s. d.For a breakfast at Westminster to our counsel . 1 6To another time for boat hire and breakfast . . 1 6In like manner the accountant of St. Margaret's, Westminster, entered in the parish books: 'Paid to Roger Fylpott, learned in the law, for his counsel given, 3s. 8d., with 4d. for his dinner.'In Elizabeth's reign, and during the time of her successors, barristers' fees showed a tendency to increase. Counsel then received 20s. fees, though 10s. was the usual fee. A ten-shilling piece was then called an 'angel,' whence arose the witty saying: 'A barrister is like Balaam's ass, only speaking when he sees the angel.' When Francis Bacon was created King's Counsel to James I., an annual salary of £40 was assigned to him; but at present the status of a Q.C. is simply an affair of professional precedence, to which no fixed emolument is attached. But Francis Bacon, though he received as his official salary £40 only, made £6,000 in his profession; other King's Counsel earned even larger sums in fees. But the barristers were not all greedy. In the days of Sir Matthew Hale, professional etiquette permitted clients and counsel to hold intercourse without the intervention of an attorney. When those who came to Hale for his advice gave him a sovereign, he used to return half, saying his fee was 10s. When appointed arbitrator, he would take no fees, because, as he said, he acted in the capacity of a judge, and a judge should take no money. If he took bad money, as he often did, he would not pass it on again, but kept it by him. At last he had a great heap of it, and his house being once entered by burglars, this accumulation of bad money attracted their attention, and they carried it off in preference to other valuables, fancying that this must be the lawyer's hoarded treasure.Readers who wish to know in what estimation lawyers were held in the seventeenth century should study the pamphlets and broadsides of the Commonwealth, which show how universal was the belief that wearers of ermine and gentlemen of the long robe would practise any sort of fraud or extortion for the sake of personal advantage. How happy we are to live in this century, when the legal profession is in a state of high purification! It does, indeed, sometimes surprise an outsider that so many barristers should be necessary to carry through one case—it looks as if they were brought in merely for the benefit of the lawyers; but, in justice to the profession, let us say that this is not so. Barristers have their special gifts, and a long and involved case brings them all into play to the advantage of the client. One man has unrivalled powers of statement; another is sound in law; another excels in cross-examination; another in reply; another has the ear of the court, or is all-persuasive with the jury. A barrister, to be successful at the Bar, needs, indeed, many qualifications. Lord Brougham states that Mansfield's powers as an advocate were great; he possessed an almost surpassing sweetness of voice, and it was said that his story was worth other men's arguments, so clear and skilful were his statements. Concerning Lord Erskine, another famous debater in the forensic lists, juries declared that they felt it impossible to remove their looks from him when he had riveted and, as it were, fascinated them by his first glance; and it used to be a common remark of men, who observed his motions, that they resembled those of a blood-horse—as light, as limber, as much betokening strength as speed. His voice was of surpassing sweetness, clear, flexible, strong, less fitted, indeed, to express indignation or scorn than pathos. Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, having brought an action for libel against persons who had charged him with having appointed landsmen as Greenwich pensioners to serve his own electioneering purposes, Erskine undertook the defence, and such was the effect of his speech that, before he left the court, thirty retainers were presented to him. Fortune comes to those who can wait. Lord Ellenborough first distinguished himself as the leading counsel for Warren Hastings, and soon after rose to the head of the Northern Circuit; Lord Brougham attained his subsequent position by his defence of Queen Caroline.But counsel must not only be able to expound his case clearly, bringing into prominence all its favourable points, and effacing or putting out of sight all those of an opposite character, but he must also be observant and quick enough on the spur of the moment to take advantage of any rift in his opponent's flute, of any weakness in his argument; he must be sharp in dealing with the plaintiff, supposing he is for the defendant, and especially so with his witnesses. He should, in civil cases, by skilful cross-questioning, entrap the principal or his witnesses into damaging admissions and contradictions. The following case, if notvero, isben trovatoto illustrate our meaning. A man brought an action against a coach proprietor, for having by the carelessness of the latter's servants suffered bodily hurt, to wit, been thrown from the coach on to the ground, the hind wheels of which passed over his body, and injured his chest and lungs. In his examination-in-chief he testified to these facts. Then the defendant's counsel took him in hand. As the plaintiff was about to leave the box, 'One moment, my friend,' said counsel quite blandly. 'According to the evidence you have just given, you obviously have suffered much; your voice is gone, you say?''Yes, sir; I cannot speak above a whisper.''Very sad. The coach, you say, gave a sudden lurch backwards, and thus threw you off the hind seat under the coach wheels? Were you sitting or standing just then?''Well, I was standing up just then.''What made you stand up whilst the coach was in motion?''Well, you would have stood up had you been there.''Just answer my question; never mind what I should have done.''I don't know why I should answer this question.'The judge pointed out to him that he must answer it.'Well, I wanted to look at a pretty girl who had passed the coach; you would have done so.''Possibly.' Counsel might have given him a sharper reply, but he did not want to lose his hold over the witness by riling him. So he went on: 'Possibly. And then, like the gallant gentleman you are, you kissed your hand to the lady, and then the accident happened?''That's about it,' innocently replied the plaintiff.'That's how it happened,' said counsel, turning to the jury.And then, turning to the plaintiff again: 'And the coach-wheels passing over you broke no bones, but ruined your voice, which we all can hear is very weak; this must be a sad affliction, for you especially, because I am given to understand that you were before this accident a famous singer at free-and-easies and other convivial meetings, and made much money by your voice?''That's the fact,' hoarsely whispered the plaintiff.'Very sad. I am told your voice was not only melodious, but very powerful. Perhaps,' continued counsel in the most insidiously flattering tones, 'you might give his Lordship and the jury a specimen of what your voice was before this unlucky accident.'And the fool, entrapped by counsel's apparent sympathy and the petty vanity clinging to all singing men to show off, actually broke forth into a rollicking drinking song, which shook the walls of the building. Thereupon counsel asked for a verdict for his client the defendant, and for costs, and got the first, if not the second.The terms barrister and counsel are often used indiscriminately; every barrister is a counsel, but not every counsel a barrister. There are barristers whose names are in everybody's mouth, and who earn their thousands a year; there are counsel unknown to the public, who never, or only under peculiar circumstances, appear at the Bar, but who are well known to the legal profession, and make more than twice as much as the barrister practising at the Bar; they are 'consulting' counsel. When you go to a joiner and tell him to make you a cabinet, he takes your order, and sets about making the piece of furniture you want; he does not say that, as such an article is not one he ever heard of in his trade, he will go and learn from someone more experienced than himself how to execute your order, and that you will have to pay for his improving himself in joinery. But if you go to your lawyer with a case which is not of the most usual description, he informs you that he must have counsel's opinion, for which you have to pay from two to five guineas, to improve your lawyer's legal knowledge. And he sends a number of questions to a 'consulting' counsel. Now, as every lawyer of any standing has in his library all the legal handbooks and reports of cases which are the consulting counsel's only guides, the lawyer might as well look up the precedents himself, but that would not be etiquette, nor so profitable all round, and so the more expensive method must be followed. The consulting counsel sits in his chambers as the soothsayers of old sat in their temples, whence, like them, he sends forth oracular utterances as obscure and ambiguous as those of the ancient mummers, and straightway solicitors and clients feel relieved of all anxiety: they have counsel's opinion and their case is as good as won. For their counsel's opinion is favourable, or, at all events, this is the interpretation they put on it, though counsel's opinion on the same case on the other side reads the very reverse. Should it so happen that on the day in which counsel has given his opinion a case should be decided in a law-court, which shows that his opinion is not worth a rap, will counsel rush off to the lawyer to tell him so? Not he; he is not going to admit that he is fallible. And he will not give his opinion on the same case twice. A lawyer's clerk having obtained such an opinion from counsel, and passing a pub, where he had agreed to meet a friend of his to settle a little betting transaction, left the opinion in the omnibus in which he had come, and did not discover his loss till it was too late to go to counsel again the same day. So he went the next day, prepared to pay out of his own pocket for another copy of the document. Counsel honestly said: 'I could not do that, my friend, for to-day I might give you an opinion totally opposed to the one I gave you yesterday, which would be awkward if the first should turn up.'Sometimes consulting counsel will condescend to come into court to argue some disgustingly technical point about 'contingent remainders' or 'conveyancing.' On such occasions they evince unbounded contempt for the court, whose ignorance necessitates their presence. They will consume a whole day in dull and dry arguments, and send some judges to sleep, and those who remain awake after counsel's speech know less of the matter than they knew before; their brains are muddled with the legal rigmarole they have been listening to. The ecclesiastical counsel, who flourished in the days before the Probate and Divorce Courts were established, and from 'doctors' became 'counsel,' when called out into the general practice of the new system, were like so many owls suddenly brought into daylight, Sir Cresswell Cresswell so bedevilled them, and yet did it so politely that they could not complain.Barristers had a good time of it in those old days of the Ecclesiastical Courts; the system of appeal was splendidly organized—the pettiest case could gradually be raised into one of great importance. There were courts throughout the country—royal, archiepiscopal, episcopal, decanal, sub-decanal, prebendal, rectorial, vicarial, and manorial. A case arises in any one of these courts, and the verdict being unsatisfactory to one of the parties, he appeals to the courts of the archdeacons and others, where the case is again heard, decided, and again appealed against. Poor men, who cannot go on for ever, must stop; but the party who can afford it goes to the Consistorial Court, where the whole process of hearing, deciding, and appealing is repeated. The third step is the Chancellor's Court; the fourth the Court of Arches. If the appellant still has some money left, he may go to the Privy Council—formerly to the Court of Delegates at Doctors' Commons, now abolished. This is no mere imaginary case. 