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JUDGMENTS IN VACATION 
 
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JUDGMENTS IN 
 VACATION 
 
 BY 
 HIS HONOUR JUDGE 
 
 EDWARD ABBOTT fARRY 
 
 Author of "Dorothy Osborne's Letters." "Life of Macklin," 
 
 "The Scarlet Berring," "Katawwmpus: Its Treatment and Ouire" 
 
 "Butterscotia" etc. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 Manchester: SHERRATT & HUGHES, 34 Cross Street 
 
 1911 
 
 [All rights reserved] 
 
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"B^^sp 
 
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TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD ALVERSTONE 
 
 LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS 
 
 BY KIND PERMISSION 
 
 DEDICATED IN AFFECTION AND RESPECT 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR 
 
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CONTENTS. 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ' The Box Office ' 
 
 1 
 
 The Disadvantages of Education 
 
 21 
 
 Cookery Book Talk 
 
 45 
 
 A Day of my Life in the County Court 
 
 52 
 
 Dorothy Osborne 
 
 75 
 
 The Debtor of To-day 
 
 103 
 
 The Folk-Lore of the County Court 
 
 114 
 
 Concerning Daughters - 
 
 129 
 
 The Future of the County Court 
 
 137 
 
 The Prevalence of Podsnap 
 
 158 
 
 An Elizabethan Recorder 
 
 165 
 
 The Funniest Thing I ever saw 
 
 190 
 
 The Playwright 
 
 196 
 
 Advice to Young Advocates 
 
 212 
 
 The Insolvent Poor 
 
 220 
 
 Why be an Author ? 
 
 - 236 
 
 Which Way is the Tide ? - 
 
 265 
 
 Kissing the Book 
 
 273 
 
 A Welsh Rector of the Last Century 
 
 290 
 
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PREFACE. 
 
 To a sane world one must offer some few words 
 of excuse for writing judgments in vacation. One 
 has heard of the emancipated slave who invested 
 his savings in purchasing a share in another slave 
 and of the historical bus-driver who made use of 
 his annual holiday to drive a bus for a sick 
 friend. And so it is with smaller men. One 
 gets so used to giving judgments upon matters, 
 the essence and properties of which one really 
 knows very little about, that the habit remains 
 after the sittings are over into the vacation. And 
 on that rainy day, when golf and the more import- 
 ant pursuits of life are impossible, one finds 
 oneself alone with pen, ink and paper, and 
 thoughts that voluntarily move towards written 
 judgments. And there is this excuse, that a Judge 
 of a County Court can offer which would not 
 be possible to his ermined brother — or should it 
 be cousin, a poor relation had best be careful in 
 claiming relationship — of the High Court. If we 
 have any lurking desire to write our judgments, 
 we shall not find leisure or opportunity to write 
 them in term time. There is such a vast number 
 of cases to try that judgments must be given forth- 
 with, relying on authority perhaps rather than 
 
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X PREFACE 
 
 accuracy for the kindly manner of their reception. 
 Well do I remember a great Judge giving a part- 
 ing word of advice to a friend of mine on the 
 Northern Circuit who preceded me to the County 
 Court Bench : " Better be strong and wrong than 
 weak and right." The wisdom of the world is 
 on the side of this epigram, and demands that all 
 judgments of real importance should be given 
 forthwith and spoken rather than written. Thus 
 that most influential arbitrator in the larger affairs 
 of Englishmen, the umpire in the cricket field, is 
 never allowed to write his judgments. 
 
 It must be a pleasant thing to listen for many 
 days to the learned arguments of the ablest minds 
 at the bar, noting down here and there an added 
 thought of your own which is to find a place in 
 the ultimate judgment which some days hence you 
 will write at leisure in your study surrounded by 
 the reports and text books necessary to give 
 weight to your written word. A poor Judge of 
 the County Court can have no such refinement of 
 pleasure. Does Bill's cat trespass in Thomas's 
 pigeon loft, at Lambeth or Salford? — the twenty- 
 five shilling claim is argued in unison, certainly 
 without harmony, until a skilful adjudication is 
 planted right between the disputants in a breath- 
 less pause in their contest, and they are whirled 
 out of Court speechless and astonished at the 
 result to revive the wordy argument in the street 
 or to join their voices in maledictions of the law 
 and all her servants. How far otherwise in the 
 
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PREFACE xi 
 
 High Court? Should some millionaire's malkin, 
 some prize Angora of Park Lane, slay the cham- 
 pion homer of a pigeon-flying Marquis — what a 
 summoning to the fray of Astburys and Carsons. 
 How thoughtfully through the long days of the 
 hearing would learned counsel "watch" on behalf of 
 the London County Council. What ancient law con- 
 cerning pigeons and cats would be disentombed by 
 hard-working juniors and submissively quoted to 
 the Bench by their leaders as matter "which I am 
 sure your Lordship remembers." And then how 
 interesting to write down the final just word of the 
 Law of England on cats and pigeons, and to read 
 it amid a reverent hush of learned approval, and 
 finally to bring down the curtain on the comedy, 
 justifying the hours and treasure that had been 
 expended to obtain the judgment you had written, 
 with some such tag of learning as : 
 
 "Deliberaie utilia mora utilissima est." 
 
 I am by no means suggesting that these delays 
 of the law would be useful in inferior Courts, or 
 that Judges of the County Court have the wit and 
 ability to write judgments in term time of value 
 to the world. Inferior as they necessarily are in 
 equipment of learning and worldly emolument to 
 the Judges of the High Court, they can only take 
 a humble pleasure in believing that they adminis- 
 ter justice at least as indifferently. 
 
 But if you are driven to writing judgments in 
 vacation, there is this to be said for it, that you 
 can choose your own subject upon which you will 
 
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xii PREFACE 
 
 deliver your words of wisdom, you are not forced 
 to listen to arguments pro and con before retiring 
 to the study with the text books, and you are 
 bound by no precedents governing your thoughts 
 and driving your ideas along some mistaken lane 
 that you know in your own heart leads to No 
 Man's Land. Nor are you tied down to the nar- 
 row, courtly and somewhat pompous language in 
 which it is the custom of the judiciary to publish 
 their wisdom. 
 
 There is this further to be said about judgments 
 written in vacation. No one is bound to listen 
 to them, no shorthand writer has to strain his ear 
 to take them down, no editor of the Law Reports 
 has to disobey his conscience to include them in 
 the authorised version of the law; and, best of 
 all, no Court of Appeal can either reverse them or 
 lessen their authority by approving them. Indeed, 
 it is only in one attribute that judgments in vacation 
 seem to me scarcely as satisfactory as judgments 
 delivered in term time. With the latter costs fol- 
 low the event. 
 
 Many of these papers have appeared in print 
 before. The oldest of them, Dorothy Osborne, 
 appeared in the English Illustrated Magazine as 
 long ago as April 1886, and I have reprinted it in 
 the belief that many of Dorothy's servants may like 
 to read the little essay that led to my receiving 
 from Mrs. Longe her copies of the original letters 
 and her notes upon them, whereby the full edition 
 was at length published. The quotations in it were 
 
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PREFACE xiii 
 
 taken from Courtenay's extracts in his " Life of 
 Temple." In reprinting the article here I have 
 only amended actual errors and misprints. In the 
 paper on "An Elizabethan Recorder " the spelling 
 has been modernized. In reproducing the article 
 on " The Insolvent Poor" which was published 
 originally in the Fortnightly Review in May 1898, 
 it has not been thought necessary to modernize all 
 the instances and figures that were then used. 
 Unhappily the situation of the Insolvent Poor is 
 no better to-day than it was in 1898, and the argu- 
 ment of that day remains unaffected by any reform. 
 " Kissing the Book " was published before the 
 recent alteration in the law, but even now the 
 custom is not extinct, and the folk-lore of it may 
 still be entertaining. I have to thank Messrs. 
 Macmillan for leave to reprint the paper on "Doro- 
 thy Osborne," and my thanks are also due to the 
 proprietors of the Fortnightly Review, The Corn- 
 hill, The Manchester Guardian, The Contemporary 
 Review, The Pall Mall Magazine, and The Rapid 
 Review, for their leave to reprint other papers. 
 
 EDWARD A. PARRY. 
 
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' THE BOX OFFICE.' 
 
 Ah ! let not censure term our fate our choice. 
 The stage but echoes back the public voice ; 
 The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give, 
 For we that live to please must please to live 
 
 — Samuel Johnson. 
 
 I HAVE a vague notion that I wrote this paper on 
 the Box Office in some former existence in the 
 eighteenth century, and that it was entitled ' The 
 Box Office in relation to the Drama of Human 
 Life,' and that it was printed in the Temple of the 
 Muses which was, if I remember, in Finsbury 
 Square. 
 
 But it is quite worth writing again with a snappy, 
 up-to-date modern title, and in a snappier, more 
 up-to-date and modern spirit, for as I discovered, 
 to my surprise, in talking the other day to a meet- 
 ing of serious playgoers, the Box Office idea is 
 as little understood to-day as ever it was. All 
 great first principles want re-stating every now and 
 then, and the Box Office principle is one of them, 
 for, like many of the great natural forces which 
 govern human action, it seems to be entirely unap- 
 preciated and misunderstood. 
 
 Speaking of the actor and his profession, I 
 pointed out that the only real test of merit in an 
 actor was the judgment of the Box Office, and 
 
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2 'THE BOX OFFICE' 
 
 that therefore an actor is bound to play to a Box 
 Office and succeed with a Box Office if he wants to 
 continue to be an actor. 
 
 The suggestion was received with contempt and 
 derision. No artist, I was told, no man of any- 
 character would deign to think of so low a thing 
 as the Box Office. All the great men of the world 
 were men who had had a contempt for the Box 
 Office, and the Box Office is, and must in its 
 nature be, a lowering and degrading influence. 
 This opinion seemed so widely held that I decided 
 to hold an inquest upon my original suggestion, 
 and the result of this, I need hardly say, was not 
 only to confirm me in the view that I was entirely 
 right, but to convince me that my neighbours were 
 sunk in the slough of a dangerous heresy, in which 
 it was my duty to preach at them whilst they 
 slowly disappeared in the ooze of their unpardoa- 
 able error. 
 
 There is something essentially English in the 
 very name of the institution— the Box Office. 
 About the only thing an average Box Office cannot 
 sell is boxes. When it begins to sell boxes the 
 happy proprietor knows that, in American phrase, 
 he has 'got right there.' But every sane manager, 
 every sane actor, and all sane individuals who 
 minister to the amusement of the people, close 
 their ears to the wranglings of the critics and listen 
 attentively to the voice of the Box Office. The 
 Box Office is the barometer of public opinion, the 
 machine that records the vox populi, which is far 
 
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'THE BOX OFFICE' 3 
 
 nearer the vox Dei than the voice of the expert 
 witness. 
 
 Before discoursing of the Box Office in its widest 
 sense, let us return for a moment to the case of the 
 actor. Here the Box Office must, in the nature 
 of things, decide his fate. It is the polling booth 
 of the playgoer, and it is the playgoer and not the 
 critic who decides whether an actor is great or 
 otherwise. Why do we call Garrick a great actor ? 
 Because the Box Office of his time acclaimed him 
 one. Davies tells us how his first performance of 
 Richard III. was received with loud and reiterated 
 applause. How his ' look and actions when he 
 pronounced the words, 
 
 OS with his head : so much for Buckingham, 
 
 were so significant and important from his visible 
 enjoyment of the incident, that several loud shouts 
 of approbation proclaimed the triumph of the actor 
 and satisfaction of the audience.' A modern purist 
 would have walked out of the playhouse when his 
 ear was insulted toy Gibber's tag; but from a 
 theatre point of view it is a good tag, and I have 
 always thought it a pity that Shakespeare forgot 
 to set it down himself, and left to Cibber the bur- 
 den of finishing the line. The tag is certainly 
 deserving of this recognition that it was the line 
 with which Garrick first captured the Box Office, 
 and it is interesting that the best Richard III. of 
 my generation, Barry Sullivan, always used Gib- 
 ber's version, for the joy, as I take it, of bringing 
 
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4 'THE BOX OFFICE' 
 
 down the house with ' so much for Buckingham.' 
 Shakespeare was so fond of improving other folk's 
 work himself, and was such a keen business man, 
 that he would certainly have adopted as his own 
 any line capable of such good Box Office results. 
 
 Throughout Garrick's career he was not without 
 critics, and envious ones at that ; but no one to-day 
 doubts that the verdict of the Box Office was a 
 right one, and it is an article of universal belief 
 that Garrick was a great actor. Of course one does 
 not contend that the sudden assault and capture 
 of the Box Office by a young actor in one part is 
 conclusive evidence of merit. As the envious Quin 
 said : ' Garrick is a new religion ; Whitfield was 
 followed for a time, but they would all come to 
 church again.' Gibber, too, shook his head at 
 the young gentleman, but was overcome by that 
 dear old lady, Mrs, Bracegirdle, who had left the 
 stage thirty years before Garrick arrived. ' Come, 
 come. Gibber,' she said, ' tell me if there is not 
 something like envy in your character of this 
 young gentleman. The actor who pleases every- 
 body must be a man of merit.' The old man felt 
 the force of this sensible rebuke ; he took a pinch 
 of snuff and frankly replied, 'Why faith, Bracey, 
 I believe you are right, the young fellow is clever.' 
 
 In these anecdotes you have the critic mind 
 annoyed by the Box Office success of the actor, 
 and the sane simple woman of the world laying 
 down the maxim ' the actor who pleases everybody 
 must be a man of merit.' And when one -considers 
 
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'THE BOX OFFICE' 5 
 
 it, must it not necessarily be so? An actor can 
 only appeal to one generation of human beings, 
 and if they do not applaud him and support him, 
 can it be reasonably said he is a great actor? If 
 he plays continually to empty benches, and if he 
 never makes a Box Office success, is it not absurd 
 to say that as an actor he is of any account at all ? 
 
 So far in the proceedings of my inquest it seemed 
 to me clear that in setting down the Box Office as 
 the only sound test of merit in an actor, my posi- 
 tion was indisputable. Of course, there were, and 
 are. Box Offices and Box Offices. Gibber, Quin, 
 Macklin, and Garrick appealed to different audi- 
 ences from Foote. An actor to-day has a hundred 
 different Box Offices to appeal to, but the point 
 and the only point is, does he succeed with the 
 Box Office he attacks? Moreover, the more Box 
 Offices he succeeds with and the greater the public 
 he can amuse, the better actor he is. Garrick knew 
 this when, in the spirit of a great artist, he said : 
 ' If you won't come to Lear and Hamlet I must 
 give you Harlequin,' and did it with splendid 
 success. 
 
 How was it, then,- when the thing seemed so 
 clear to my mind, there should be so many to 
 dispute this Box Office test ? The more one 
 studied the attitude of these unbelievers, the more 
 certain it seemed that their unbelief arose in a 
 great measure as Gibber's and Quin's had arisen, 
 namely, from a certain spirit of natural envy. It 
 is obvious that not every one of us can achieve 
 
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6 'THE BOX OFFICE' 
 
 a great Box Office success, and that many men 
 who live laborious lives, without much prosperity 
 of any kind, not unnaturally dislike the success 
 that an actor appears to attain so easily. But the 
 suggestion that Box Office success is or can be 
 largely attained by unworthy means is, it seems 
 to me, a curious delusion of the envious, insulting 
 to the generation of which we are individuals, inas- 
 much as it suggests that we are easily deceived 
 and deluded, and exhibiting unpleasantly that 
 modern pessimism that spells — or should we more 
 accurately say smells? — degeneration. Garrick's 
 career is an eloquent example of the fact that a 
 great Box Office success can only be attained by 
 great attributes used with consummate power, and 
 that pettiness and meanness, chicanery and bom- 
 bast are not the methods approved of by the 
 patrons of the Box Office. 
 
 Of course it will be said by the envious ' This 
 man is a great success to-day, wait and see what 
 the next generation think of him.' But why 
 should a man act or paint or write for any other 
 generation but his own ? Common sense suggests 
 that many men can successfully entertain their 
 own generation, but that only the work of the rare 
 occasional genius will survive in the future. 
 Luckily for all artists of to-day, this is and always 
 was a law of Nature; equally fortunate for artists 
 of the future, that nothing that is being done to-day 
 is in the least likely to interfere with the workings 
 of that law in days to come. 
 
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'THE BOX OFFICE' 7 
 
 There is undoubtedly a tendency — and probably 
 there always has been a tendency — to infer that 
 because a man is rich therefore he is lucky, and 
 that a man who is successful is very likely a dis- 
 honest man ; indeed, it seems a common belief that 
 to gain the verdict of the Box Office it is necessary 
 to do that which is unworthy. This idea being so 
 widely spread, it appears interesting to study the 
 Box Office in relation to other scenes in the human 
 drama. What part does it play, for instance, in 
 literature or art or politics? 
 
 Of course, a writer or painter is in a somewhat 
 different position from an actor. He can, if he 
 wishes, appeal to a much smaller circle, or, in an 
 extreme case, he can refuse to appeal at all to the 
 generation in which he lives and make his appeal 
 to posterity. The statesman, however, is perhaps 
 nearer akin to the actor. Let us consider how 
 statesmen and politicians have regarded the Box 
 Office, and whether it can fairly be said to have 
 exercised a bad influence on their actions. 
 
 And as Garrick is one of the high sounding 
 names in the world of the theatre, so Gladstone 
 may not unfairly be taken as a type of English 
 politician, and it is curious that the whole evolu- 
 tion of his mind is chiefly interesting in its gradual 
 discovery of the fact that the Box Office is the 
 sole test of a statesman's merit, that the vox populi 
 is indeed the vox Dei, and that the superior person 
 is of no account in politics as against the will of 
 the nation. As in the theatre, so in politics, it is 
 
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8 'THE BOX OFFICE' 
 
 the people who pay to come in who have to be 
 catered for. In 1838, Gladstone was as superior — 
 ' sniffy ' is the modern phrase — about the Box 
 Office as any latter-day journalist could wish. He 
 complimented the Speaker on putting down dis- 
 cussions upon the presentation of petitions. The 
 Speaker sagely said 'that those discussions greatly 
 raised the influence of popular feeling on the de- 
 liberation of the House; and that by stopping 
 them he thought a wall was erected — not as strong 
 as might be wished.' Young Mr. Gladstone con- 
 curred, and quoted with approval an exclamation 
 of Roebuck's in the House : 'We, sir, are, or 
 ought to be, the elite of the people of England, 
 for mind; we are at the head of the mind of the 
 people of England.' 
 
 It took over forty years for Gladstone to discover 
 that his early views were a hopeless form of 
 conceit, and that the only test of the merit of a 
 policy was the Box Office test. But when he 
 recognised that the elite of the people were not in 
 the House of Commons, but were really in the 
 pit and gallery of his audiences, he never wearied 
 of putting forward and explaining Box Office prin- 
 ciples with the enthusiasm, and perhaps the exag- 
 geration, of a convert. 
 
 Take that eloquent appeal in Midlothian as an 
 instance : 
 
 We cannot (he says) reckon on the wealth of the country, nor 
 upon the rank of the country, nor upon the influence which 
 rank and wealth usually bring. In the main these powers are 
 
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'THE BOX OFFICE' 9 
 
 against us, for wherever there is a close corporation, wherever 
 there is a spirit of organised monopoly, wherever there is a 
 narrow and sectional interest — apart from that of the country, 
 and desiring to be set up above the interest of the public, there 
 we have no friendship and no tolerance to expect. Above all 
 these and behind all these, there is something greater than 
 these : there is the nation itself. This great trial is now 
 proceeding before the nation. The nation is a power hard te 
 rouse, but when roused, harder and still more hopeless to resist. 
 
 Now here is the Box Office test with a vengeance. 
 Not in its soundest form, perhaps, because the 
 really ideal manager would have found a piece and 
 a company that would draw stalls and dress circle 
 as well as pit and gallery. For Bacon says : ' If 
 a man so temper his actions as in some of them 
 he do content every faction, the music will be the 
 fuller.' But Gladstone at that time had neither the 
 piece nor the company for this, and, great artist as 
 he was, his music did not in later years draw the 
 stalls and dress circle; but having mastered the 
 eternal Box Office principle, this did not disconcert 
 him, for he knew that of the two the pit and gallery 
 were sounder business for a manager who wanted 
 to succeed in the provinces and was eager for a 
 long run. 
 
 This recognition by Mr, Gladstone of the Box 
 Office as supreme comes with especial interest 
 when you consider that his education and instinct 
 made it peculiarly difficult for him to appreciate 
 the truth. Disraeli jumped at it more easily, as 
 one might expect from a man of Hebrew descent, 
 for that great race have always held the soundest 
 
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lo 'THE BOX OFFICE' 
 
 views on questions of the Box Office. As a 
 novelist, the novels he wrote were no doubt the 
 best he was capable of, but whatever may be their 
 merits or demerits, they were written with an eye 
 to the Box Office and the Box Office responded. 
 His first appearance upon the political stage was 
 not a success. The pit and gallery howled at him. 
 But this did not lead him to pretend that he des- 
 pised his audience, and that they were a mob whose 
 approval was unworthy of winning; on the con- 
 trary, he told them to their faces that ' the time 
 would come when they would be obliged to listen.' 
 A smaller man would have shrunk with ready 
 excuse from conquering such a Box Office, but 
 Disraeli knew that it was a condition precedent 
 to greatness, and he intended to be great. He 
 had no visionary ideas about the political game. 
 As he said to a fellow-politician : ' Look at it as 
 you will, it is a beastly career.' Much the same 
 may be said in moments of despondency of any 
 career. The only thing that ultimately sweetens 
 the labour necessary to success is the Box Office 
 returns, not by any means solely because of their 
 value in money — though a man honest with him- 
 self does not despise money — but because every 
 shilling paid into the Box Office is a, straight 
 testimonial from a fellow-citizen who believes in 
 your work. Disraeli's Box Office returns were 
 colossal and deservedly so — for he had worked 
 hard for them. 
 
 When you come to think of it seriously, the 
 
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'THE BOX OFFICE' n 
 
 Box Office principle in the drama of politics is 
 the right for that drama's patrons to make its 
 laws, a thing that this nation has contended for 
 through the centuries. Indeed, there are only two 
 possible methods of right choice open : either to 
 listen to the voice of public opinion — the Box 
 Office principle — or to leave affairs entirely to the 
 arbitrament of chance. With sturdy English com- 
 mon sense we have embodied both these principles 
 in an excellent but eccentric constitution. We 
 allow public opinion to choose the members of 
 the House of Commons, and leave the choice of 
 members of the House of Lords entirely to chance. 
 To an outside observer both methods seem to give 
 equally satisfactory results. 
 
