Part 4 (1/2)
”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 gla.s.s 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 n.o.body ever came from to some other place which n.o.body ever went to.
Mr. Phunky would not hear of pa.s.sing through any door until Mr.
Pickwick and his solicitor had pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body 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 fas.h.i.+on. 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, pa.s.sing 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? Pa.s.sing 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 c.o.c.k-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 circ.u.mstances of the case. Those facts and circ.u.mstances, 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 doc.u.ment.
”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 doc.u.ment. 'Apartments furnished for a single gentleman!' Mrs. Bardell's opinions of the opposite s.e.x, 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 a.s.sistance, 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.