'There was a case,' says Dr. Nicholls, 'in which the cause had originally commenced in the Archdeacon's Court at Totnes, and thence there had been an appeal to the Court at Exeter, thence to the Arches, and thence to the Delegates; and the whole question at issue was simply the question which of two persons had the right of hanging his hat on a particular peg. Fancy, what an army of barristers must have grown fat on this oyster!'Success at the Bar comes to barristers in the most capricious manner. In this profession, as in many other pursuits, modest merit but slowly makes its way. Manners make the man, but impudence an advocate; without this latter quality even high connections and powerful patronage often seem ineffectual. Earl Camden, the son of Chief Justice Pratt, was called to the Bar in his twenty-fourth year, and remained a briefless barrister for nine long years, when he resolved to abandon Westminster Hall for his College Fellowship; but at the solicitation of his friend Healey, afterwards Lord Chancellor Northington, he consented once more to go the Western Circuit, and through his kind offices received a brief as his junior in an important case. His leader's illness threw the management of the case into Mr. Pratt's hands; his success was complete, and, after many years' lucrative practice, he was made Attorney-General, and three years after, in 1762, raised to the Bench as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. In 1766 he was made Lord Chancellor, and raised to the peerage. The Earl of Eldon was on the point of retiring from the contest for clients, when fortune unexpectedly smiled upon him, and the records of the Bar are full of similar instances.We have spoken of cross-examination. Its legitimate object is not to produce startling effects, but to elicit facts which will support the theory intended to be put forward; but in most cases the first is aimed at, and frequently with success. Counsel, however, must perform this operation with much discretion. To a barrister who was recklessly asking a number of questions in the hope of getting at something, Mr. Baron Alderson said: 'You seem to think that the art of cross-examination consists in examining crossly.' Judges frequently give hints to counsel; to one who was terribly long-winded, the judge said: 'You have stated that before, but you may have forgotten it—it was so long ago.' Counsel must not allow himself to be carried away by the fervour of his oratorical powers, and thus overshoot the mark. Arabin, the Commissioner, a shrewd, quaint little man, uttered absurdities without knowing he did so. 'I assure you, gentlemen,' he one day said to the jury, 'the inhabitants of Uxbridge will steal the very teeth out of your mouth as you walk through the streets.I know it from experience.' When technical expressions are likely to be brought up in a case before the court, counsel should be careful to get posted up in them, or he may make a strange and laughable mess of it. A question of collision between two boats down the river Thames was being investigated. The master of one of the boats was in the witness-box.'Now,' said counsel, cross-examining him, 'what time was it when the other boat ran into you, as you say?''It was during the dog-watch,' replied the mariner.'You hear this, gentlemen?' said counsel, turning to the jury. 'According to this man's evidence, a boat, laden with valuable merchandize, is left in charge of a dog! And, guilty of such contributory negligence, this man has the impudence to come into court and claim compensation and damages!' And, turning to the witness again: 'Was your boat attached to a landing-stage?''No; to a buoy.''A boy! These are curious revelations. A mere boy is made to hold the boat! And where was the boy?''Why, in the water, of course!''This is getting more strange every moment. The poor boy is actually kept standing in the water whilst he is holding the boat! I had no idea such cruelties were practised in the shipping—shipping interest. The Legislature should see to this.' Then, fumbling among his papers, counsel went on: 'You said, when questioned by my learned friend, that you had gone on shore? Why did you go on shore?''To get a man to bleed the buoy. It wanted bleeding very much.''You went to get a surgeon, you mean?''No; a workman from the yard.''What, to bleed a boy! To perform so delicate an operation on a boy, then standing in the water, and, in the state of health he was in, no doubt in great pain, whilst holding the boat all the time—shocking inhumanity!'Here judge and jury thought it time to interfere. They all knew the meaning of the technical terms; but as they enjoyed the fun of seeing counsel getting deeper and deeper into the mire, they allowed him to go on, and the court being full of sailors, who cheered counsel vociferously as he stumbled from blunder to blunder, the trial was one of the most amusing in that court, and gave judge and jury a splendid appetite for their lunch.Some counsel are very fond of reminding a witness at every other question they put to him that he is 'on his oath.' The practice is absurd, the very reminder sounds sarcastic. This 'taking the oath' is a relic of ancient barbarism and superstition; for the man who means to tell the truth it is unnecessary, and on the man who intends to tell a lie it is no check; he looks on the proceeding as a ridiculous ceremony. The very official who administers the oath in court, by the way he rattles it off, shows in what estimation he holds it. Nay, in matters far more important than the mere stealing of a piece of cheese off a counter, on occasions when one would expect taking the oath to be invested with some solemnity, how is it done? I once accompanied an Italian friend of mine, who was being naturalized in this country, to the court where he was to take the oath of allegiance. This is how the official authorized to administer the oath rushed through it: 'I A. B. do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria her heirs and successors according to law so help me God it will be half a crown.' My friend produced the half-crown, which, I suppose, stood in place of a seal, and the performance was over. With the court 'So help me God it will be half a crown' was evidently the chief point, the crowning glory and confirmation of the allegiance business.Swearing children as witnesses leads to very ludicrous scenes, enough to cover the whole proceeding with contempt, and show its utter futility. Montagu Williams, Q.C., tells a good story:At a trial a discussion arose as to whether or no a boy of very tender age was old enough to be sworn. The judge, at the suggestion of counsel for the prosecution, interrogated the boy: 'Do you know what will become of you if you tell an untruth?'The boy, evidently brought up in the Spurgeon school, replied: 'Hell fire.''What will become of you if you play truant, and do not go to school?''Hell fire,' again answered the boy.'What if you spill the milk?''Hell fire.'His lordship ran through a list of trifling faults; the punishment was always the same—'Hell fire.'Counsel then suggested that the boy was scarcely intelligent enough to be sworn. But the judge thought otherwise, and expected he would grow up a very good man, seeing he believed that the most trifling error involved the penalty of hell fire, and the boy was sworn. The boy, of course, was a fool, through no fault of his, but through that of his bigoted teachers.It was mentioned above that in the days of Sir Matthew Hale professional etiquette allowed clients to have interviews with counsel without the intervention of a solicitor. But gradually, after his time, the public were deprived of this privilege, and a rigid rule was enforced that all communications to counsel must be through the solicitor only, a rule highly detrimental to litigants, since it caused constant misunderstandings and misleading instructions. It is a roundabout way of doing business, which would not be tolerated for a day in any commercial transaction. It was from the first a tyrannical assumption on the part of the profession that the public should submit to a restriction, based nominally on professional etiquette, but really on professional interest. The public have begun to object to the rule, and in 1888 the Attorney-General (Sir R. Webster), on being asked to express his views in reference to the occasions when a barrister may advise and otherwise act for a client without the intervention of a solicitor, replied that in contentious business, necessitating inquiry into facts, which could not possibly be undertaken by a barrister, it was essential that the latter should have the advice of a solicitor. But might this advice not be given in the presence of the client to exclude the possibility of misapprehension? As to non-contentious business Sir Richard allowed of direct communication between counsel and client. My own rule, whenever it has been my misfortune to be involved in a legal dispute, has always been to push aside this bogie of professional etiquette, and insist on telling counsel my own story myself.The profession, as we hardly need remind the reader, has produced many distinguished characters; to choose from amongst them those most deserving of praise would be difficult, and perhaps invidious; still, the actions of those whose conduct has not imparted to them the mere splendour of passing meteors, but has conferred permanent benefits on the country, seem to entitle them to a certain pre-eminence. A man entitled to such pre-eminence and the grateful remembrance of Englishmen was Sir Samuel Romilly. His father was a jeweller in Frith Street, Soho; the boy was first placed with a solicitor, then with a merchant, and finally articled to one of the sworn clerks of Chancery. At the expiration of his articles he qualified himself for the Bar, but he had to wait long before he was rewarded with any practice. But when briefs came, they came in a flood; his income rose to about £9,000 a year. He was returned to Parliament in 1806 by the electors of Westminster, without the expenditure of a shilling on his part—a significant fact of his merits in those days of bribery and corruption. He was also appointed Solicitor-General and knighted. He distinguished himself in the House by his speeches in favour of the abolition of the slave trade, but his great claims to the gratitude of the nation are the efforts he made to mitigate the Draconic code of the criminal law, in which nearly three hundred offences, varying from murder to keeping company with a gipsy, were punishable with death. The first success he had was the repeal of the statute of Elizabeth which made it a capital offence to steal privately from the person of another. He next tried to get several statutes repealed which made it a capital offence to privately steal from a house or a shop goods to the value of five shillings. But this Bill was lost. What bloodthirsty savages the members of the House must have been in those days! Some of this savagery remains in their blood now, for when the abolition of training children to become acrobats, contortionists and similar horrors, the abolition of vivisection and such-like cruelties, are mooted in the House, the introducer of the Bill is hooted down. Romilly, as we have seen, did not succeed in all his humane efforts, but he kept on agitating session after session, and cleared the way for the modification and mitigation of the ferocious laws which turned England into human shambles. And what Romilly had been striving for was a long time in coming. In the first decades of this century it was no unusual sight to see from a dozen to twenty criminals, many for slight offences only, hanged in one morning in front of Newgate. The end of Romilly was sad; it showed the malignity of fate. He who had spent his life in endeavouring to lighten the lot of others was terribly stricken himself. In 1818 he lost his wife, whom he had married twenty years before, and her loss was such a shock to him that he fell into delirium, and in an unwatched moment he sprang from his bed, cut his throat, and expired almost instantly.Nowadays briefless barristers utilize their legal knowledge as financiers and company promoters; before those two honest pursuits had been invented they had to turn their attention to other specs. Thus Francis Forcer the younger, the son of Francis Forcer, a musician, had received a liberal education, and, on leaving Oxford, entered Gray's Inn, and was afterwards called to the Bar, where he practised for a short time. He was very gentlemanly in his manners, and in person remarkably tall and athletic. In 1735, having been disturbed by legal interference, or some other cause, he petitioned Parliament for a license for Sadler's Wells, which application, we are told, was rejected at first, but in the end it must have been granted, for we are informed that he was the first who exhibited there the diversions of rope-dancing and tumbling, and performances on the slack wire. It is doubtful whether the speculation paid, for at the