Part 6
The funny thing about the House of Lords sitting as a court is that it actually sits in the House of Lords. Entering the great red chamber--as anybody may do if he can find the way--one receives the impression that it is perfectly empty, save for the knot of barristers’ clerks, solicitors’ clerks, pressmen and casual onlookers who are huddled round the entrance. Beyond them are miles, and miles, and miles of red leather benches, silent, mournful, untenanted, dead. But no! A low monotonous drone reaches you--like the voice of a priest intoning at the other end of a cathedral. Guided by this sound you discover faint traces of life on one of the vast red benches. There is an old man sitting on the bench, a pleasant, bearded old man; he does not look at all legal, and he is dressed in every-day clothes, huddled up in front of a sort of small card-table covered with huge tomes. He is speaking apparently into space--in a kind of squeaky hum, if you can imagine the sound--fumbling all the time with the large brown tomes.
Look again. Beyond him, a very long way off, is another old man, a very, very jolly old man, with another beard, another card-table, and more tomes. He is staring with profundity at the bench opposite. Following his gaze, you detect with amazement another old man, all alone on the great red bench. No, not alone. With something of the sensations of a man who stands by a stagnant pond or looks at a drop of drinking water through a microscope to discover that it is teeming with life, you detect yet a fourth old man on the very same bench, though, of course, a long way away. Both of them are equipped as the others, though one of them, for some reason which does not appear, has no beard. You are ready for anything now, so quite quickly you find the fifth old man, far, far away in the distance, all alone on an island in the emptiness, so far off that he seems to be cut off from all communication with the other old men, or anyone else. Yet suddenly his lips move, and it is seen that he is speaking. He is the presiding old man, and he begins speaking while the first old man is still droning. From the faint movement of his head and the far gleam of his eyes you draw the conclusion that he is speaking to some living creature in your own neighborhood; and, sure enough, you find that close to you, but curtained off, there are seven or eight men shut up in a wooden pen about seven feet square. These must be the prisoners, and that is the dock, you think. But no, it is the barristers; as the House of Lords is very holy they are only allowed to huddle on the doorstep. One of them is standing in front of the pen at a sort of lectern, wearing a big wig (the special House of Lords wig), and waiting patiently till the old men have stopped squeaking. Most of the other men in the pen are asleep, but two of them are crouching intently behind the other one, and they keep tugging at his gown, or poking him in the back, and whispering suggestions at him. When they do this he whispers back with an aspect of calm, “Yes, yes--I follow,” but you know he does not follow, and you know he is really in a great rage, because he is trying to hear with the other ear what the old man is saying, and the old man is so far away and his voice is so gentle, and his sentences are so long and so full of parentheses, very often in Latin, that it is hard enough to have to follow him, without being whispered at from the rear.
At last the old man shuts his mouth very firmly in a legal manner, and it is clear that he has stopped speaking. It is the barrister’s turn. He starts off with a huge sentence about “the presumption of intent under the Drains and Mortgages (Consolidation) Act, 1892,” but when he is right in the middle of it the fourth old man, whom everybody supposed to be fast asleep, wakes up and asks the barrister an awkward question about the Amending Act of 1899, just to show that he has got a grip of the whole thing. The barrister has not the faintest idea what the answer is, but he begins one immediately, as if it was quite easy, for that is the game. While he is groping about in the middle of a huge remark which means nothing at present but may very likely lead him to the right answer in the end, the third old man, in order to confuse the barrister, makes an interjection which he pretends is on the same point, but is really on a totally different point, which the barrister did not propose to deal with for days and days to come. When I say “interjection” I mean that he delivers extremely slowly a sentence of inconceivable duration, a sentence so long that it seems really as if it would never end. Finally, the presiding old man decides that it is time it did end, so he interrupts rather testily. Then all the old men frankly abandon the pretence that the barrister has got anything to do with it, and they just argue quietly with each other across the vast red spaces. Meanwhile, the poor men in the pen try to stretch their legs, and mutter fiercely at each other. Four or five of them are immensely distinguished K.C.’s, earning thousands and thousands a year, the very first men in their profession. Yet they tamely submit to being confined in a tiny space where there is no room for their papers, or their tomes, let alone their legs, for days and days and sometimes weeks, with the whole of the House of Lords empty in front of them except for the five old men who spend the day badgering them at ease from comfortable sofas.