 In political matters we find that for all practical 
 purposes the Box Office reigns supreme. No mis- 
 guided f>olitical impresario to-day would plant 
 some incompetent young actor into a star part 
 because he was a member of his own family. We 
 may be thankful that all parties openly recognise 
 that any political play to be produced must please 
 the pit and gallery, and that any statesman actor, 
 to be a success, must play to their satisfaction. No 
 one wants the stalls and dress circle of the political 
 circus to be empty, but it would be absurd to let 
 a small percentage of the audience exercise too 
 great an influence on the productions of the man- 
 agement. 
 
 As in politics, so in business, for here no sane 
 man will be heard to deny that the Box Office test 
 
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12 'THE BOX OFFICE' 
 
 is the only test of merit. If the balance sheet is 
 adverse, the business man may be a man of culture, 
 brain-power, intellect, sentiment and good man- 
 ners, but as a business man he is not a success, 
 and Nature kindly extinguishes him and automat- 
 ically removes him from a field of energy for which 
 he is unfitted. It is really unfortunate that one 
 cannot have a moral, social, and literary Bank- 
 ruptcy Court, where, applying the Box Office test, 
 actors, authors, artists, and statesmen might file 
 their petitions and be adjudged politically, or 
 histrionically, or artistically bankrupt, as the case 
 might be, and obtain a certificate of the Court, 
 permitting them to open a fried-fish shop, to start 
 a newspaper, or to enter upon some simpler occu- 
 pation which, upon evidence given, it might appjear 
 they are really fitted for. 
 
 It is the vogue to-day for those claiming to 
 possess the literary and artistic temperament to 
 shrink with very theatrical emphasis from the Box 
 Office. They point out how the Box Office of 
 to-day overrules the Box Office of yesterday, for- 
 getting that the Box Office of to-morrow may 
 reinstate the judgment of the inferior Court. Even 
 if the Box Office is as uncertain as the law, it is 
 also as powerful as the law. Of course a f>ainter 
 or writer has the advantage over the actor — if it be 
 one — of appealing to a smaller Box Office to-day, 
 in the hopes of attracting a large Box Office 
 to-morrow, A man can write and paint to please 
 a coming generation, but a man cannot act, or 
 
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'THE BOX OFFICE' 13 
 
 bring in Bills in Parliament, or bake or brew, or 
 make candlesticks for anyone else than his fellow 
 living men. Not that, for myself, I think there 
 have ever been many writers or artists who wrote 
 and painted for future generations. On the con- 
 trary, they wrote and painted largely to please 
 themselves, but in so far as they cared for their 
 wives and children, with an eye on the Box Office, 
 and in most cases it was only because their business 
 arrangements were mismanaged that their own 
 generations failed to pay to come in. These 
 failures were the exception. The greatest men, 
 such as Shakespeare and Dickens, were immediate 
 Box Office successes — others were Box Office 
 successes in their own day, but have not stood the 
 test of time. Nevertheless, it is something to suc- 
 ceed at any Box Office, even if the success be only 
 temporary. Every man cannot be a Prime 
 Minister, but is that any reason why he should not 
 aspire to a seat on the Parish Council ? When 
 one turns to the lives of authors and artists, one 
 does not find that the wisest and best were men 
 who despised the test of the Box Office. 
 
 Goldsmith had the good sense to ' heartily wish 
 to be rich,' but he scarcely went the right way 
 about it. One remembers Dr. Johnson sending 
 him a guinea, and going across to his lodgings to 
 find that his landlady had arrested him for debt and 
 that he had changed the guinea for a bottle of 
 Madeira. Dr. Johnson immediately makes across 
 to the bookseller and sells the 'Vicar of Wakefield' 
 
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14 'THE BOX OFFICE' 
 
 for sixty pounds. The Box Office test absolutely 
 settled the merit of the book in its own generation, 
 and from then until now. One may regret that 
 Goldsmith reaped so poor a reward, and that is 
 what so constantly happens, not that the Box 
 Office test fails to be a true test at revealing merit, 
 but that, owing to superior business capacity, a 
 very inferior author will for a time reap a bigger 
 reward than a better author. This is generally the 
 result of bad business management, and the cases 
 even of authors and artists who are not discovered 
 in their own lifetime, and are discovered by future 
 generations, are rarer than one would suppose. It 
 is an amusing modern craze among the cognoscenti 
 to assess the ability of a writer or an artist of to-day 
 by the mere fact alone that he has few admirers 
 of his own generation. 
 
 If one were to investigate the lives of great 
 writers and painters, one would find, I think, that 
 the majority wrote and painted for money and re- 
 cognition, and that the one reward they really 
 wished for was a Box Office success. 
 
 Dickens, who is perhaps the healthiest genius 
 in English literature, writing of a proposed new 
 publication, says frankly : 
 
 I say nothing of the novelty of such a publication, nowadays, 
 or its chance of success. Of course I think them great, very 
 great; indeed almost beyond calculation, or I should not seek to 
 bind myself to anything so extensive. The heads of the terms 
 which I should be prepared to go into the undertaking would 
 be — ^that I be made a proprietor in the work, -and a sharer in 
 
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'THE BOX OFFICE' 15 
 
 the profits. That when I bind myself to write a certain portion 
 of every number, I am ensured for that writing in every 
 number, a certain sum of money. 
 
 That is the wholesome way of approaching a piece 
 of literary work from the Box Office point of view. 
 But Dickens well understood the inward signific- 
 ance of Box Office success and why it is a thing 
 good in itself. As he puts it in answering the 
 letter of a reader in the backwoods of America : 
 
 To be numbered among the household gods of one's distant 
 countrymen and associated with their homes and quiet pleasures ; 
 to be told that in each nook and corner of the world's great 
 mass there lives one well-wisher who holds communion with me 
 in spirit is a worthy fame indeed, and one which I would not 
 barter for a mine of wealth. 
 
 Dickens's Box Office returns brought him a simi- 
 lar message from hundreds and thousands of his 
 fellow-men to that contained in the letter from the 
 backwoods of America, and though in the nature 
 of things such messages can only come in any 
 number through the Box Office, Dickens under- 
 stood the meaning of a Box Office success, and had 
 too honest a heart to pretend that he despised it. 
 
 Thackeray was of course absolutely dogmatic on 
 the Box Office principle. He rightly regarded the 
 Box Office as the winnowing machine separating 
 chafif from wheat. He refused to whimper over 
 imaginary men of genius who failed to get a hear- 
 ing from the world. One of the first duties of an 
 author, in his view, was that of any other citizen, 
 namely, to pay his way and earn his living. He 
 
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i6 'THE BOX OFFICE' 
 
 puts his cold sensible views into the mouth of 
 Warrington reproving Pen for some maudlin 
 observation about the wrongs of genius at the 
 hands of publishers. 
 
 What is it you want? (asks Warrington). Do you want a 
 body of capitalists that shall be forced to purchase the works 
 of all authors who may present themselves, manuscript In 
 hand ? Everybody who writes his epic, every driveller who can 
 and can't spell and produces his novel or his tragedy — are they 
 all to come and find a bag of sovereigns in exchange for their 
 worthless reams of paper ? Who is to settle what is good, bad, 
 saleable, or otherwise? Will you give the buyer leave in fine 
 to purchase or not? ... I may have my own ideas of the 
 value of my Pegasus, and think him the most wonderful of 
 animals, but the dealer has a right to his opinion, too, and 
 may want a lady's horse, or a cob for a heavy timid rider, or a 
 sound hack for the road, and my beast won't suit him. 
 
 One cannot have the Box Office principle more 
 correctly stated than it is in that passage. Nearly 
 all the great writers seem to be of the same opinion, 
 and for the same reasons and without being such 
 a 'whole-hogger' as Dr. Johnson, who roundly 
 asserted that ' No man but a blockhead ever wrote 
 except for money,' it .seems undoubted that the 
 motives of money and recognition have produced 
 the best work that has been done. 
 
 Nor do we find that the painter is in this matter 
 less sensible than his artistic brethren. The late 
 Sir John Millais expresses very accurately the sen- 
 sible spirit in which all great artists attend to the 
 varied voices of critics as against the unanimous 
 voice of the Box Office. 
 
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'THE BOX OFFICE' 17 
 
 I have now lost all hope of gaining just appreciation in the 
 Press ; but thank goodness ' the proof of the pudding is in the 
 eating.' Nothing could have been more adverse than the 
 criticism on 'The Huguenot,' yet the engraving is now selling 
 more rapidly than any other of recent time. I have great faith 
 in the mass of the public, although one hears now and then 
 such grossly ignorant remarks. 
 
 The artist then gives instances of public criticism 
 in other arts with which he disagrees ; but the only 
 matter that I am concerned with is that in his 
 own art, and for himself, he has arrived at the 
 Box Office conclusion that the proof of the pudding 
 is in the eating. 
 
 I have searched through many biographies in 
 hopes of finding the writer or artist who was wholly 
 uninfluenced by the Box Office. If he existed, or 
 was likely to exist, he would be found, one would 
 think, in large numbers among those well-to-do 
 folk who had ample means and could devote their 
 lives to developing their genius and ability solely 
 for the good of mankind. It must seem curious 
 to those who despise the Box Office to find how- 
 little good work is achieved by men and women 
 who are under no necessity of appealing to that 
 institution for support. 
 
 If I had been asked to name any writer of my 
 own time who was absolutely free from any truck 
 with the Box Office, I should, before I had read 
 his charming autobiography, have suggested Her- 
 bert Spencer. For indeed one would not expect 
 to find a Box Office within the curtilage of a 
 cathedral or a laboratory. Religion and science 
 
 C 
 
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i8 'THE BOX OFFICE' 
 
 and their preachers have necessarily very little to 
 do with the Box Office. 
 
 But Spencer was not only a great writer, but a 
 keen scientific analyst of the facts of human life. 
 He could not deceive himself — as so many of the 
 literary folk do — as to his aims and objects. Look- 
 ing back on the youthful valleys of his life from 
 the calm mountain slopes that a man may rest on 
 at the age of seventy-three, he asks himself 
 
 What have been the motives prompting my career? how 
 much have they been egotistic, and how much altruistic ? That 
 they have been mixed there can be no doubt. And in this case, 
 as in most cases, it is next to impossible to separate them 
 mentally in such a way as to preserve the relations of amount 
 among them. So deep down is the gratification which results 
 from the consciousness of efficiency, and the further conscious- 
 ness of the applause which recognised efficiency brings, that it 
 is impossible for anyone to exclude it. Certainly, in my own 
 case, the desire for such recognition has not been absent. 
 
 He continues to point out that this desire for 
 recognition was ' not the primary motive of my 
 first efforts, nor has it been the primary motive of 
 my larger and later efforts,' and concludes, ' Still, 
 as I have said, the desire of achievement, and the 
 honour which achievement brings, have doubtless 
 been large factors.' 
 
 It is very interesting to note that a man like 
 Herbert Spencer recognises what a large part the 
 Box Office played in his own work — work which 
 was rather the work of a scientist than the work 
 of a literary man. 
 
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'THE BOX OFFICE' 19 
 
 In the modern education and in the Socialist 
 doctrines that are preached, emulation, competition 
 and success are spoken of almost as though they 
 were evils in themselves. People are to have 
 without attaining. Children and men and women 
 are taught to forget that ' they which run in a race 
 run all, but one receiveth the prize.' It is con- 
 sidered bad form to remember that there is a Box 
 Office, that it is the world's medium for deciding 
 human values; and that to gain prizes it is neces- 
 sary to ' so run that ye may obtain.' 
 
 These old-world notions are worth repeating, for 
 however we may wish they were otherwise, they 
 remain with us and have to be faced. And on the 
 whole they are good. Success at the Box Office is 
 not only to be desired on account of the money it 
 brings in, but because it means an appreciation 
 and belief in one's work by one's fellow-men. In 
 professions such as the actor's, the barrister's, the 
 politician's, and to a great extent the dramatist's, 
 and all those vocations where a man to succeed at 
 all must succeed in his own lifetime, the Box Office 
 is, for all practical purposes, the sole test of merit. 
 The suggestion — a very common one to-day — that 
 a man can only make a Box Office success by pan- 
 dering to low tastes, or indulging in some form of 
 dishonesty or chicanery, is a form of cant invented 
 by the man who has failed, to soothe his self-esteem 
 and to account pleasantly to himself for his own 
 failure. A study of the lives of great men will 
 show that they all worked for the two main things, 
 
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20 'THE BOX OFFICE' 
 
 popular recognition and substantial reward, that 
 are summed up in the modern phrase Box Office. 
 
 It may be that in some ideal state the incentive 
 to work may be found in some other institution 
 rather than the Box Office. It is the dream of a 
 growing number of people that a time is nearly 
 at hand when the Box Office results attained by 
 the workers are to be taken away and shared 
 among those high-souled unemployables who pre- 
 fer talking to toiling and spinning. Such theories 
 are nothing new, though just at the moment they 
 may be uttered in louder tones than usual. St. 
 Paul knew that they were troubling the Thessaloni- 
 ans when he reminded them ' that if any would 
 not work neither should he eat,' and he added, 
 ' for we hear that there are some which walk 
 among you disorderly, working not at all, but are 
 busybodies.' St. Paul makes the sensible sugges- 
 tion ' that with quietness they work and eat their 
 own bread.' To eat your own bread and not 
 someone else's, you must work for it successfully 
 and earn it. That really is the Box Office 
 principle. 
 
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21 
 
 THE DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION. 
 
 " A merry heart doeth good like a medicine : 
 But a broken spirit drieth the bones." 
 
 Proverbs xvii., 22. 
 
 The Professors of dry bones have broken so many 
 spirits in their machine that they will not grudge 
 me a laugh at their little failings. A mere "man 
 in the street" like myself can do little more than 
 call attention to some of the weaknesses of our 
 educational system, well understanding that the 
 earnest Schoolmaster knows far more about the 
 disadvantages of education than anything he can 
 learn from his surviving pupils. For my part I 
 have never made any secret of the fact that from 
 my earliest days I disliked education, and had a 
 natural, and I hope not unhealthy, distrust of 
 schoolmasters. Let it here be understood with the 
 greatest respect to the sex that "schoolmaster" 
 embraces "schoolmistress." Most school-boys 
 that I remember have had that attitude of mind, 
 but many remained so long in scholastic cloisters 
 that the sane belief of their youth, that the school- 
 master was their natural enemy, became diminished 
 and was ultimately lost altogether. Indeed, there 
 are few minds that undergo the strain of years of 
 
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22 DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 
 
 toil among scholastic persons without becoming 
 dulled into the respectable belief that schoolmasters 
 are in themselves desirable social assets, like 
 priests and policemen and judges. Now no small 
 boy with a healthy mind believes this. He knows 
 that the schoolmaster and the policeman are merely 
 evidences of an imperfect social system, that no 
 progress is likely to be made until society is able 
 to dispense with their services, and though he 
 cannot put these ideas into words he can and 
 does act upon that assumption, and continues to 
 do so until his natural alertness is destroyed and he 
 is dragooned into at all events an outward observ- 
 ance of the official belief in the sanctity of school- 
 masters. 
 
 Personally I have always regarded it as a matter 
 of congratulation that I escaped from school at a 
 comparatively early age, nor can I honestly say 
 that I remember to-day anything that I formerly 
 learnt at school, or that if I did remember anything 
 I learnt, there, — except perhaps a few irregular 
 French verbs — that it would be of the slightest use 
 to me in the everyday business of life. 
 
 If I were, for instance, to model my methods of 
 trial in the County Court upon the proceedings of 
 Euclid, who spent his life in endeavouring to prove 
 by words, propositions that were self-evident even 
 in his own very rudimentary pictures, I should 
 be justly blamed by a commercial community for 
 wasting their time. Yet how many of the most 
 precious hours of the best of my youth have been 
 
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DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 23 
 
 wasted for me by schoolmasters, who were so dull 
 as not to perceive that Euclid, like Edward Lear 
 and Lewis Carroll, was the writer of a book of 
 nonsense? Not nonsense that can possibly appeal 
 to the child of to-day, but nonsense that will always 
 have its place in the library of those to whom the 
 Absurd is as precious in life as the Beautiful. 
 
 If you believe at all in evolution and progress, 
 and the descent of man from more primitive types, 
 with its wonderfully hopeful corollary, the ascent of 
 man to higher things, you must acknowledge at 
 once that education has necessarily been, and 
 always must be, a great set back to onward move- 
 ment. A schoolmaster can only teach what he 
 knows, and if one generation only learns what the 
 last generation can teach there is not much hope 
 of onward movement. 
 
 Schoolmasters are apt to believe that the hope 
 of the younger generation depends upon their 
 assimilating the ideas of their pastors and masters, 
 whereas the true hope is that they will not be so 
 long overborne by authority, as to make their 
 young brains incapable of rejecting at all events 
 some of the false teaching that each generation 
 complacently offers to the next. 
 
 We need not accept the new generation entirely 
 at its own valuation, nor need we disturb ourselves 
 about the exaggerated under-estimate with which 
 one-and- twenty sets down for naught the wisdom 
 of fifty. But unless we pursue education as a 
 preparation for the betterment of the human race 
 
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24 DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 
 
 we are beating the air. And the responsibility is 
 a great one. For the mind of a child, as Roger 
 Ascham says, is "like the newest wax, most able 
 to receive the best and fairest printing!" But, 
 alas ! it is equally able to receive printing of an 
 inferior type. Every one of us, I should imagine, 
 half believes something to-day that he knows to 
 be untrue because it was impressed on the wax of 
 his child-mind by some well-meaning but ignorant 
 schoolmaster. 
 
 One of the gravest disadvantages about educa- 
 tion is the way it thwarts progress by teaching 
 young folk that which, to say the least of it, is 
 uncertain. If education were to be strictly confined 
 by the schoolmaster to the things he really knew, 
 what a quantity of lumber could be trundled out 
 of the school-room to-morrow. Teaching should 
 be kept to arts, accomplishments and facts — 
 opinions and theories should have no place what- 
 ever in the school-room. 
 
 Open any school book of a hundred years ago 
 and read its theories and opinions, and remember 
 that these were thrust down the throats of the little 
 ones with the same complacent conceit that our 
 opinions and theories of to-day are being taught 
 in the schools. And yet we all know that theories 
 and opinions in the main become very dead sea- 
 fruit in fifty or a hundred years, whilst the multi- 
 plication table remains with us like the Ten 
 Commandments, a monument of everlasting truth. 
 
 This chief disadvantage of education will prob- 
 
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DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 25 
 
 ably continue with us for many generations, until 
 it is recognised as immoral and wicked to warp 
 a child's mind by teaching things to it as facts 
 which are at the best only conjectures, in the hope 
 that in after life it may take some side in the affairs 
 of the world, which the teacher, or the committee 
 of the school, is interested in. The true rule 
 should of course be to teach children, especially in 
 State Schools, only ascertained facts, the truth of 
 which all citizens, who are not in asylums, agree 
 to be true. 
 
 My view of the ideal system of education is much 
 the same as Mr. Weller senior's. You will remem- 
 ber that he said to Mr. Pickwick about his son 
 Sam, " I took a great deal of pains with his 
 eddication, sir ! I let him run in the streets when 
 he were very young and shift for his self. It's the 
 only way to make a boy sharp, sir." I could not 
 ask any body of schoolmasters to adopt this prin- 
 ciple, though it is one that seems to me thoroughly 
 sound. Put into other and more scholastic words, 
 it may be made a copy-book sentiment. Emerson 
 says much the same thing as old Tony Weller, 
 when he writes, "That which each can do best 
 only his Maker can teach him," and the spirit of 
 the Maker of the Universe seems to me at least as 
 likely to be met with in Market Street as in a 
 committee room of the Manchester Town Hall, 
 where the destinies of our national education are so 
 ably managed by citizens of respectability and 
 authority. 
 
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26 DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 
 
 Some such preface as this is needed if I am to 
 make it clear to you why I choose the disadvantages 
 of education rather than the advantages, as the 
 subject matter of my essay. One should always 
 try to speak on something one really believes in 
 heartily and thoroughly. The advantages of 
 education have been spread before us during the 
 last fifty years by every writer of importance — a 
 writer of no importance may fairly give an idle 
 hour to the other side of the picture. 
 
 In any commercial country it should not be 
 necessary to apologise for the endeavour to make 
 a rough balance-sheet describing the liabilities of 
 education ; even if we are all convinced that the 
 assets of education are more than enough to meet 
 the liabilities and that we are educationally solvent. 
 Nor am I really stating anything very new or 
 startling, for all thinkers and writers on education 
 seem beginning at last to discover that education 
 is only a means to an end, and that when you 
 have no clear idea of what end you hope to arrive 
 at it is not very probable that you will choose the 
 right means. 
 
 If a man wanted to travel to Blackpool and was 
 so ignorant as to imagine that Blackpool was in 
 the neighbourhood of London, he would probably 
 in the length of his journey lose many beautiful 
 hours of the sea-side and spend them in the 
 stuffy atmosphere of a railway train. This would 
 be of little importance to the community if it was 
 only the case of an individual man — a. schoolmaster 
 
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DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 27 
 
 for instance. But what if the man had taken a 
 party of children with him? thereby losing for 
 them wonderful hours of digging on the sand, 
 or seeing Punch or Judy, or listening to a Bishop 
 preaching — that indeed would be a serious state 
 of things for everyone. 
 
 One of the great disadvantages of modern 
 education is that few of its professors and teachers, 
 and fewer of its elected managers, have the least 
 idea where they are going to. The authorities 
 shoot out codes and prospectuses and minutes and 
 rules and orders, and change their systems with 
 the inspired regularity of a War Office. 
 
 Another of the disadvantages of education to-day 
 is that there is too much of it, and that what there 
 is is in the hands of well-meaning directors, who 
 are either middle-aged and ignorant, or, what is 
 worse, middle-aged and academic. If we cannot 
 reach the ideal of Tony Weller and let the child 
 shift for himself, let us at all events unshackle 
 the schoolmaster and allow him to shift for himself. 
 The head master of a great English school is a 
 despot. He has at his back — and I use the phrase 
 "at his back" with deliberate care, not meaning 
 "upon his shoulders" — he has at his back a power- 
 ful board of citizens of position who are wise 
 enough and strong enough to leave the question 
 of education to the man at the wheel, and to 
 remember that it is dangerous to speak to him 
 whilst he is steering the ship. Any system of 
 education that is to be of any avail at all must be 
 
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28 DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 
 
 a personal system in a great measure, and the 
 elementary head master should be in the same 
 position as the head master of our great public 
 schools. The boards and committees should 
 interfere as little as possible with the schoolmasters 
 they employ. A schoolmaster, of all workmen, 
 wants freedom and liberty to do his work his 
 own way. And who can teach anything, worth 
 teaching, who is being constantly worried and 
 harassed by inspectors and committees? Educa- 
 tion is not sewage, and you cannot judge of 
 its results by a chemical analysis of the mental 
 condition of the human effluent that pours out of 
 the school gates into the rivers of life. 
 
