Part 20

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 L9,000 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 THE KIT-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 refined _gourmet_ only, 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, make 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.'

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 a _ris de veau_. Being asked if he ate partridge in France, Dick said 'Yes,' but he could not bear them served up in 'shoes'; he meant _perdrix 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 L400 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 L70. 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 L14 5s.; a cheese-toaster brought L12 6s.; an Oriental punch-bowl, L11 15s. Wine-glasses, engraved with the gridiron, sold for from 27s. to 34s. a pair. The actual gridiron, plain as it was, fetched 5-1/2 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.