Part 5

The trial of a County Court action on a black-letter day, where Plaintiff and Defendant appear in person, where neither understands law, evidence, or procedure, and where the main object of each party is to overwhelm his opponent by a reckless fire of irrelevant statements, is not easy to conduct with suavity and dignity. The chief object of a County Court Judge, as it seems to me—I speak from many years’ experience—should be to suffer fools gladly without betraying any suspicion that he considers himself wise. Ninety-nine per cent. of the cases are like recurring decimals. They have happened, and will happen again and again. The same defence is raised under the same circumstances. To the shallow-witted Defendant it is an inspiration of mendacity, to the Judge it is a commonplace and expected deceit. All prisoners in a Police Court who are found with stolen goods upon them tell you that they have bought them from a man whose name they do not know. There is no copyright in such a defence, and it sounds satisfactory to each succeeding publisher of it. No doubt it is disappointing to find that the judge and jury have heard it before and are not disposed to believe it. In the same way in the County Court there are certain lines of defence that I feel sure students of folk-lore could tell us were put forward beneath the oak trees when the Druids sat in County Courts in prehistoric times. The serious difficulty lies in continuing to believe that a Defendant may arise who actually has a defence, and in discovering and rescuing a specimen of a properly defended action from a crowded museum of antique mendacities. Counter-claims, for instance, which of course are only filed in the bigger cases, are very largely imaginative. The betting against a valid counter-claim must be at least ten to one. It is, of course, in finding the one that there is scope for ingenuity. It is the necessity for constant alertness that makes the work interesting.

The women are the best advocates. Here, for instance, is a case in point.

A woman Plaintiff with a shawl over her head comes into the box, and an elderly collier, the Defendant, is opposite to her. The action is brought for nine shillings. I ask her to state her case.

“I lent yon mon’s missus my mon’s Sunday trousers to pay ’is rent, an’ I want ’em back.”

That seems to me, as a matter of pleading, as crisp and sound as can be. If the trousers had been worth five hundred pounds, a barrister would have printed several pages of statement of claim over them, but could not have stated his case better. My sympathies are with the lady. I know well the kindness of the poor to each other, and, won by the businesslike statement of the case, I turn round to the Defendant and ask him why the trousers are not returned and what his defence may be.

He smiles and shakes his head. He is a rough, stupid fellow, and something amuses him. I ask him to stop chuckling and tell me his defence.

“There’s nowt in it all,” is his answer.

I point out that this is vague and unsatisfactory, and that the words do not embody any defence to an action of detinue known to the law.

He is not disturbed. The lady gazes at him triumphantly. He is a slow man, and casually mentions “The ’ole street knows about them trousers.”

I point out to him that I have never lived in the street, and know nothing about it. He seems to disbelieve this and says with a chuckle, “Everyone knows about them trousers.”

I press him to tell me the story, but he can scarcely believe that I do not know all about it. At length he satisfies my curiosity.

“Why yon woman an’ my missus drank them trousers.”

The woman vociferates, desires to be struck dead and continues to live, but bit by bit the story is got at. Two ladies pawn the husband’s trousers, and quench an afternoon’s thirst with the proceeds. The owner of the Sunday trousers is told by his wife a story of destitution and want of rent, and the generous loan of garments. Every one in the street but the husband enjoys the joke. The indignant husband, believing in his wife, sues for the trousers and sends his wife to Court. The street comes down to see the fun, and when I decide for the Defendant there is an uprising of men, women, and babies, and the parties and their friends disappear while we call the next case. These are the little matters where it is easy to make a blunder, and where patience and attention and a knowledge of the ways and customs of the “’ole street” are worth much legal learning.

One must learn to sympathise with domestic frailties. I was rebuking a man, the other day, for backing up his wife in what was not only an absurd story, but one in which I could see he had no belief.

“You should really be more careful,” I said, “and I tell you candidly I don’t believe a word of your wife’s story.”

