he is generally supposed to have lived on sprats and table-beer, he seldom passed twenty-four hours without a bottle of his favorite wine. Prudence, however, made him careful to avoid intoxication, and when he found that a friendship often betrayed him into what he thought excessive drinking, he withdrew from the dangerous connexion. "I see your friend Bowes very often," he wrote in May, 1778, a time when Mr. Bowes was his most valuable client; "but I dare not dine with him above once in three months, as there is no getting away before midnight; and, indeed, one is sure to be in a condition in which no man would wish to be in the streets at any other season." Of the quantities imbibed at these three-monthly dinners, an estimate may be formed from the following story. Bringing from Oxford to London that fine sense of the merits of port wine which characterized the thorough Oxonion of a century since, William Scott made it for some years a rule to dine with his brother John on the first day of term at a tavern hard by the Temple; and on these occasions the brothers used to make away with bottle after bottle not less to the astonishment than the approval of the waiters who served them. Before the decay of his faculties, Lord Stowell was recalling these terminal dinners to his son-in-law, Lord Sidmouth, when the latter observed, "You drank some wine together, I dare say?" Lord Stowell, modestly, "Yes, we drank some wine." Son-in-law, inquisitively, "Two bottles?" Lord Stowell, quickly putting away the imputation of such abstemiousness, "More than that." Son-in-law, smiling, "What, three bottles?" Lord Stowell, "More." Son-in-law, opening his eyes with astonishment, "By Jove, sir, you don't mean to say that you took four bottles?" Lord Stowell, beginning to feel ashamed of himself, "More; I mean to say we had more. Now don't ask any more questions."
Whilst Lord Stowell, smarting under the domestic misery of which his foolish marriage with the Dowager Marchioness of Sligo was fruitful, sought comfort and forgetfulness in the cellar of the Middle Temple, Lord Eldon drained magnums of Newcastle port at his own table. Populous with wealthy merchants, and surrounded by an opulent aristocracy, Newcastle had used the advantages given her by a large export trade with Portugal to draw to her cellars such superb port wine as could be found in no other town in the United Kingdom; and to the last the Tory Chancellor used to get his port from the canny capital of Northumbria. Just three weeks before his death, the veteran lawyer, sitting in his easy-chair and recalling his early triumphs, preluded an account of the great leading case, "Akroydv.Smithson," by saying to his listener, "Come, Farrer, help yourself to a glass of Newcastle port, and help me to a little." But though he asked for a little, the old earl, according to his wont, drank much before he was raised from his chair and led to his sleeping-room. It is on record, and is moreover supported by unexceptionable evidence, that in his extreme old age, whilst he was completely laid upon the shelf, and almost down to the day of his death, which occurred in his eighty-seventh year, Lord Eldon never drank less than three pints of port daily with or after his dinner.
Of eminent lawyers who were steady port-wine drinkers, Baron Platt—the amiable and popular judge who died in 1862, aged seventy-two years—may be regarded as one of the last. Of him it is recorded that in early manhood he was so completely prostrated by severe illness that beholders judged him to be actually dead. Standing over his silent body shortly before the arrival of the undertaker, two of his friends concurred in giving utterance to the sentiment: "Ah, poor dear fellow, we shall never drink a glass of wine with him again;" when, to their momentary alarm and subsequent delight, the dead man interposed with a faint assumption of jocularity, "But you will though, and a good many too, I hope." When the undertaker called he was sent away a genuinely sorrowful man; and the young lawyer, who was 'not dead yet,' lived to old age and good purpose.