 I have expressed my distrust of schoolmasters 
 quite freely, but I must confess that my detestation 
 of boards and committees amounts almost to a 
 mania, though when I notice the pleasure and 
 delight so many good citizens have in sitting on 
 a committee and preventing business from being 
 done, I fairly admit it is quite possible I am wrong 
 about the matter. It may well be that there is 
 some hidden virtue in these boards and committees, 
 some divine purpose in them that I cannot see. I 
 have sometimes thought that in the course of 
 evolution they will arrive at a condition of perma- 
 nent session without the transaction of any business 
 whatever. Then possibly the golden age will have 
 arrived, and then the individual servant, no longer 
 hampered by their well meant interference, will 
 have a chance to do his best work. But for my 
 
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DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 29 
 
 part, so oppressed am I by the futility of committees 
 that I am tempted sometimes to doubt the person- 
 ality of the Evil One, in the sure belief that the 
 affairs of his territory would be governed more to 
 his liking by a large committee elected on a 
 universal suffrage of both sexes. Who are our 
 ideal schoolmasters in the history of the profession ? 
 Roger Ascham, who, learned man that he was, 
 impressed on youth the necessity of riding, running, 
 wrestling, swimming, dancing, singing and the 
 playing of instruments cunningly; Arnold, of 
 Rugby, whose whole method was founded on the 
 principle of awakening the intellect of every 
 individual boy, and who was the personal guide and 
 friend of those of the scholars who could appreciate 
 the value of his friendship; Edward Thring, of 
 Uppingham, who thought "the most pitiful sight 
 in the world was the slow, good boy laboriously 
 kneading himself into stupidity because he is good," 
 and who stood firm for the individual master's 
 "liberty to teach." Are any of these schoolmasters 
 men who could or would have tolerated any inter- 
 ference in their life's work from an unsympathetic 
 inspector or a prosy town councillor. The work of 
 the committees should be devoted to choosing a 
 good man or woman to be head master of a school 
 and then to leaving him or her alone. The 
 inspectors should be pensioned — and turned off on 
 the golf-links. 
 
 Having dealt with these serious disadvantages to 
 education, let me hasten to say a little more about 
 
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30 DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 
 
 that grave disadvantage to education, the school- 
 master himself. The schoolmaster is generally a 
 man who, having learnt to teach, has long ago 
 ceased to learn. It is the past education of the 
 schoolmaster that generally stands in his way. He 
 believes in education, and thinks it a good thing 
 in itself; he believes in rules and orders and 
 lessons as desirable, whereas they are only the 
 necessary outcome of Adam's misconduct in the 
 Garden of Eden. I cannot quite agree with 
 Tolstoi's suggestion that all rules in a school 
 are illegitimate, and that the child's liberty is 
 inviolable. I do not think anarchy in a school is 
 more possible to-day than anarchy in a state. But I 
 do think that the schoolmaster of to-day should rule 
 as far as possible by the creation of a healthy public 
 opinion among his scholars and make the largest 
 use of that public opinion as a moral and educational 
 force. Looking back on my own experience, it is 
 not what I learnt from my schoolmasters but what 
 I learnt from my companions that has been of any 
 real value to me in after life. 
 
 A child should go early to some good kinder- 
 garten presided over by some delightfully bright and 
 pleasant lady, merely to learn the lesson that there 
 are other children in the world besides itself. How 
 important it is in life to learn to sit cheerfully next 
 to someone you cordially detest without slapping 
 him or her. And yet such a lesson, to be really 
 mastered, should be learnt before five or seven at 
 the latest. After that it can only be learned by 
 
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DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 31 
 
 much prayer and — dining out. At dinner parties, 
 and particularly public dinners, one can get the 
 necessary practice in this kind of self-control, 
 but it is better to learn it whilst you are young, 
 when alone it is p)ossible to master the great lessons 
 of life thoroughly and with comparatively little 
 pain. Men have reached the position of King's 
 Counsel without attaining this simple moral grace. 
 If you come to think of it, all the really important 
 things in life must of necessity be self -taught. I 
 suppose schoolmasters, being experts in education, 
 have never given serious thought to the fact that the 
 child teaches itself, with the aid of a mother, all the 
 best and necessary lessons of life in the first few 
 years of its being. It learns to eat, for instance. 
 I have watched a baby struggling to find the way 
 to its mouth with a rusk, with intense interest and 
 admiration. How it jabs itself in the eye with the 
 soft end of the biscuit and bedaubs its cheeks and 
 clothes with the debris, and kicks and fights in 
 disgust and loses the biscuit in a temper and if not 
 assisted by an over indulgent mother, finds the 
 biscuit after infinite search and goes at it again with 
 renewed energy on its way, and at length is 
 rewarded by success. What a smile of victory, 
 what a happy relapse into the dreamless sleep of 
 the successful. The child has learned a lesson it 
 will never forget. It has found its way to its mouth. 
 One never learns anything as good as that from a 
 schoolmaster. And indeed if you think of it the 
 baby is learning useful things on its own every 
 
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32 DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 
 
 day of its life, and working hard at them. It 
 learns to talk, and that in spite of its father and 
 mother, who insist on cooing at it, and talking a wild 
 baby language that must greatly irritate and impede 
 a conscientious self-educating baby endeavouring 
 to master the tongue of the land of its adoption. 
 It learns to walk, too, not without tumbles, 
 and tumbles which inspire it to further effort. 
 I have very little doubt that some monkey 
 schoolmaster of primeval days checked some bright 
 monkey scholar who endeavoured to walk into the 
 first primeval school on his hind legs, and threw 
 back the progress of mankind some thousands of 
 years in the sacred name of discipline. If you 
 think of a child teaching itself those wonderful 
 pursuits eating, walking, and talking, are there any 
 bounds to what it might continue to learn if there 
 were no schoolmaster? 
 
 If you were to abolish the schoolmaster what would 
 happen ? I think the answer is that the Burns, the 
 Milton and the Sam Weller of a nation would profit 
 by the stimulus to self-education. The child whose 
 father was a musician or a carpenter or a plough- 
 man who loved his art or craft, would be found 
 striving to become as good an artist or craftsman 
 as his father, and perhaps in the end bettering the 
 paternal example. The school and the school- 
 master can do little but hinder the evolution of 
 any worker in any art or craft. The real worker's 
 work must be the result of self-education, and he 
 must live from early childhood among the workers. 
 
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DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 33 
 
 Read, for instance, the delightful account given 
 by Miss Ellen Terry of her early days in 
 "The Story of My Life." "At the time of my 
 marriage," she writes, "I had never had the 
 advantage — I assume it is an advantage — of a single 
 day's schooling in a real school. What I have 
 learned outside my own profession I have learnt 
 from environment. Perhaps it is this that makes me 
 think environment more valuable than a set education 
 and a stronger agent in forming character even than 
 heredity." Lives there even the schoolmaster who 
 believes that there was any school or schoolmistress 
 in Victorian days that could have done anything but 
 hinder Miss Terry in the triumph of her artistic 
 career ? A born actress like Miss Terry could not be 
 aided by Miss Melissa Wackles, with her "English 
 grammar, composition and geography," even 
 though in that day of lady's education it was 
 tempered by the use of the dumb-bells. 
 
 In the same way, if we could assure to a boy or 
 girl an apprenticeship from early days to a crafts- 
 man or farmer, it would probably be better for the 
 children and the State than any other form of 
 education they receive to-day. It is quite unlikely 
 the world will ever see the minor arts and crafts ever 
 restored to their former glory, unless it encourages 
 parents who are themselves good craftsmen to keep 
 their children away from the schoolmaster in the 
 better atmosphere of a good workshop. 
 
 We talk largely about the melancholy increase of 
 unemployment, but how much of this is caused bj 
 
 D 
 
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34 DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 
 
 the education of masses of people in useless subjects. 
 The bad boy who gets into trouble and has the good 
 fortune to be put in a reformatory and there learns 
 a trade has a much better chance of a useful and 
 pleasurable life than the good boy who gains a 
 County Council prize in geography. 
 
 I came across a servant in Cumberland whose 
 education had resulted among other things in a 
 knowledge of the catechism and a list of the rivers 
 on the East coast of England, but who did not 
 know the name of the river she could see from the 
 window and who had not the least idea how to 
 light a fire. What is the good of learning your duty 
 to your neighour when you cannot light a fire to 
 warm him when he is wet through, without wasting 
 two bundles of sticks and a pint of paraffin oil ? 
 
 One must not however blame the girl, nor indeed 
 her schoolmistress, for probably she too could not 
 light a fire, and both regarded the lighting of a fire 
 as a degrading thing to do. No doubt if you had 
 pursued your educational researches in Cumberland 
 to the source of things, you would have found that 
 the committee could not light fires, and the inspector 
 of schools could not light fires — it may be the 
 Minister of Education himself cannot light a fire — 
 and though there is plenty of material for fires in 
 every board room there is nothing in the code about 
 teaching children to make use of it. Yet I can 
 conceive nothing a child would like better, in his or 
 her early days in school, than being a fire monitor 
 and having charge of the fire and learning to light 
 
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DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 35 
 
 and look after it. I have made much of this little 
 incident because it is typical of the school education 
 of to-day. 
 
 In the old days of family life boys and girls, and 
 especially the latter, learnt in a good home a great 
 deal of domestic work, and the boys could help in 
 their father's shop or farm or inn as the case might 
 be, and learnt thereby many things that you cannot 
 learn in schools. Mr. Squeers, though not a moral 
 character, was possessed of a practical mode of 
 teaching. "C-1-e-a-n clean, verb active to make 
 bright, to scour. W-i-n win, d-e-r der, winder a 
 casement. When the boy knows this out of a book 
 he goes and does it." And if you come to think of 
 it, it is far more important that a boy should know^ 
 how to keep a window clean than that he should 
 know how to spell it. 
 
 The schoolmaster of an elementary school there- 
 fore should be a man of good domestic tastes, who 
 wishes to see his home neat and clean and well kept 
 and tidy, who insists on having his food well cooked, 
 and prefers that his wife and daughter should be 
 well dressed at the smallest possible cost to himself. 
 These virtues he should be urged to put before 
 scholars as being the first duties of life and the 
 chiefest honour of a good citizen. The false notion 
 that reading and writing are in themselves higher 
 attainments than carpentering, cooking and sewing 
 should be sternly discouraged, and only teachers 
 should be chosen capable of some technical 
 excellence in the practical work of crafts. For 
 
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36 DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 
 
 the same reasons teachers should never be chosen 
 for any academic degree they possess, for every 
 day it becomes more certain that the man who 
 obtains thesedegrees is the man who has deliberately 
 failed to make himself a master of any one subject. 
 He is a man who has wasted precious hours in 
 getting a smattering of many useless branches of 
 learning, and has been forced by the sellers of 
 degrees to abandon all hope of having sufficient 
 leisure to study music or painting or the workman- 
 ship of a craft, or even to have read widely of 
 English literature. In the education of the young 
 the man who can play the piano, or better still, the 
 fiddle, is more important to my purpose than the 
 man who can make Latin verses ; and the man who 
 can model a toy boat with a pocket-knife whilst he 
 is telling you a fairy tale is, from the standpoint of 
 real education, a jewel of rare price. The school- 
 master of to-day is one of the disadvantages of 
 education because he is interested mainly in 
 subjects of smaller importance and is not really a 
 sound man in any one real pursuit, such as music 
 or drawing. 
 
 Another disadvantage of English elementary 
 education is that it places the school course and 
 literary things above the playing fields and physical 
 things. All men who have thought about education 
 at all, and who had any capacity for thinking wisely, 
 have recognised that in training a child to make and 
 keep his body a healthy body we are proceeding 
 upon lines that experience tells us are right and 
 
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DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 37 
 
 sound lines. Here we can teach something we know. 
 Plato tells us that the experience of the past in his 
 day had discovered that right education consisted in 
 gymnastics for the body and music for the mind. I 
 do not know that we can say with certainty that we 
 have ascertained to-day much more about education 
 than Plato knew. In our day I should put the arts 
 and crafts of home life and the practice — not 
 preaching — of its virtues, first in the programme, 
 and secondly, to use Plato's word, gymnastics. 
 These should include cricket, football, running, 
 jumping, wrestling, dancing, fives, tennis, and all 
 manly and womanly associated games which exer- 
 cise and develop the body, and have by the public 
 opinion of the players to be played with modesty 
 and self-restraint, and with a reasonable technical 
 skill that can only be arrived at by taking pains. 
 All these things are far more useful than any sub- 
 jects that can be taught in a schoolroom. One of 
 the great advantages of middle-class public school 
 life is that these things are taught, and that the 
 boys work at them in a healthy spirit of emulation 
 and a magnificent desire to succeed that would turn 
 the whole nation into a Latin-speaking race, if by 
 any misfortune its motive power were diverted into 
 the schoolroom. 
 
 Elementary education and its schoolmasters have 
 but small opportunities to foster this natural healthy 
 training of the body in which all young people are 
 willing and ready to co-operate with their teachers. 
 Unfortunately, the men who obtain positions on 
 
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38 DISADVANTAGETS OF EDUCATION 
 
 educational committees are too often men who have 
 amassed wealth at the expense of their livers, and 
 who would look askance at the ideas of Plato, Roger 
 Ascham, or Tolstoi. Still, I think a day is coming 
 when playing-fields and playgrounds will be 
 attached to every elementary school, and used not 
 only by existing scholars, but by the old boys and 
 girls, who will thereby keep in touch with the 
 school and its good influences. 
 
 But, you will say, nothing has been said hitherto 
 about any lessons. Are reading, writing, and 
 arithmetic to be considered wholly as disadvan- 
 tages ? It would be easy to take up such a position 
 and hold it in argument but it is not necessary. The 
 advantages of educating the masses in the three R's 
 are obvious and on the surface, but the grave dis- 
 advantages are also there. It is no use teaching a 
 person anything that he is likely to make a bad use 
 of, and experience tells us that many people are 
 ruined by learning to read. Since the Education 
 Act of 1870, a mass of low-class literature and 
 journalism has sprung up to cater for the tastes of 
 a population that has undergone a compulsory 
 training in reading. Betting and gambling have 
 been greatly fostered by the power of reading and 
 answering advertisements. In the same way quack 
 remedies for imaginary ailments must have done a 
 lot of harm to the health of the people, and the use 
 of them is the direct result of teaching ignorant 
 people to read and not teaching them to disbelieve 
 most things they may happen to read. Writing in 
 
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DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 39 
 
 the same way by being made popular and common 
 has become debased. One seldom sees a good 
 handwriting now-a-days and spelling is a lost art. 
 Writing, however, must in a few years go out in 
 favour of machine writing. Penmanship will 
 hardly be taught some years hence when everyone 
 will have a telephone and typewriter of his own. 
 I cannot see that the universal habit of writing has 
 done very much for the world. The great mass of 
 written matter that circulates through the post, the 
 vast columns of newspaper reports that are contra- 
 dicted the next day — ^these things are the fruits of 
 universal writing. There is no evidence that in the 
 past anything worth writing ever remained un- 
 written. But there is strong evidence that since 
 1870 much has been written that had better have 
 remained unwritten, and would have so remained 
 but for State encouragement through its system of 
 education . As to arithmetic — if you saw the books 
 of the small shopkeepers in the County Court — you 
 would recognise its small hold on the people. One 
 chief use of it by the simpler folk seems to be the 
 calculations of the odds on a horse race. In France 
 and other more civilised countries this is done more 
 honestly by a machine called a totaliser, and 
 gambling is thereby kept within more reasonable 
 limits. Elementary arithmetic has been profitable 
 to the bookmaker — but to how many besides? If 
 you teach a boy cooking or carpentering he is very 
 unlikely to make an evil use of these accomplish- 
 ments in after life because they naturally minister 
 
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40 DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 
 
 to the right enjoyment of life. Whereas if you 
 teach a boy reading, writing, and arithmetic, the 
 surroundings of youth being what they are, he is at 
 least as likely to misuse these attainments as to use 
 them to the benefit of himself and his fellow 
 creatures. Once recognise this and you must admit 
 not that the three R's should be discontinued, but 
 that much more should be done to teach the young 
 persons to whom you have imparted these pleasant 
 arts how to make use of them legitimately and 
 honourably. It is no use teaching young people 
 any subject unless you see that in after life they 
 are to have opportunities of using their attainment 
 for the benefit of the State. Our fathers and 
 grandfathers were all for education as an end. We 
 are face to face with the results of a national system 
 of elementary education with no system whatever 
 of helping the educated to make good use of their 
 compulsory equipment. It is as though you gave a 
 boy a rifle and taught him to shoot and turned him 
 out into the world to shoot at anything he felt 
 inclined. Such a boy would be a danger to the 
 community, whereas if you placed him in a cadet 
 corps when he left school he and his rifle might be 
 a national asset. 
 
 That learning without a proper outlet for its use 
 may be a grave danger to the individual and to the 
 community is seen in the present state of India, 
 and Lord Morley of Blackburn, one of the greatest 
 supporters of education himself, called attention to 
 the necessity of a community which provides an 
 
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DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 41 
 
 education to a certain class allowing the citizens so 
 educated a proper opportunity of exercising the 
 faculties it has developed. As he said in the 
 House of Lords, "I agree that those who made 
 education what it is in India are responsible for a 
 great deal of what has happened since." And 
 what is true of India is equally true of England. 
 
 It is in providing healthy outlets and uses for the 
 educational power that has been created that the 
 Boards and Committees who govern these matters 
 will have to turn immediate attention if they wish 
 to justify their existence. 
 
 I know that these detached remarks of mine on 
 education must necessarily appear heretical — and 
 they are to some extent intentionally so. I do not 
 agree with Mr. Chesterton that the heretic of old 
 was proud of not being a heretic, and believed 
 himself orthodox and all the rest of the world 
 heretics. If he did he was indeed a madman. But 
 there is a place in the world for the utterer of 
 heresies if only to awaken the orthodox from 
 slumber and to make him look around and see if 
 there is any reform that can be made without 
 destroying the whole edifice. Reforms come slowly 
 and we, for our part, shall only see the dawn of a 
 better era whose sunshine will gladden the lives of 
 our grandchildren. I am not a pessimist about the 
 English school though I have chosen to speak of 
 its disadvantages. I think, to use an American 
 phrase, it is a "live" thing. 
 
 If you go into an English village you find three 
 
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42 DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 
 
 great public institutions, the Church, the Inn, and 
 the School. Each is licensed to some extent by 
 the State and each is burdened by the connection. 
 You find as a rule that the Church has voluntarily 
 locked its doors and put up a notice that the key 
 may be found at some old lady's cottage half a mile 
 away. You go into the Inn and find it struggling 
 to make itself hospitable in spite of the mismanage- 
 ment of brewers and the unsympathetic bigotry of 
 magistrates. But from the door of the School 
 troop out merry children, who some day will look 
 back to that time of their life as the happiest of all, 
 and who will recognise the debt of gratitude they 
 are under to the schoolmaster, who in spite of the 
 limitations of his system and himself encourages 
 his pupils to effort and self-reliance and teaches 
 them lessons of duty, reverence, and love. 
 
 I am not greatly interested in the Church or the 
 Inn, both of which institutions seem well able to 
 guard themselves from the disestablishment they 
 are said to deserve. But I am interested in the 
 School — and I wish to see it housed in fairer and 
 more ample buildings with larger playing fields 
 around them. And I want to see a race of school- 
 masters not only better paid — ^but worth more. 
 Men and women to whom the State can fairly give 
 a free hand, knowing that their object in education 
 would be to mould their pupils into self-reliant 
 citizens rather than to teach them scholastic tricks. 
 "The schoolmaster is abroad," said Lord Broug- 
 ham, "and I trust to him armed with his primer." 
 
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DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 43 
 
 For my part, a schoolmaster armed with a primer 
 is an abomination of desolation standing in a holy 
 place. I differ from a Lord Chancellor with a very 
 natural diffidence but his Lordship was wrong. 
 The schoolmaster of 1828 was not abroad, he was 
 in the same predicament as the schoolmaster of 
 191 1 — at sea. 
 
 If I were Minister of Education, I would write 
 over the door of every school in the country the 
 beautiful words, " Suffer little children and forbid 
 them not to come unto Me: for of such is the 
 Kingdom of Heaven." Let us beware lest we 
 forbid them by dogmas and creeds that lead only 
 to hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness ; let us 
 take heed lest we forbid them by lessons and 
 learning dull for to-day and dangerous for to- 
 morrow. Let us at least teach them as our grand- 
 mothers taught children when there were no schools 
 in the land, the simple duties of life that we all 
 know the meaning of, and the Christian duty of 
 unselfishness which we none of us practise. And 
 in this, as in all things, let us strive to teach by 
 example rather than by word. And if we are to 
 teach by the Christian rule, then how great, how 
 noble, how enduring is to be the work of the school- 
 master in continuing the greatness of our nation. 
 And the man or woman we shall choose shall not 
 be a pedant, whose long ears are decorated by 
 degrees, but an honest, simple person of any creed 
 whatsoever, who will humbly and reverently teach 
 the children of his or her school the few simple 
 
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44 DISADVANTAGES OF EDUCATION 
 
 facts of life, and add to that something of its arts 
 and its crafts and so much or little of its learning 
 as can be a service and not a hindrance to the 
 child's career. 
 
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45 
 
 COOKERY BOOK TALK. 
 
 Arviragus. How angel-like he sings ! 
 
 Guiderius. But his neat cookery ! he cut our roots in characters, 
 
 And saac'd our broths as Juno had been sick 
 
 And he her dieter. 
 
 Cymheline iv. 2. 
 
 In this passage Shakespeare exalts cookery above 
 songs that are merely angel-like, and anyone who 
 has dined at a modern restaurant with "music off" 
 as part of the stage directions will agree with 
 Guiderius that it is impertinent to consider the 
 merit of song at moments that should be given to 
 the praise of cookery. Incidentally, too, the 
 passage has a value for the cuisinologist of an 
 antiquarian turn of mind by pointing out that the 
 decoration of dishes with alphabetical carrots and 
 turnips, "roots cut in characters," was a common- 
 place of the Shakespearean table. 
 
 And if in a detached passage from a dramatic 
 writer we can find so much culinary thought, how 
 much inore remains to be sought after in those 
 masterpieces of kitchen literature given to the 
 world by the great artist cooks of bygone centuries. 
 