“You may do as yer like,” he said, mournfully, “but I’ve got to.”

The sigh of envy at the comparative freedom of my position as compared with his own was full of pathos.

A case of a workman who was being sued for lodging money gave me a new insight into the point of view of the clever but dissipated workman. His late landlady was suing for arrears run up when, as she said, he was “out of work.”

The phrase made him very angry.

“Look ’ere,” he said, “can that wumman kiss the book agen? She’s swearin’ false. I’ve never been out o’ wark i’ my life. Never.”

“Tummas,” says the old lady, in a soothingly irritating voice. “Think, Tummas.”

“Never been out o’ wark i’ my life,” he shouts.

“Oh, Tummas,” says the old lady, more in sorrow than in anger. “You remember Queen’s funeral. You were on the spree a whole fortneet.”

“Oh, ay!” says Thomas unabashed; “but you said out o’ wark. If you’re sayin’ on the spree I’m with yer, but I’ve never been out o’ wark i’ my life.”

It was a sad distinction for a clever working man to make, but a true one and to him an important one, and I rather fancy the nice old lady knew well what she was doing in her choice of phrase and hoped to score off Thomas by irritating him into an unseemly exhibition by the use of it.

A class of case that becomes very familiar arises out of the sale of a small business. A fried-fish shop is regarded by an enterprising widow who does not possess one as a mine of untold gold. She purchases one at a price above its value, fails from want of knowledge to conduct it successfully, and then brings an action for fraudulent misrepresentation against the seller. Of course, there are cases of fraud and misrepresentation; but, as a rule, there is nothing more than the natural optimistic statements of a seller followed by incompetence of the purchaser and the disgust of old customers. In a case of this sort, in which up to a point it was difficult to know where the truth lay, owing to the vague nature of the evidence, a graphic butcher gave a convincing account of the reason of the failure of the new management. He had come down to the Court in the interests of justice, leaving the abattoir—or as he called it “habbitoyre”—on his busiest morning.

“Yer see,” he said, “I knew the old shop well. I was in the ’abit of takin’ in a crowd of my pals on Saturday neet. So when the old Missus gave it up, I promised to give it a try wi’ the new Missus. Well, I went in twice, an’ there wor no sort o’ choice at all. There worn’t no penny fish, what there wor, wor ’a-penny fish, and bad at that, an’ the chips wor putty.”

It was obvious that the Plaintiff had started on a career for which Nature did not intend her, and that the cause of the failure of the business was not the fraud of the Defendant, but the culinary incompetence of the Plaintiff.

It is amazing how, apart altogether from perjury, two witnesses will give entirely different accounts of the same matter. No doubt there is a great deal of reckless evidence given and some perjury committed, but a great deal of the contradictory swearing arises from “natural causes,” as it were. A man is very ready to take sides, and discusses the facts of a case with his friend until he remembers more than he ever saw. In “running down” cases, where the witnesses are often independent folk and give their own evidence their own way, widely different testimony is given about the same event. One curious circumstance I have noticed in “running down” cases is that a large percentage of witnesses give evidence against the vehicle coming towards them. That is to say, if a man is walking along, and a brougham is in front of him and going the same way as he is, and a cab coming in the opposite direction collides with the brougham, I should expect that man to give evidence against the cab. I suppose the reason of that is that to a man so situated the brougham appears stationary and the cab aggressively dangerous, but whatever the reason may be the fact is very noticeable.

On the whole the uneducated man in the street is a better witness of outdoor facts than the clerk or warehouseman. The outdoor workers have, I fancy, a more retentive memory for things seen, and are more observant than the indoor workers. They do not want to refresh their memory with notes.

A story is told of a blacksmith who came to the farriery classes held by the Manchester Education authorities. The clerk in charge gave him a notebook and a pencil.

“Wot’s this ’ere for?” asks the blacksmith.

“To take notes,” replied the clerk.

“Notes? Wot sort o’ notes?”

“Why, anything that the lecturer says which you think important and want to remember, you make a note of it,” said the clerk.