To argue a case in the House of Lords must be one of the severest strains to which middle-aged men are ever subjected; it requires tremendous qualities of concentration and patience and intellectual quickness (not to speak of the labour of preparing the cases beforehand). At half-past one, when they have endured this for three hours, they dash out to lunch; they are lucky if they get anything to eat before twenty minutes to two, but at two (presumably because the House of Lords is required for legislative purposes when they have done with it) they have to dash back to the pen again, where digestion must be quite impossible, even if you are not required to argue with the old men. No manual labourer in the world would tolerate such conditions for a day. Either he would break out of the pen and put up his feet on the red benches, or, very sensibly, he would insist that the House of Lords, when sitting as a court, must sit in a place which was suitable for a court, if it was only a committee-room in the upper purlieus of the House.
I cannot imagine why the barristers do not say that. It is not as if there was any impressive pomp or ceremony connected with this archaic survival; if there were, it might be worth it. But nothing could be less impressive than these old men mumbling desolately in everyday clothes and beards at rows and rows of empty red sofas. I am told that when the Lord Chancellor presides he does wear robes, but the other Lords still wear mufti. That must be a great sight, but not, I should think, extravagantly solemn.
But perhaps that is the real secret of the British Constitution--our capacity to extract solemnity from the incongruous or the merely dull. I once heard the House of Lords deliver judgment--after days and days of argument--in a case of the highest constitutional importance, involving the rights of the Crown, and what remain of the rights of the subject. All England was waiting with real interest for the issue. One by one the old men read out their long opinions, opinions of great profundity and learning and care, opinions of the greatest judges in the land, universally and rightly respected, opinions that will be quoted in every history and text-book, in every constitutional case, for hundreds of years to come. It took nearly a day to read them. While they were being read, the old men who were not reading, the barristers, the odd dozen of “the public,” the clerks, everybody--sat or stood in a sort of coma of stupefied boredom, gazing at nothing. No one stirred. Only, very far away, the gentle voice of the old man might have been heard rolling up to the roof, and squeaking about in the corners, and buzzing about like a sleepy bee under the benches--and always with a faint note of querulous amazement, as if the old man could not believe that anyone was listening to what he was saying. And he was right--for nobody was.
We are a marvellous nation.
Little Bits of London
II
“THE BEAR GARDEN”
The authors of the guide-books have signally failed to discover the really interesting parts of Law-land. I have looked through several of these books and not one of them refers, for example, to the “Bear-Garden,” which is the place where the preliminary skirmishes of litigation are carried out. The Bear-Garden is the name given to it by the legal profession, so I am quite in order in using the title. In fact, if you want to get to it, you have to use that title. The proper title would be something like The Place where Masters in Chambers function at Half-past One: but if you go into the Law Courts and ask one of the attendants where that is, he will say, rather pityingly, “Do you mean the _Bear-Garden_?” And you will know at once that you have lost caste. Caste is a thing you should be very careful of in these days; so the best thing is to ask for the Bear-Garden straightaway. It is in the purlieus of the Law Courts, and very hard to find. It is up a lot of very dingy back staircases and down a lot of very dingy passages. The Law Courts are like all our public buildings. The parts where the public is allowed to go are fairly respectable, if not beautiful, but the purlieus and the basements and the upper floors are scenes of unimaginable dinginess and decay. The Law Courts’ purlieus are worse than the Houses of Parliament purlieus; and it seems to me that even more disgraceful things are done in them. It only shows you the dangers of Nationalization.
On the way to the Bear-Garden you pass the King’s Remembrancer’s rooms; this is the man who reminds His Majesty about people’s birthdays; and in a large family like that he must be kept busy. Not far from the King’s Remembrancer there is a Commissioner for Oaths; you can go into this room and have a really good swear for about half a crown. This is cheaper than having it in the street--that is, if you are a gentleman; for by the Profane Oaths Act, 1745, swearing and cursing is punishable by a fine of 1s. for every day-labourer, soldier or seaman; 2s. for every other person under the degree of gentleman; and 5s. for every person far above the degree of gentleman. This is not generally known. The Commissioner for Oaths is a very broad-minded man, and there is literally no limit to what you may swear before him. The only thing is that he insists on your filing it before you actually say it. This may cause delay, so that if you are feeling particularly strongly about anything, it is probably better to have it out in the street and risk being taken for a gentleman.