time of his death (he died in 1743) he directed by his will that the lease of the premises, together with the scenery, implements, stock, furniture, household stuff and things thereunto belonging, should be sold for the purpose of paying his debts, which direction was carried out soon after his decease. This seems as if the refreshment bar, for which Mr. Forcer had left the legal Bar, had not proved very remunerative; perhaps he had better have stuck to the litigation oyster, than to the native he dispensed at Sadler's Wells.XVIII.THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS AND THEKIT-KAT AND ROTA CLUBS.The last two centuries were very prolific in the production of clubs, founded to gratify rational purposes or fanciful whims. In those days, as soon as a set of men found themselves agree in any particular, though ever so trivial, they immediately formed themselves into a fraternity called a club. The Apollo Club, which held its meetings at the Devil tavern in Fleet Street, comprised all the wits of Ben Jonson's day; the Cauliflower in Butcher Hall Lane was the sober symposium of Paternoster Row booksellers. Humdrum clubs were composed of peaceable nobodies, who used to meet at taverns, sit and smoke and say nothing. A few of these latter clubs survive. But Addison, who knew something of the club life of his day, said: 'All celebrated clubs were founded on eating and drinking, which are points wherein most men agree, and in which the learned and the illiterate, the dull and the airy, the philosopher and the buffoon can all of them bear a part.' Just so, though not every club would acknowledge it; but the Beefsteakers boldly proclaimed their object in the name they assumed; theirs was the worship of beef-steaks.Now, chops and steaks are relics of barbarism, of ages when men, having not as yet invented cooking apparatus, made a fire between some stones, and laid their slices of raw meat on the top, and ate them when half burnt and blackened. Steaks done on a gridiron are antediluvian enough, but mutton chops diffusing, when undergoing this roasting process, throughout the room the stench of a tallow candle just blown out, are enough to turn the stomach, not of the refinedgourmetonly, but of the untutored savage. It is only custom which enables the visitor to the grill-room to stand its effluvium, and to eat the food placed before him. Steaks are not so bad, because they have not the sickening smell of the chop, and so they actually found a set of worshippers, who formed themselves into a society to pay due adoration to their idol. Of course, in this age of higher culture and more widely diffused intelligence, such a proceeding must appear to us not only childish, but somewhat degrading; it was, however, a phase of the convivial life and tendency of the Georgian era, and as such merits a record; but lest we, in producing it, should be suspected of sympathizing with it, we deem it necessary to preface it with the above remarks.The Beefsteak Club[#] was founded in the reign of Anne, and was composed of the 'chief wits and great men of the nation,' who were, however, silly enough to wear suspended from the neck by a green silk ribbon a small gridiron of gold, the badge of the club. Dick Estcourt the player, and landlord of a tavern called the Bumper, in Covent Garden, was made caterer of the club. He was, we are told, a man of good manners and of infinite wit, or of what in those days passed for wit, though much of it at the present time would be declined by the editor of the poorest comic paper. Steele, however, grows quite enthusiastic over him. The club first established itself at the sign of the Imperial Phiz, just opposite the famous conventicle in the Old Jewry; here the superintendent of the kitchen was wont to provide several nice specimens of their beef-steak cookery. Eventually the boys of Merchant Taylors' School were accustomed to regale the club on its nights of meeting with uproarious shouts of 'Huzza, Beefsteak!' But these attentions in course of time became irksome, and the club withdrew to more quiet quarters, but its final fate is left in the dark. Ned Ward, in his 'Secret History of Clubs,' from whom we get our chief information concerning the Beefsteak Club, simply says: 'So that now, whether they have healed the breach, and are again returned into the Kit-Kat community, whence it is believed, upon some disgust, they at first separated ... I shan't presume to determine, ... but, though they are much talked of, they are difficult to be found.'[#] Not to be confounded with the 'Sublime Society of Steaks,' founded a few years after the club, and of which we shall speak more fully presently as the more important of the two associations.The Beefsteak Society, or the 'Sublime Society of Beefsteaks,' as they chose to designate themselves, whilst severely objecting to be called a club, originated with George Lambert, the scene-painter of Covent Garden Theatre during Rich's management (1735), where Lambert often dined from a steak cooked on the fire in his painting-room, in which he was frequently joined by his visitors. This led to the foundation of the society in a room in the theatre. Afterwards the place of meeting was at the Shakespeare tavern in the Piazza, and subsequently at the Lyceum, and on its destruction by fire (1830), at the Bedford Hotel, and on its being rebuilt in 1834, at the theatre again. The members used to meet on Saturdays, from November to the end of June, to partake of a dinner of beefsteaks. The room in which they met was appropriately fitted up, the doors, wainscoting and roof, of English oak, being ornamented with gridirons; Lambert's original gridiron, saved from two fires, formed the chief ornament in the centre of the ceiling.Among the members of this society, restricted to twenty-five, were George, Prince of Wales, and his brothers, the Dukes of York and Sussex, Sheridan, Lord Sandwich, Garrick, John Wilkes, the Duke of Argyle, the Duke of Leinster, Alderman Wood, and many other men of note. The club had its president and vice-president, its bishop, who said grace, and its 'boots,' as the steward was called; the Dukes of Sussex and Leinster in their turn discharged the office of 'boots.' Its festivals were of a somewhat bacchanalian character; the chief liquors consumed were port and punch, and fun, the more rampant the more relished, followed the feast. They had their bard, or laureate, Captain Morris, who had been in the Life Guards. Here is a stanza of one of his songs:'Like Britain's island lies our steak,A sea of gravy bounds it;Shallots, confusedly scattered, makeThe rockwork that surrounds it.Your isle's best emblem there behold,Remember ancient story;Be, like your grandsires, first and bold,And live and die with glory.'Now what can we think of the literary taste then prevailing in the highest quarters, when we are told that this song rendered Morris so great a favourite with the Prince of Wales that he adopted him in the circle of his intimate friends, and made him his constant guest both at Carlton House and the Pavilion at Brighton? Truly, in those days fame and distinction were lightly earned! But does not our own time admire, or pretend to admire, the jerky platitudes of a Tennyson, and the jejune prose, cut up into measured lines, of a Browning as poetry? By the society Morris was presented with an elegant silver bowl for his 'pottery.'In the decline of life and fortune Morris was handsomely provided for by his fellow-steak, the Duke of Norfolk, who conferred upon him a charming retreat at Brockham in Surrey, which he lived to enjoy until the year 1838, surviving his benefactor by twenty-three years, whilst hundreds of men of real merit were left to fight the battle of life unaided and unrewarded. But those who amuse the idle hours of fools with foolish nonsense are always more highly thought of than those who instruct and impart useful knowledge. There is more money spent at a State or Municipal banquet in one evening than would suffice for maintaining a scientific institution for a whole year. What did the Queen's Jubilee cost the nation, and what lasting benefit has this extravagant expenditure conferred on the nation? Of all this firework, what remains but the sticks and the burnt-out cartridge tubes? Carlyle, with whom we agree in few things, was right in what he said about the aggregate of fools. But return we to the 'sublime' Beefsteakers. The epithet they assumed reminds us that there is indeed but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. When a society, formed for the mere purpose of gorging and swilling, and howling drinking songs, the most stupid of all songs, calls itself 'sublime,' may we not ask, Where are the 'Lofty Taters-all-'ot' and the 'Exalted Tripe and Onioners?'There were some queer members in the society. A wealthy solicitor, named Richard Wilson, popularly called Dick, having been to Paris, and not knowing a word of French, praised French cookery, and said that its utmost perfection was seen in the way in which they dished up a 'rendezvous'; he meant aris de veau. Being asked if he ate partridge in France, Dick said 'Yes,' but he could not bear them served up in 'shoes'; he meantperdrix aux choux. William Taylor, another member, believed firmly that Stonehenge was formed by an extraordinary shower of immense hailstones which fell two thousand years ago. The society, we know, claimed to be a literary society, and had actually offered a prize of £400 for the best comedy. It had many dramatic authors among its members. One of them was Cobb, who, among other plays, wrote 'Ramah Drug'—drug or droog meaning in India, where the scene was laid, a hill-fort;[#] he was complimented by his fellow-members on the happy titles he always chose for his pieces. 'What could be better for your last attempt to ram a drug down the public throat than "Ramah Drug"?' said one of the Beefsteakers. But Arnold, a rival dramatist, disputed Cobb's claim to admiration on this account. 'What worse title,' said he, 'could he have chosen for his "Haunted Tower"? Why, there is no spirit in it from beginning to end!'[#] The tower known as Severndroog on Shooter's Hill commemorates the taking of the fort of that name on the coast of Malabar.When the Beefsteak Society was broken up in 1869, the pictures of the former members, mostly copies, were sold for only about £70. The plate, however, brought high prices; the forks and table-spoons, all bearing the emblem of the club, a gridiron, fetched about a sovereign apiece; the punch-ladle realized £14 5s.; a cheese-toaster brought £12 6s.; an Oriental punch-bowl, £11 15s. Wine-glasses, engraved with the gridiron, sold for from 27s. to 34s. a pair. The actual gridiron, plain as it was, fetched 5-½ guineas. Eulogies have been written on the society, as if it had been a really meritorious institution, and endless anecdotes are told, chiefly illustrating the gluttony of the members; but such details are neither attractive in themselves nor profitable to the reader, and we will not enter into them. We agree with Thackeray's estimate of the club-life of the last century: 'It was too hard, too coarse a life.... All that fuddling and punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boozing, reduced the lives and enlarged the waistcoats of the men of that age.' But such were the convivial clubs of the past; it is as well to see the other side of things.Addison, in support of his assertion that all clubs were founded on eating and drinking, says that the Kit-Kat Club itself is said to have taken its original from mutton-pies. If he means its name, he is, as far as can now be known, right; but if he means that its object was the consumption of pies, as the consumption of steaks was that of the 'Sublime' Beefsteaks, he was wrong. The Kit-Kat was the great Whig club of Queen Anne's time; it consisted of the principal noblemen and gentlemen who had opposed the arbitrary measures of James II., and was instituted about the year 1700 for the purpose ostensibly of encouraging literature and the fine arts, but really for promoting loyalty and allegiance to the Protestant succession in the House of Hanover. Among the forty-eight members were the Dukes of Marlborough and Newcastle; the Earls of Halifax, Dorset, and Wharton; Sirs Robert Walpole, John Vanbrugh, Richard Steele, Samuel Garth, Godfrey Kneller; Addison, Congreve, Pulteney, Walsh, and other persons, illustrious for rank or talent.The real founder of the club is said to have been Jacob Tonson, the bookseller; he was for many years their secretary, and, in fact, the very pivot upon which the society revolved. Their meetings were originally held at a house in Shire Lane, close to Temple Bar, a lane which in time became infamous as the resort of thieves, rogues, and ruffians of every kind, though in previous years it had been fashionable. The house where they met was kept by one Christopher Katt, a pastrycook, famous for his mutton pies, which immortalized his name, since they became known by it, Kit being then a vulgar abbreviation of Christopher, and Katt being his surname, and from these pies the club took its name, the pies always forming part of its bill of fare. It seems strange that with so simple a derivation the origin of the name Kit-Kat should have been unknown even to Pope or Arbuthnot—it is uncertain to whom the lines are attributable—who wrote:'Whence deathless Kit-Kat took his nameFew critics can unriddle:Some say from pastrycook it came,And some from Cat and Piddle.From no trim beans its name it boasts,Grey statesmen or green wits,But from this pell-mell pack of toasts,Of old Cats and young Kits.'Surely the name is simply that of the pastrycook, Kit (Christopher) Katt, given to his pies, and has no reference to old cats or young kits or kittens.As regards the pies, Dr. King, in his 'Art of Cookery,' wrote:'Immortal made as Kit-Kat by his pies;'and in the prologue to 'The Reformed Wife,' a comedy, 1700, is the line:'A Kit-Kat is a supper for a lord.'Tonson had his own and the portraits of all the members painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller; each member gave him his.