“Oh,” was the scornful reply, “anything I want to remember I must make a note of in this ’ere book, must I? Then wot do you think my blooming yed’s for?”

It is the use and exercise of the “blooming yed” that makes the Lancashire workman the strong character he is. May it be long before the mother wit inside it is dulled by the undue use of the scholastic notebook.

Witnesses are often discursive, and the greatest ingenuity is devoted to keeping them to the point without breaking the thread of their discourse. Only long practice and a certain instinct which comes from having undergone many weary hours of listening can give you the knack of getting the pith and marrow of a witness’s story without the domestic and genealogical details with which he—and especially she—desires to garnish it.

I remember soon after I took my seat on the bench having an amusing dialogue with a collier. He had been sued for twelve shillings for three weeks’ rent. One week he admitted, and the week in lieu of notice, which leads to more friction between landlord and tenant than any other incident in their contract, was duly wrangled over and decided upon. Then came the third week, and the collier proudly handed in four years’ rent books to show nothing else was owing. The landlord’s agent pointed out that two years back a week’s rent was missing, and sure enough in the rent book was the usual cross instead of a four, showing that no rent had been paid for that week.

“How did that week come to be missed?” I asked the collier.

“I’ll never pay that week,” he said, shaking his head stubbornly. “Not laikely.”

“But,” I said, “I’m afraid you’ll have to. You see you admit it’s owing.”

“Well, I’ll just tell yer ’ow it was. You see we wor ’aving rabbit for supper, an’ my wife——”

He looked as if he was settling down for a long yarn, so I interposed: “Never mind about the rabbit, tell me about the rent.”

“I’m telling yer. Yer see we wor ’aving rabbit for supper, an’ my wife ’ad got a noo kettle, an’ we don’t ’ave rabbit every——”

“Oh, come, come,” I said impatiently, “just tell me about the rent.”

He looked at me rather contemptuously, and began again at the very beginning.

“I’m telling yer, if yer’ll only listen. We wor ’aving rabbit for supper, an’ my wife ’ad got a noo kettle, an’ we don’t ’ave rabbit every neet for supper, an’ my wife ’ad just put the kettle, the noo kettle——”

“Oh, never mind about the kettle, do please get to the rent,” I said, and was immediately sorry I had spoken.

“I’m getting to it, ain’t I?” he asked, rather angrily. “We wor ’aving rabbit for supper”—I groaned inwardly and resolved to sit it out without another word—“an’ my wife ’ad got a noo kettle, an’ we don’t ’ave rabbit every neet for supper, an’ my wife ’ad just put the kettle—the noo kettle with the rabbit—on to th’ fire, when down coom chimley an’ aw into middle o’ room. Was I going to pay rent for that week? Not laikely!”

It turned out that I was wholly in the wrong, and that the destruction of the rabbit was a kind of equitable plea in defence to the action for rent. When I am tempted now to burst in too soon upon an irrelevant story, I think of the rabbit and am patient. Of course all rabbit stories are not even equitable defences, but the diagnosis of what is purely domestic and dilatory and of what is apparently anecdotal but in reality relevant gives a distinct charm to one’s daily work.

One day of my life every month is given up to the trial of Yiddish cases. The Yiddisher is a litigious person, and his best friend would not describe him as a very accurate witness. One ought to remember, however, that he has not had generations of justice administered to him, that he is a child and beginner in a court of law, and that the idea of a judge listening to his story and deciding for him upon the evidence is, in some cases from personal experience and in all cases from hereditary instinct, an utterly unfamiliar thing. The fact, too, that he speaks Yiddish, or very broken English, and never answers a question except by asking another, always gives his evidence an indirect flavour. One strong point about a Yiddisher is his family affection, and he swears in tribes, so to speak. A Christian in a family dispute will too often swear anything against his brother, and is often wickedly reckless in his sworn aspersions. A Yiddisher, on the other hand, will swear anything for his brother, and most Yiddish evidence could be discounted by an accurate percentage according to the exact relationship by blood or marriage of the witness to the Plaintiff or Defendant.

