WITH LORD BIRKENHEAD ON THE WOOLSACK
Hehad thrown himself negligently into a formidable wooden armchair. Lace ruffles of the eighteenth century clung round his wrists, and partly concealed his hands. Crossed over its fellow-knee, he displayed with pardonable ostentation a powerful calf, set on a shapely ankle, and set off by the silken hose of his high office. A prodigious cigar—Flor Monumento—protruded from the corner of his mouth. Intellectual intolerance was the distinguishing characteristic of his face.
The gentlemen ushers, marshals, petty bag keepers, javelin men and other menials, who had heralded me into the presence, bowed themselves obsequiously out. I sat down nervously on the edge of a chair. He eyed me with a freezing compound of disdainful curiosity and disfavour. Abashed out of countenance, I slipped out of my hands and fell on the floor with a faint thud. It seemed that it would only add to the solecism if I began groping about on the floor for myself—I made up my mind that I would let myself lie where I had fallen, until he wasn’t looking; but, somewhat to my surprise, he picked me up in the most courtly manner, dusted me, and restored me to my chair.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said reassuringly. “It’s the look that does it. No witness has ever resisted it yet. They used to curl up, and go limp, and lean over the side of the box, when I began my cross-examination; and it has not lost its power.”
“Have you ever tried it on Mr. Lloyd George?” I gasped.
“Once,” he replied, “only once, and that long ago—for, you understand, it would hardly be fitting in me to hamper and embarrass His Majesty’s Government.”
“Was it effective?”
“I think I may claim that it impaired his digestion seriously for a few days. He tried to resist it, you see, and the after-effects in such a case become cumulatively more powerful.... As a matter of fact, his visit to Gairloch—well, perhaps I’d better say nothing further. Of course, the remainder of the Cabinet are the merest children. I can quell Fisher or Horne with comparative ease; I have even succeeded in making Curzon blush; and, as you know, on a recent occasion I overthrew poor Carson so severely that for several days they despaired of his reason. My castigations are notorious. Let me warn you to take great care....”
“Would it,” I began nervously, “would it fall under the heading of incurring a castigation, if Iwere so presumptuous as to inquire about your hobbies?”
“By no means. A very proper question. I am devoted to all sports. Football, cricket, tennis, water polo, lion hunting, kiss-in-the-ring and spillikins are among my favourites; but I think that most of all I enjoy a quiet game of pogo with the Cabinet.... Sing? Yes, I sing frequently. My favourite song? I think my favourite is that fine old ditty, ‘Rendle, My Son.’ You are unacquainted with it?” He broke into a prodigious baritone:
“Where have you been all the night, Rendle, my son?Where have you been all the night, my pretty one?At the O.P. Club, dear mother.Make my bed soon,For F. E. was there, and I fain would lie down.”
“Where have you been all the night, Rendle, my son?Where have you been all the night, my pretty one?At the O.P. Club, dear mother.Make my bed soon,For F. E. was there, and I fain would lie down.”
“Where have you been all the night, Rendle, my son?Where have you been all the night, my pretty one?At the O.P. Club, dear mother.Make my bed soon,For F. E. was there, and I fain would lie down.”
“Where have you been all the night, Rendle, my son?
Where have you been all the night, my pretty one?
At the O.P. Club, dear mother.
Make my bed soon,
For F. E. was there, and I fain would lie down.”
“Indeed,” he continued, “I am devoted to simple old songs of all kinds—‘Weel May the Dail Row,’ for instance, and ‘Solly in Our Alley.’”
“And now,” I ventured to say, “... I was instructed to ask you for a Christmas message to the public.”
“If you will write something of the necessary degree of sickliness, I’ve no objection to signing it,” he replied. “Or wait.... It happensthat I have to deliver a judgment in the House this afternoon, in the case of a curious old man named Klaus against the Attorney-General for detinue, wrongful imprisonment, and a declaration of nationality. He has been excluded from the country under some of the numerous regulations of the Defence of the Realm Act, and his sack, which appears to contain an astonishing miscellany of objects, has been confiscated by the Customs authorities.... Would that serve your purpose? It will figure in the next edition of my judgments.”
“If I might hear it, perhaps....”