[#] The canvas was 36 inches by 28 inches, sufficiently long to show a hand, and the size is still known as the Kit-Kat. There were forty-two of those portraits, and they were first hung up in the club-room, but Tonson in time removed them to his country-house at Barn Elms, where he built a handsome room for their reception, and where the club frequently met. At his death in 1736, Tonson left them to his great-nephew, also an eminent bookseller, who died in 1767. The paintings were then removed to the house of his brother at Water-Oakley, near Windsor, and on his death to the house of Mr. Baker, one of the sons of Sir William Baker, who had married the elder of the two daughters of old Tonson; the house of this Mr. Baker is called the Park, situate at Hertingfordbury, where they still remain.[#] They were all engraved in mezzotinto by the younger Faber.As regards the room at Barn Elms referred to above, Sir Richard Phillips, in his 'Morning Walk from London to Kew,' in 1816, gives an account of his visit to it.'A lane,' he says, 'brought me to Barn Elms, where now resides a Mr. Hoare, a banker, of London. The family were not at home, but on asking the servants if that was the house of Mr. Tonson, they assured me, with great naïveté, that no such gentleman lived there. I named the Kit-Kat Club as accustomed to assemble here, but the oddity of the name excited their ridicule, and I was told that no such club was held there; but perhaps, said one to the other, the gentleman means the club that assembles at the public-house on the common.... One of them exclaimed: "I should not wonder if the gentleman means the philosopher's room." "Aye," rejoined his comrade, "I remember somebody coming once before to see something of this sort, and my master sent him there." I requested, then, to be shown to this room, distinguished by so high an appellation, when I was conducted across a detached garden and brought to a handsome erection in the architectural style of the early part of the last century, evidently the establishment of the Kit-Kat Club! ... The man unfastened the decayed door of the building, and showed me the once elegant hall filled with cobwebs, a fallen ceiling, and accumulated rubbish. On the right the present proprietor had erected a copper, and converted one of the parlours into a wash-house. The door on the left led to a spacious and once superb staircase, now in ruins, presenting pendant cobwebs that hung from the lofty ceiling, and which seemed to be deserted even by the spiders.... I ascended the staircase; here I found the Kit-Kat Club-room nearly as it existed in its days of service. It was about 18 feet high, 40 feet long, and 20 wide. The mouldings and ornaments were in the most superb fashion of the day, but the whole was tumbling to pieces from the effects of the dry rot.... The marks and sizes [of the portraits] were still visible, and the numbers and names remained as written in chalk for the guide of the hanger.... On rejoining Mr. Hoare's man in the hall below ... he told me that his master intended to pull [the room] down.... Mr. Tonson's house had a few years since been taken down.'In 'A Pilgrimage from London to Woolstrope,' communicated to theMonthly Magazineof June, 1818, the then home of the Kit-Kat Club pictures is thus referred to: 'I reached Hartingfordbury, and the magnificent seat of Wm. Baker, Esq.... Here I paid my homage to the forty-two portraits of the Kit Kat Club, and found myself in a splendid apartment. They [the portraits] are all in as fine a condition as though they had been painted but last year. I regretted, however, that the characteristic features are lost or disguised by the enormous perukes which disfigured the human countenance in their age. The whole looked like a wiggery, and the portrait of Tonson in his velvet cap was the only relief afforded by the entire assemblage.'But even the Kit-Kat Club in time'Descended from its high politic flavour,Down to a sentimental toasting savour.'Byron improved.The club was invaded by a spirit of gallantry. When a number of fashionable gentlemen meet, politics are all very well for a time; horses will afford the next subject of entertainment, but the women must come in in the end. And so the members of the Kit-Kat Club established the custom of every year electing some reigning beauty as a toast. To the queen of the year the members wrote epigrammatic verses, which were etched with a diamond on the club glasses, or a separate bowl was dedicated to her worship, and the lines engraved thereon. Some of the most celebrated of the toasts had their pictures hung up in the club-room. How Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, when only eight years old, was introduced and declared the beauty of the year, has often been told. Of course, to our more refined ideas of propriety the conduct of her father, the Duke of Kingston, in thus thrusting his infant daughter into the society of his roistering boon-companions, cannot but appear as highly reprehensible. Among the more celebrated of the toasts were the four daughters of the Duke of Marlborough: Lady Godolphin, Lady Sunderland, generally known as the Little Whig, Lady Bridgewater, and Lady Monthermer. Swift's friend, Mrs. Long, and the niece of Sir Isaac Newton were two others. Others were the Duchesses of Bolton, St. Albans, Richmond and Beaufort; also Lady Molyneux, who, Walpole says, died smoking a pipe.We will conclude our account of this club with a few stray notes.Three o'clock in the morning seems to have been no uncommon hour for the club to break up. Addison and Steele usually got drunk, so did Dr. Garth, the poet laureate of the club, wherefore a Tory lampooner said that at this club the youth of Anne's reign learned'To sleep away the days, and drink away the nights.'When Tonson had gone to live at Barn Elms, the members generally held their meetings at his house. In the summer they would resort to the Upper Flask tavern, near Hampstead Heath; but this practice did not continue long: there was too much difficulty in getting home after strong potations. The Upper Flask eventually became a private house, and was occupied by George Steevens, the celebrated critic and antiquary, till his death. The Kit-Kat Club died out before the year 1727, and we now take leave of it.We have given accounts of a purely convivial, of a literary and artistic, and now will shortly describe a purely political club, of which, however, but little is known, namely, the Rota. It took its name from its object, namely, to promote the changing of certain Members of Parliament annually by rotation. It held its meetings at the Turk's Head, otherwise known as Miles' Coffee-house, in New Palace Yard, not far from the residence of James Harrington, which was in the Little Ambry (Almonry), looking into the Dean's yard. It was founded in 1659 for the dissemination of republican ideas, which Harrington had glorified in his 'Oceana,' and for resisting Cromwell's attempt to do without a Parliament and to establish an undisguised military despotism. The republicans took the alarm, and formed themselves into a debating society, says the Royalist Anthony Wood, to discuss the best form of government. Their discourses, according to this author, of ordering a commonwealth were the most ingenious and smart ever heard, for the arguments in the Parliament House were flat to these. This gang had a balloting box ... the room was every evening very full. Beside James Harrington and Henry Nevil, who were the prime men of the club, were Cyriac Skinner, Major Wildman, Roger Coke, author of the 'Detection of the Four Last Reigns,' William Petty and Maximilian Petty, and a great many others. The doctrines were very taking, and the more so because to human foresight there was no possibility of the King's return. The greatest of the Parliament men hated this rotation and balloting, as being against their power. Henry Nevil proposed it to the House; the third part of the House should vote out by ballot every year, and not be re-eligible for three years to come, so that every ninth year the Senate would be wholly changed. No magistrate was to continue above three years, and all were to be chosen by a sort of ballot. It is probable that Milton was a member of the Rota; Aubrey belonged to it in 1659. After the death of Cromwell the Rota gave great publicity to its proceedings, and acquired a high reputation for learning, talent, and eloquence, so that it became a question whether it were more honourable to belong to the Rota or the Society of Virtuosi, which had been designated by Boyle in 1646 'the Invisible or Philosophical Society.' The members of the Rota threw into the teeth of their rivals that they had an excellent faculty of magnifying a louse and diminishing a commonwealth. Charles II., who was a virtuoso himself, avenged this taunt by erecting, in 1664, the Virtuosi into the Royal Society, by dispersing the members of the Rota, and exiling Harrington for life to the island of St. Nicholas, near Plymouth; but he was afterwards released on bail, and died at his house in the Almonry in 1677. The statement that the Royal Society was established for political reasons, though it has often been contradicted, would thus seem not to be without foundation. In the third canto of the second part of 'Hudibras,' Sidrophel is said to be'... as full of tricks,As Rota-men of politicks.'
s. d.For a breakfast at Westminster to our counsel . 1 6To another time for boat hire and breakfast . . 1 6
In like manner the accountant of St. Margaret's, Westminster, entered in the parish books: 'Paid to Roger Fylpott, learned in the law, for his counsel given, 3s. 8d., with 4d. for his dinner.'
In Elizabeth's reign, and during the time of her successors, barristers' fees showed a tendency to increase. Counsel then received 20s. fees, though 10s. was the usual fee. A ten-shilling piece was then called an 'angel,' whence arose the witty saying: 'A barrister is like Balaam's ass, only speaking when he sees the angel.' When Francis Bacon was created King's Counsel to James I., an annual salary of £40 was assigned to him; but at present the status of a Q.C. is simply an affair of professional precedence, to which no fixed emolument is attached. But Francis Bacon, though he received as his official salary £40 only, made £6,000 in his profession; other King's Counsel earned even larger sums in fees. But the barristers were not all greedy. In the days of Sir Matthew Hale, professional etiquette permitted clients and counsel to hold intercourse without the intervention of an attorney. When those who came to Hale for his advice gave him a sovereign, he used to return half, saying his fee was 10s. When appointed arbitrator, he would take no fees, because, as he said, he acted in the capacity of a judge, and a judge should take no money. If he took bad money, as he often did, he would not pass it on again, but kept it by him. At last he had a great heap of it, and his house being once entered by burglars, this accumulation of bad money attracted their attention, and they carried it off in preference to other valuables, fancying that this must be the lawyer's hoarded treasure.
