Chapter 3

A murmur of assent ran through the company.

"I remember, gentlemen," said Mr. Pell, "dining with him on one occasion. There was only us two, but everything as splendid as if twenty people had been expected--the great seal on a dumb-waiter at his right, and a man in a bag-wig and suit of armour guarding the mace with a drawn sword and silk stockings--which is perpetually done, gentlemen, night and day; when he said, 'Pell,' he said, 'no false delicacy, Pell. You're a man of talent; you can get anybody through the Insolvent Court, Pell; and your country should be proud of you.' Those were his very words. 'My lord,' I said, 'you flatter me.' 'Pell,' he said, 'if I do I'm damned.'"

"Did he say that?" inquired Mr. Weller.

"He did," replied Pell.

"Vell, then," said Mr. Weller, "I say Parliament ought to ha' took it up; and if he'd been a poor man they _would_ ha' done it."

"But, my dear friend," argued Mr. Pell, "it was in confidence."

"In what?" said Mr. Weller.

"In confidence."

"Oh! wery good," replied Mr. Weller, after a little reflection. "If he damned hisself in confidence, o' course that was another thing."

"Of course it was," said Mr. Pell. "The distinction's obvious, you will perceive."

"Alters the case entirely," said Mr. Weller. "Go on, sir."

"No, I will not go on, sir," said Mr. Pell, in a low and serious tone. "You have reminded me, sir, that this conversation was private--private and confidential, gentlemen. Gentlemen, I am a professional man. It may be that I am a good deal looked up to in my profession--it may be that I am not. Most people know. I say nothing. Observations have already been made in this room injurious to the reputation of my noble friend. You will excuse me, gentlemen; I was imprudent. I feel that I have no right to mention this matter without his concurrence. Thank you, sir; thank you."

Thus delivering himself, Mr. Pell thrust his hands into his pockets, and, frowning grimly around, rattled three-halfpence with terrible determination.

We hear also of Mrs. Pell.

Mrs. Pell was a tall figure, a splendid woman, with a noble shape, and a nose, gentlemen, formed to command, gentlemen, and be majestic. She was very much attached to me--very much--highly connected, too. Her mother's brother, gentlemen, failed for eight hundred pounds, as a law stationer.

So we have, ladies and gentlemen, these three types of this honourable profession. To my mind they have never been quite placed in their proper order. Perker has been universally admired and looked up to; Dodson and Fogg have been universally denounced; Mr. Pell has been suffered to remain unnoticed. Well, let us judge fairly the merits of these three gentlemen.

If Mr. Perker had lived to-day instead of in the year 1827, he would undoubtedly have been tried for the part he took in the Eatanswill election. What is the charge, after all, against Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, except that question with regard to poor Ramsey?--which, after all, is only a story told by the clerk Wicks, upon whom I do not think we can place very much reliance. What else did Dodson and Fogg do that should make them the object of obloquy and universal execration? They brought an action for breach of promise of marriage--some people think such actions should never be brought at all--they brought the action for breach of promise of marriage; they made a little arrangement with regard to costs, unprofessional if you like, but still nothing to bring down upon them the denouncement to which they have been made subject. So far as Mr. Pickwick was concerned, he had absolutely nothing to complain of in their conduct; and I venture to say it was most reprehensible in him under the circumstances to use the language which he did upon the occasion which I have quoted. But against Mr. Pell there is absolutely nothing to be said. He perhaps romanced a little with regard to his friendship with the Lord Chancellor; but which of us would not like to be on friendly terms with the Lord Chancellor? On that trifling exaggeration there is nothing practically to be urged against him; and while I claim for Mr. Pell the position of premier in this matter, I am sorry I have to accord to Mr. Perker the third place.