 It has always been a matter of considerable 
 surprise to me that so few people really read their 
 Cookery Book with any diligence and attention. 
 There is no subject of conversation so popular as 
 
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46 COOKERY BOOK TALK 
 
 Cookery Book. It blends together all persons in 
 a common chorus of talk irrespective of rank, age, 
 sex, religion and education. The dullest eye lights 
 up and a ripple crosses the most stagnant mind 
 when the dying embers of formal conversation 
 are called into brilliant flames by a few pages from 
 the Cookery Book. Every one lays claim to take 
 a hand at Cookery Book talk, no one is too bashful 
 or ignorant in his own seeming, and yet how few 
 really bring to the discussion a sound literary 
 knowledge of even Mrs. Beeton and Francatelli, 
 and how many prate of cookery to whom Mrs. 
 Glasse and John Farley are unknown names. No 
 one will talk of Shakespeare and the musical glasses 
 without at least a slight knowledge of Charles 
 Lamb's delightful nursery tales and the study of 
 an article on the theory of music in "Snippy Bits." 
 But if Cookery Book is mentioned — and in ordinary 
 society the subject is generally reached in the first 
 ten minutes after the introduction — ^the humblest 
 and most ignorant is found laying down the law 
 with the misplaced confidence of a county magis- 
 trate. And yet with Cookery Book as with lower 
 forms of learning one can never tell whence 
 illumination may spring. True indeed is it that 
 out of the mouths of babes and sucklings strength 
 is ordained. 
 
 I remember a beautiful and remarkable instance 
 of this which occurred but recently. I was privi- 
 leged to dine at the family table of a great artist 
 and there were present besides myself several others 
 
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COOKERY BOOK TALK 47 
 
 of sound learning and religious education from 
 whom might be expected stimulating and rational 
 conversation. We began I remember with the Pre- 
 Raphaelites and ox-tail soup. Albert Durer started 
 with the fish but "failed to stay the course," as a 
 sporting friend of my host remarked. He it was 
 who brought the conversation round to the haven 
 and heaven of all conversation^ — Cookery Book. 
 He told a story of a haggis which drew from my 
 host — ^an ardent Scotsman — a learned and literary 
 defence of the haggis, which in common with the 
 thistle, the bagpipes and Burns poetry it is a matter 
 of patriotism for a Scotsman to uphold in the 
 company of aliens. There was no doubt that my 
 friend broke down in cross-examination as to the 
 actual contents of the haggis, but as to the necessity 
 of drinking raw whisky at short intervals during 
 its consumption he was eloquent and convincing. 
 When he had finished — or maybe before — I began 
 to describe the inward beauties of a well-grilled 
 mutton chop, and to detail an interesting discussion 
 I had had the week before with a Dean of the Church 
 of England on the respective merits of Sam's Chop 
 House in Manchester and the South Kensington 
 Museum Grill Room. Listening is I fear a lost 
 art for my entertaining reminiscences were broken 
 into by a babel of tongues. Every one named his 
 or her particular and favourite dish which was 
 discussed rejected, laughed at and dismissed by the 
 rest of the company. So loud was the clash of 
 tongues that you might have imagined you were 
 
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48 COOKERY BOOK TALK 
 
 taking part in a solemn council at Pandemonium, 
 when suddenly the shower of Cookery Book talk 
 dried up and there was a pause, a lull — a silence. 
 At that moment the youngest son of the house 
 whose little curly head — like one of those heads 
 of Sir Joshua's angels — rested on his hands as he 
 listened to the earnest converse of his grave elders 
 — this child threw down before us a pearl of simple 
 wisdom — "Surely you have forgotten bread sauce 
 and chicken!" And so we had. The artist also 
 remembered that we had left out sucking pig. The 
 conversation started with renewed force. The 
 whole question of onions in bread sauce was 
 exhaustively debated and a happy evening was 
 spent in congenial and intellectual conversation. 
 
 But how seldom it is that you find yourself among 
 persons capable of discussing with knowledge any 
 of the nicer problems of the kitchen. At my own 
 table the other day a graduate of Cambridge 
 actually asked my wife whether she put maraschino 
 or curafoa in the Hock cup. Yet in educational 
 affairs this man passes for a rational and highly 
 cultivated man. Colossal ignorance of this type is 
 but too common. I have stayed — but never for more 
 than one week-end — with families of the highest 
 respectability to whom tarragon vinegar is un- 
 known, and I once entertained a Judge of the High 
 Court who did not know the difference between 
 Nepaul and Cayenne pepper, — yet in his daily life 
 he must have been called upon to decide differences 
 of graver importance. 
 
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COOKERY BOOK TALK 49 
 
 I wish I had the pen and the inspiration of one 
 of the early prophets to rouse my countrymen to 
 urge upon Education Committees, schools and 
 universities their duty in dealing with this national 
 ignorance. But one may at least make a practical 
 suggestion. Why should not "What to do with 
 the Cold Mutton" be read as a first reader in our 
 elementary schools ? It touches on no points of 
 doctrine and teaches truths that both Anglican and 
 Nonconformist could discuss pleasantly at a 
 common board. 
 
 Once the young mind has tasted of the delight 
 of the literary side of cookery a demand would 
 spring up for the re-publication of many earnest, 
 eloquent and scientific Cookery books of olden 
 time. The eighteenth century was a golden age in 
 the literature of cookery, and the works of Char- 
 lotte Mason, Sarah Harrison's " Housekeeper's 
 Pocket Book," and Elizabeth Marshall's "Young 
 Ladies' Guide in the Art of Cookery," — these are 
 books that should be in every polite library. For 
 myself I prefer what may be called the Archaeology 
 of Cookery and the study of "The Proper New 
 Book of Cookery, 1546," or Partridge's "Treasury 
 of Commodious Conceits and Hidden Secrets, 
 1580?" will have a charm for all who like to pierce 
 the veil that hides the old world from us. We 
 have moved on since then it is true, but for my part 
 I like to learn how to "pot a Swan" or "make an 
 Olio Pye," though such learning is no longer prac- 
 tical. 
 
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50 COOKERY BOOK TALK 
 
 To those who have not access to the original 
 editions of the classics, let me commend that 
 charming volume of the Book Lovers' Library, Mr. 
 W, Carew Hazlitt's "Old Cookery Books." Pro- 
 blems are there touched upon that when we have 
 a serious business Government untrammelled by 
 party ties will be solved by Royal Commissions 
 dealing with the various aspects of cookery which, 
 as an old writer says, is "The Key of Living." 
 It was Tobias Venner, as long ago as 1620, who 
 endeavoured to dissuade the poor from eating part- 
 ridges, because they were calculated to promote 
 asthma. Many Poor Law Commissions have sat 
 since then, but the truth of Venner's theory has 
 never yet been subjected to modern scientific critic- 
 ism, and every year from September to February 
 the poor continue to remain under the shadow of 
 asthma. The Government give us volumes of 
 historical records, but I search in vain among them 
 for the way to make Mrs. Leed's Cheesecakes and 
 " The Lord Conway, His Lordship's receipt for 
 the making of Amber Pudding." Thus are we 
 trifled with by our rulers, few of whom I think 
 could tell us without research why the porpoise 
 and the peacock no longer grace the tables of 
 Royal persons. 
 
 But see how Nature supplements the mistakes 
 of mankind. True it is that Governments do 
 nothing for our greatest art, sadly true it is that 
 the great masterpieces of culinary writing remain 
 on the shelves, and disgracefully true it is that 
 
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COOKERY BOOK TALK 51 
 
 among the idle rich of our universities there is not 
 one Professor of Cookery — though there be many 
 ignorant critics of the Art at high tables. And 
 yet, round every board, simple or noble, with the 
 steam that rises from the cooked meats comes the 
 heartfelt praise of mankind rejoicing to lift up 
 the voice in that Cookery Book talk, which is the 
 oral tradition that carries on the religion of the 
 "Key of Living." 
 
 Indeed, there is only one human being who does 
 not talk about Cookery, and that is the high 
 Priestess herself — the Cook. This I have on the 
 evidence of a policeman. 
 
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52 
 
 A DAY OF MY LIFE IN THE COUNTY 
 COURT. 
 
 " We take no note of time 
 But from its loss." 
 
 Young's Night Thoughts. 
 
 It is a difficult task to describe to others the 
 everyday affairs of one's own life. The difficulty 
 seems to me to arise in discovering what it is that 
 is new and strange to a person who finds himself 
 for the first time in a place where the writer has 
 spent the best part of the last twenty years. The 
 events in a County Court are to me so familiar 
 that it is hard to appreciate the interest shown in 
 our daily routine by some casual onlooker whom 
 curiosity, or a subpoena, has brought within our 
 walls. Still, in so far as the County Court is a 
 poor man's Court, it is a good thing that the out- 
 side world should take an interest in its proceedings, 
 for much goes on there that has an immediate 
 bearing on the social welfare of the working 
 classes, and a morning in the Manchester County 
 Court would throw a strong light on the ways and 
 means of the poor and the fiscal problems by 
 which they are surrounded. 
 
 An urban County Court is a wholly different 
 thing from the same institution in a country town. 
 Here in Manchester we have to deal with a large 
 
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LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 53 
 
 number of bankruptcy cases, proceedings under 
 special Acts of Parliament, cases remitted from the 
 High Court, and litigation similar in character to, 
 but smaller in importance than the ordinary civil 
 list of an Assize Court. Cases such as these are 
 contested in much the same way as they are in 
 the High Court, counsel and solicitors appear — 
 the latter having a right of audience in the County 
 Court — and all things are done in legal decency 
 and order. The litigants very seldom desire a 
 jury, having perhaps the idea that a common 
 judge is as a good tribunal as a common jury, 
 whereas a special judge wants a common jury to 
 find out the everyday facts of his case for him. I 
 could never see why juries are divided into two 
 classes, special and common, and judges are not. 
 It is a fruitful idea for the legal reformer to follow 
 out. 
 
 The practice in Manchester is to have special 
 days for the bigger class of cases, and to try 
 to give clear days for the smaller matters where 
 most of the parties appear in person. The former 
 are printed in red on the Court Calendar, and the 
 latter in black, and locally the days are known as 
 red-letter days and black-letter days. On a black- 
 letter day counsel and solicitors indeed often appear 
 — for it is a practical impossibility to sort out the 
 cases into two exact classes — ^but the professions 
 know that on a black-letter day they have no pre- 
 cedence, and very cheerfully acquiesce in the 
 arrangement, since it is obvious that to the com- 
 
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54 LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 munity at large it is at least as important that a 
 working woman should be home in time to give 
 her children their dinner as that a solicitor should 
 return to his office or a barrister lunch at his club. 
 
 Let me try, then, to bring home to your mind 
 what happens on a black-letter day. 
 
 We are early risers in Manchester, and the Court 
 sits at ten. I used to get down to my Court about 
 twenty minutes earlier, as on a black-letter day 
 there are sure to be several letters from debtors 
 who are unable to be at Court, and these are 
 always addressed to me personally. Having dis- 
 posed of the correspondence there is generally an 
 "application in chambers" consisting of one or 
 more widows whose compensation under the 
 Workman's Compensation Act remains in Court 
 to be dealt with for their benefit. I am rather 
 proud of the interest and industry the chief clerks 
 of my Court have shown in the aflfairs of these 
 poor women and children, and the general "liberty 
 to apply" is largely made use of that I may discuss 
 with the widows or the guardians of orphans plans 
 for the maintenance and education of the children, 
 and the best way to make the most of their money. 
 
 You would expect to find the Court buildings 
 geographically in the centre of Manchester, but 
 they are placed almost on the boundary. Turning 
 out of Deansgate down Quay Street, which, as its 
 name implies, leads towards the river Irwell, you 
 come across a street with an historic name, Byrom 
 Street. The name recalls to us the worthy Man- 
 
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LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 55 
 
 Chester doctor and the days when even Manchester 
 was on the fringe of a world of romance, and John 
 Byrom made his clever epigram : 
 
 God bless the King, I mean the faith's defender, 
 God bless — no harm in blessing — ^the Pretender. 
 But who Pretender is, and who the King, 
 God bless us all — ^that's quite another thing. 
 
 It is a far cry from Jacobites to judgment debtors, 
 but it is a pleasant thought to know that one lives 
 in an historic neighbourhood, even if the building 
 you work in is not exactly fitted for the modern 
 purpose for which it is used. 
 
 At the corner of Byrom Street and Quay Street 
 is the Manchester County Court. It is an old 
 brick building with some new brick additions. 
 Some architect, we may suppose, designed it, 
 therefore let it pass for a house. It was built, as 
 far as I can make out, in the early part of last 
 century, when the brick box with holes in it was 
 the standard form of the better class domestic 
 dwelling house. Still it is an historic building. 
 In 1836 it was No. 21 Quay Street, the residence 
 of Richard Cobden, calico printer, whose next door 
 neighbour was a Miss Eleanora Byrom. Cobden 
 sold it to Mr, Faulkner for the purposes of the 
 Owens College, so it was the first home of the 
 present Victoria University. It is now a County 
 Court. Facilis descensus. It still contains several 
 very fine mahogany doors that give it the air of a 
 house that has seen better days. 
 
 You will see groups of women making their way 
 
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56 LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 down to the Court, many with a baby in one arm 
 and a door Itey slung on the finger. The wife is 
 the solicitor and the advocate of the working class 
 household, and very cleverly she does her work 
 as a rule. The group of substantial-looking men 
 chatting in the street are debt-collecting agents 
 and travelling drapers discussing the state of trade. 
 These are the Plaintiffs and their representatives, 
 the women are the Defendants. Here and there 
 you will see a well-dressed lady, probably sum- 
 moned to the Court by a servant or a dressmaker. 
 There will always be a few miscellaneous cases, 
 but the trivial round and common task of the day 
 is collecting the debts of small tradesmen from the 
 working class. 
 
 I have no doubt that a County Court Judge gets 
 an exaggerated view of the evils of the indiscriminate 
 credit given to the poor. They seem to paddle all 
 their lives ankle-deep in debt, and never get a 
 chance of walking the clean parapet of solvency. 
 But that is because one sees only the seamy side 
 of the debt-collecting world, and knows nothing of 
 the folk who pay without process. At the same 
 time, that indiscriminate credit-giving as practised 
 in Manchester is an evil, no one, I think, can doubt, 
 and it seems strange that social reformers pay so 
 little attention to the matter. 
 
 The whole thing turns, of course, upon imprison- 
 ment for debt. Without imprisonment for debt 
 there would be little credit given, except to persons 
 of good character, and good character would be 
 
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LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 57 
 
 an asset. As it is, however, our first business in 
 the morning will be to hear a hundred judgment 
 summonses in which creditors are seeking to im- 
 prison their debtors. There are some ten thousand 
 judgment summonses in Manchester and Salford 
 in a year, but they have to be personally served, 
 and not nearly that number come for trial. We 
 start with a hundred this morning, of which say 
 sixty are served. It is well to sit punctually, and 
 we will start on the stroke of ten. 
 
 A debt collector enters the Plaintiff's box, and, 
 refreshing his memory from a note book^ tells you 
 what the Defendant's position is, where he works, 
 and what he earns. The minute book before you 
 tells you the amount of his debt, that he has been 
 ordered to pay 2s. a month, and has not paid any- 
 thing for six months. His wife now enters into 
 all the troubles of her household, and makes the 
 worst of them. One tries to sift the true from 
 the false, the result being that one is generally 
 convinced that the Defendant has had means to 
 pay the 2s. a month, or whatever the amount may 
 be, since the date when the order was made. The 
 law demands that the debtor should be imprisoned 
 for not having paid, but no one wants him to go to 
 prison, so an order is made of seven or fourteen 
 days, and it is suspended, and is not to issue if 
 he pays the arrears and fees, say in three monthly 
 instalments. The wife is satisfied that the evil day 
 is put off and goes away home, and the creditor 
 generally gets his money. He may have to issue 
 
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58 LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 a warrant, but the Defendant generally manages to 
 pay by hook or by crook, rather than go to Knutsford 
 Gaol, where the debtors are imprisoned, and as 
 a matter of fact only a few actually go to gaol. 
 Of course, the money is often borrowed or paid 
 by friends, which is another evil of the system. 
 The matter is more difficult when, as often happens, 
 the Defendants do not appear. It is extraordinary 
 how few people can read and understand a com- 
 paratively simple legal notice or summons. Mis- 
 takes are constantly made. A collier once brought 
 me an official schedule of his creditors, in which 
 in the column for "description," where he should 
 have entered "grocer," "butcher," etc., he had 
 filled in the best literary description he could 
 achieve of his different creditors, and one figured 
 as "little lame man with sandy whiskers." There 
 are of course many illiterates, and they have to call 
 in the assistance of a "scholard." An amusing 
 old gentleman came before me once, who was very 
 much perturbed to know if, to use his own phrase, 
 he was " entaitled to pay this 'ere debt." The 
 incident occurred at a time when the citizens of 
 Manchester were being polled to vote on a "culvert 
 scheme" of drainage, which excited much popular 
 interest. 
 
 "I don't deny owing the debt," he said, "and 
 I'll pay reet enow, what your Honour thinks reet, 
 if I'm entaitled to pay." 
 
 I suggested that if he owed the money he was 
 clearly "entitled" to pay. 
 
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LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 59 
 
 "Well," he continued, "I thowt as I should 
 'ave a summons first." 
 
 "But you must have had a summons," I said, 
 "or how did you get here?" 
 
 " 'E towd me case wor on," he said, pointing 
 to the Plaintiff, "so I coom." 
 
 I looked up matters and discovered that service 
 of the summons was duly reported, and informed 
 the Defendant, who seemed much relieved. 
 
 "You see," he said, "I'm no scholard, and we 
 got a paaper left at our 'ouse, and I took it up 
 to Bill Thomas in our street, a mon as con read, 
 an' 'e looks at it, an' says as 'ow may be it's a 
 coolvert paaper. ' I'm not certain,' 'e says, 'but 
 I think it's a coolvert paaper.' So I asks him what 
 to do wi' it, and he says, 'Put a cross on it, and 
 put it in a pillar box,' and that wor done. But 
 if you say it wor a summons. Bill must a bin 
 wrong." 
 
 One can gather something from this poor fellow's 
 difficulties of the trouble that a summons of any 
 kind must cause in a domestic household, and one 
 can only hope for the day when England will 
 follow the example of other civilised countries and 
 at least do away with the judgment summons and 
 imprisonment for debt. 
 
 The hundred judgment summonses will have 
 taken us until about eleven o'clock, and meanwhile 
 in an adjoining Court the Registrar has been deal- 
 ing with a list of about four hundred cases. The 
 bulk of these are undefended, and the Registrar 
 
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6o LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 enters up judgment and makes orders against the 
 Defendant to pay the debt by instalments at so 
 much a month. A small percentage — say from 
 five to ten per cent, of the cases — are sent across 
 to the Judge's Court for trial, and small knots of 
 folk come into Court to take the seats vacated by 
 the judgment debtors and wait for the trials to 
 come on. 
 
 The trial of a County Court action on a black- 
 letter day, where Plaintiff and Defendant appear 
 in person, where neither understands law, evidence, 
 or procedure, and where the main object of each 
 party is to overwhelm his opponent by a reckless 
 fire of irrelevant statements, is not easy to conduct 
 with suavity and dignity. The chief object of a 
 County Court Judge, as it seems to me — I speak 
 from many years' experience — should be to suffer 
 fools gladly without betraying any suspicion that 
 he considers himself wise. Ninety-nine per cent, 
 of the cases are like recurring decimals. They 
 have happened, and will happen again and again. 
 The same defence is raised under the same cir- 
 cumstances. To the shallow-witted Defendant it 
 is an inspiration of mendacity, to the Judge it is a 
 commonplace and expected deceit. All prisoners 
 in a Police Court who are found with stolen goods 
 upon them tell you that they have bought them 
 from a man whose name they do not know. There 
 is no copyright in such a defence, and it sounds 
 satisfactory to each succeeding publisher of it. No 
 doubt it is disappointing to find that the judge 
 
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LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 6i 
 
 and jury have heard it before and are not disposed 
 to believe it. In the same way in the County 
 Court there are certain lines of defence that I feel 
 sure students of folk-lore could tell us were put 
 forward beneath the oak trees when the Druids 
 sat in County Courts in prehistoric times. The 
 serious difficulty lies in continuing to believe that 
 a Defendant may arise who actually has a defence, 
 and in discovering and rescuing a specimen of a 
 properly defended action from a crowded museum 
 of antique mendacities. Counter-claims, for 
 instance, which of course are only filed in the 
 bigger cases, are very largely imaginative. The 
 betting against a valid counter-claim must be at 
 least ten to one. It is, of course, in finding the 
 one that there is scope for ingenuity. It is the 
 necessity for constant alertness that makes the 
 work interesting. 
 
 The women are the best advocates. Here, for 
 instance, is a case in point. 
 
 A woman Plaintiff with a shawl over her head 
 comes into the box, and an elderly collier, the 
 Defendant, is opposite to her. The action is 
 brought for nine shillings. I ask her to state her 
 case. 
 
 "I lent yon mon's missus my mon's Sunday 
 trousers to pay 'is rent, an' I want 'em back." 
 
 That seems to me, as a matter of pleading, as 
 crisp and sound as can be. If the trousers had 
 been worth five hundred pounds, a barrister would 
 have printed several pages of statement of claim 
 
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62 LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 over them, but could not have stated his case bet- 
 ter. My sympathies are with the lady. I know 
 well the kindness of the poor to each other, and, 
 won by the businesslike statement of the case, I 
 turn round to the Defendant and ask him why the 
 trousers are not returned and what his defence 
 may be. 
 
 He smiles and shakes his head. He is a rough, 
 stupid fellow, and something amuses him. I ask 
 him to stop chuckling and tell me his defence. 
 
 "There's nowt in it all," is his answer. 
 
 I point out that this is vague and unsatisfactory, 
 and that the words do not embody any defence 
 to an action of detinue known to the law. 
 
 He is not disturbed. The lady gazes at him 
 triumphantly. He is a slow man, and casually 
 mentions "The 'ole street knows about them trou- 
 sers." 
 
 I point out to him that I have never lived in 
 the street, and know nothing about it. He seems 
 to disbelieve this and says with a chuckle. "Every- 
 one knows about them trousers." 
 
 I press him to tell me the story, but he can 
 scarcely believe that I do not know all about it. 
 At length he satisfies my curiosity. 
 
 "Why yon woman an' my missus drank them 
 trousers." 
 
 The woman vociferates, desires to be struck 
 dead and continues to live, but bit by bit the story 
 is got at. Two ladies pawn the husband's trou- 
 sers, and quench an afternoon's thirst with the 
 
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LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 63 
 
 proceeds. The owner of the Sunday trousers is 
 told by his wife a story of destitution and want 
 of rent, and the generous loan of garments. 
 Every one in the street but the husband enjoys the 
 joke. The indignant husband, believing in his 
 wife, sues for the trousers and sends his wife to 
 Court. The street comes down to see the fun, and 
 when I decide for the Defendant there is an 
 uprising of men, women,, and babies, and the 
 parties and their friends disappear while we call 
 the next case. These are the little matters where 
 it is easy to make a blunder, and where patience 
 and attention and a knowledge of the ways and 
 customs of the " 'ole street" are worth much legal 
 learning. 
 