Readers who wish to know in what estimation lawyers were held in the seventeenth century should study the pamphlets and broadsides of the Commonwealth, which show how universal was the belief that wearers of ermine and gentlemen of the long robe would practise any sort of fraud or extortion for the sake of personal advantage. How happy we are to live in this century, when the legal profession is in a state of high purification! It does, indeed, sometimes surprise an outsider that so many barristers should be necessary to carry through one case—it looks as if they were brought in merely for the benefit of the lawyers; but, in justice to the profession, let us say that this is not so. Barristers have their special gifts, and a long and involved case brings them all into play to the advantage of the client. One man has unrivalled powers of statement; another is sound in law; another excels in cross-examination; another in reply; another has the ear of the court, or is all-persuasive with the jury. A barrister, to be successful at the Bar, needs, indeed, many qualifications. Lord Brougham states that Mansfield's powers as an advocate were great; he possessed an almost surpassing sweetness of voice, and it was said that his story was worth other men's arguments, so clear and skilful were his statements. Concerning Lord Erskine, another famous debater in the forensic lists, juries declared that they felt it impossible to remove their looks from him when he had riveted and, as it were, fascinated them by his first glance; and it used to be a common remark of men, who observed his motions, that they resembled those of a blood-horse—as light, as limber, as much betokening strength as speed. His voice was of surpassing sweetness, clear, flexible, strong, less fitted, indeed, to express indignation or scorn than pathos. Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, having brought an action for libel against persons who had charged him with having appointed landsmen as Greenwich pensioners to serve his own electioneering purposes, Erskine undertook the defence, and such was the effect of his speech that, before he left the court, thirty retainers were presented to him. Fortune comes to those who can wait. Lord Ellenborough first distinguished himself as the leading counsel for Warren Hastings, and soon after rose to the head of the Northern Circuit; Lord Brougham attained his subsequent position by his defence of Queen Caroline.
But counsel must not only be able to expound his case clearly, bringing into prominence all its favourable points, and effacing or putting out of sight all those of an opposite character, but he must also be observant and quick enough on the spur of the moment to take advantage of any rift in his opponent's flute, of any weakness in his argument; he must be sharp in dealing with the plaintiff, supposing he is for the defendant, and especially so with his witnesses. He should, in civil cases, by skilful cross-questioning, entrap the principal or his witnesses into damaging admissions and contradictions. The following case, if notvero, isben trovatoto illustrate our meaning. A man brought an action against a coach proprietor, for having by the carelessness of the latter's servants suffered bodily hurt, to wit, been thrown from the coach on to the ground, the hind wheels of which passed over his body, and injured his chest and lungs. In his examination-in-chief he testified to these facts. Then the defendant's counsel took him in hand. As the plaintiff was about to leave the box, 'One moment, my friend,' said counsel quite blandly. 'According to the evidence you have just given, you obviously have suffered much; your voice is gone, you say?'
'Yes, sir; I cannot speak above a whisper.'
'Very sad. The coach, you say, gave a sudden lurch backwards, and thus threw you off the hind seat under the coach wheels? Were you sitting or standing just then?'
'Well, I was standing up just then.'
'What made you stand up whilst the coach was in motion?'
'Well, you would have stood up had you been there.'
'Just answer my question; never mind what I should have done.'
'I don't know why I should answer this question.'
The judge pointed out to him that he must answer it.
'Well, I wanted to look at a pretty girl who had passed the coach; you would have done so.'
'Possibly.' Counsel might have given him a sharper reply, but he did not want to lose his hold over the witness by riling him. So he went on: 'Possibly. And then, like the gallant gentleman you are, you kissed your hand to the lady, and then the accident happened?'
'That's about it,' innocently replied the plaintiff.
'That's how it happened,' said counsel, turning to the jury.
And then, turning to the plaintiff again: 'And the coach-wheels passing over you broke no bones, but ruined your voice, which we all can hear is very weak; this must be a sad affliction, for you especially, because I am given to understand that you were before this accident a famous singer at free-and-easies and other convivial meetings, and made much money by your voice?'
'That's the fact,' hoarsely whispered the plaintiff.
'Very sad. I am told your voice was not only melodious, but very powerful. Perhaps,' continued counsel in the most insidiously flattering tones, 'you might give his Lordship and the jury a specimen of what your voice was before this unlucky accident.'
And the fool, entrapped by counsel's apparent sympathy and the petty vanity clinging to all singing men to show off, actually broke forth into a rollicking drinking song, which shook the walls of the building. Thereupon counsel asked for a verdict for his client the defendant, and for costs, and got the first, if not the second.
The terms barrister and counsel are often used indiscriminately; every barrister is a counsel, but not every counsel a barrister. There are barristers whose names are in everybody's mouth, and who earn their thousands a year; there are counsel unknown to the public, who never, or only under peculiar circumstances, appear at the Bar, but who are well known to the legal profession, and make more than twice as much as the barrister practising at the Bar; they are 'consulting' counsel. When you go to a joiner and tell him to make you a cabinet, he takes your order, and sets about making the piece of furniture you want; he does not say that, as such an article is not one he ever heard of in his trade, he will go and learn from someone more experienced than himself how to execute your order, and that you will have to pay for his improving himself in joinery. But if you go to your lawyer with a case which is not of the most usual description, he informs you that he must have counsel's opinion, for which you have to pay from two to five guineas, to improve your lawyer's legal knowledge. And he sends a number of questions to a 'consulting' counsel. Now, as every lawyer of any standing has in his library all the legal handbooks and reports of cases which are the consulting counsel's only guides, the lawyer might as well look up the precedents himself, but that would not be etiquette, nor so profitable all round, and so the more expensive method must be followed. The consulting counsel sits in his chambers as the soothsayers of old sat in their temples, whence, like them, he sends forth oracular utterances as obscure and ambiguous as those of the ancient mummers, and straightway solicitors and clients feel relieved of all anxiety: they have counsel's opinion and their case is as good as won. For their counsel's opinion is favourable, or, at all events, this is the interpretation they put on it, though counsel's opinion on the same case on the other side reads the very reverse. Should it so happen that on the day in which counsel has given his opinion a case should be decided in a law-court, which shows that his opinion is not worth a rap, will counsel rush off to the lawyer to tell him so? Not he; he is not going to admit that he is fallible. And he will not give his opinion on the same case twice. A lawyer's clerk having obtained such an opinion from counsel, and passing a pub, where he had agreed to meet a friend of his to settle a little betting transaction, left the opinion in the omnibus in which he had come, and did not discover his loss till it was too late to go to counsel again the same day. So he went the next day, prepared to pay out of his own pocket for another copy of the document. Counsel honestly said: 'I could not do that, my friend, for to-day I might give you an opinion totally opposed to the one I gave you yesterday, which would be awkward if the first should turn up.'
Sometimes consulting counsel will condescend to come into court to argue some disgustingly technical point about 'contingent remainders' or 'conveyancing.' On such occasions they evince unbounded contempt for the court, whose ignorance necessitates their presence. They will consume a whole day in dull and dry arguments, and send some judges to sleep, and those who remain awake after counsel's speech know less of the matter than they knew before; their brains are muddled with the legal rigmarole they have been listening to. The ecclesiastical counsel, who flourished in the days before the Probate and Divorce Courts were established, and from 'doctors' became 'counsel,' when called out into the general practice of the new system, were like so many owls suddenly brought into daylight, Sir Cresswell Cresswell so bedevilled them, and yet did it so politely that they could not complain.
Barristers had a good time of it in those old days of the Ecclesiastical Courts; the system of appeal was splendidly organized—the pettiest case could gradually be raised into one of great importance. There were courts throughout the country—royal, archiepiscopal, episcopal, decanal, sub-decanal, prebendal, rectorial, vicarial, and manorial. A case arises in any one of these courts, and the verdict being unsatisfactory to one of the parties, he appeals to the courts of the archdeacons and others, where the case is again heard, decided, and again appealed against. Poor men, who cannot go on for ever, must stop; but the party who can afford it goes to the Consistorial Court, where the whole process of hearing, deciding, and appealing is repeated. The third step is the Chancellor's Court; the fourth the Court of Arches. If the appellant still has some money left, he may go to the Privy Council—formerly to the Court of Delegates at Doctors' Commons, now abolished. This is no mere imaginary case. 'There was a case,' says Dr. Nicholls, 'in which the cause had originally commenced in the Archdeacon's Court at Totnes, and thence there had been an appeal to the Court at Exeter, thence to the Arches, and thence to the Delegates; and the whole question at issue was simply the question which of two persons had the right of hanging his hat on a particular peg. Fancy, what an army of barristers must have grown fat on this oyster!'
Success at the Bar comes to barristers in the most capricious manner. In this profession, as in many other pursuits, modest merit but slowly makes its way. Manners make the man, but impudence an advocate; without this latter quality even high connections and powerful patronage often seem ineffectual. Earl Camden, the son of Chief Justice Pratt, was called to the Bar in his twenty-fourth year, and remained a briefless barrister for nine long years, when he resolved to abandon Westminster Hall for his College Fellowship; but at the solicitation of his friend Healey, afterwards Lord Chancellor Northington, he consented once more to go the Western Circuit, and through his kind offices received a brief as his junior in an important case. His leader's illness threw the management of the case into Mr. Pratt's hands; his success was complete, and, after many years' lucrative practice, he was made Attorney-General, and three years after, in 1762, raised to the Bench as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. In 1766 he was made Lord Chancellor, and raised to the peerage. The Earl of Eldon was on the point of retiring from the contest for clients, when fortune unexpectedly smiled upon him, and the records of the Bar are full of similar instances.
