Part 1 (1/2)
The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton).
by Henry Hawkins Brampton.
PREFACE.
As a preface I wish to say only a very few words--namely, that but for the great pressure put upon me I should not have ventured to write, or allowed to be published, any reminiscences of mine, being very conscious that I could not offer to the public any words of my own that would be worth the time it would occupy to read them; but the whole merit of this volume is due to my very old friend Richard Harris, K.C., who has already shown, by his skill and marvellously attractive composition in reproducing my efforts in the Tichborne case, what interest may be imparted to an otherwise very dry subject.
In that work[A] he has done me much more than justice, and for this I thank him, with many good wishes for the success of this his new work, and with many thanks to those of the public who may take and feel an interest in such of my imperfect reminiscences as are here recorded.
BRAMPTON.
HARROGATE, _August 17, 1904_.
[Footnote A: ”Ill.u.s.trations in Advocacy” (fourth edition, Stevens and Haynes).]
CHAPTER I.
AT BEDFORD SCHOOL.
My father was a solicitor at Hitchin, and much esteemed in the county of Hertford. He was also agent for many of the county families, with whom he was in friendly intercourse. My mother was the daughter of the respected Clerk of the Peace for Bedfords.h.i.+re, a position of good influence, which might be, and is occasionally, of great a.s.sistance to a young man commencing his career at the Bar. To me it was of no importance whatever.
My father had a large family, sons and daughters, of whom only two are living. I mention this as an explanation of my early position when straitened circ.u.mstances compelled a most rigid economy. During no part of my educational career, either at school or in the Inn of Court to which I belonged, had I anything but a small allowance from my father. My life at home is as little worth telling as that of any other in the same social position, and I pa.s.s it by, merely stating that, after proper preparation, I was packed off to Bedford School for a few years.
My life there would have been an uninteresting blank but for a little circ.u.mstance which will presently be related. It was the custom then at this very excellent foundation to give mainly a cla.s.sical education, and doubtless I attained a very fair proficiency in my studies. Had I cultivated them, however, with the same a.s.siduity as I did many of my pursuits in after-life, I might have attained some eminence as a professor of the dead languages, and arrived at the dignity of one of the masters of Bedford.
However, if I had any ambition at that time, it was not to become a professor of dead languages, but to see what I could make of my own.
It is of no interest to any one that I had great numbers of peg-tops and marbles, or learnt to be a pretty good swimmer in the Ouse. There was a greater swim prepared for me in after-life, and that is the only reason for my referring to it.
In the year 1830 Bedford Schoolhouse occupied the whole of one side of St. Paul's Square, which faced the High Street. From that part of the building you commanded a view of the square and the beautiful country around. The sleepy old bridge spanned the still more sleepy river, over which lay the quiet road leading to the little village of Willshampstead, and it came along through the old square where the schoolhouse was.
It was market day in Bedford, and there was the usual concourse of buyers and sellers, tramps and country people in their Sunday gear; farmers and their wives, with itinerant venders of every saleable and unsaleable article from far and near.
I was in the upper schoolroom with another boy, and, looking out of the window, had an opportunity of watching all that took place for a considerable s.p.a.ce. There was a good deal of merriment to divert our attention, for there were clowns and merry-andrews pa.s.sing along the highroad, with singlestick players, Punch and Judy shows, and other public amusers. Every one knows that the smallest event in the country will cause a good deal of excitement, even if it be so small an occurrence as a runaway horse.
There was, however, no runaway horse to-day; but suddenly a great silence came over the people, and a sullen gloom that made a great despondency in my mind without my knowing why. Public solemnity affects even the youngest of us. At all events, it affected me.
Presently--and deeply is the event impressed on my mind after seventy years of a busy life, full of almost every conceivable event--I saw, emerging from a bystreet that led from Bedford Jail, and coming along through the square and near the window where I was standing, a common farm cart, drawn by a horse which was led by a labouring man. As I was above the crowd on the first floor I could see there was a layer of straw in the cart at the bottom, and above it, tumbled into a rough heap, as though carelessly thrown in, a quant.i.ty of the same; and I could see also from all the surrounding circ.u.mstances, especially the pallid faces of the crowd, that there was something sad about it all.
The horse moved slowly along, at almost a snail's pace, while behind walked a poor, sad couple with their heads bowed down, and each with a hand on the tail-board of the cart. They were evidently overwhelmed with grief.
Happily we have no such processions now; even Justice itself has been humanized to some extent, and the law's cruel severity mitigated. The cart contained the rude sh.e.l.l into which had been laid the body of this poor man and woman's only son, _a youth of seventeen, hanged that morning at Bedford Jail for setting fire to a stack of corn_!
He was now being conveyed to the village of Willshampstead, six miles from Bedford, there to be laid in the little churchyard where in his childhood he had played. He was the son of very respectable labouring people of Willshampstead; had been misled into committing what was more a boyish freak than a crime, and was hanged. That was all the authorities could do for him, and they did it. This is the remotest and the saddest reminiscence of my life, and the only sad one I mean to relate, if I can avoid it.
But years afterwards, when I became a judge, this picture, photographed on my mind as it was, gave me many a lesson which I believe was turned to good account on the judicial bench. It was mainly useful in impressing on my mind the great consideration of the surrounding circ.u.mstances of every crime, the _degree_ of guilt in the criminal, and the difference in the degrees of the same kind of offence. About this I shall say something hereafter.
I remained at this school until I had acquired all the learning my father thought necessary for my future position, as he intended it to be, and much more than I thought necessary, unless I was to get my living by teaching Latin and Greek.