 One must learn to sympathise with domestic 
 frailties. I was rebuking a man, the other day, 
 for backing up his wife in what was not only an 
 absurd story, but one in which I could see he had 
 no belief. 
 
 "You should really be more careful," I said, 
 "and I tell you candidly I don't believe a word of 
 your wife's story." 
 
 "You may do as yer like," he said, mournfully, 
 "but I've got to." 
 
 The sigh of envy at the comparative freedom 
 of my position as compared with his own was full 
 of pathos. 
 
 A case of a workman who was being sued for 
 lodging money gave me a new insight into the 
 point of view of the clever but dissipated workman. 
 
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64 LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 His late landlady was suing for arrears run up 
 when, as she said, he was "out of work." 
 
 The phrase made him very angry. 
 
 "Look 'ere," he said, "can that wumman kiss 
 the book agen ? She's swearin' false. I've never 
 been out o' wark i' my life. Never." 
 
 "Tummas," says the old lady, in a soothingly 
 irritating voice. "Think, Tummas." 
 
 "Never been out o' wark i' my life" he shouts. 
 
 "Oh, Tummas," says the old lady, more in 
 sorrow than in anger. "You remember Queen's 
 funeral. You were on the spree a whole fortneet." 
 
 "Oh, ay!" says Thomas unabashed; "but you 
 said out o' wark. If you're sayin' on the spree 
 I'm with yer, but I've never been out o' wark i' 
 my life." 
 
 It was a sad distinction for a clever working man 
 to make, but a true one and to him an important 
 one, and I rather fancy the nice old lady knew well 
 what she was doing in her choice of phrase and 
 hoped to score off Thomas by irritating him into 
 an unseemly exhibition by the use of it. 
 
 A class of case that becomes very familiar arises 
 out of the sale of a small business. A fried-fish 
 shop is regarded by an enterprising widow who 
 does not possess one as a mine of untold gold. 
 She purchases one at a price above its value, fails 
 from want of knowledge to conduct it successfully, 
 and then brings an action for fraudulent misre- 
 presentation against the seller. Of course, there 
 are cases of fraud and misrepresentation ; but, as 
 
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LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 65 
 
 a rule, there is nothing more than the natural 
 optimistic statements of a seller followed by 
 incompetence of the purchaser and the disgust of 
 old customers. In a case of this sort, in which 
 up to a point it was difficult to know where the 
 truth lay, owing to the vague nature of the evid- 
 ence, a graphic butcher gave a convincing account 
 of the reason of the failure of the new management. 
 He had come down to the Court in the interests of 
 justice, leaving the abattoir — or as he called it 
 "habbitoyre" — on his busiest morning. 
 
 "Yer see," he said, "I knew the old shop well. 
 I was in the 'abit of takin' in a crowd of my pals 
 on Saturday neet. So when the old Missus gave 
 it up, I promised to give it a try wi' the new 
 Missus. Well, I went in twice, an' there wor no 
 sort o' choice at all. There worn't no penny fish, 
 what there wor, wor 'a-penny fish, and bad at 
 that, an' the chips wor putty." 
 
 It was obvious that the Plaintiff had started on 
 a career for which Nature did not intend her, and 
 that the cause of the failure of the business was 
 not the fraud of the Defendant, but the culinary 
 incompetence of the Plaintiff. 
 
 It is amazing how, apart altogether from perjury, 
 two witnesses will give entirely different accounts 
 of the same matter. No doubt there is a great 
 deal of reckless evidence given and some perjury 
 committed, but a great deal of the contradictory 
 swearing arises from "natural causes," as it were. 
 A man is very ready to take sides, and discusses 
 
 F 
 
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66 LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 the facts of a case with his friend until he remem- 
 bers more than he ever saw. In "running down" 
 cases, where the witnesses are often independent 
 folk and give their own evidence their own way, 
 widely different testimony is given about the same 
 event. One curious circumstance I have noticed 
 in "running down" cases is that a large percentage 
 of witnesses give evidence against the vehicle com- 
 ing towards them. That is to say, if a man is 
 walking along, and a brougham is in front of 
 him and going the same way as he is, and a cab 
 coming in the opposite direction collides with the 
 brougham, I should expect that man to give evid- 
 ence against the cab. I suppose the reason of 
 that is that to a man so situated the brougham 
 appears stationary and the cab aggressively dan- 
 gerous, but whatever the reason may be the fact is 
 very noticeable. 
 
 On the whole the uneducated man in the street 
 is a better witness of outdoor facts than the clerk 
 or warehouseman. The outdoor workers have, I 
 fancy, a more retentive memory for things seen, 
 and are more observant than the indoor workers. 
 They do not want to refresh their memory with notes. 
 
 A story is told of a blacksmith who came to the 
 farriery classes held by the Manchester Education 
 authorities. The clerk in charge gave him a note- 
 book and a pencil. 
 
 "Wot's this 'ere for?" asks the blacksmith. 
 
 "To take notes," replied the clerk. 
 
 "Notes? Wot sort o' notes?" 
 
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LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 67 
 
 "Why, anything that the lecturer says which 
 you think important and want to remember, you 
 make a note of it," said the clerk. 
 
 "Oh," was the scornful reply, "anything I want 
 to remember I must make a note of in this 'ere 
 book, must I ? Then wot do you think my bloom- 
 ing yed's for?" 
 
 It is the use and exercise of the "blooming 
 yed" that makes the Lancashire workman the 
 strong character he is. May it be long before the 
 mother wit inside it is dulled by the undue use of 
 the scholastic notebook. 
 
 Witnesses are often discursive, and the greatest 
 ingenuity is devoted to keeping them to the point 
 without breaking the thread of their discourse. 
 Only long practice and a certain instinct which 
 comes from having undergone many weary hours 
 of listening can give you the knack of getting the 
 pith and marrow of a witness's story without the 
 domestic and genealogical details with which he — 
 and especially she — desires to garnish it. 
 
 I remember soon after I took my seat on the 
 bench having an amusing dialogue v. "th a collier. 
 He had been sued for twelve shillings for three 
 weeks' rent. One week he admitted, and the week 
 in lieu of notice, which leads to more friction 
 between landlord and tenant than any other 
 incident in their contract, was duly wrangled over 
 and decided upon. Then came the third week, 
 and the collier proudly handed in four years' rent 
 books to show nothing else was owing. The 
 
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68 LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 landlord's agent pointed out that two years back 
 a week's rent was missing, and sure enough in 
 the rent book was the usual cross instead of a four, 
 showing that no rent had been paid for that week. 
 
 "How did that week come to be missed?" I 
 asked the collier. 
 
 "I'll never pay that week," he said, shaking his 
 head stubbornly. "Not laikely." 
 
 "But," I said, "I'm afraid you'll have to. You 
 see you admit it's owing." 
 
 "Well, I'll just tell yer 'ow it was. You see 
 we wor 'aving rabbit for supper, an' my wife 
 
 He looked as if he was settling down for a long 
 yarn, so I interposed: "Never mind about the 
 rabbit, tell me about the rent." 
 
 "I'm telling yer. Yer see we wor 'aving rabbit 
 for supper, an' my wife 'ad got a noo kettle, an' 
 we don't 'ave rabbit every " 
 
 "Oh, come, come," I said impatiently, "just tell 
 me about the rent." 
 
 He looked at me rather contemptuously, and 
 began again at the very beginning. 
 
 "I'm telling yer, if yer '11 only listen. We wor 
 'aving rabbit for-supper, an' my wife 'ad got a noo 
 kettle, an' we don't 'ave rabbit every neet for sup- 
 per, an' my wife 'ad just put the kettle, the noo 
 kettle " 
 
 "Oh, never mind about the kettle, do please get 
 to the rent," I said, and was immediately sorry I 
 had spoken. 
 
 "I'm getting to it, ain't I?" he asked, rather 
 
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LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 69 
 
 angrily. "We wor 'aving rabbit for supper" — I 
 groaned inwardly and resolved to sit it out without 
 another word — " an' my wife 'ad got a noo kettle, 
 an* we don't 'ave rabbit every neet for supper, an' 
 my wife 'ad just put the kettle — the noo kettle with 
 the rabbit — on to th' fire, when down coom chimley 
 an' aw into middle o' room. Was I going to pay 
 rent for that week? Not laikely!" 
 
 It turned out that I was wholly in the wrong, 
 and that the destruction of the rabbit was a kind of 
 equitable plea in defence to the action for rent. 
 When I am tempted now to burst in too soon upon 
 an irrelevant story, I think of the rabbit and am 
 patient. Of course all rabbit stories are not even 
 equitable defences, but the diagnosis of what is 
 purely domestic and dilatory and of what is appar- 
 ently anecdotal but in reality relevant gives a 
 distinct charm to one's daily work. 
 
 One day of my life every month is given up to 
 the trial of Yiddish cases. The Yiddisher is a 
 litigious person, and his best friend would not 
 describe him as a very accurate witness. One 
 ought to remember, however, that he has not had 
 generations of justice administered to him, that he 
 is a child and beginner in a court of law, and that 
 the idea of a judge listening to his story and 
 deciding for him upon the evidence is, in some 
 cases from personal experience and in all cases from 
 hereditary instinct, an utterly unfamiliar thing. 
 The fact, too, that he speaks Yiddish, or very 
 broken English, and never answers a question 
 
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70 LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 except by asking another, always gives his evidence 
 an indirect flavour. One strong point about a 
 Yiddisher is his family affection, and he swears 
 in tribes, so to speak. A Christian in a family 
 dispute will too often swear anything against his 
 brother, and is often wickedly reckless in his sworn 
 aspersions. A Yiddisher, on the other hand, will 
 swear anything for his brother, and most Yiddish 
 evidence could be discounted by an accurate per- 
 centage according to the exact relationship by 
 blood or marriage of the witness to the Plaintiff or 
 Defendant. 
 
 It is needless to say a foreign-speaking race such 
 as this gives one some anxiety and trouble in a 
 small-debt court. One of my earliest Yiddish 
 experiences was a case in which two Yiddishers 
 each brought his own interpreter. A small scrap 
 of paper cropped up in the case with some Hebrew- 
 writing on it. One interpreter swore it was a 
 receipt, the other that it was an order for a new 
 pair of boots. Without knowing anything of 
 Hebrew, it occurred to me that these divergent 
 readings were improbable. The case was adjourned. 
 I applied to some of my friends on that excellent 
 body, the Jewish Board of Guardians, a respectable 
 interpreter was obtained, and the Hebrew document 
 properly translated. There is now an official inter- 
 preter attached to the Manchester Court, and I 
 think I can safely congratulate the Yiddish com- 
 munity on a distinct improvement in their educa- 
 tion in the proper use of English law courts. 
 
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LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 71 
 
 That some of them have the very vaguest notions 
 of the principles on which we administer justice 
 may be seen from the following story which hap- 
 pened some years ago. A little flashy Yiddish 
 jeweller who spoke very bad English, had taken 
 out a judgment summons against an old man who 
 appeared broken down in health and pocket. I 
 asked the little man for evidence of means which 
 would justify me in committing the debtor to 
 prison . 
 
 "Veil," he says, "I vill tell you. He ish in a 
 very larsh vay of pizness indeed. He has zree 
 daughters vorking for him and several hands as 
 veil, and zare is a great deal of monish coming into 
 ze house." 
 
 The old man told a sad story of ill-health, loss 
 of business, and said that his daughters had 10 
 keep him. It turned out that there was a Yiddish 
 gentleman in Court, Mr. X., who knew him, and 
 Mr. X. corroborated the defendant's story in every 
 particular. He had had a good business, but was 
 now being kept by his daughters, having broken 
 down in health. 
 
 I turned to the little jeweller and said: "You 
 have made a mistake here." 
 
 "It ish no mishtake at all," he cried excitedly. 
 "Mr. X. ish a very bad man. He and the Defend- 
 ant are both cap makers, and are vot you call in 
 English a long firm." 
 
 This was too much for Mr. X. — a most respect- 
 able tradesman — and he called out: "My Lorts, 
 
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72 LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 may I speak?" Without waiting for leave, lie 
 continued very solemnly: "My Lorts, I have 
 sworn by Jehovah that every vord I say ish true, 
 but I vill go furder than that. I vill put down 
 ten pounds in cash, and it may be taken avay from 
 me if vot I say ish not true." 
 
 The offer was made with such fervour and sin- 
 cerity that I thought it best to enter into the spirit 
 of the thing. 
 
 Turning to the little man, I asked: "Are you 
 ready to put down ten pounds that what you say 
 is true?" 
 
 He looked blank and lost, and, shaking his 
 head, murmured sadly, "No, it ish too motch." 
 
 I pointed out to him how his attitude about the 
 ten pounds went to confirm the evidence for the 
 Defendant, and seeing his case slipping away 
 from under his feet, he cried out, as if catching at 
 the last straw, "My Lorts thish ish not mine own 
 case, thish ish mine farder's case, and I vill put 
 down ten pounds of mine farder's monish that vot 
 I say ish true." 
 
 The offer was not accepted, and the Defendant 
 was not committed. But the story throws light 
 on the rudimentary ideas that some Yiddishers 
 have of the administration of justice. 
 
 And now we have finished the list of cases, but 
 there are a few stragglers left in Court. Some of 
 them have been in the wrong Court, or come on 
 the wrong day; some have applications to make, 
 or advice to ask. I always make a point now of 
 
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LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 73 
 
 finding out what these folk want before leaving 
 the bench. I remember in my early days a man 
 coming before me the first thing one morning, and 
 saying he had sat in my Court until the end of 
 yesterday's proceedings. 
 
 "Why didn't you come up at the end of the 
 day," I asked, "and make your application then?" 
 
 "I was coming," he replied, "but at the end of 
 last case you was off your chair an' bolted through 
 yon door like a rabbit." I think his description 
 was exaggerated, but I rise in a more leisurely way 
 nowadays, though I am still glad when the day's 
 work is over. 
 
 I do not know that what I have written will 
 convey any clear idea of the day of my life that 
 I have been asked to portray. I know it is in many 
 respects a very dull grey life, but it has its brighter 
 moments in the possibilities of usefulness to 
 others. I am not at all sure that the black-letter 
 jurisdiction of a big urban County Court ought not 
 to be worked by a parish priest rather than by a 
 lawyer. I know that it wants a patience, a sym- 
 pathy, and a belief in the goodness of human 
 nature that we find in those rare characters who 
 give up the good things in this world for the sake 
 of working for others. I am very conscious of my 
 own imperfections; but I was once greatly encour- 
 aged by a criticism passed upon me which I accid- 
 entally overheard, and which I am conceited enough 
 to repeat. I was going away from the Court, and 
 passed two men walking slowly away. I had 
 
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74 LIFE IN THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 decided against them, and they were discussing 
 why I had done so. 
 
 "Well, 'ow on earth 'e could do it I don't see, 
 do you, Bill?" 
 
 " 'E's a fool." 
 
 "Yes, 'e's a fool, a fool, but 'e did 'is best." 
 
 "Ay. I think 'e did 'is best." 
 
 After all, coming from such source or indeed 
 from any source, the suggestion contained in the 
 conversation was very gratifying. I have often 
 thought that one might rest beneath an unkinder 
 epitaph than this : 
 
 HE WAS 
 
 A FOOL, 
 
 BUT 
 HE DID HIS BEST. 
 
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75 
 
 DOROTHY OSBORNE. 
 
 lachimo. Here are letters for you. 
 Posthumus. Their tenor good, I trust. 
 lachimo. 'Tis very like. 
 
 Cymbaline ii. 4. 
 
 They had set (it is years ago now) the Period of the 
 Restoration as subject for the Historical Essay 
 Prize at Oxbridge. I had been advised to read 
 Courtenay's LAfe of Sir William Temple. It would 
 give me an insight into the times, and a thorough 
 knowledge of the Triple Alliance. 
 
 It was in my uncle's library that I found the 
 book — two octavo volumes of memoirs bound in 
 plain green cloth, with mouldy yellow backs. I 
 remember it well, and the circumstances surround- 
 ing it. 
 
 I threw open the windows, piled all the red 
 cushions into one window seat, placed a chair for 
 my feet, and took up the volumes. I cast my eyes 
 over the contents of Vol. I. : a portrait of Temple 
 — a handsome fellow — engraved by one Dean, after 
 Sir Peter; a genealogical table. Ugh! And 
 twenty chapters of negotiations to follow. My 
 uncle was right, it was undoubtedly a dull book. 
 
 The second volume looked more interesting; 
 there was something in it about Swift. Memory 
 
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76 DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 asserting herself, I remembered Temple to be Swift's 
 first patron, and Stella, I fancy, was Lady Tem- 
 ple's maid. Happy Stella ! At that moment a 
 piece of paper fluttered out of the volume in my 
 hand on to the floor, driving the Dean and his 
 affairs out of my head. I picked it up. An old 
 paper, brown at its edges and foldings, singed by 
 time. On it were some verses — a sonnet. It ran 
 thus : — 
 
 " TO DOROTHY OSBORNE, 
 
 "Why hag no laureate, in golden song. 
 
 Wreathed rhythmic honours for her name alone, 
 Who worships now anear a purer throne? 
 And chosen, from that lovely, loyal throng 
 Of wantons ambling devilward along 
 At beck of God's Anointed, one to praise. 
 Of brightest wit, yet pure through works and days. 
 Constant in love, in every virtue strong. 
 " Dorothy, gift of Grod, it was not meant. 
 
 That thy bright light should shine upon the few, 
 Within the straitened circle of thy life; 
 Failing to reach mankind and represent 
 His own ideal, manifest in you, 
 
 Of holy woman and the perfect wife." 
 
 I was a sonneteer myself, and therefore critical. 
 This effort (was it my uncle's?) did not seem to 
 me of portentous genius. I hate your sonneteer 
 who has more than two rhymes in his octett. It 
 proves him a coward at the measure, one who is 
 burdened by those shackles in which he should 
 move as skilfully and lightly as a clever dancer 
 bound to the knees on stihs. Those two sub- 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 77 
 
 dominant rhymes were misplaced; so was the sud- 
 den stop in the sixth line, the violent ccesura in 
 the sense, sending a cold shiver through the cul- 
 tured mind. I did not admire the sestett either in 
 its arrangement, but much liberty has always been 
 allowed in the management of the sestett. For 
 an amateur sonnet, I had read, nay, I will be just, 
 I had written worse. 
 
 But whom does this sonnet describe? Dorothy 
 Osborne, who is she? Lady Temple, answers 
 Courtenay, and says little more. But she has 
 written her own life, and painted her own char- 
 acter, as none else could have done it for her, 
 in letters written to her liusband before marriage. 
 When I had read these, I pitied the unknown, and 
 forbore to criticise his sonnet, I, too, could have 
 written sonnets, roundels, ballads by the score to 
 celebrate her praise. But I remembered Poi>e's 
 chill warning about those who "rush in where 
 angels fear to tread," and, full of humility I did 
 not apply it to my friend the sonneteer, but — to 
 myself. 
 
 These letters of Dorothy Osborne were, at one 
 time, lying at Coddenham Vicarage, Suffolk, 
 Forty-two of them has Courtenay transferred to an 
 appendix, without arrangement or any form of 
 editing, as he candidly confesses, but not without 
 misgivings as to how they will be received by a 
 people thirsting to read the details of the negotia- 
 tions which took place in connection with the Triple 
 Alliance. Poor Courtenay ! Did he live to learn 
 
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78 DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 that the world had other things to do than pore 
 over dull excerpts from inhuman state papers ? For 
 the lighting of fires, for the rag-bag, or, if of stout 
 paper or parchment, for the due covering of pre- 
 serves and pickles, much of these Temple corre- 
 spondences and treaties would be eminently fitted, 
 but for the making of books they are all but use- 
 less ; book-making of such material is not to ;)e 
 achieved by Courtenay, nay, nor by the cunningest 
 publisher's devil in Grub Street, Here, beneath 
 poor blind Courtenay's eye, were papers and 
 negotiations, not about a triple alliance between 
 states, but concerning a dual alliance between souls. 
 Here, even for the dull historian, were chat, gos- 
 sip, the witty portrayal of neighbours, the customs, 
 manners, thoughts, the very life itself, of English 
 human beings of that time, set out by the living 
 pen of Dorothy Osborne. Surely it was within 
 his power at least to edit carefully for us those 
 letters ? Alas, no ! All that he can do is to pro- 
 duce a book in two unreadable octavo volumes, and 
 to set down in an appendix, not without misgivings 
 but forty-two of these charming letters. 
 
 But I will dare to put it to the touch to gain 
 or lose it all. I cannot, I know, make her glorious 
 by my pen, but I can let her own pen have free 
 play, and try to draw from her letters, and what 
 other data there are at hand, some living present- 
 ment of a beautiful woman, pure in dissolute days, 
 passing a quiet domestic existence among her own 
 family; a loyalist, leading, in Cromwell's days, a 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 79 
 
 home-life of which those who draw their history 
 from the pleasant pages of Sir Walter's historical 
 novels can have little idea. To confirmed novel 
 readers it will be, I think, an awakening to learn 
 that there was ever cessation of the "clashing of 
 rapiers" and "heavy tramp of cavalry" in the 
 middle of the seventeenth century. 
 
 Dorothy Osborne, born in 1627, was the 
 daughter of Sir Peter Osborne, Lord Treasurer's 
 Remembrancer (an inherited office) and Governor 
 of Guernsey in the days of James I. and Charles 
 his son. She was the only daughter now (1650) 
 unmarried, and had been named after her mother, 
 Dorothy, without further addition. Much more 
 could be collected of this sort from the lumber in 
 Baronetages and Herald's manuals; but to what 
 purpose? William Temple was born in 1628. 
 