We have spoken of cross-examination. Its legitimate object is not to produce startling effects, but to elicit facts which will support the theory intended to be put forward; but in most cases the first is aimed at, and frequently with success. Counsel, however, must perform this operation with much discretion. To a barrister who was recklessly asking a number of questions in the hope of getting at something, Mr. Baron Alderson said: 'You seem to think that the art of cross-examination consists in examining crossly.' Judges frequently give hints to counsel; to one who was terribly long-winded, the judge said: 'You have stated that before, but you may have forgotten it—it was so long ago.' Counsel must not allow himself to be carried away by the fervour of his oratorical powers, and thus overshoot the mark. Arabin, the Commissioner, a shrewd, quaint little man, uttered absurdities without knowing he did so. 'I assure you, gentlemen,' he one day said to the jury, 'the inhabitants of Uxbridge will steal the very teeth out of your mouth as you walk through the streets.I know it from experience.' When technical expressions are likely to be brought up in a case before the court, counsel should be careful to get posted up in them, or he may make a strange and laughable mess of it. A question of collision between two boats down the river Thames was being investigated. The master of one of the boats was in the witness-box.
'Now,' said counsel, cross-examining him, 'what time was it when the other boat ran into you, as you say?'
'It was during the dog-watch,' replied the mariner.
'You hear this, gentlemen?' said counsel, turning to the jury. 'According to this man's evidence, a boat, laden with valuable merchandize, is left in charge of a dog! And, guilty of such contributory negligence, this man has the impudence to come into court and claim compensation and damages!' And, turning to the witness again: 'Was your boat attached to a landing-stage?'
'No; to a buoy.'
'A boy! These are curious revelations. A mere boy is made to hold the boat! And where was the boy?'
'Why, in the water, of course!'
'This is getting more strange every moment. The poor boy is actually kept standing in the water whilst he is holding the boat! I had no idea such cruelties were practised in the shipping—shipping interest. The Legislature should see to this.' Then, fumbling among his papers, counsel went on: 'You said, when questioned by my learned friend, that you had gone on shore? Why did you go on shore?'
'To get a man to bleed the buoy. It wanted bleeding very much.'
'You went to get a surgeon, you mean?'
'No; a workman from the yard.'
'What, to bleed a boy! To perform so delicate an operation on a boy, then standing in the water, and, in the state of health he was in, no doubt in great pain, whilst holding the boat all the time—shocking inhumanity!'
Here judge and jury thought it time to interfere. They all knew the meaning of the technical terms; but as they enjoyed the fun of seeing counsel getting deeper and deeper into the mire, they allowed him to go on, and the court being full of sailors, who cheered counsel vociferously as he stumbled from blunder to blunder, the trial was one of the most amusing in that court, and gave judge and jury a splendid appetite for their lunch.
Some counsel are very fond of reminding a witness at every other question they put to him that he is 'on his oath.' The practice is absurd, the very reminder sounds sarcastic. This 'taking the oath' is a relic of ancient barbarism and superstition; for the man who means to tell the truth it is unnecessary, and on the man who intends to tell a lie it is no check; he looks on the proceeding as a ridiculous ceremony. The very official who administers the oath in court, by the way he rattles it off, shows in what estimation he holds it. Nay, in matters far more important than the mere stealing of a piece of cheese off a counter, on occasions when one would expect taking the oath to be invested with some solemnity, how is it done? I once accompanied an Italian friend of mine, who was being naturalized in this country, to the court where he was to take the oath of allegiance. This is how the official authorized to administer the oath rushed through it: 'I A. B. do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Victoria her heirs and successors according to law so help me God it will be half a crown.' My friend produced the half-crown, which, I suppose, stood in place of a seal, and the performance was over. With the court 'So help me God it will be half a crown' was evidently the chief point, the crowning glory and confirmation of the allegiance business.
Swearing children as witnesses leads to very ludicrous scenes, enough to cover the whole proceeding with contempt, and show its utter futility. Montagu Williams, Q.C., tells a good story:
At a trial a discussion arose as to whether or no a boy of very tender age was old enough to be sworn. The judge, at the suggestion of counsel for the prosecution, interrogated the boy: 'Do you know what will become of you if you tell an untruth?'
The boy, evidently brought up in the Spurgeon school, replied: 'Hell fire.'
'What will become of you if you play truant, and do not go to school?'
'Hell fire,' again answered the boy.
'What if you spill the milk?'
'Hell fire.'
His lordship ran through a list of trifling faults; the punishment was always the same—'Hell fire.'
Counsel then suggested that the boy was scarcely intelligent enough to be sworn. But the judge thought otherwise, and expected he would grow up a very good man, seeing he believed that the most trifling error involved the penalty of hell fire, and the boy was sworn. The boy, of course, was a fool, through no fault of his, but through that of his bigoted teachers.
It was mentioned above that in the days of Sir Matthew Hale professional etiquette allowed clients to have interviews with counsel without the intervention of a solicitor. But gradually, after his time, the public were deprived of this privilege, and a rigid rule was enforced that all communications to counsel must be through the solicitor only, a rule highly detrimental to litigants, since it caused constant misunderstandings and misleading instructions. It is a roundabout way of doing business, which would not be tolerated for a day in any commercial transaction. It was from the first a tyrannical assumption on the part of the profession that the public should submit to a restriction, based nominally on professional etiquette, but really on professional interest. The public have begun to object to the rule, and in 1888 the Attorney-General (Sir R. Webster), on being asked to express his views in reference to the occasions when a barrister may advise and otherwise act for a client without the intervention of a solicitor, replied that in contentious business, necessitating inquiry into facts, which could not possibly be undertaken by a barrister, it was essential that the latter should have the advice of a solicitor. But might this advice not be given in the presence of the client to exclude the possibility of misapprehension? As to non-contentious business Sir Richard allowed of direct communication between counsel and client. My own rule, whenever it has been my misfortune to be involved in a legal dispute, has always been to push aside this bogie of professional etiquette, and insist on telling counsel my own story myself.
The profession, as we hardly need remind the reader, has produced many distinguished characters; to choose from amongst them those most deserving of praise would be difficult, and perhaps invidious; still, the actions of those whose conduct has not imparted to them the mere splendour of passing meteors, but has conferred permanent benefits on the country, seem to entitle them to a certain pre-eminence. A man entitled to such pre-eminence and the grateful remembrance of Englishmen was Sir Samuel Romilly. His father was a jeweller in Frith Street, Soho; the boy was first placed with a solicitor, then with a merchant, and finally articled to one of the sworn clerks of Chancery. At the expiration of his articles he qualified himself for the Bar, but he had to wait long before he was rewarded with any practice. But when briefs came, they came in a flood; his income rose to about £9,000 a year. He was returned to Parliament in 1806 by the electors of Westminster, without the expenditure of a shilling on his part—a significant fact of his merits in those days of bribery and corruption. He was also appointed Solicitor-General and knighted. He distinguished himself in the House by his speeches in favour of the abolition of the slave trade, but his great claims to the gratitude of the nation are the efforts he made to mitigate the Draconic code of the criminal law, in which nearly three hundred offences, varying from murder to keeping company with a gipsy, were punishable with death. The first success he had was the repeal of the statute of Elizabeth which made it a capital offence to steal privately from the person of another. He next tried to get several statutes repealed which made it a capital offence to privately steal from a house or a shop goods to the value of five shillings. But this Bill was lost. What bloodthirsty savages the members of the House must have been in those days! Some of this savagery remains in their blood now, for when the abolition of training children to become acrobats, contortionists and similar horrors, the abolition of vivisection and such-like cruelties, are mooted in the House, the introducer of the Bill is hooted down. Romilly, as we have seen, did not succeed in all his humane efforts, but he kept on agitating session after session, and cleared the way for the modification and mitigation of the ferocious laws which turned England into human shambles. And what Romilly had been striving for was a long time in coming. In the first decades of this century it was no unusual sight to see from a dozen to twenty criminals, many for slight offences only, hanged in one morning in front of Newgate. The end of Romilly was sad; it showed the malignity of fate. He who had spent his life in endeavouring to lighten the lot of others was terribly stricken himself. In 1818 he lost his wife, whom he had married twenty years before, and her loss was such a shock to him that he fell into delirium, and in an unwatched moment he sprang from his bed, cut his throat, and expired almost instantly.
Nowadays briefless barristers utilize their legal knowledge as financiers and company promoters; before those two honest pursuits had been invented they had to turn their attention to other specs. Thus Francis Forcer the younger, the son of Francis Forcer, a musician, had received a liberal education, and, on leaving Oxford, entered Gray's Inn, and was afterwards called to the Bar, where he practised for a short time. He was very gentlemanly in his manners, and in person remarkably tall and athletic. In 1735, having been disturbed by legal interference, or some other cause, he petitioned Parliament for a license for Sadler's Wells, which application, we are told, was rejected at first, but in the end it must have been granted, for we are informed that he was the first who exhibited there the diversions of rope-dancing and tumbling, and performances on the slack wire. It is doubtful whether the speculation paid, for at the time of his death (he died in 1743) he directed by his will that the lease of the premises, together with the scenery, implements, stock, furniture, household stuff and things thereunto belonging, should be sold for the purpose of paying his debts, which direction was carried out soon after his decease. This seems as if the refreshment bar, for which Mr. Forcer had left the legal Bar, had not proved very remunerative; perhaps he had better have stuck to the litigation oyster, than to the native he dispensed at Sadler's Wells.
XVIII.
THE SUBLIME BEEFSTEAKERS AND THEKIT-KAT AND ROTA CLUBS.
The last two centuries were very prolific in the production of clubs, founded to gratify rational purposes or fanciful whims. In those days, as soon as a set of men found themselves agree in any particular, though ever so trivial, they immediately formed themselves into a fraternity called a club. The Apollo Club, which held its meetings at the Devil tavern in Fleet Street, comprised all the wits of Ben Jonson's day; the Cauliflower in Butcher Hall Lane was the sober symposium of Paternoster Row booksellers. Humdrum clubs were composed of peaceable nobodies, who used to meet at taverns, sit and smoke and say nothing. A few of these latter clubs survive. But Addison, who knew something of the club life of his day, said: 'All celebrated clubs were founded on eating and drinking, which are points wherein most men agree, and in which the learned and the illiterate, the dull and the airy, the philosopher and the buffoon can all of them bear a part.' Just so, though not every club would acknowledge it; but the Beefsteakers boldly proclaimed their object in the name they assumed; theirs was the worship of beef-steaks.