Well, now, although I would love to linger over Mr. Pell, I must pass on to say something of the counsel mentioned in this admirable work. But before I consider the more eminent and the more conspicuous of these, there is one member of the Bar who is seldom alluded to, but of whom I wish to say something to-night. I refer to Mr. Prosee. Mr. Prosee very few of you have ever heard of. He dined with Mr. Perker at Montague Place, Russell Square, on one occasion. It must have been rather a dull dinner party, for there were present two good country agents, Mr. Snicks, the Life Office Secretary, Mr. Prosee, the eminent counsel, three solicitors, one Commissioner of Bankrupts, a special pleader from the Temple, a small-eyed, peremptory young gentleman, his pupil, who had written a lively book about the law of demises, with a vast quantity of marginal notes and references; and several other eminent and distinguished personages, including the Mr. Prosee just mentioned.

Ladies and gentlemen, I do not know how it is, but I have always associated Mr. Prosee with the Equity Bar. It may be that his name suggests it.

Well, I come now to the counsel which is better known to you, namely Serjeant Snubbin.

"We've done everything that's necessary," said Mr. Perker. "I have retained Serjeant Snubbin."

"Is he a good man?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.

"Good man!" replied Perker. "Bless your heart and soul, my dear sir, Serjeant Snubbin is at the very top of his profession. Gets treble the business of any man in court--engaged in every case. You needn't mention it abroad, but we say--we of the profession--that Serjeant Snubbin leads the court by the nose."

"I should like to see him," said Mr. Pickwick.

"See Serjeant Snubbin, my dear sir!" rejoined Perker, in utter amazement. "Pooh, pooh! my dear sir, impossible! See Serjeant Snubbin! Bless you, my dear sir, such a thing was never heard of without a consultation fee being previously paid, and a consultation fixed. It couldn't be done, my dear sir--it couldn't be done!"

Thus was Mr. Pickwick brought face to face with the difficulty of seeing his own counsel. He could not understand why, having retained the services of a professional man and paid for them, there should exist any impediment to prevent access to him. I won't discuss to-night the advisability or non-advisability of dividing the profession of the law into two parts, but I do say that any system which prevents litigants having the fullest personal communication with those they have paid to represent them is an anomaly and an absurdity.

But Mr. Pickwick was a person of determination, and he did see Serjeant Snubbin, and he delivered to that learned gentleman a short address that was well worthy of his attention, as it is of every member of the Bar, including your very humble servant.

"Gentlemen of your profession, sir," continued Mr. Pickwick, "see the worst side of human nature. All its disputes, all its ill-will and bad blood, rise up before you. You know from your experience of juries (I mean no disparagement to you, or them) how much depends upon _effect_; and you are apt to attribute to others a desire to use, for purposes of deception and self-interest, the very instruments which you, in pure honesty and honour of purpose, and with a laudable desire to do your utmost for your client, know the temper and worth of so well, from constantly employing them yourselves. I really believe that to this circumstance may be attributed the vulgar but very general notion of your being, as a body, suspicious, distrustful, and overcautious. Conscious as I am, sir, of the disadvantage of making such a declaration to you, under such circumstances, I have come here, because I wish you distinctly to understand, as my friend Mr. Perker has said, that I am innocent of the falsehood laid to my charge; and although I am very well aware of the inestimable value of your assistance, sir, I must beg to add that, unless you sincerely believe this, I would rather be deprived of the aid of your talents than have the advantage of them."

The only effect this had upon Serjeant Snubbin was to cause him to ask rather snappishly,--

"Who is with me in this case?"

"Mr. Phunky, Serjeant Snubbin," replied the attorney.

"Phunky, Phunky," said the Serjeant, "I never heard the name before. He must be a very young man."

"Yes, he is a very young man," replied the attorney. "He was only called the other day. Let me see--he has not been at the Bar eight years yet."

"Ah, I thought not," said the Serjeant, in that sort of pitying tone in which ordinary folks would speak of a very helpless little child. "Mr. Mallard, send round to Mr.--Mr.--"

"Phunky's--Holborn Court, Gray's Inn," interposed Perker. (Holborn Court, by-the-bye, is South Square now.)

"Mr. Phunky, and say I should be glad if he'd step here a moment."