It is needless to say a foreign-speaking race such as this gives one some anxiety and trouble in a small-debt court. One of my earliest Yiddish experiences was a case in which two Yiddishers each brought his own interpreter. A small scrap of paper cropped up in the case with some Hebrew writing on it. One interpreter swore it was a receipt, the other that it was an order for a new pair of boots. Without knowing anything of Hebrew, it occurred to me that these divergent readings were improbable. The case was adjourned. I applied to some of my friends on that excellent body, the Jewish Board of Guardians, a respectable interpreter was obtained, and the Hebrew document properly translated. There is now an official interpreter attached to the Manchester Court, and I think I can safely congratulate the Yiddish community on a distinct improvement in their education in the proper use of English law courts.

That some of them have the very vaguest notions of the principles on which we administer justice may be seen from the following story which happened some years ago. A little flashy Yiddish jeweller who spoke very bad English, had taken out a judgment summons against an old man who appeared broken down in health and pocket. I asked the little man for evidence of means which would justify me in committing the debtor to prison.

“Vell,” he says, “I vill tell you. He ish in a very larsh vay of pizness indeed. He has zree daughters vorking for him and several hands as vell, and zare is a great deal of monish coming into ze house.”

The old man told a sad story of ill-health, loss of business, and said that his daughters had to keep him. It turned out that there was a Yiddish gentleman in Court, Mr. X., who knew him, and Mr. X. corroborated the defendant’s story in every particular. He had had a good business, but was now being kept by his daughters, having broken down in health.

I turned to the little jeweller and said: “You have made a mistake here.”

“It ish no mishtake at all,” he cried excitedly. “Mr. X. ish a very bad man. He and the Defendant are both cap makers, and are vot you call in English a long firm.”

This was too much for Mr. X.—a most respectable tradesman—and he called out: “My Lorts, may I speak?” Without waiting for leave, he continued very solemnly: “My Lorts, I have sworn by Jehovah that every vord I say ish true, but I vill go furder than that. I vill put down ten pounds in cash, and it may be taken avay from me if vot I say ish not true.”

The offer was made with such fervour and sincerity that I thought it best to enter into the spirit of the thing.

Turning to the little man, I asked: “Are you ready to put down ten pounds that what you say is true?”

He looked blank and lost, and, shaking his head, murmured sadly, “No, it ish too motch.”

I pointed out to him how his attitude about the ten pounds went to confirm the evidence for the Defendant, and seeing his case slipping away from under his feet, he cried out, as if catching at the last straw, “My Lorts thish ish not mine own case, thish ish mine farder’s case, and I vill put down ten pounds of mine farder’s monish that vot I say ish true.”

The offer was not accepted, and the Defendant was not committed. But the story throws light on the rudimentary ideas that some Yiddishers have of the administration of justice.

And now we have finished the list of cases, but there are a few stragglers left in Court. Some of them have been in the wrong Court, or come on the wrong day; some have applications to make, or advice to ask. I always make a point now of finding out what these folk want before leaving the bench. I remember in my early days a man coming before me the first thing one morning, and saying he had sat in my Court until the end of yesterday’s proceedings.

“Why didn’t you come up at the end of the day,” I asked, “and make your application then?”

“I was coming,” he replied, “but at the end of last case you was off your chair an’ bolted through yon door like a rabbit.” I think his description was exaggerated, but I rise in a more leisurely way nowadays, though I am still glad when the day’s work is over.

I do not know that what I have written will convey any clear idea of the day of my life that I have been asked to portray. I know it is in many respects a very dull grey life, but it has its brighter moments in the possibilities of usefulness to others. I am not at all sure that the black-letter jurisdiction of a big urban County Court ought not to be worked by a parish priest rather than by a lawyer. I know that it wants a patience, a sympathy, and a belief in the goodness of human nature that we find in those rare characters who give up the good things in this world for the sake of working for others. I am very conscious of my own imperfections; but I was once greatly encouraged by a criticism passed upon me which I accidentally overheard, and which I am conceited enough to repeat. I was going away from the Court, and passed two men walking slowly away. I had decided against them, and they were discussing why I had done so.