 It was in 1648, when the King was imprisoned 
 at Carisbrook, in Colonel Hammond's charge, that 
 Dorothy first met her constant lover. They met 
 in the Isle of Wight. She and her brother were 
 on their way to St. Malo. Temple was starting 
 on his travels. A little incident, almost a Waver- 
 ley incident, took place here, worth reciting, per- 
 haps. The Osbornes and Temple were loyalists. 
 Young Osborne, more loyal than intelligent, 
 remained behind at an inn where they had halted, 
 that he might write on a window pane with a diamond 
 "And Haman was hanged upon the gallows he 
 had prepared for Mordecai." This attack 
 on Colonel Hammond, and the audacity of a 
 
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8o DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 cavalier daring to apply the Scriptures after the 
 Puritanical method, caused the whole party to be 
 arrested by the Roundheads, and a very pretty 
 adventure was spoilt by the ready wit of our 
 Dorothy taking the offence upon herself, when, 
 through the gallantry of the Roundhead officer, 
 the whole party was suffered to depart. "This 
 incident," says Courtenay, on good authority, 
 "was not lost upon Temple." Indeed, I think 
 with Courtenay; but would add that much else 
 besides was not lost upon him. Travelling with 
 her and her brother, staying with her at St. Malo, 
 is it to be wondered that Temple was attracted by 
 the bright wit, clear faith and honesty of Dorothy ; 
 or that the brilliant parts and seriousness of Tem- 
 ple — a great contrast to many of the bibulous, 
 rowdy cavaliers whom she must have met with — 
 made her find in him one worthy of her friendship 
 and her love? That Temple at this time openly 
 declared his love I doubt. Love grew between 
 them unknown to either. Years afterwards 
 Dorothy writes : — 
 
 "For God's sake, when we meet let us design 
 one day to remember old stories in, to ask one 
 another by what degrees our friendship grew to this 
 height 'tis at. In earnest I am at a loss sometimes 
 in thinking on't; and though I can never repent 
 of the share you have in my heart, I know not 
 whether I gave it you willingly or not at first. 
 No; to speak ingenuously, I think you got an 
 interest there a good while before I thought you 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 8i 
 
 had any, and it grew so insensibly, and yet so fast, 
 that all the traverses it has met with since, have 
 served rather to discover it to me than at all to 
 hinder it." 
 
 The further circumstances necessary to the under- 
 standing of Dorothy's letters, are shortly, these : 
 Dorothy lived at Chicksands Priory, where her 
 father was in ill-health, and there she received 
 suitors at her parent's commands. The Osbornes, 
 it seemed, disliked Temple, and objected to him 
 on the score of want of means; whilst Temple's 
 father had planned for his son an advantageous 
 match in another quarter. Alas ! for the froward- 
 ness of young couples ! They held their course, 
 and waited successfully. 
 
 Hardly can we do better that you may picture 
 Dorothy and her mode of life clearly to yourself, 
 than copy this important letter for you at length : 
 
 "You ask me how I pass my time here. I can 
 give you a perfect account, not only of what I do 
 for the present, but of what I am likely to do this 
 seven years if I stay here so long. I rise in the 
 morning reasonably early, and before I am ready 
 I go round the house till I am weary of that, and 
 then in the garden till it grows too hot for me. 
 About ten o'clock I think of making me ready ; and 
 when that's done I go into my father's chamber; 
 from thence to dinner, where my cousin Molle and 
 I sit in great state in a room and at a table that 
 would hold a great many more. After dinner we 
 sit and talk till Mr. B. comes in question, and then 
 
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82 DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 I am gone. The heat of the day is spent in reading 
 or working, and about six or seven o'clock I walk 
 out into a common that lies hard by the house, where 
 a great many young wenches keep sheep and cows, 
 and sit in the shade singing of ballads ; I go to them, 
 and compare their voices and beauty to some 
 ancient shepherdesses that I have read of, and find 
 a vast difference there ; but, trust me, I think these 
 are as innocent as those could be. I talk to them, 
 and find they want nothing to make them the hap- 
 piest people in- the world but the knowledge that 
 they are so. Most commonly, while we are in the 
 middle of our discourse, one looks about her, and 
 spies her cows going into the corn, and then away 
 they all run as if they had wings at their heels. 
 I, that am not so nimble, stay behind, and when 
 I see them driving home their cattle I think 'tis time 
 for me to retire too. When I have supped I go 
 into the garden, and so to the side of a small river 
 that runs by it, where I sit down and wish you with 
 me (you had best say this is not kind, neither). 
 In earnest, 'tis a pleasant place, and would be 
 more so to me if I had your company. I sit there 
 sometimes till I am lost with thinking; and were 
 it not for some cruel thought of the crossness of our 
 fortune, that will not let me sleep there, I should 
 forget there were such a thing to be done as going 
 to bed." 
 
 Truly a quiet country life, in a quiet country 
 house ; poor lonely Dorothy ! 
 
 Chicksands Priory, Bedfordshire, is a low-built 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 83 
 
 sacro-secular edifice, well fitted for its former ser- 
 vice. Its priestly denizens were turned out in 
 Henry VHI's monk-hunting reign (1538). To the 
 joy or sorrow of the neighbourhood : who knows 
 now? Granted then to one, Richard Snow, of 
 whom the records are silent ; by him sold^ in Eliza- 
 beth's reign, to Sir John Osborne, Knt. (Dorothy's 
 brother was first baronet); thus it becomes the 
 ancestral home of our Dorothy. There is a crisp 
 etching of the house in Fisher's Collections of 
 Bedfordshire. The very exterior of it is Catholic, un- 
 puritanical, no methodism about the square windows 
 set here and there, at undecided intervals, whereso- 
 ever they may be wanted. Six attic windows jut 
 out from the low-tiled roof. At the corner of the 
 house a high pinnacled buttress rising the full 
 height of the wall; five buttresses flank the side 
 wall, built so that they shade the lower windows 
 from the morning sun, in one place reaching to 
 the sill of an upper window. Perhaps Mrs. 
 Dorothy's window; how tempting to scale and see. 
 What a spot for the happier realisation of Romeo 
 and Juliet, or of Sigismonde and Guichard, if this 
 were romance. In one end of the wall are two 
 Gothic windows, claustral remnants, lighting now, 
 perhaps, the dining-hall, where cousin Molle and 
 Dorothy sat in state; or the saloon, where the latter 
 received her servants. There are old cloisters 
 attached to the house; at the other side of it may 
 be. Yes ! a sleepy country house, the warm earth 
 and her shrubs creeping close up to the very sills 
 
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84 DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 of the lower windows, sending in morning 
 fragrance, I doubt not, when Dorothy thrust back 
 the lattice after breakfast. A quiet place, "slow" 
 is the accurate modern epithet for it, "awfully 
 slow." But to Dorothy, a quite suitable home at 
 which she never repines. 
 
 This etching of Thomas Fisher, of December 
 26th, 1816, is a godsend to me, hearing as I do that 
 Chicksands Priory no longer remains to us, having 
 suffered martyrdom at the bloody hands of the 
 restorer. For through this, partly, we have attained 
 to a knowledge of Dorothy's surroundings, and may 
 now safely let Dorothy herself tell us of the servants 
 visiting her at Chicksands during those long seven 
 years through which she remains constant to 
 Temple. See what she expects in a lover ! Have 
 we not here some local squires hit off to the life? 
 Could George Eliot have done more for us in like 
 space ? 
 
 "There are a great many ingredients must go to 
 the making me happy in a husband. First, as my 
 Cousin Franklin says our humours must agree, and 
 to do that he must have that kind of breeding that I 
 have had, and used that kind of company. That is, 
 he must not be so much a country gentleman as to 
 understand nothing but hawks and dogs, and be 
 fonder of either than of his wife; nor of the next 
 sort of them, whose aim reaches no farther than 
 to be Justice of Peace, and once in his life High 
 Sheriff, who reads no books but statutes, and studies 
 nothing but how to make a speech interlarded with 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 85 
 
 Latin, that may amaze his disagreeing poor neigh- 
 bours, and fright them rather than persuade them 
 into quietness. He must not be a thing that began 
 the world in a free school, was sent from thence 
 to the university, and is at his furthest when he 
 reaches the Inns of Court, has no acquaintance but 
 those of his form in those places, speaks the French 
 he has picked out of old laws, and admires nothing 
 but the stories he has heard of the revels that were 
 kept there before his time. He must not be a town 
 gallant neither, that lives in a tavern and an 
 ordinary, that cannot imagine how an hour should 
 be spent without company unless it be in sleeping, 
 that makes court to all the women he sees, thinks 
 they believe him, and laughs and is laughed at 
 equally. Nor a travelled Monsieur, whose head is 
 feather inside and outside, that can talk of nothing 
 but of dances and duels, and has courage enough 
 to wear slashes, when everybody else dies with cold 
 to see him. He must not be a fool of no sort, nor 
 peevish, nor ill-natured, nor proud, nor courteous; 
 and to all this must be added, that he must love 
 me, and I him, as much as we are capable of 
 loving. Without all this his fortune, though never 
 so great, would not satisfy me; and with it a very 
 modefate one would keep me from ever repenting 
 my disposal." 
 
 These negative needs doubtless excluded many 
 of the neighbours who were ready to throw them- 
 selves at her feet. But, from far and near, came 
 many suitors, Cromwell's son, Henry, among 
 
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86 DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 others; who will be "as acceptable to her," she 
 thinks, "as anybody else." He seems almost 
 worthy of her, if we believe most accounts of him, 
 and allow for the Presbyterian animosity of good 
 Mrs. Hutchinson. However, Henry Cromwell 
 disappears from the scene, marrying elsewhere; 
 whereby English history is possibly considerably 
 modified. Temple is ordered to get her a dog, an 
 Irish greyhound. "Henry Cromwell undertook 
 to write to his brother Fleetwood, for another for 
 me ; but I have lost my hopes there ; whomsoever 
 it is that you employ, he will need no other 
 instruction, but to get the biggest he can meet 
 with. 'Tis all the beauty of those dogs, or of any, 
 indeed, I think. A mastiff is handsomer to me 
 than the most exact little dog that ever lady played 
 withal." Temple, no doubt, procured the biggest 
 dog in Ireland, not the less joyfully that "she has 
 lost her hopes of Henry Cromwell." 
 
 There is another lover worthy of special mention 
 — a widower — Sir Justinian Isham, of Lamport, 
 Northamptonshire, pragmatical enough in his love 
 suit, causing Mrs. Dorothy much amusement. 
 She writes of him to Temple under the nickname 
 "The Emperor." This is the character she gives 
 him: "He was the vainest, impertinent, self- 
 conceited, learned coxcomb that ever yet I saw." 
 Hard words these ! 
 
 The Emperor, it appears, caused further 
 disagreement between Dorothy and her brother. 
 Like the kettle in the Cricket on the Hearth, the 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 87 
 
 Emperor began it. "The Emperor and his 
 proposals began it ; I talked merrily on't till I saw 
 my brother put on his sober face, and could hardly 
 then believe he was in earnest. It seems he was; 
 for when I had spoke freely my meaning, it wrought 
 so with him, as to fetch up all that lay upon his 
 stomach. All the people that I had ever in my life 
 refused were brought again upon the stage, like 
 Richard the Ill's ghosts to reproach me withal, and 
 all the kindness his discoveries could make I had 
 for you was laid to my charge. My best qualities, 
 if I have any that are good, served but for 
 aggravations of my fault, and I was allowed to 
 have wit, and understanding, and discretions, in 
 all other things, that it might appear I had none 
 in this. Well, 'twas a pretty lecture, and I grew 
 warm with it after a while. In short, we came so 
 near to an absolute falling out that 'twas time 10 
 give over, and we said so much then that we have 
 hardly spoken a word together since. But 'tis 
 wonderful to see what curtseys and legs pass 
 between us, and as before we were thought the 
 kindest brother and sister, we are certainly now 
 the most complimental couple in England. 'Tis 
 a strange change, and I am very sorry for it, but 
 I'll swear I know not how to help it." 
 
 It is doubtless unpleasant to be pestered by an 
 unwelcome suitor; however Dorothy has this 
 compensation, that the Emperor's proposals and 
 letters give her mighty amusement. 
 
 "In my opinion, these great scholars are not the 
 
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88 DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 best writers (of letters I mean, of books perhaps 
 they are) ; I never had, I think, but one letter from 
 Sir Jus, but 'twas worth twenty of anybody's else 
 to make me sport. It was the most sublime non- 
 sense that in my life I ever read, and yet I believe 
 he descended as low as he could to come near my 
 weak understanding. 'Twill be no compliment 
 after this to say I like your letters in themselves, 
 not as they come from one that is not indifferent 
 to me, but seriously I do. All letters, methinks, 
 should be free and easy as one's discourse; not 
 studied as an oration, nor made up of hard words 
 like a charm. 'Tis an admirable thing to see how 
 some people will labour to find out terms that may 
 obscure a plain sense, like a gentleman I know, 
 who would never say 'the weather grew cold,' but 
 that ' winter began to salute us.' I have no 
 patience at such coxcombs, and cannot blame an 
 old uncle of mine that threw the standish at his 
 man's head, because he writ a letter for him, 
 where, instead of saying (as his master bid him) 
 'that he would have writ himself but that he had 
 gout in his hand,' he said, 'that the gout in his 
 hand would not permit him to put pen to paper.' " 
 
 The Emperor, it seems, this much to his credit, 
 is much enamoured of Mrs. Dorothy; and does not 
 take a refusal quietly. Or is she playing the 
 coquette with him ? 
 
 "Would you think it, that I have an ambassador 
 from the Emperor Justinian, that comes to renew 
 the treaty? In earnest 'tis true, and I want your 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 89 
 
 counsel extremely what to do in it. You told me 
 once that of all my servants you liked him the 
 best. If I could so too, there were no dispute in't. 
 Well, I'll think on't, and if it succeed I will be as 
 good as my word : you shall take your choice of 
 my four daughters. Am not I beholding to him, 
 think you ? He says he has made addresses, 
 'tis true, in several places since we parted, but 
 could not fix anywhere, and in his opinion he sees 
 nobody that would make so fit a wife for himself 
 as I. He has often inquired after me to knbw if I 
 were not marrying : and somebodv told him I had 
 an ague, and he presently fell sick of one too, so 
 natural a sympathy there is between us, and yet 
 for all this, on my conscience we shall never marry. 
 He desires to know whether I am at liberty or not. 
 What shall I tell him, or shall I send him to you 
 to know? I think that will be best. I'll say that 
 you are much my friend, and that I am resolved 
 not to dispose of myself but with your consent and 
 approbation ; and therefore he must make all his 
 court to you, and when he can bring me a certificate 
 under your hand that you think him a fit husband 
 for me, 'tis very likely I may have him ; till then 
 I am his humble servant, and your faithful friend." 
 But, at length Sir Justinian marries some other 
 fair neighbour, and vanishes from these pages; 
 leaving, however, other lovers in the field seeking 
 Dorothy's hand. "I have a squire now," she 
 writes, "that is as good as a knight. He was 
 coming as fast as a coach and six horses could bring 
 
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go DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 him, but I desired him to stay till my ague was 
 gone, and give me a little time to recover my good 
 looks, for I protest if he saw me now he would 
 never desire to see me again. Oh, me! I cannot 
 think how I shall sit like the lady of the lobster, 
 and give audience at Babram ; you have been there, 
 I am sure, nobody at Cambridge 'scapes it, but 
 you were never so welcome thither as you shall 
 be when I am mistress of it." Also there comes 
 to woo her "a modest, melancholy, reserved man, 
 whose head is so taken up with little philosophical 
 studies, that I admire how I found a room there." 
 A new servant is offered to her : "who had ;^20oo 
 a year in present, with ;^20oo more to come. I 
 had not the curiosity to ask who he was, which 
 they took so ill that I think I shall hear no more 
 of it." Thus in one way or another, she gets rid 
 of them all. But they are very importunate, these 
 " servants," as they style themselves, requiring 
 wit and determination to send them about their 
 business. Dorothy is determined to marry where 
 she loves. "Surely," she says, "the whole world 
 could never persuade me (unless a parent 
 commanded it) to marry one that I had no esteem 
 for." It is doubtful if a parent's command would 
 suffice, did Dorothy come face to face with such. 
 Here is a sharp refusal dramatically given to 
 one importunate servant, Mr. James Fish by name 
 (fancy Dorothy Osborne as Mrs. Fish), who would 
 fain have become master. "I cannot forbear telling 
 you the other day he made me a visit; and I, 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 91 
 
 to prevent his making discourses to me, made Mrs. 
 Goldsmith and Jane sit by all the while. But he 
 came better provided than I could have imagined. 
 He brought a letter with him, and gave it me as 
 one that he had met with, directed to me; he 
 thought it came out of Northamptonshire. I was 
 upon my guard, and suspecting all he said, 
 examined him so strictly where he had it, before 
 I would open it, that he was hugely confounded, 
 and I confirmed that 'twas his. I laid it by, and 
 wished then that they would have left us, that I 
 might have taken notice on't to him. But I had 
 forbid it them so strictly before, that they offered 
 not to stir further than to look out of window, 
 as not thinking there was any necessity of giving 
 us their eyes as well as their ears; but he, that 
 thought himself discovered, took that time to 
 confess to me (in a whispering voice that I could 
 hardly hear myself), that the letter (as my Lord 
 Broghill says) was of great concern to him, and 
 begged I would read it, and give him my answer. 
 I took it up presently, as if I had meant it, but 
 threw it sealed as it was into the fire, and told him 
 (as softly as he had spoke to me) I thought that the 
 quickest and best way of answering it. He sat 
 awhile in great disorder without speaking a word, 
 and so rose and took his leave. Now what think 
 you; shall I ever hear of him more?" We think 
 not, decidedly. He, like the others, recovers, 
 doubtless to marry elsewhere. 
 
 But Temple's father, Dorothy's brother, and her 
 
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92 DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 solicitous servants, are not the only obstacles these 
 lovers meet with. There are long separations at 
 great distances when the lovers can hear but little 
 of each other. Few meetings, and these at long 
 intervals, break the monotony of Dorothy's life of 
 love. 
 
 'Tis not the loss of love's assurance, 
 It is not doubting what thou art, 
 
 But' tis the too, too long endurance 
 Of absence, that afflicts my heart. 
 
 Thus would Dorothy have written, perhaps, had 
 she rhymed her thoughts in these days. 
 
 Now and again, indeed, Mrs. Dorothy is in Lon- 
 don, "engaged to play and sup at the Three Kings," 
 or at Spring Gardens, Foxhall; enjoying for the 
 time, as gay a life as is possible, in these Puritan 
 days. But this is not the life for our Dorothy. 
 "We go abroad all day," she writes, "and play 
 all night, and say our prayers when we have time. 
 Well, in sober earnest, now, I would not live thus 
 a twelvemonth, to gain all that the king has lost, 
 unless it was to give it him again." No ! 
 Dorothy's life is at Chicksands tending her father, 
 writing to her lover, reading romances sent to her 
 by him, and crying real tears over the miseries of 
 their poor pasteboard heroines. In those days 
 Fielding was not, and the glories of fiction were 
 unknown and quite unconceivable. Mr. Cowley's 
 verses reach her (in MS. Courtenay thinkls), and 
 occasional news of political matters. Here, set 
 down in this dull priory house, she lives a calm 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 93 
 
 domestic life without repining, without sympathy 
 in her troubles. Is not this difficult; impossible 
 to most, and worthy of a heroine? But, though 
 her life is at Chicksands, her heart is far away 
 with Temple; though her eyes are brimming with 
 tears for the sorrows of Almanzar, it is because 
 they mirror her troubles in their own weak fashion ; 
 and, whilst her soul is longing to commune with 
 her lover, is it marvellous that by some mesmeric 
 culture, she, quite untrained in literary skill, so 
 portrays her thoughts that not only were they 
 clearly uttered for Temple, but remain to us, clothed 
 in the power of clear intention, honesty of 
 expression, and kindly wit? 
 
 Perhaps, in these seven long apprentice years 
 to matrimony, Dorothy had no trouble causing her 
 more real anguish than her fears concerning 
 Temple's religious belief. Gossiping Bishop 
 Burnet, in one of his more ill-natured passages, 
 tells us that Temple was an Epicurean, thinking 
 religion to be fit only for the mob ; and a corrupter 
 of all that came near him. Unkind words these, 
 with just perhaps those dregs of truth in them, 
 which make gossip so hard to bear patiently. 
 Temple, I take it, was too intelligent not to see the 
 hollow, noisy, drum nature of much of the religion 
 around him ; preferred also, as young men will do, 
 to air speculative opinions rather than consider 
 them; hence the bishop's censure. Was it true, 
 as Courtenay thinks, that jealousy of King 
 William's attachment to Temple, disturbed the 
 
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94 DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 episcopal equipoise of soul, rendering his Lordship 
 slanderous, even a backbiter? To us, brother 
 servants of Dorothy, this matters not. Sufficient 
 pity is it, that Dorothy is forced to write to her 
 lover in such words as these: "I tremble at the 
 desperate things you say in your letter : for the 
 love of God, consider seriously with yourself what 
 can enter into comparison with the safety of your 
 soul? Are a thousand women or ten thousand 
 worlds worth it? No, you cannot have so little 
 reason left as you pretend, nor so little religion ; 
 for God's sake let us not neglect what can only 
 make us happy for a trifle. If God had seen it 
 fit to have satisfied our desires, we should have 
 had them, and everything would not have conspired 
 thus to cross them ; since He has decreed it other- 
 wise (at least as far as we are able to judge by 
 events) we must submit, and not by striving make 
 an innocent passion a sin, and show a childish 
 stubbornness. I could say a thousand things more 
 to this purpose if I were not in haste to send this 
 away, that it may come to you at least as soon as 
 the other. 
 
 Adieu." 
 
 Thus, you see, Dorothy is not without her fears ; 
 but, though she can write thus to her lover, yet, 
 when he is attackied by her brother, she is ready 
 to defend him; having at heart that real faith in 
 his righteousness, without which there could be no 
 love. "All this," she writes in another letter, "I 
 can say to you ; but when my brother disputes it 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 95 
 
 with me, I have other arguments for him, and I 
 drove him up so close t'other night, that for want of 
 a better gap to get out at, he was fain to say that he 
 feared as much your having a fortune as your 
 having none, for he saw you held my Lord S.'s 
 principles; that religion and honour were things 
 you did not consider at all; and that he was 
 confident you would take any engagement, serve 
 in any employment, or do anything to advance 
 yourself. I had no patience for this : to say you 
 were a beggar, your father not worth ;^4,ooo in 
 the whole world, was nothing in comparison of 
 having no religion, nor no honour. I forgot all 
 my disguise, and we talked ourselves weary; he 
 renounced me again, and I defied him." 
 
 There is no religious twaddle in Dorothy's 
 letters; her religion grew from within herself, and 
 was not the distorted reflection of Scriptural beliefs 
 coloured by modern sympathies and antipathies. 
 She does not satisfy her tendency towards 
 righteousness by the mock humility of constant 
 self-abasement, or by the juggling misapplication 
 of texts of Scripture. Indeed, the depth of her 
 faith and belief is not to be seen on the surface 
 of these letters — hardly, indeed, to be understood 
 at all, I think, except from the charitable tendency of 
 her thoughts, her deep silences and self-restraint, 
 Dorothy, it appears, sees with her clear smiling 
 eyes quite through the loudly-expressed longings 
 for the next world, which had helped to put some 
 prominent men of the time in high places in this. 
 