Mr. Mallard departed to execute his commission, and Serjeant Snubbin relapsed into abstraction until Mr. Phunky himself was introduced.

Although an infant barrister he was a full-grown man. He had a very nervous manner, and a painful hesitation in his speech; it did not appear to be a natural defect, but seemed rather the result of timidity, arising from the consciousness of being "kept down" by want of means, or interest, or connection, or impudence, as the case might be. He was overawed by the Serjeant, and profoundly courteous to the attorney.

"I have not had the pleasure of seeing you before, Mr. Phunky," said Serjeant Snubbin, with haughty condescension.

Mr. Phunky bowed. He _had_ had the pleasure of seeing the Serjeant, and of envying him too, with all a poor man's envy, for eight years and a quarter.

"You are with me in this case, I understand?" said the Serjeant.

If Mr. Phunky had been a rich man he would have instantly sent for his clerk to remind him; if he had been a wise one he would have applied his forefinger to his forehead, and endeavoured to recollect whether, in the multiplicity of his engagements, he had undertaken this one or not; but as he was neither rich nor wise (in this sense, at all events) he turned red and bowed.

"Have you read the papers, Mr. Phunky?" inquired the Serjeant.

Here again Mr. Phunky should have professed to have forgotten all about the merits of the case; but as he had read such papers as had been laid before him in the course of the action, and had thought of nothing else, waking or sleeping, throughout the two months during which he had been retained as Mr. Serjeant Snubbin's junior, he turned a deeper red and bowed again.

"This is Mr. Pickwick," said the Serjeant, waving his pen in the direction in which that gentleman was standing.

Mr. Phunky bowed to Mr. Pickwick with a reverence which a first client must ever awaken, and again inclined his head towards his leader.

"Perhaps you will take Mr. Pickwick away," said the Serjeant, "and--and--and--hear anything Mr. Pickwick may wish to communicate. We shall have a consultation, of course." With this hint that he had been interrupted quite long enough, Mr. Serjeant Snubbin, who had been gradually growing more and more abstracted, applied his glass to his eye for an instant, bowed slightly round, and was once more deeply immersed in the case before him, which arose out of an interminable law-suit originating in the act of an individual, deceased a century or so ago, who had stopped up a pathway leading from some place which nobody ever came from to some other place which nobody ever went to.

Mr. Phunky would not hear of passing through any door until Mr. Pickwick and his solicitor had passed through before him, so it was some time before they got into the Square; and when they did reach it they walked up and down, and held a long conference, the result of which was that it was a very difficult matter to say how the verdict would go; that nobody could presume to calculate on the issue of an action; that it was very lucky they had prevented the other party from getting Serjeant Snubbin; and other topics of doubt and consolation common in such a position of affairs.

Mr. Pickwick's lawsuit was to be tried in the Court of Common Pleas, a division in which Serjeants-at-Law had the exclusive right to practise. At this time, 1827, and indeed up till 1873, every common law judge was turned into a Serjeant, if he were not one ere he was promoted to the Bench. It was a solemn kind of ceremony. The subject of the operation was led out of the precincts of the Inns of Court; the church bell tolled as for one dead.

He was then admitted member of Serjeants' Inn; and the judge would address the Serjeants who practised before him as Brother So-and-So. Justice Lindley was the last judge who took the degree, a degree the only outward visible sign of which is the black patch or coif which is attached to the top of the wig. I do not know what kind of counsel Serjeant Snubbin, retained by Mr. Perker for the defendant, was; but Dodson and Fogg had retained Serjeant Buzfuz for the plaintiff, and we all know that Serjeant Snubbin was no match for Serjeant Buzfuz. It has been objected by a writer in _Fraser's Magazine_, to the account of this trial, that it is full of inconsistencies. Serjeant Buzfuz' case, he says, was absurd, and that he would not have been able to browbeat any witness, and that no jury could have given a verdict on such evidence. This criticism resembles many other criticisms of Pickwick. Had the description in Pickwick been intended as a serious picture of the proceedings in a court of justice, it would have been open to much serious dissection and examination.