There are a number of other interesting functionaries on the way to the Bear-Garden; but we must get on. When you have wandered about in the purlieus for a long time you will hear a tremendous noise, a sort of combined snarling and roaring and legal conversation. When you hear that you will know that you are very near the bears. They are all snarling and roaring in a large preliminary arena, where the bears prepare themselves for the struggle; all round it are smaller cages or arenæ, where the struggle takes place. If possible, you ought to go early so that you can watch the animals massing. Lawyers, as I have had occasion to observe before, are the most long-suffering profession in the country, and the things they do in the Bear-Garden they have to do in the luncheon-hour, or rather in the luncheon half-hour, 1.30 to 2. This accounts, perhaps, for the extreme frenzy of the proceedings. They hurry in in a frenzy up the back stairs about 1.25, and they pace up and down in a frenzy till the time comes. There are all sorts of bears, most of them rather seedy old bears, with shaggy and unkempt coats. These are solicitors’ clerks, and they all come straight out of Dickens. They have shiny little private-school handbags, each inherited, no doubt, through a long line of ancestral solicitors’ clerks; and they all have the draggled sort of moustache that tells you when it is going to rain. While they are pacing up and down the arena they all try to get rid of these moustaches by pulling violently at alternate ends; but the only result is to make it look more like rain than ever. Some of the bears are robust old bears, with well-kept coats and loud roars; these are solicitors’ clerks too, only better-fed; or else they are real solicitors. And a few of the bears are perky young creatures--in barrister’s robes--either for the first time--when they look very self-conscious--or for the second time--when they look very self-confident. All the bears are telling each other about their cases. They are saying, “We are a deceased wife’s sister suing _in forma pauperis_,” or, I am a discharged bankrupt, three times convicted of perjury, but I am claiming damages under the Diseases of Pigs Act, 1862,” or “You are the crew of a merchant ship and we are the editor of a newspaper----” Just at first it is rather disturbing to hear snatches of conversation like that, but there is no real cause for alarm; they are only identifying themselves with the interests of their clients, and when one realizes that one is a little touched.
At last one of the keepers at the entrance to the small cages begins to shout very loudly. It is not at all clear what he is shouting, but apparently it is the pet-names of the bears, for there is a wild rush for the various cages. Attaching himself to this rush the observer is swept with a struggling mass of bears past the keeper into a cage. Across the middle of the cage a stout barricade has been erected, and behind the barricade sits the Master, pale but defiant. Masters in Chambers are barristers who have not the proper legal faces and have had to give up being ordinary barristers on that account; in the obscurity and excitement of the Bear-Garden nobody notices that their faces are all wrong. The two chief bears rush at the Master and the other bears jostle round them, egging them on. When they see that they cannot get at the Master they begin snarling. One of them snarls quietly out of a long document about the Statement of Claim. He throws a copy of this at the Master, and the Master tries to get the hang of it while the bear is snarling; but the other bear is by now beside himself With rage and he begins putting in what are called interlocutory snarls, so that the Master gets terribly confused, though he doesn’t let on. By and by all pretence of formality and order is put aside, and the battle really begins. At this stage of the proceedings the rule is that not less than two of the protagonists must be roaring at the same time, of which one must be the Master. But the more general practice is for all three of them to roar at the same time. Sometimes, it is true, by sheer roar-power, the Master succeeds in silencing one of the bears for a moment, but he can never be said to succeed in cowing a bear. If anybody is cowed it is the Master. Meanwhile, the lesser bears press closer and closer, pulling at the damp ends of their rainy moustaches and making whispered suggestions for new devilries in the ears of the chief bears, who nod their heads emphatically, but don’t pay any attention. The final stage is the stage of physical violence, when the chief bears lean over the barricade and shake their paws at the Master; they think they are only making legal gestures, but the Master knows very well that they are getting out of hand; he knows then that it is time he threw them a bun. So he says a soothing word to each of them and runs his pen savagely through almost everything on their papers. The bears growl in stupefaction and rage, and take deep breaths to begin again. But meanwhile the keeper has shouted for a fresh set of bears, who surge wildly into the room. The old bears are swept aside and creep out, grunting. What the result of it all is I don’t know. Nobody knows. The new bears begin snarling....
Little Bits of London
III
BILLINGSGATE
In order to see Billingsgate properly in action it is necessary to get up at half-past four and travel on the Underground by the first train East, which is an adventure in itself. The first train East goes at three minutes past five, and there are large numbers of people who travel in it every day; by Charing Cross it is almost crowded. It is full of Bolshevists; and I do not wonder. One sits with one’s feet up in a first-class carriage, clutching a nice cheap workman’s ticket and trying hard to look as if, like the Bolshevists, one did this every day.
On arriving at the Monument Station one walks briskly past the seductive announcement that “The Monument is Now Open,” and plunges into a world of fish. I have never been able to understand why fish are so funny. On the comic stage a casual reference to fish is almost certain to provoke a shout of laughter; in practice, and especially in the mass, it is not so funny; it is like the Government, an inexhaustible source of humour at a distance, and in the flesh extraordinarily dull.