“Certainly.” He drew a formidable case-book from the shelf behind him, adjusted a pair of horn spectacles, and read as follows:
“In this case your lordships have been moved to set aside a decision by the Court of Appeal, affirming the decision of the King’s Bench, whereby the Attorney-General, the Sheriff, and the Justices of Lower Mudhaven were upheld in refusing admission into this country to the appellant, S. Klaus, a person of indubitable ex-enemy origin, but widely esteemed in this country, who carries on an old-established business in many parts of the world.
“It has been claimed on behalf of the appellant that, by long use, he has acquired a prescriptive domicile amounting to British nationality, which,since it has been enjoyed without interruption for more than ninety years, is to be taken, by irrebuttable presumption, as having arisen in time immemorial, which, as we are all aware, means from the time of Richard I. It was contended for the Crown, that, by reason of the various statutes and regulations prohibiting the presence of enemies in this country during the war of 1914-1918, this user was in law interrupted, and therefore is bad as a plea. The appellant replies that, despite the prohibitions, he did, in fact, continue to ply his calling here during the four years in question; and in the Court below he called a number of witnesses, whose credit is in no way impeached, to depose that, to their knowledge, at a certain season in each year, he visited this country in order to keep his business afloat. This is certainly a matter to which the attention of the proper authorities ought to be drawn, for clearly at that time the appropriate person to have carried on his affairs was the Controller of Enemy Businesses under the supervision of the Public Trustee; and some inquiry seems to me to be called for, into the neglect of that official to carry out his duties. This, however, by the way.
“Passing over the testimony of Elsie Biggers and John Marmaduke Baxter-Cunliffe, also known by the alias of ‘Tweety,’ both of whom depose to having seen the appellant descend through thechimney in their respective houses a year ago, but whose tender years—three in the first case and two and a-half, as I believe, in the second—raise a doubt in my mind as to their understanding of the nature of an oath, there is unquestionable and unimpeachable evidence of some person or persons unknown having placed a variety of articles in the houses, and, indeed, in the stockings, of a number of the deponents in this cause, which were not there before. The appellant avers that it was he who placed them there; and, as no alternative hypothesis has been advanced by the Crown, I should, I think, be disposed to accept the appellant’s word as conclusive, were it necessary for me, in advising your lordships as to the judgment which your lordships will shortly deliver, to pronounce either upon one side or upon the other in this conflict of testimony—so far as it can be so called.
“But is it necessary to go into these questions? Mr. Attorney-General,arguendo, has urged upon us that, where a person performs an act of which he is legally incapable, then it is as if the act in question had not been performed; and he cites the cases of a child under seven, who isdoli incapax, and of a child between seven and fourteen, who isprima facie doli incapax, and the case of a minor incurring a debt other than for necessaries, and of a person who makes a will, not in due formof law. From these premises, he contends that, since it was illegal for the appellant to come to, or be in, this country, it must be taken, for our purposes, that he was never there; and the plea of prescriptive domicile must fall to the ground.
“My lords, I am unable to resist this argument. Where a person, whether wilfully or not, steps outside the ambit of the law, it is clearly established that he does so at his own risk; and ignorance will not thereafter avail him as an excuse. I must advise your lordships to pronounce, that, despite the evidence, the appellant was not in this country during the war, that the user upon which he bases his title was interrupted during that time, and, consequently, that his first plea must fail——”
He broke off, and looked at me, quizzically.
“What do you think of that reasoning?” he asked. “Ingenious, isn’t it?”
“Hardly ingenuous though,” I murmured; “and it seems to me——”
He drew himself to his full height, and glared. One corner of his mouth went down, and the other rose to the level of his lower eyelid. It was the celebrated sneer.
“No doubt,” he said icily, “no doubt in the purlieus of Tooting Bec or Brockley, whichever you inhabit, remarks of that kind pass current as wit. I daresay, among cannibals and anthropoidapes, there is to be found a rough sense of coarse buffoonery that is tickled by such vulgar exuberance; but, among the aristocracy of an old civilisation, your behaviour would provoke pity, rather than mirth, were it not that, with us, the impudence of a scavenger is accounted a more noxious thing than his trade——”
“Really,” I began, “I must protest——”
“What? Argument?” he cried harshly. He smote a bell. An old and trembling man doddered into the room. He pointed dramatically.
“Remove it,” he ordered.... I judged it best to remove myself.
And as I walked away along the corridor the notes of “Rendle, My Son” floated after me. Only at that distance I could not be quite sure that the name was Rendle.