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96 DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 " We complain," she writes, " of this world and 
 the variety of crosses and afflictions it abounds in 
 and yet for all this who is weary on't (more than in 
 discourse), who thinks with pleasure of leaving it 
 or preparing for the next? We see old folks that 
 have outlived all the comforts of life desire to 
 continue it and nothing can wean us from the folly 
 of preferring a mortal being, subject to great 
 infirmity and unavoidable decays, before an 
 immortal one, and all the glories that are promised 
 with it. Is this not very like preaching? Well, 
 'tis too good for you — ^you shall have no more 
 on't. I am afraid you are not mortified enough 
 for such discourses to work upon, though I am 
 not of my brother's opinion neither, that you have 
 no religion in you. In earnest, I never took 
 anything he ever said half so ill, as nothing is so 
 great an injury. It must suppose one to be the 
 devil in human shape." 
 
 Seven long years ! Which of you, mv readers, 
 has waited this time without a murmur and without 
 a doubt ? Was not this an acting of faith far higher 
 than any letter writing of it ? Let us think so, and 
 honour it as such. Here is a letter, written when 
 doubt almost overwhelmed, when the spieen (a 
 disease as common now as then, though we have 
 lost the good name for it) was upon her, when the 
 world looked blank, and life a drifting mist of 
 despair. 
 
 "Let me tell you that if I could help it I would 
 not love you, and that as long as I live I shall strive 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 97 
 
 against it, as against that which has been my ruin, 
 and was certainly sent me as a punishment for my 
 sins. But I shall always have a sense of your mis- 
 fortunes equal if not above my own ; I shall pray 
 that you may obtain quiet I never hope for but in 
 my grave, and I shall never change my condition 
 but with my life. Yet let not this give you a 
 hope. Nothing can ever persuade me to enter 
 the world again ; I shall in a short time have 
 disengaged myself of all my little affairs in it and 
 setled myself in a condition to apprehend nothing 
 but too long a life, and therefore I wish you r.o 
 forget me, and to induce you to it let me tell you 
 freely that I deserve you should. If I remember 
 anybody 'tis against my will ; I am possessed with 
 that strange insensibility that my nearest relations 
 have no tie upon me, and I find myself no more 
 concerned in those that 1 have heretofore had great 
 tenderness of affection for, than if they had died 
 long before I was born ; leave me to this, and seek 
 a better fortune : I beg it of you as heartily as I 
 forgive you all those strange thoughts you have 
 had of me ; think me so still if that will do anything 
 towards it, for God's sake so, take any course that 
 may make you happy, of if that cannot be, less 
 unfortunate at least than 
 
 Your friend and humble servant, 
 
 D. Osborne." 
 
 Such letters are, happily, not numerous. Here 
 is another, of a quite different nature, in which you 
 
 H 
 
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98 DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 can read the practical English sense of our Dorothy, 
 and her thoughts about love in a cottage : — 
 
 "I have not lived thus long in the world, and in 
 this age of changes, but certainly I know what an 
 estate is; I have seen my father's reduced better 
 than ;^4,ooo to not ;^400 a year, and I thank God 
 I never felt the change in anything that I thought 
 necessary. I never wanted, and am confident I never 
 shall. But yet I would not be thought so inconsid- 
 erate a person as not to remember that it is expected 
 from all people that have sense that they should 
 act with reason ; that to all persons some proportion 
 of fortune is necessary, according to their several 
 qualities, and though it is not required that one 
 should tie oneself to just so much, and something 
 is left for one's inclination, and the difference in 
 the persons to make, yet still within such a compass ; 
 (a little incoherent this, meaning, I think, that 
 Dorothy does not believe that even the world would 
 have you choose by money and goods alone), and 
 such as lay more upon these considerations than 
 they will bear, shall infallibly be condemned by all 
 sober persons. If any accident out of my power 
 should bring me to necessity though never so great, 
 I should not doubt with God's assistance, but to 
 bear it as well as anybody, and I should never be 
 ashamed on't if He pleased to send it me ; but if by 
 my own folly I had put it upon myself, the Case 
 would be extremely altered." But this is Dorothy 
 in her serious strain ; often (how often ?) she plays 
 the lover, and though I disapprove of peeping into 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 99 
 
 such letters, doubting if Cupid recognises any 
 statute of limitations in these affairs, yet to complete 
 the fabric we must play eavesdropper for once. 
 
 "It will be pleasinger to you, I am sure, to tell 
 you how fond I am of your lock. Well, in earnest 
 now, and setting aside all compliment I never saw 
 finer hair, nor of a better colour; but cut no more 
 of it. I would not have it spoiled for the world; 
 if you love me be careful of it; I am combing and 
 curling and kissing this lock all day, and dreaming 
 of it all night. The ring, too, is very well, only 
 a little of the biggest. Send me a tortoiseshell one 
 to keep it on, that is a little less than that I sent 
 for a pattern. I would not have the rule absolutely 
 true without exception, that hard hairs are ill- 
 natured, for then I should be so; but I can allow 
 that all soft hairs are good, and so are you, or I 
 am deceived as much as you are, if you think I do 
 not love you enough. Tell me, my dearest, am I ? 
 You will not be if you think I am not yours." 
 
 Space ! space ! how narrow, how harsh, and 
 ungallant thou art ; not ready to give place, even to 
 Dorothy herself. We must hasten to the end. 
 Dorothy, it appears, unlike some of her sex, does 
 not like playing the Mrs. Bride in a public wedding. 
 " I never yet," she writes, " saw anyone that did 
 not look simply and out of countenance, nor ever 
 knew a wedding well designed but one, and that 
 was of two persons who had time enough I confess 
 to contrive it, and nobody to please in't but them- 
 selves. He came down into the country where she 
 
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loo DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 was upon a visit, and one morning married her. As 
 soon as they came out of the church, they took 
 coach and came for the town, dined at an inn by 
 the way, and at night came into lodgings that were 
 provided for them, where nobody knew them, and 
 where they passed for married people of seven years' 
 standing. The truth is I could not endure to be 
 Mrs. Bride in a public wedding, to be made the 
 happiest person on earth ; do not take it ill, for 
 I would endure it if I could, rather than fail, but 
 in earnest I do not think it were possible for me." 
 But her father is now dead. Her brother, 
 Peyton, is to make the treaty for her. Here is 
 the letter, dated for once (Oct. 2, 1654), inviting 
 Temple to come, and she will name the day; at 
 least, Courtenay tells us, that in this interview 
 the preliminaries were settled. " After a long 
 debate with myself how to satisfy you, and remove 
 that rock (as you call it) which in your apprehen- 
 sions is of no great danger, I am at last resolved 
 to let you see that I value your affection for me 
 at as high a rate as you yourself can set it, and 
 that you cannot have more of tenderness for me 
 and my interests than I shall ever have for yours. 
 The particulars how I intend to make this good, 
 you shall kinow when I see you, which, since I 
 find them here more irresolute in point of time 
 (though not as to the journey itself) than I hoped 
 they would have been, notwithstanding your quar- 
 rel to me, and the apprehensions you would make 
 me believe you have that I do not care to see you 
 
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DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 of eyd 
 
 1 01 
 
 —pray come hither, and try whether you shall be 
 welcome or not." 
 
 And now one moment of suspense. A last 
 trial to the lover's constancy. The bride is taken 
 dangerously ill. So seriously ill that the doctors 
 rejoice when the disease pronounces itself to be 
 small-pox. Alas ! who shall now say what are 
 the inmost thoughts of our Dorothy? Does she 
 not now need all her faith in her lover, in herself, 
 ay, and in God, to uphold her in this new afflic- 
 tion. She rises from her bed, her beauty of face 
 destroyed; her fair looks living only on the pain- 
 ter's canvas, unless we may believe that they were 
 etched in deeply bitten lines on Temple's heart. 
 But this skin beauty is not the firmest hold she 
 has on Temple's affections; this was not the 
 beauty that had attracted her lover, and held him 
 enchained in her service for seven years of waiting 
 and suspense; this was not the only light leading 
 him through dark days of doubt, almost of des- 
 pair, constant, unwavering in his troth to her. 
 Other beauty, not outward, of which I may not 
 write, having seen it but darkly, only through 
 these letters; knowing it indeed to be there, but 
 quite unable to visualise it fully, or to paint it 
 clearly on these pages; other beauty it is, than 
 that of face and form, that made Dorothy to Temple 
 and to all men, in fact, as she was in name — the 
 gift of God. 
 
 They are wedded, says Courtenay, at the end of 
 1654; 3nd thus my task ends. Of Lady Temple 
 
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I02 DOROTHY OSBORNE 
 
 there is little to know, and this is not the place 
 to set it down. She lies on the north side of 
 the west aisle at Westminster, with her husband 
 and children. 
 
 " Her body sleeps in Capel's monument. 
 And her immortal past with angels lives." 
 
 You, reading for yourself, will perhaps gaze 
 upon the darkened tablet, with new interest; and 
 may, perhaps, thank him who has shown you this 
 picture. Yes, thank him, not as author or his- 
 torian, but as a servant holding a lamp, but 
 ill-trimmed may be, before a glowing picture, 
 careful that what light he holds, may not glisten 
 on its shining surface, and hide the painting from 
 sight ; or as a menial, drawing aside with difficulty 
 the heavy, dusty curtain of intervening ages which 
 has veiled from human eyes the beautiful figure of 
 Dorothy Osborne. She herself is the picture, and 
 the painter of it; the historian of her own history. 
 But not even to her are the real thanks due ; these 
 must be humbly offered to Him from whom she 
 came to represent 
 
 "A holy woman and the perfect wife." 
 
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io:. 
 
 THE DEBTOR OF TO-DAY. 
 
 "He that dies pays all debts." 
 
 Tempest iii. 2. 
 
 The debtor is a slave. In the nature of things he 
 always has been and must be a slave. The debtor 
 of to-day is not such a direct slave as his ancestor 
 of remote ages, but he is, in political phrase, a 
 relic of barbarism living under servile conditions. 
 As he has no organisation, and as, in the pictur- 
 esque analogy of the man in the street, he is a 
 bottom-dog in every sense of the word, no one 
 worries about him. Eleven thousand of him go 
 to gaol every year, and process is issued against 
 three or four hundred thousand, but there is no party 
 capital to be made out of the subject, no one 
 statesman can abuse any other statesman for 
 neglecting the question, and the churches and 
 chapels are so keen about fighting over the tech- 
 nicalities of catechisms that they have no time to 
 worry over the sorrows of the debtor of to-day. 
 
 It was not always so. Elisha the Prophet 
 thought it worth while to perform a miracle on 
 one well-known occasion in order to pay the bailiffs 
 out. The creditor, if you remember, had come to 
 the widow's house "to take unto him my two sons 
 to be bondmen." In those days you took in 
 
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104 THE DEBTOR OF TO-DAY 
 
 execution not only the debtor himself, but his 
 wife and family. Elisha was indignant. He 
 orders the widow to borrow her neighbour's ves- 
 sels and fills them miraculously with oil. Then 
 he says: "Go, sell the oil and pay thy debt, and 
 live thou and thy children of the rest." One does 
 not expect miracles from our clergy of to-day, but 
 a consideration of the subject, and the discussion 
 of its social aspects, would be a following out of 
 Elisha's example. I for one have never yet heard 
 a sermon on imprisonment for debt, but the texts 
 are plentiful, and to any intending preacher I will 
 willingly supply the references. 
 
 As in Hebrew times, .so in the days of Greece 
 and Rome, you find the slavery of the debtor con- 
 tinue, and what seems to be wanting in 
 the legislator of to-day, an anxiety to relieve his 
 condition. Solon, the Greek law-giver, had 
 sounder notions of the matter than any modern 
 Home Secretary whose views I have come across. 
 It would be interesting to trace the evolution of 
 our poor unfortunate County Court debtor of to-day 
 across the spacious pages of history, through the 
 various degrees of ignominy, slavery, and misery 
 that the debtor has been made to suffer, until we 
 see him what he is to-day — not a very ill-used 
 martyr, perhaps, but the victim of an utterly out- 
 of-date system, the remnant of the cruel laws of 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
 To Charles Dickens must be awarded a great 
 portion of the honour that is due to those who 
 
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THE DEBTOR OF TO-DAY 105 
 
 abolishpd the horrible incidents of the imprison- 
 ment for debt that existed in his day. 
 
 The picture of the old debtor dying in the Fleet 
 after twenty years of captivity must have haunted 
 even the most callous official the Circumlocution 
 Office ever produced. Great reforms followed, 
 but in the usual English way, in scraps and 
 portions by means of compromise and amendment, 
 and by degrees. At last, in 1869, came the start 
 of the present system of imprisonment for debt 
 which abolished a great deal of imprisonment, but 
 left the very poorest still under threat of the gaol 
 if they did not pay their debts. There were many 
 great reformers of that day who saw that the time 
 was even then ripe for total abolition, and that the 
 House of Commons was legislating on too con- 
 servative lines. 
 
 Jessel, a great lawyer and a sound law-giver, 
 laid down the principle that has always been to 
 me a statement of the true gospel on this ques- 
 tion. "In no case," he says, "should a man 
 suffer penal imprisonment because he failed to 
 pay a certain sum of money on a private contract 
 with which the public had nothing to do." When 
 we have legislated to that effect we shall get rid 
 of this relic of the barbarous a^es that is still with 
 us — imprisonment for debt. 
 
 And a word to explain what the system means. 
 It must be remembered that the smaller debts in 
 County Courts are generally ordered to be paid by 
 instalments. Where a debt or instalment is in 
 
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io6 THE DEBTOR OF TO-DAY 
 
 arrear, and it is proved to the satisfaction of the 
 Court that the person making default either has, 
 or has had since the date of the order or judgment, 
 the means to pay the sum in respect of which he 
 has made default, and has refused or neglected 
 to pay, the Judge may commit him to prison for 
 a period of not more than forty-two days. In 
 practice the wind is very much tempered to the 
 shorn lamb, and a period of twenty-one days is 
 generally the maximum imprisonment ordered. 
 In practice, also, debtors will beg, borrow, and 
 perhaps do worse rather than go to prison, and 
 the result is that the percentage actually impri- 
 soned is small. This, to my mind, has very little 
 bearing on the question whether the system is a 
 wise one in the interests of the State and of the 
 working-man. For it must not be forgotten that 
 the system is in practice a system of collecting 
 debts from the wage-earning class, and the wage- 
 earning class only. It is, of course, incidentally used 
 against small tradesmen and others, but the bulk 
 of those against whom orders are made are 
 working-men. As the late Mr. Commissioner Kerr 
 said in 1873, "The rich man makes a clean sweep 
 of it, and begins again, and the poor man has a 
 miserable debt hanging round his neck all his life." 
 For the rich bankrupt is really rather a pampered 
 creature. Here you have the younger son of a 
 duke whose creditors are mostly money-lenders 
 and tradesmen, whose downfall is due to betting, 
 and who has known of his insolvency for a long 
 
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THE DEBTOR OF TO-DAY 107 
 
 period, owing £36,631, and his assets are ;^ioo. 
 The Official Receiver drops a silent tear of pity 
 over the statement of affairs, and, like the tear 
 of the recording angel, it blots out the record and 
 the younger son goes forth ducally to prey upon 
 a new generation of creditors. Here, again, you 
 have a bankrupt, an ex-Army officer, living on his 
 wife's income, and betting, and winding up with 
 debts ;^27,74i, and assets £€A'j. These are not 
 fancy cases, they come out of the stern, dull 
 rejrorts of the Inspector-General of Bankruptcy. 
 And as long as such men are allowed to live 
 without fear of imprisonment day by day, we can- 
 not sit down and say with a clear conscience that 
 we have only one law for rich and poor. 
 
 The chief evil of the present system of imprison- 
 ment for debt is the undesirable class of trade and 
 traders that it encourages : the money-lenders, 
 the credit drapers, the "Scotchmen," the travelling 
 jewellers, the furniture hirers, and all those firms 
 who tout their goods round the streets for sale 
 by small weekly instalments, relying on imprison- 
 ment for debt to enable them to plant their goods 
 out on the weaklings. The law as it stands assists 
 the knave at the expense of the fool. I was dis- 
 cussing with a rather slow-minded working-man 
 and his wife why he had purchased a showy and 
 unsatisfactory sideboard wholly beyond his means. 
 It had been seized and sold for rent, and he had 
 this burden of a few pounds debt to clear off as 
 best he might. 
 
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io8 THE DEBTOR OF TO-DAY 
 
 "Why buy it?" I asked. 
 
 "My wife would have it," he replied. 
 
 "Why did she want it?" I asked. 
 
 "She didn't want it, but yon man (the shop- 
 man) seemed to instil the sideboard into her." 
 
 The shopman was a clever salesman, no doubt, 
 but does anyone suppose he would have instilled 
 a sideboard into the workman's wife if it had not 
 been for imprisonment for debt. To a working- 
 man on small weekly wages no credit can be given 
 in any commercial sense. His only asset is 
 character, and there are many retail traders who 
 never come near the County Court at all, because 
 they make it a rule only to give credit after 
 inquiry. 
 
 Constantly one finds goods taken by women, 
 and immediately pawned, the proceeds being 
 spent on drink. How can a workman prevent 
 this ? He probably never hears of the matter until 
 a judgment summons is served on him. I asked 
 such a man the other day if his wife had had the 
 goods, mentioning the date when they were said 
 to be delivered. 
 
 "I don't doubt she had the goods. Indeed, she 
 must have got some goods that day," he admitted. 
 
 I asked why. 
 
 "Because that day she got locked up for being 
 drunk and disorderly, and I never knew until now 
 where she got the money." 
 
 This is by no means an isolated case. I have 
 been several times applied to by quite respectable 
 
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THE DEBTOR OF TO-DAY 109 
 
 men whose wives had run up debts with as many 
 as twelve to nineteen different drapers for relief 
 under the power permitting of small bankruptcies. 
 One man told me he was putting a nail in the 
 wall, and on moving a picture he found some 
 County Court summonses. I asked him what he 
 did. 
 
 "I upbraided my wife," he replied, in a rather 
 melancholy tone, "and she ran away, and I have 
 never seen her since." 
 
 A creditor corroborated the fact, and it was clear 
 that debt had destroyed that household. The man 
 had no idea that there were any debts owing, they 
 had been hidden from ihim, but he thought it 
 right to arrange honestly enough to pay them all 
 off. Many a man removes, or has his house sold 
 over his head, or his wife leaves him through 
 misunderstanding arising out of credit recklessly 
 given for useless articles, and the law as it stands 
 encourages this kind of thing. 
 
 Nor can it be said that the wife is always to 
 blame. The husband finds that his wife can 
 obtain credit at any grocer's for the week's food, 
 and the necessity of carrying home his wages to 
 the chancellor of his domestic exchequer is less 
 apparent. The temptation to spend wages on 
 drink or gambling is distinctly encouraged in the 
 debtor of to-day by a system that makes credit 
 so readily obtainable by the unthrifty and unfit. 
 
 There was a story illustrating this aspect of the 
 matter told me by a member of a relief committee 
 
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no THE DEBTOR OF TO-DAY 
 
 during the late war. The committee were paying 
 women half wages whilst the men were at the 
 front. The wife of a working-man refused a 
 sovereign saying, "That ain't half my man's 
 wages." 
 
 It was explained that he earned forty shillings. 
 
 The honest woman shook her head. "Nay, he 
 didn't," she said. "Nowt o' sort. He never 
 earned more than twenty -five. Twenty-three he 
 give me, and two shillings spending money." 
 
 After some time and examination of the books, 
 the good lady was convinced that she was entitled 
 to a sovereign, and she went away aghast at her 
 husband's deceit, and murmured, " Eh, but if 
 yon Boers don't kill him, wait till I get .him 
 back!" 
 
 One reason why imprisonment should be abol- 
 ished in relation, at all events, to amounts under 
 forty shillings is the dangerous and slippery paths 
 of evidence along which a Judge has to walk in 
 dealing with small cases. Some witnesses have 
 not the remotest idea of their duties and responsi- 
 bilities. On one occasion a low-class Jewish 
 workman was sufficiently impressed with his 
 responsibilities to make the following demand 
 after he was sworn. 
 
 "My lort, I cannot be a vitness in this case." 
 
 "Why not?" I asked. "Don't you know any- 
 thing about it?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I know all about it, but I don't vant 
 to speak." 
 
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THE DEBTOR OF TO-DAY in 
 
 After a good deal of trouble I obtained from 
 him the reason of his reticence. 
 
 "You see," he said, "Moses (the plaintiff) is 
 mine brother-in-law, and little Isaac (the defend- 
 ant) he is mine vife's nephew, and if I speak about 
 this case, vy, I must give vun of them avay." 
 
 I condoled with him about his family difficulties, 
 and tried to persuade him that his duty was to 
 speak the truth, but my only recollection of his 
 evidence is that it was of no service to anyone, 
 and that he certainly succeeded in giving himself 
 away. 
 
 In a family dispute the greatest care must be 
 taken to accept nothing as true that can possibly 
 be prompted by hatred or malice. To do justice 
 to the Jews they do not, as a rule, bring family 
 disputes into court. A cynical registrar once told 
 me that a Jew would swear anything for his bro- 
 ther, and a Christian anything against his 
 brother. Without endorsing this epigrammatic 
 exaggeration, I must sorrowfully admit that a 
 downright North Country fight between blood 
 relations over club money or the cost of a funeral 
 tea or the furniture of a deceased parent is one 
 of the saddest exhibitions of uncharitableness that 
 I know. 
 
 The recklessness with which good ladies of 
 unblemished character will commit what technical- 
 minded lawyers might be inclined to consider 
 perjury, and on occasion even stoop to something 
 like forgery, would surprise anyone who was not 
 
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112 THE DEBTOR OF TO-DAY 
 
 conversant with it. In ordinary matters tliese 
 good people are honest citizens enough, but in a 
 family dispute honour requires that no iniquity 
 must be left undone in order to gain the day. I 
 remember in my early days a fat old dame of 
 cheerful countenance suing her son-in-law, a young 
 workman, for £2 17s. gd. The odd shillings and 
 pence were admitted, but the £2, which figured 
 through two or three greasy books as "ballanse 
 of account," could not be traced to any particular 
 source. 
 
 The old lady swore it was a grocery account. 
 The young man denied it with emphasis, and 
 said it was spite. Sarah, the old lady's elder 
 daughter, remembered some of the items of it, 
 and with a great relish swore to them in detail. 
 The young wife, who had been keeping a very 
 lively baby quiet, and trying in between whiles 
 to give evidence from the body of the court, at 
 last got into the witness-box. Flinging the baby 
 into her husband's arms, and kissing the book 
 with a smack, she shot out the following testimony 
 at her mother and myself: "Look 'ere, mother, 
 you know reet enow what that there balance is; 
 it ain't no balance at all — it's my 'at and the wed- 
 ding-dress, and the shoes to match, and the pair 
 o' greys what druv us to church, which I paid for 
 when I was in service for three years, putting by 
 'arf-a-crown a month, which mother kep' for me, 
 and well she knows it, which it's Sarah's spite as 
 ain't got married yet." 
 