Now, chops and steaks are relics of barbarism, of ages when men, having not as yet invented cooking apparatus, made a fire between some stones, and laid their slices of raw meat on the top, and ate them when half burnt and blackened. Steaks done on a gridiron are antediluvian enough, but mutton chops diffusing, when undergoing this roasting process, throughout the room the stench of a tallow candle just blown out, are enough to turn the stomach, not of the refinedgourmetonly, but of the untutored savage. It is only custom which enables the visitor to the grill-room to stand its effluvium, and to eat the food placed before him. Steaks are not so bad, because they have not the sickening smell of the chop, and so they actually found a set of worshippers, who formed themselves into a society to pay due adoration to their idol. Of course, in this age of higher culture and more widely diffused intelligence, such a proceeding must appear to us not only childish, but somewhat degrading; it was, however, a phase of the convivial life and tendency of the Georgian era, and as such merits a record; but lest we, in producing it, should be suspected of sympathizing with it, we deem it necessary to preface it with the above remarks.
The Beefsteak Club[#] was founded in the reign of Anne, and was composed of the 'chief wits and great men of the nation,' who were, however, silly enough to wear suspended from the neck by a green silk ribbon a small gridiron of gold, the badge of the club. Dick Estcourt the player, and landlord of a tavern called the Bumper, in Covent Garden, was made caterer of the club. He was, we are told, a man of good manners and of infinite wit, or of what in those days passed for wit, though much of it at the present time would be declined by the editor of the poorest comic paper. Steele, however, grows quite enthusiastic over him. The club first established itself at the sign of the Imperial Phiz, just opposite the famous conventicle in the Old Jewry; here the superintendent of the kitchen was wont to provide several nice specimens of their beef-steak cookery. Eventually the boys of Merchant Taylors' School were accustomed to regale the club on its nights of meeting with uproarious shouts of 'Huzza, Beefsteak!' But these attentions in course of time became irksome, and the club withdrew to more quiet quarters, but its final fate is left in the dark. Ned Ward, in his 'Secret History of Clubs,' from whom we get our chief information concerning the Beefsteak Club, simply says: 'So that now, whether they have healed the breach, and are again returned into the Kit-Kat community, whence it is believed, upon some disgust, they at first separated ... I shan't presume to determine, ... but, though they are much talked of, they are difficult to be found.'
[#] Not to be confounded with the 'Sublime Society of Steaks,' founded a few years after the club, and of which we shall speak more fully presently as the more important of the two associations.
The Beefsteak Society, or the 'Sublime Society of Beefsteaks,' as they chose to designate themselves, whilst severely objecting to be called a club, originated with George Lambert, the scene-painter of Covent Garden Theatre during Rich's management (1735), where Lambert often dined from a steak cooked on the fire in his painting-room, in which he was frequently joined by his visitors. This led to the foundation of the society in a room in the theatre. Afterwards the place of meeting was at the Shakespeare tavern in the Piazza, and subsequently at the Lyceum, and on its destruction by fire (1830), at the Bedford Hotel, and on its being rebuilt in 1834, at the theatre again. The members used to meet on Saturdays, from November to the end of June, to partake of a dinner of beefsteaks. The room in which they met was appropriately fitted up, the doors, wainscoting and roof, of English oak, being ornamented with gridirons; Lambert's original gridiron, saved from two fires, formed the chief ornament in the centre of the ceiling.
Among the members of this society, restricted to twenty-five, were George, Prince of Wales, and his brothers, the Dukes of York and Sussex, Sheridan, Lord Sandwich, Garrick, John Wilkes, the Duke of Argyle, the Duke of Leinster, Alderman Wood, and many other men of note. The club had its president and vice-president, its bishop, who said grace, and its 'boots,' as the steward was called; the Dukes of Sussex and Leinster in their turn discharged the office of 'boots.' Its festivals were of a somewhat bacchanalian character; the chief liquors consumed were port and punch, and fun, the more rampant the more relished, followed the feast. They had their bard, or laureate, Captain Morris, who had been in the Life Guards. Here is a stanza of one of his songs:
'Like Britain's island lies our steak,A sea of gravy bounds it;Shallots, confusedly scattered, makeThe rockwork that surrounds it.Your isle's best emblem there behold,Remember ancient story;Be, like your grandsires, first and bold,And live and die with glory.'
'Like Britain's island lies our steak,A sea of gravy bounds it;Shallots, confusedly scattered, makeThe rockwork that surrounds it.
'Like Britain's island lies our steak,
A sea of gravy bounds it;
A sea of gravy bounds it;
Shallots, confusedly scattered, make
The rockwork that surrounds it.
The rockwork that surrounds it.
Your isle's best emblem there behold,Remember ancient story;Be, like your grandsires, first and bold,And live and die with glory.'
Your isle's best emblem there behold,
Remember ancient story;
Remember ancient story;
Be, like your grandsires, first and bold,
And live and die with glory.'
And live and die with glory.'
Now what can we think of the literary taste then prevailing in the highest quarters, when we are told that this song rendered Morris so great a favourite with the Prince of Wales that he adopted him in the circle of his intimate friends, and made him his constant guest both at Carlton House and the Pavilion at Brighton? Truly, in those days fame and distinction were lightly earned! But does not our own time admire, or pretend to admire, the jerky platitudes of a Tennyson, and the jejune prose, cut up into measured lines, of a Browning as poetry? By the society Morris was presented with an elegant silver bowl for his 'pottery.'
In the decline of life and fortune Morris was handsomely provided for by his fellow-steak, the Duke of Norfolk, who conferred upon him a charming retreat at Brockham in Surrey, which he lived to enjoy until the year 1838, surviving his benefactor by twenty-three years, whilst hundreds of men of real merit were left to fight the battle of life unaided and unrewarded. But those who amuse the idle hours of fools with foolish nonsense are always more highly thought of than those who instruct and impart useful knowledge. There is more money spent at a State or Municipal banquet in one evening than would suffice for maintaining a scientific institution for a whole year. What did the Queen's Jubilee cost the nation, and what lasting benefit has this extravagant expenditure conferred on the nation? Of all this firework, what remains but the sticks and the burnt-out cartridge tubes? Carlyle, with whom we agree in few things, was right in what he said about the aggregate of fools. But return we to the 'sublime' Beefsteakers. The epithet they assumed reminds us that there is indeed but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. When a society, formed for the mere purpose of gorging and swilling, and howling drinking songs, the most stupid of all songs, calls itself 'sublime,' may we not ask, Where are the 'Lofty Taters-all-'ot' and the 'Exalted Tripe and Onioners?'
There were some queer members in the society. A wealthy solicitor, named Richard Wilson, popularly called Dick, having been to Paris, and not knowing a word of French, praised French cookery, and said that its utmost perfection was seen in the way in which they dished up a 'rendezvous'; he meant aris de veau. Being asked if he ate partridge in France, Dick said 'Yes,' but he could not bear them served up in 'shoes'; he meantperdrix aux choux. William Taylor, another member, believed firmly that Stonehenge was formed by an extraordinary shower of immense hailstones which fell two thousand years ago. The society, we know, claimed to be a literary society, and had actually offered a prize of £400 for the best comedy. It had many dramatic authors among its members. One of them was Cobb, who, among other plays, wrote 'Ramah Drug'—drug or droog meaning in India, where the scene was laid, a hill-fort;[#] he was complimented by his fellow-members on the happy titles he always chose for his pieces. 'What could be better for your last attempt to ram a drug down the public throat than "Ramah Drug"?' said one of the Beefsteakers. But Arnold, a rival dramatist, disputed Cobb's claim to admiration on this account. 'What worse title,' said he, 'could he have chosen for his "Haunted Tower"? Why, there is no spirit in it from beginning to end!'
[#] The tower known as Severndroog on Shooter's Hill commemorates the taking of the fort of that name on the coast of Malabar.
When the Beefsteak Society was broken up in 1869, the pictures of the former members, mostly copies, were sold for only about £70. The plate, however, brought high prices; the forks and table-spoons, all bearing the emblem of the club, a gridiron, fetched about a sovereign apiece; the punch-ladle realized £14 5s.; a cheese-toaster brought £12 6s.; an Oriental punch-bowl, £11 15s. Wine-glasses, engraved with the gridiron, sold for from 27s. to 34s. a pair. The actual gridiron, plain as it was, fetched 5-½ guineas. Eulogies have been written on the society, as if it had been a really meritorious institution, and endless anecdotes are told, chiefly illustrating the gluttony of the members; but such details are neither attractive in themselves nor profitable to the reader, and we will not enter into them. We agree with Thackeray's estimate of the club-life of the last century: 'It was too hard, too coarse a life.... All that fuddling and punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boozing, reduced the lives and enlarged the waistcoats of the men of that age.' But such were the convivial clubs of the past; it is as well to see the other side of things.
Addison, in support of his assertion that all clubs were founded on eating and drinking, says that the Kit-Kat Club itself is said to have taken its original from mutton-pies. If he means its name, he is, as far as can now be known, right; but if he means that its object was the consumption of pies, as the consumption of steaks was that of the 'Sublime' Beefsteaks, he was wrong. The Kit-Kat was the great Whig club of Queen Anne's time; it consisted of the principal noblemen and gentlemen who had opposed the arbitrary measures of James II., and was instituted about the year 1700 for the purpose ostensibly of encouraging literature and the fine arts, but really for promoting loyalty and allegiance to the Protestant succession in the House of Hanover. Among the forty-eight members were the Dukes of Marlborough and Newcastle; the Earls of Halifax, Dorset, and Wharton; Sirs Robert Walpole, John Vanbrugh, Richard Steele, Samuel Garth, Godfrey Kneller; Addison, Congreve, Pulteney, Walsh, and other persons, illustrious for rank or talent.