But the writer just quoted did not, it seems, possess a sufficient sense of humour to enable him to see that this chapter of "Pickwick" was intended for broad fun amounting to burlesque, and nothing more; and to examine Mr. Buzfuz' proceedings by the light of the law is to strip them of their meaning.

I mentioned just now that this trial took place in 1827. At that time, as I daresay some of you are aware, the parties to the action could not be called upon to give evidence; and Lord Denman did not, I think, till 1843 remove the Arcadian fetters which bound the litigants in this fashion. But, ladies and gentlemen, what a fortunate thing it was for Mr. Pickwick that he could not be called upon that occasion. If Mr. Pickwick had been called he would have been cross-examined. Let us imagine for a moment what that cross-examination would have been. Suppose merely for the sake of example that that operation had been performed by my honourable and learned friend the Attorney-General. Cannot you imagine how in the first place he would forcibly but firmly have interrogated Mr. Pickwick with regard to his conduct after the cricket match at Muggleton; how he would have asked him whether he was prepared to admit, or whether he was prepared to deny, that he was drunk upon that occasion? Could you not imagine how my honourable and learned friend, passing on from that topic, would have alluded to what I think he would have termed the disgraceful incident when, on the 1st of September, Mr. Pickwick was found in a wheelbarrow on the ground of Captain Boldwig, and was removed to the public pound, from which he was only extricated by the violence of his friends and servant? Passing on from that topic, would not my honourable and learned friend have reminded him of how he had been bound over at Ipswich before Mr. Nupkins, together with his friend Mr. Tupman, and called upon to find bail for good behaviour for six months? Then in conclusion how my friend would have turned to that incident in the double-bedded room at Ipswich, at the Great White Horse, and how my learned friend, with that skill which he possesses, would, bit by bit, by slow degrees, have extricated from that miserable man the confession that he had been found in that double-bedded room, a spinster lady being there at the same time. Ladies and gentlemen, what would have been left of Mr. Pickwick after that process had been gone through? His only relief would have been to write to the _Times_ newspaper, and to complain of cross- examination.

Indeed, no notice of this case, as indeed no reference to the lawyers of "Pickwick," would be regarded as in any sense complete that did not include the remarkable forensic efforts of Serjeant Buzfuz. Oft read, oft recited, oft quoted, it stands to-day, perhaps, the best-known speech ever delivered at the Bar.

We are told that the speech of Serjeant Snubbin was long and emphatic, but at any rate it was ineffective, and that learned gentleman committed a grave error in entrusting the cross-examination of Mr. Winkle to Mr. Phunky. Now it does sometimes happen, in the course of a case, that owing to the absence of the leading counsel, which sometimes occurs, the cross-examination of a witness, perchance an important one, is left to some junior; but this excuse did not exist in this case. Serjeant Snubbin was there in Court, because we hear that he winked at Mr. Phunky to intimate to him that he had better sit down; and this, as we know, from what I have told you just now, was the first brief that Mr. Phunky had ever had. No, Serjeant Snubbin was over-matched throughout by Serjeant Buzfuz, and Mr. Phunky was no match even for the scheming junior on the other side, and Perker was no match for Dodson and Fogg. The law, as we are told in one of George Eliot's books, is a kind of cock-fight, in which it is the business of injured honesty to get a game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs; and I venture to think that the combined pluck of Buzfuz and Skimpin by far outweighed any of that commodity possessed by Snubbin and Phunky. No wonder Mr. Pickwick lost his case; but his case never recovered the effect of the speech which I now propose to read to you.

Serjeant Buzfuz began by saying that never, in the whole course of his professional experience--never, from the very first moment of his applying himself to the study and practice of the law--had he approached a case with feelings of such deep emotion, or with such a heavy sense of the responsibility imposed upon him--a responsibility, he would say, which he could never have supported, were he not buoyed up and sustained by a conviction so strong, that it amounted to positive certainty that the cause of truth and justice, or, in other words, the cause of his much injured and most oppressed client, must prevail with the high-minded and intelligent dozen of men whom he now saw in that box before him.