Over the small streets which surround the market hangs a heavy pall of fishy vapour. The streets are full of carts; the carts are full of fish. The houses in the streets are fish-dealers’ places, more or less full of fish. The pavements are full of fish-porters, carrying fish, smelling of fish. Fragments of conversation are heard, all about fish. Fish lie sadly in the gutters. The scales of fish glitter on the pavements. A little vigorous swimming through the outlying fisheries brings you to the actual market, which is even more wonderful. Imagine a place like Covent Garden, and nearly as big, but entirely devoted to fish. In the place of those enchanting perspectives of flower-stalls, imagine enormous regiments of fish-stalls, paraded in close order and groaning with halibut and conger-eel, with whiting and lobsters and huge crabs. Round these stalls the wholesale dealers wade ankle-deep in fish. Steadily, maliciously, the great fish slide off the stalls on to the floor; steadily the dealers recover them and pile them up on their small counters, or cast them through the air on to other counters, or fling them into baskets in rage or mortification or sheer bravado.
The dealers are men with business-faces, in long white coats, surprisingly clean. Every now and then they stop throwing crabs into baskets or retrieving halibut from the floor, and make little entries in long note-books. I do not know exactly what entries they make, but I think they must all be in for some competition, and are making notes about their scores; one man I watched had obviously just beaten the record for halibut retrieving. He retrieved so many in about a minute that the tops of his boots were just beginning to show. When he had done that he made such long notes in his book about it that most of the halibut slid on to the floor again while he was doing it. Then he began all over again. But I expect he won the prize.
Meanwhile about a million fish-porters are dashing up and down the narrow avenues between the fish-stalls, porting millions of boxes of fish. Nearly all of them, I am glad to say, have been in the army or have had a relative in the army; for they are nearly all wearing the full uniform of a company cook, which needs no description. On their heads they have a kind of india-rubber hat, and on the india-rubber hat they have a large box of fish weighing about six stone--six _stone_, I tell you. This box they handle as if it was a box of cigars. They pick it up with a careless gesture; they carry it as if it was a slightly uncomfortable hat, and they throw it down with another careless gesture, usually on to another box of fish; this explains why so many of one’s herrings appear to have been maimed at sea.
When they have finished throwing the boxes about they too take out a notebook and make notes about it all. This, it seems, is to make sure that they are paid something for throwing each box about. I don’t blame them. It must be a hard life. Yet if I thought I could pick up six stone of salmon and plaice and throw it about I should sign on at Billingsgate at once. It is true they start work about five; but they stop work, it seems, about ten, and they earn a pound and over for that. Then they can go home. Most of them, I imagine, are stockbrokers during the rest of the day.
And they are a refined and gentlemanly body of men. I hope the old legend that the fish-porter of Billingsgate expresses himself in terms too forcible for the ordinary man is now exploded; for it is a slander. In fact, it is a slander to call him a “porter”; at least in these days I suppose it is libellous to connect a man falsely with the N.U.R., if only by verbal implication. But, however that may be, I here assert that the Billingsgate fish-porter is a comparatively smooth and courteous personage, and, considering his constant association with fish in bulk, I think it is wonderful.
At the far end of the market is the river Thames; and on the river Thames there is a ship or two, chockful of fish. Fish-porters with a kind of _blasé_ animation run up and down a long gangway to the ship with six-stone boxes of fine fresh whiting on their heads. These boxes they pile up on a chute (carefully noting each box in their notebooks), after which an auctioneer auctions the boxes. This is the really exciting part of the show. The dealers or the dealers’ agents stand round in a hungry ring and buy the boxes of fish as they slide down the chute. The dealers seem to detail a less cultured type of man for this purpose, and few of the bidders come up to the standard of refinement of the fish-porters. But the auctioneer understands them, and he knows all their Christian names. He can tell at a glance whether it is Mossy Isaacs or Sam Isaacs. He is a very clever man.
They stand round looking at the boxes of fish, and when one of them twitches the flesh of his nose or faintly moves one of his eyelashes it means that he has bought six stone of whiting for thirty shillings. That is the only kind of sign they give, and the visitor will be wise not to catch the auctioneer’s eye, or blow his nose or do any overt action like that, or he may find that he has bought six stone of salmon and halibut for forty-five shillings. At an auction of fish it is true to say that a nod is as good as a wink; in fact, it is worse.
The dealers are silent, motionless men; but nobody else is. Everybody else is dashing about and shouting as loud as he can. As each box of fish is sold the porters dash at it and shout at it (of course in a very gentlemanly way) and carry it off in all directions. It is quite clear that nobody knows who has bought it or where it is going. The idea of the whole thing is to impress the visitor with the mobility of fish, and this object is successfully attained. No doubt when the visitors have gone away they settle down and decide definitely who is to have the fish.