The real founder of the club is said to have been Jacob Tonson, the bookseller; he was for many years their secretary, and, in fact, the very pivot upon which the society revolved. Their meetings were originally held at a house in Shire Lane, close to Temple Bar, a lane which in time became infamous as the resort of thieves, rogues, and ruffians of every kind, though in previous years it had been fashionable. The house where they met was kept by one Christopher Katt, a pastrycook, famous for his mutton pies, which immortalized his name, since they became known by it, Kit being then a vulgar abbreviation of Christopher, and Katt being his surname, and from these pies the club took its name, the pies always forming part of its bill of fare. It seems strange that with so simple a derivation the origin of the name Kit-Kat should have been unknown even to Pope or Arbuthnot—it is uncertain to whom the lines are attributable—who wrote:
'Whence deathless Kit-Kat took his nameFew critics can unriddle:Some say from pastrycook it came,And some from Cat and Piddle.From no trim beans its name it boasts,Grey statesmen or green wits,But from this pell-mell pack of toasts,Of old Cats and young Kits.'
'Whence deathless Kit-Kat took his nameFew critics can unriddle:Some say from pastrycook it came,And some from Cat and Piddle.From no trim beans its name it boasts,Grey statesmen or green wits,But from this pell-mell pack of toasts,Of old Cats and young Kits.'
'Whence deathless Kit-Kat took his name
Few critics can unriddle:
Few critics can unriddle:
Some say from pastrycook it came,
And some from Cat and Piddle.
And some from Cat and Piddle.
From no trim beans its name it boasts,
Grey statesmen or green wits,
Grey statesmen or green wits,
But from this pell-mell pack of toasts,
Of old Cats and young Kits.'
Of old Cats and young Kits.'
Surely the name is simply that of the pastrycook, Kit (Christopher) Katt, given to his pies, and has no reference to old cats or young kits or kittens.
As regards the pies, Dr. King, in his 'Art of Cookery,' wrote:
'Immortal made as Kit-Kat by his pies;'
'Immortal made as Kit-Kat by his pies;'
'Immortal made as Kit-Kat by his pies;'
and in the prologue to 'The Reformed Wife,' a comedy, 1700, is the line:
'A Kit-Kat is a supper for a lord.'
'A Kit-Kat is a supper for a lord.'
'A Kit-Kat is a supper for a lord.'
Tonson had his own and the portraits of all the members painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller; each member gave him his.[#] The canvas was 36 inches by 28 inches, sufficiently long to show a hand, and the size is still known as the Kit-Kat. There were forty-two of those portraits, and they were first hung up in the club-room, but Tonson in time removed them to his country-house at Barn Elms, where he built a handsome room for their reception, and where the club frequently met. At his death in 1736, Tonson left them to his great-nephew, also an eminent bookseller, who died in 1767. The paintings were then removed to the house of his brother at Water-Oakley, near Windsor, and on his death to the house of Mr. Baker, one of the sons of Sir William Baker, who had married the elder of the two daughters of old Tonson; the house of this Mr. Baker is called the Park, situate at Hertingfordbury, where they still remain.
[#] They were all engraved in mezzotinto by the younger Faber.
As regards the room at Barn Elms referred to above, Sir Richard Phillips, in his 'Morning Walk from London to Kew,' in 1816, gives an account of his visit to it.
'A lane,' he says, 'brought me to Barn Elms, where now resides a Mr. Hoare, a banker, of London. The family were not at home, but on asking the servants if that was the house of Mr. Tonson, they assured me, with great naïveté, that no such gentleman lived there. I named the Kit-Kat Club as accustomed to assemble here, but the oddity of the name excited their ridicule, and I was told that no such club was held there; but perhaps, said one to the other, the gentleman means the club that assembles at the public-house on the common.... One of them exclaimed: "I should not wonder if the gentleman means the philosopher's room." "Aye," rejoined his comrade, "I remember somebody coming once before to see something of this sort, and my master sent him there." I requested, then, to be shown to this room, distinguished by so high an appellation, when I was conducted across a detached garden and brought to a handsome erection in the architectural style of the early part of the last century, evidently the establishment of the Kit-Kat Club! ... The man unfastened the decayed door of the building, and showed me the once elegant hall filled with cobwebs, a fallen ceiling, and accumulated rubbish. On the right the present proprietor had erected a copper, and converted one of the parlours into a wash-house. The door on the left led to a spacious and once superb staircase, now in ruins, presenting pendant cobwebs that hung from the lofty ceiling, and which seemed to be deserted even by the spiders.... I ascended the staircase; here I found the Kit-Kat Club-room nearly as it existed in its days of service. It was about 18 feet high, 40 feet long, and 20 wide. The mouldings and ornaments were in the most superb fashion of the day, but the whole was tumbling to pieces from the effects of the dry rot.... The marks and sizes [of the portraits] were still visible, and the numbers and names remained as written in chalk for the guide of the hanger.... On rejoining Mr. Hoare's man in the hall below ... he told me that his master intended to pull [the room] down.... Mr. Tonson's house had a few years since been taken down.'
In 'A Pilgrimage from London to Woolstrope,' communicated to theMonthly Magazineof June, 1818, the then home of the Kit-Kat Club pictures is thus referred to: 'I reached Hartingfordbury, and the magnificent seat of Wm. Baker, Esq.... Here I paid my homage to the forty-two portraits of the Kit Kat Club, and found myself in a splendid apartment. They [the portraits] are all in as fine a condition as though they had been painted but last year. I regretted, however, that the characteristic features are lost or disguised by the enormous perukes which disfigured the human countenance in their age. The whole looked like a wiggery, and the portrait of Tonson in his velvet cap was the only relief afforded by the entire assemblage.'
But even the Kit-Kat Club in time
'Descended from its high politic flavour,Down to a sentimental toasting savour.'Byron improved.
'Descended from its high politic flavour,Down to a sentimental toasting savour.'Byron improved.
'Descended from its high politic flavour,
Down to a sentimental toasting savour.'
Byron improved.
Byron improved.
The club was invaded by a spirit of gallantry. When a number of fashionable gentlemen meet, politics are all very well for a time; horses will afford the next subject of entertainment, but the women must come in in the end. And so the members of the Kit-Kat Club established the custom of every year electing some reigning beauty as a toast. To the queen of the year the members wrote epigrammatic verses, which were etched with a diamond on the club glasses, or a separate bowl was dedicated to her worship, and the lines engraved thereon. Some of the most celebrated of the toasts had their pictures hung up in the club-room. How Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, when only eight years old, was introduced and declared the beauty of the year, has often been told. Of course, to our more refined ideas of propriety the conduct of her father, the Duke of Kingston, in thus thrusting his infant daughter into the society of his roistering boon-companions, cannot but appear as highly reprehensible. Among the more celebrated of the toasts were the four daughters of the Duke of Marlborough: Lady Godolphin, Lady Sunderland, generally known as the Little Whig, Lady Bridgewater, and Lady Monthermer. Swift's friend, Mrs. Long, and the niece of Sir Isaac Newton were two others. Others were the Duchesses of Bolton, St. Albans, Richmond and Beaufort; also Lady Molyneux, who, Walpole says, died smoking a pipe.
We will conclude our account of this club with a few stray notes.
Three o'clock in the morning seems to have been no uncommon hour for the club to break up. Addison and Steele usually got drunk, so did Dr. Garth, the poet laureate of the club, wherefore a Tory lampooner said that at this club the youth of Anne's reign learned
'To sleep away the days, and drink away the nights.'
'To sleep away the days, and drink away the nights.'
'To sleep away the days, and drink away the nights.'
When Tonson had gone to live at Barn Elms, the members generally held their meetings at his house. In the summer they would resort to the Upper Flask tavern, near Hampstead Heath; but this practice did not continue long: there was too much difficulty in getting home after strong potations. The Upper Flask eventually became a private house, and was occupied by George Steevens, the celebrated critic and antiquary, till his death. The Kit-Kat Club died out before the year 1727, and we now take leave of it.
We have given accounts of a purely convivial, of a literary and artistic, and now will shortly describe a purely political club, of which, however, but little is known, namely, the Rota. It took its name from its object, namely, to promote the changing of certain Members of Parliament annually by rotation. It held its meetings at the Turk's Head, otherwise known as Miles' Coffee-house, in New Palace Yard, not far from the residence of James Harrington, which was in the Little Ambry (Almonry), looking into the Dean's yard. It was founded in 1659 for the dissemination of republican ideas, which Harrington had glorified in his 'Oceana,' and for resisting Cromwell's attempt to do without a Parliament and to establish an undisguised military despotism. The republicans took the alarm, and formed themselves into a debating society, says the Royalist Anthony Wood, to discuss the best form of government. Their discourses, according to this author, of ordering a commonwealth were the most ingenious and smart ever heard, for the arguments in the Parliament House were flat to these. This gang had a balloting box ... the room was every evening very full. Beside James Harrington and Henry Nevil, who were the prime men of the club, were Cyriac Skinner, Major Wildman, Roger Coke, author of the 'Detection of the Four Last Reigns,' William Petty and Maximilian Petty, and a great many others. The doctrines were very taking, and the more so because to human foresight there was no possibility of the King's return. The greatest of the Parliament men hated this rotation and balloting, as being against their power. Henry Nevil proposed it to the House; the third part of the House should vote out by ballot every year, and not be re-eligible for three years to come, so that every ninth year the Senate would be wholly changed. No magistrate was to continue above three years, and all were to be chosen by a sort of ballot. It is probable that Milton was a member of the Rota; Aubrey belonged to it in 1659. After the death of Cromwell the Rota gave great publicity to its proceedings, and acquired a high reputation for learning, talent, and eloquence, so that it became a question whether it were more honourable to belong to the Rota or the Society of Virtuosi, which had been designated by Boyle in 1646 'the Invisible or Philosophical Society.' The members of the Rota threw into the teeth of their rivals that they had an excellent faculty of magnifying a louse and diminishing a commonwealth. Charles II., who was a virtuoso himself, avenged this taunt by erecting, in 1664, the Virtuosi into the Royal Society, by dispersing the members of the Rota, and exiling Harrington for life to the island of St. Nicholas, near Plymouth; but he was afterwards released on bail, and died at his house in the Almonry in 1677. The statement that the Royal Society was established for political reasons, though it has often been contradicted, would thus seem not to be without foundation. In the third canto of the second part of 'Hudibras,' Sidrophel is said to be
'... as full of tricks,As Rota-men of politicks.'
'... as full of tricks,As Rota-men of politicks.'
'... as full of tricks,
'... as full of tricks,
As Rota-men of politicks.'