Counsel usually begin in this way, because it puts the jury on the very best terms with themselves, and makes them think what sharp fellows they must be. A visible effect was produced immediately; several jurymen beginning to take voluminous notes with the utmost eagerness.

"You have heard from my learned friend, gentlemen," continued Serjeant Buzfuz--well knowing that, from the learned friend alluded to, the gentlemen of the jury had heard just nothing at all--"you have heard from my learned friend, gentlemen, that this is an action for breach of promise of marriage, in which the damages are laid at 1,500 pounds. But you have not heard from my learned friend, inasmuch as it did not come within my learned friend's province to tell you, what are the facts and circumstances of the case. Those facts and circumstances, gentlemen, you shall hear detailed by me, and proved by the unimpeachable female whom I will place in that box before you."

Here Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz, with a tremendous emphasis on the word "box," smote his table with a mighty sound, and glanced at Dodson and Fogg, who nodded admiration to the Serjeant, and indignant defiance of the defendant.

"The plaintiff, gentlemen," continued Serjeant Buzfuz, in a soft and melancholy voice, "the plaintiff is a widow; yes, gentlemen, a widow. The late Mr. Bardell, after enjoying, for many years, the esteem and confidence of his sovereign, as one of the guardians of his royal revenues, glided almost imperceptibly from the world, to seek elsewhere for that repose and peace which a custom house can never afford."

At this pathetic description of the decease of Mr. Bardell, who had been knocked on the head with a quart pot in a public-house cellar, the learned Serjeant's voice faltered, and he proceeded with emotion,--

"Some time before his death he had stamped his likeness upon a little boy. With this little boy, the only pledge of her departed exciseman, Mrs. Bardell shrunk from the world, and courted the retirement and tranquillity of Goswell Street; and here she placed in her front parlour-window a written placard, bearing this inscription--'Apartments furnished for a single gentleman. Inquire within.'" Here Serjeant Buzfuz paused, while several gentlemen of the jury took a note of the document.

"There is no date to that, is there?" inquired a juror.

"There is no date, gentlemen," replied Serjeant Buzfuz; "but I am instructed to say that it was put in the plaintiff's parlour-window just this time three years. I entreat the attention of the jury to the wording of this document. 'Apartments furnished for a single gentleman!' Mrs. Bardell's opinions of the opposite sex, gentlemen, were derived from a long contemplation of the inestimable qualities of her lost husband. She had no fear, she had no distrust, she had no suspicion, all was confidence and reliance. 'Mr. Bardell,' said the widow, 'Mr. Bardell was a man of honour, Mr. Bardell was a man of his word, Mr. Bardell was no deceiver, Mr. Bardell was once a single gentleman himself; _to_ single gentlemen I look for protection, for assistance, for comfort, and for consolation; _in_ single gentlemen I shall perpetually see something to remind me of what Mr. Bardell was when he first won my young and untried affections: to a single gentleman, then, shall my lodgings be let.' Actuated by this beautiful and touching impulse (among the best impulses of our imperfect nature, gentlemen) the lonely and desolate widow dried her tears, furnished her first floor, caught the innocent boy to her maternal bosom, and put the bill up in her parlour-window. Did it remain there long? No. The serpent was on the watch, the train was laid, the mine was preparing, the sapper and miner was at work. Before the bill had been in the parlour-window three days--three days, gentlemen--a Being, erect upon two legs, and bearing all the outward semblance of a man, and not of a monster, knocked at the door of Mrs. Bardell's house. He inquired within--he took the lodgings; and on the very next day he entered into possession of them. The man was Pickwick--Pickwick, the defendant."

Serjeant Buzfuz, who had proceeded with such volubility that his face was perfectly crimson, here paused for breath. The silence awoke Mr. Justice Stareleigh, who immediately wrote down something with a pen without any ink in it, and looked unusually profound, to impress the jury with the belief that he always thought most deeply with his eyes shut. Serjeant Buzfuz proceeded.