“Well, ’ow on earth ’e could do it I don’t see, do you, Bill?”

“’E’s a fool.”

“Yes, ’e’s a fool, a —— fool, but ’e did ’is best.”

“Ay. I think ’e did ’is best.”

After all, coming from such source or indeed from any source, the suggestion contained in the conversation was very gratifying. I have often thought that one might rest beneath an unkinder epitaph than this:

HE WAS A —— FOOL, BUT HE DID HIS BEST.

DOROTHY OSBORNE.

_Iachimo._ Here are letters for you.

_Posthumus._ Their tenor good, I trust.

_Iachimo._ ’Tis very like.

_Cymbeline_ ii. 4.

They had set (it is years ago now) the Period of the Restoration as subject for the Historical Essay Prize at Oxbridge. I had been advised to read Courtenay’s _Life of Sir William Temple_. It would give me an insight into the times, and a thorough knowledge of the Triple Alliance.

It was in my uncle’s library that I found the book—two octavo volumes of memoirs bound in plain green cloth, with mouldy yellow backs. I remember it well, and the circumstances surrounding it.

I threw open the windows, piled all the red cushions into one window seat, placed a chair for my feet, and took up the volumes. I cast my eyes over the contents of Vol. I.: a portrait of Temple—a handsome fellow—engraved by one Dean, after Sir Peter; a genealogical table. Ugh! And twenty chapters of negotiations to follow. My uncle was right, it was undoubtedly a dull book.

The second volume looked more interesting; there was something in it about Swift. Memory asserting herself, I remembered Temple to be Swift’s first patron, and Stella, I fancy, was Lady Temple’s maid. Happy Stella! At that moment a piece of paper fluttered out of the volume in my hand on to the floor, driving the Dean and his affairs out of my head. I picked it up. An old paper, brown at its edges and foldings, singed by time. On it were some verses—a sonnet. It ran thus:—

“TO DOROTHY OSBORNE,

“Why has no laureate, in golden song, Wreathed rhythmic honours for her name alone, Who worships now anear a purer throne? And chosen, from that lovely, loyal throng Of wantons ambling devilward along At beck of God’s Anointed, one to praise, Of brightest wit, yet pure through works and days, Constant in love, in every virtue strong. Dorothy, gift of God, it was not meant, That thy bright light should shine upon the few, Within the straitened circle of thy life; Failing to reach mankind and represent His own ideal, manifest in you, Of holy woman and the perfect wife.”

I was a sonneteer myself, and therefore critical. This effort (was it my uncle’s?) did not seem to me of portentous genius. I hate your sonneteer who has more than two rhymes in his octett. It proves him a coward at the measure, one who is burdened by those shackles in which he should move as skilfully and lightly as a clever dancer bound to the knees on stilts. Those two subdominant rhymes were misplaced; so was the sudden stop in the sixth line, the violent _cæsura_ in the sense, sending a cold shiver through the cultured mind. I did not admire the sestett either in its arrangement, but much liberty has always been allowed in the management of the sestett. For an amateur sonnet, I had read, nay, I will be just, I had written worse.

But whom does this sonnet describe? Dorothy Osborne, who is she? Lady Temple, answers Courtenay, and says little more. But she has written her own life, and painted her own character, as none else could have done it for her, in letters written to her husband before marriage. When I had read these, I pitied the unknown, and forbore to criticise his sonnet. I, too, could have written sonnets, roundels, ballads by the score to celebrate her praise. But I remembered Pope’s chill warning about those who “rush in where angels fear to tread,” and, full of humility I did not apply it to my friend the sonneteer, but—to myself.