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THE DEBTOR OF TO-DAY 113 
 
 What was the real truth may be doubtful, but 
 I was clear the "ballanse of account" was not 
 groceries, and struck it out; yet, had the mother 
 succeeded, she would have pursued her son-in-law 
 to prison in an endeavour to collect the money. 
 
 For my part I think it is bad business for the 
 community that homes should be broken up in 
 order that a creditor may collect a trumpery debt 
 that should never have been incurred, and it is 
 because I believe it is the interest of the State to 
 keep together the home of the working-man, and 
 to deliver him from temptation, that I hope to see 
 imprisonment for debt diminished, if not abolished 
 altogether. An intelligent landlord wishing to 
 preserve game kills off birds of prey and puts down 
 poachers. An intelligent State, if it wishes to 
 preserve the home of the working-man and his 
 wife and children, should make it illegal for him 
 to mortgage his future earnings, and to place his 
 liberty in jeopardy in order to possess for the 
 moment some shoddy piece of jewellery or drapery 
 for which he has no real use. 
 
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114 
 
 THE FOLK-LORE OF THE COUNTY 
 COURT. 
 
 "To those athirst the whole world seems 
 A spring of water in their dreams.'' 
 
 From the Arabic. 
 
 Being snowed up in a library, well stocked with 
 modern scientific folk-lore, I began a serious study 
 of the subject. I started with enthusiasm. I saw 
 myself propounding a new theory for every vari- 
 ant text, and pictured myself triumphantly riding 
 through the otherworld on the Ossianic cycle. 
 After a few days of it, however, I found that, won- 
 derful as the science was, it was not made for me. 
 I ran into a thick German fog, I got mixed up 
 with sagzug and mdrchen, I failed to appreciate 
 the true differences between those holy men, 
 Zimmer and Rohde, and I wandered aimlessly 
 among parallels and analogues of varying age and 
 provenance. When I emerged from the German 
 fog I found myself staggering about a bleak Irish 
 moor in company with a fellow named Cormac — 
 or was it Finn ? We were studying the Dinn- 
 shenchas, or playing with an Agallamh or looking 
 for a Leprechaun. It was worse than political 
 economy, or logic, or the lost tribes. The fiscal 
 problem is merriment compared to folk-lore. I 
 finished my holiday with Trollope and have put 
 folk-lore on my index expurgatorius. 
 
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FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 1 15 
 
 One thing, however, haunts me still. I seem 
 to have escaped from the learned confusions of 
 this dismal science with a belief that the world 
 is certainly not progressing. They took a lot of 
 trouble at school to persuade me that the world 
 kept going round. Since I have dipped into 
 folk-lore I find this to be only part of the truth. 
 The fact seems to be that the world does nothing 
 else but go round and round and round, reiterating 
 its old ideas in a very tiresome way indeed. The 
 things we do and gossip and preach about to-day 
 are much the same as the things they worried over 
 in the ages of caves and mammoths and flint 
 implements. I feel sorry that I cannot explore 
 folk-lore further, for there are evidently great pos- 
 sibilities in it. But folk-lore is like collecting 
 stamps, or keeping gold-fish or guinea-pigs. It 
 is a "fancy," and if you don't fancy it you cannot 
 be of the " fancy." The slang of the science is 
 too difficult for most of us, and if you cannot mas- 
 ter the technical terms of a game, how can you 
 hope to play it? Even football would be dull if 
 you had no elementary conception of "off-side," 
 and it is easier to get "off-side" at folk-lore than 
 it is at football. Then these scientists are so 
 solemn, Euclid has his pictures and occasionally 
 admits that things are absurd; but the smiles of 
 folk-lore are in the otherworld, and even their 
 ghosts do not appear to the latter-day student. 
 
 I should never have troubled further about 
 folki-lore had not I met one of its greatest profes- 
 
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ii6 FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 
 
 sors. To him I unburdened myself and told my 
 trouble. "Folk-lore books," he explained, "are 
 not made to read. They are written to amuse the 
 writer. You write about folk-lore — then you will 
 begin to enjoy it." I remembered that Lord Fop- 
 pington held similar views when he said: "To 
 mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's 
 self with the forced product of another man's 
 brain. Now, I think a man of quality and breeding 
 may be much amused with the natural sprouts of 
 his own." An idea held in common by a peer 
 and a professor must be precious indeed. 
 
 I modestly murmured that I knew nothing about 
 folk-lore. To which the Professor encouragingly 
 remarked that I should "approach the subject with 
 an open mind." "There is one royal road to suc- 
 cess," he said, as we parted, "have a theory of 
 your own, and whatever happens, stick to it." 
 
 Now curiously enough, I had a theory about 
 folk-lore. It was the simple common idea that 
 comes to many children even in their earliest 
 school-days. The schoolmasters were all wrong. 
 The professors of folk-lore were teaching it upside 
 down. Instead of beginning with ancient legends 
 and working back towards to-day, they should 
 begin with to-day and march forward into the 
 past. I wired to the Professor about it — reply 
 prepaid. His answer was encouraging. "Theory 
 probably Celtic origin; stick." 
 
 As my business is to preside over a County 
 Court, I went down to my work full of my theory 
 
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FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 117 
 
 and determined at all costs to stick to it. I know 
 that to the pathologist a County Court is merely 
 a gathering-place for microbes, and a centre point 
 of infection ; that the reformer sees in it only a 
 cumbrous institution for deciding unnecessary dis- 
 putes, whilst the facile reporter comes there to 
 wash from its social dirt a few ounces of golden 
 humour for his latest headline. These are but 
 surface views. I went there like the poet, "whose 
 seed-field is Time," to find folk-lore, and I was 
 overwhelmed. 
 
 No sooner did I enter the Court, as I had done 
 many and many a hundred times, than the High 
 Bailiff, rising in his place, called out, as he, too, 
 had done many a hundred times, " Oh yes ! Oh 
 yes ! Oh yes ! All persons having business in 
 the Manchester County Court draw near and give 
 attention." At once I knew that the place I was 
 in belonged to the old days of fairies and knights, 
 and ladies and giants, and heroes and dragons. 
 The "Oyez ! Oyez ! Oyez !" struck my certain ear 
 and told me I was in the presence of folk-lore. The 
 creeping voice of the old world came stealing 
 across the ages, calling upon me "Oyez!" 
 "Hear!" and if you can "Understand!" It 
 seemed to bring its message with a sly chuckle as 
 if to say, "There you are, my modern, up-to-date, 
 twentieth century judicial person, beginning your 
 day's work with the same old cry that has called 
 men together to listen to official wisdom for cen- 
 turies of time." 
 
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ii8 FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 
 
 My friend the High Bailiff has not, I am sure, 
 the least notion that he is, from a folk-lore point 
 of view, a man of parallels and analogues, or 
 that the "fancy" would undoubtedly classify him 
 along with that most beautiful of human fritillaries, 
 the Herald. For indeed, in everything but glory 
 of costume, he is one of those delightful figures 
 of the middle ages who carried challenges and 
 messages of peace and war, and set out the lists 
 in jousts and tournaments, and witnessed combats 
 and wagers of battle — which my friend sits and 
 watches to-day — and recorded the names of those 
 who did valiantly, and remembered the dead when 
 the fight was over — which to-day he leaves to the 
 reporters. Here in this dingy court in a Man- 
 chester back street students of folk lore may see 
 a real Herald calling out "Oyez ! Oyez!" 
 announcing that the lists are open, and that anyone 
 may come prancing into Court and throw down 
 his glove — ^with the post-heroic gloss of a treasury 
 hearing fee upon it — and that if the challenge be 
 taken up, the fight may proceed according to the 
 custom of County Courts. 
 
 I would inaugurate a movement to apparel the 
 High Bailiff in scarlet and gold lace, and I would 
 have him ride into Court on a white palfrey, sound- 
 ing a trumpet, but that I fear it would lead to 
 jealousy among Registrars. Besides, some 
 envious German Professor will, I know, point out 
 that as a crier my High Bailiff is more akin to the 
 Praeco of a Roman auction, and that the village 
 
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FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 1 19 
 
 town crier is his poor relation. The answer to this 
 is that his auctioneering tendencies really belong 
 to his bailiff cycle, as the "fancy" would say. 
 And as a bailiff we could, did time permit, trace 
 him in dry-as-dust glossaries and abridgments, 
 through a line of sheriffs of counties, and stewards 
 of manors, and in various forms of governors and 
 superintendents, until we lose sight of him as a 
 kind of tutor to the sons of emjierors in the twilight 
 of the gods. 
 
 Let the High Bailiff call on the first case, and 
 say with Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York : 
 
 Thia is the day appointed for the combat, 
 And ready are the appellant and defendant, 
 The armourer and hig man to enter the lists ; 
 So please your Highness to behold the fight. 
 
 It seems a real pity that we no longer follow 
 the rubric of the Second Part of Henry VL, and 
 that we cannot see Horner enter with his neigh- 
 bours "bearing his staff with a sand-bag fastened 
 to it," on the other side, "Peter with a drum and 
 a sand-bag." Horner and Peter to-day would 
 make a much better fight of it, thumping each 
 other with sand-bags, than they do "barging" at 
 each other with tongues, and they would be better 
 friends afterwards. With a small charge for 
 admission, too, and two houses a night, the County 
 Courts might be self-supporting. 
 
 But we have not got very far away from the 
 wager of battle after all. The hired champion 
 
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I20 FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 
 
 is still with us from the house of the old Knights 
 Templars, but he breaks his wit against his 
 adversary instead of a lance. In another hundred 
 years or so our methods of settling disputes may 
 seem as laughable and melodramatic to our more 
 reasonable great grandchildren as our grandfathers' 
 romantic methods seem to us. They may think 
 that fees paid to eminent counsel, dressed in antique 
 shapes, to exhibit their jjowers before packed 
 galleries, according to the ancient and musty rules 
 of a game that is wholly out of date, is an absurd 
 way of endeavouring to reconcile human differences. 
 The whole thing must before long, one would 
 think, tumble into the dustbin of history and 
 become folk-lore. But the legendary charm of 
 the absurdity will always remain. Sir Edward 
 Clarke or Mr. Rufus Isaacs, appearing for an 
 injured ballet-girl in a breach of promise case 
 against a faithless and wicked peer, is only a new 
 setting of the story of Perseus and Andromeda, 
 with the golden addition of a special fee. Perhaps 
 there is even a parallel for the special fee in the 
 old myth, for may it not be said that in a sense 
 Perseus was moved to leave his usual circuit, and 
 appear against the dragon by the tempting special 
 fee of Andromeda herself ? Could such a glorious 
 figure be marked on the brief of to-day, what 
 eloquence we should listen to. 
 
 The longer one stays in a County Court, the 
 more does the atmosphere seemed charged with 
 folk-lore. Sagas seem to float in the air with the 
 
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FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 121 
 
 soot of our smoky chimneys, and wraiths of old 
 customs swim in the draughty currents of cold 
 that whistle under our doors. No sooner does a 
 witness step into the box than one perceives that 
 he too is an eternal type, and our methods of 
 dealing with him as everlasting as the forms of 
 the waves. The Greeks with all their noble ideals 
 were a practical people, and the exactitude of their 
 terminology is beyond praise; with a true instinct 
 they described their witness as fidprvi, a martyr. 
 For, in the Golden Age, and equally I take it, in 
 the Bronze, Stone, and Flint Chip period, the only 
 way to stimulate your witness to truth was by blood 
 or fire. These rough, kind-hearted, jovial, out-of- 
 door fellows had not considered the superior and 
 more subtle torture of cross-examination. The rack 
 and the stake were good enough for them. Yet 
 I feel sorry for the Greeks. How an Athenian 
 mob would have enjoyed the intellectual entertain- 
 ment of Mr. Hawkins, Q.C., administering one of 
 those searching cross-examinations so lovingly 
 described in Lord Brampton's "Book of Martyrs." 
 Many others I have heard greatly skilled in this 
 truly gentle art, but no one who played the game 
 with such sporting strictness or approached his 
 task with such loving joy. To see a witness in 
 his hands made one feel almost jealous of the 
 victim. To say this is only to say that to be a 
 great advocate you must also be a great sportsman. 
 How many moderns could handle a witness 
 after the manner of Master Izaak Walton dealing 
 
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122 FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 
 
 with his frog? "I say, put your hook, I mean 
 the arming-wire, through his mouth and out at 
 his gills, and then with a fine needle and silk sew 
 the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to 
 the arming-wire of your hook ; or tie the frog's leg 
 above the upper joint to the armed wire; and, in 
 so doing, use him as though you loved him, that 
 is, harm him as little as you may possibly that he 
 may live the longer." Alas ! Lord Brampton's 
 arming-wire is laid on the shelf, and the pike in 
 his pool mourns for Master Izaak — but what sports- 
 men they were. Really, when I think of the 
 sorrows of the human frog in the witness-box, I 
 begin to think the hour is coming to start a Witness 
 Preservation Society with a paid secretary and a 
 London oifice. It would be a charity — and there 
 is a lot of money in charity nowadays. 
 
 Some day I will write a book the size of a 
 Wensleydale cheese on the folk-lore of evidence. 
 It should be written in German, but unfortunately 
 I am such a bigoted Imperialist that I have 
 patriotically avoided the study of the tongue. It 
 should perhaps be published in several cheeses, 
 and the biggest cheese should be all about the 
 Oath. It was the flood of folk-lore on this subject 
 that overwhelmed me when I first began to consider 
 the matter. 
 
 In our County Court we administered two 
 oaths.* The Scotch oath, with uplifted hand, and 
 
 * This was written prior to The Oaths Act 1909. 
 
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FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 133 
 
 the English oath, with its undesirable ceremony 
 of kissing the Book. The Scotch form is incom- 
 parably the older, and though some maintain that 
 the hand of the witness is lifted to show he has no 
 weapon about him, there seems no doubt that the 
 sounder view is that both Judge and witness are 
 really each lifting his hand in appeal to the Deity, 
 In this way did the Greeks lift their hands at the 
 altars of their gods when they made sacrifice. In 
 similar fashion was the oath to Wodin admini- 
 stered in the Orkneys by two persons joining their 
 hands through the hole in the ring-stone of Stennis. 
 So also Aaron "lifted up his hand toward the 
 p>eople'." And it is no stretch of imagination to 
 suppose the lifting of the hands to the sun to have 
 been one of the most natural and solemn attitudes 
 of early man. In the Scotch form of oath we seem 
 to have a ceremony that has been with us from 
 the earliest dawn of humanity. I have seen this 
 oath administered in a Scotch Court, and it 
 certainly still retains many of the solemn incidents 
 of a religious ceremony, and compares very 
 favourably from a serious dramatic point of view 
 with the English oath as administered here. The 
 fact that the Judge administers the oath himself, 
 standing with hand uplifted, is impressive, at all 
 events to those to whom it is not made stale by 
 custom. To me it seems a very appropriate cere- 
 mony in an old-world system of law such as prevails 
 in Scotland, where there are numerous judges and 
 not too much work to do. In a busy English 
 
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124 FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 
 
 urban County Court, it would render the life of 
 a Judge uninsurable. 
 
 Our English oath is a much younger branch of 
 the family. I have made my own theory of its 
 incidents, and remembering my professor's advice, 
 I propose to stick to it. It is a quite modern idea 
 that the oath should be taken on the New Testa- 
 ment. Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, writing to John 
 Paston in 1460, says that the late Sir John Falstafe 
 in his place at Suffolk, "by his othe made on his 
 primer then granted and promitted me to have his 
 manner of Gunton." Even as late as 1681, Coke's 
 "Institutes" print a form of oath with the Roman 
 Catholic adjuration, " So help you God and all 
 Saints." An Irish woman in Salford County 
 Court quite recently objected to kiss the Book, and 
 desired to kiss a crucifix. But the "kissing" idea 
 is very modern. In 1681 it seems clear that kissing 
 the Book was not a necessary ofRcial act. All that 
 was necessary was to place the hand upon the 
 Bible. " It is called a corporall oath," writes 
 Coke, "because he toucheth with his hand some 
 part of the Holy Scripture." 
 
 The efficacy of the "touch" runs through all the 
 old legends, and we have an amusing survival of 
 it to-day when a punctilious Crier insists upon a 
 nervous lady struggling out of her glove before 
 he will hand her the Book, and again, in the 
 peremptory order constantly given by a clerk when 
 handing the Book to a witness, "Right hand, if 
 you please." For these demands there is as far 
 
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FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 125 
 
 as I know no legal sanction, and I take them to be 
 echoes of the social system of these islands that 
 prevailed some time prior to the building of Stone- 
 henge. 
 
 Touching a sacred object seems a world-wide 
 method of oath-taking. The Somali — who are 
 not yesterday's children — have a special sacred 
 stone, and observe a very beautiful ceremony. 
 One party says, "God is before us, and this stone 
 is from Amr Bur," naming a fabulous and sacred 
 mountain. The other party receiving the stone 
 says, "I shall not lie in this agreement, and there- 
 fore take this stone from you." Let us hope that 
 what follows is more satisfactory than are my 
 everyday experiences. 
 
 The exact origin of kissing the Book in English 
 Courts, though modern, is obscure. It is not, I 
 should say, a matter of legal obligation, but seems 
 to be merely a custom dating from the middle or 
 end of the eighteenth century. If a witness claims 
 to follow the law according to Coke, and to take 
 his "corporall oath" by touching the Book, who 
 shall refuse him his right? The "kissing" act 
 seems akin indeed to what the "fancy" call, some- 
 what unpleasantly, a saliva custom, which in 
 modern western life exists in very few forms, 
 though many of the lower classes still "spit" on 
 a coin for luck. The subject is a very large one, 
 but the fundamental idea of all customs relating to 
 saliva seems to have been a desire for union with 
 divinity, and if the Book were always kissed in 
 
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126 FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 
 
 our Courts with that aspiration, the custom might 
 well be retained. 
 
 Unfortunately, the practical value of an oath 
 depends in almost exact ratio upon the depth of 
 superstition of the person to whom it is admini- 
 stered. The moral man will speak truth for practical 
 moral reasons. The immoral man will lie for 
 practical immoral reasons. The latter in the old 
 days was hindered by the oath from lying, because 
 he firmly believed in the practical evil effects of 
 breaking the oath. The perjurer of old was 
 certainly "looking for trouble." This is not a 
 phrase of the "fancy," but it exactly describes 
 the oath-breaker's position. Some of the few 
 minor sequelcB of perjury were such domestic 
 troubles as a curse which ran on to the seventh 
 generation, or the perjurer's death from lingering 
 disease in twelve months, or that he would be 
 turned into stone, or that the earth might swallow 
 him up and that after death he would wander round 
 as a vampire. These simple beliefs, which were 
 no doubt part of the cave-dwellers' early religious 
 education, must have done a great deal to render 
 the evidence of early man more trustworthy and 
 accurate than that of his degenerate younger 
 brother. 
 
 Though in an occasional burst of atavism an 
 uneducated man may kiss his thumb instead of the 
 Book, the bulk of humanity take any oath that is 
 offered without any deep feeling of religious 
 sanction, nor any particular fear of supernatural 
 
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FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 127 
 
 results. It is not altogether a matter of regret that 
 this should be so. Our ceremony of oath-taking 
 is really a Pagan one. Our very verb "to swear" 
 takes us back to the pre-Christian days when man's 
 strength and his sword were the masters, and peace 
 and goodwill had come to conquer the earth. To 
 swear was a vow to Heaven upon a sword. When 
 we offer the Book to a witness to swear upon, we 
 really tender him, not a Christian thought, but 
 the old Pagan oath which, splendid as it was, is 
 no longer of force. It was a fine thing in its day 
 when a knight vowed upon his sword " to serve 
 the King right well by day and night, on field, on 
 wave, at ting, at board — in peace, in war, in life 
 or death; so help him Thor and Odin, likewise 
 his own good sword." It is no use replacing the 
 sword by the Book if you retain the spirit of the 
 sword in the old Pagan ceremony. The word "to 
 swear" is very closely related to the word "sword," 
 and the very essence of swearing, deep down in the 
 root form of the thing and the word itself, is to 
 take one's sword in one's right hand, and fight 
 for one's own side with an energy that will make 
 the Pagan gods shout with joy in the Valhalla. 
 Medical witnesses and land surveyors are real 
 Vikings in this respect, especially as it seems to me 
 those of Celtic origin. 
 
 But of a truth it is not only the oath and the 
 witnesses that want amendment. For when I 
 suggest that it would be well in Court if we obeyed 
 the command, "Swear not at all," and that the 
 
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128 FOLK-LORE OF COUNTY COURT 
 
 outward use of the Book in the County Court is 
 undesirable, it is because I feel that some such 
 thing as a Court on the lines of the teaching of 
 the Book ought not to be wholly impossible after 
 1,900 years of endeavour. You must drive out of 
 the Court all the folk-lore with its Pagan notions 
 of fighting and hired champions and oaths, and 
 witnesses and heralds, and above all you must get 
 rid of the anachronism of a Judge, and appoint in 
 his place a peace-maker or official reconciler. The 
 idea is not wholly Quixotic. Lord Brougham, a 
 very practical reformer, had hopes of constructing 
 Courts of Reconciliation in this country seventy 
 years ago. We shall not close the courts of 
 litigation and replace them by courts of reconcili- 
 ation in a day. But I am optimist enough to hope 
 that I may go down to my work one morning to 
 find that we have been taken over by a new depart- 
 ment called the Office of Peace, and that under the 
 Royal Arms is our new official motto, " Blessed 
 are the Peacemakers." 
 
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129 
 
 CONCERNING DAUGHTERS. 
 
 "As is the mother go ig the daughter." 
 
 Ezekiel zvi., 44. 
 
 I am far from thinking Ezekiel knew much 
 about it. Tnie he was a married man and a house- 
 holder, but I remember no evidence of his being 
 the father of daughters. At all events if he thought 
 that the education and brineging up of daughters 
 was an inferior thing because of the authority of 
 mothers, I think he was gravely mistaken. When 
 the daughters of the middle ages were part of the 
 household plant their mothers turned them out 
 with certain practical qualities that made them a 
 valuable asset to the comfort of mankind.^ 
 
 It was when unthinking fathers began to meddle 
 in the affair and to consider the subject of the 
 education of their daughters that the trouble began » 
 The fathers — particularly the middle class Early 
 Victorian father — discovered that it was a desirable 
 thing to be a gentleman. Remembering and mis- 
 applying one of the catch words of his own 
 education that things which are equal to the same 
 thing are equal to one another, he thought it was 
 equally important to the success of his family that 
 
 J 
 
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I30 CONCERNING DAUGHTERS 
 
 as his sons were to be gentlemen his daughters 
 should be gentlewomen. 
 
 And this is where he missed it. The word 
 "gentlewoman" is obscure, but it is certainly not 
 the grammatical feminine of gentleman. True it 
 has a narrow technical dictionary meaning, but it is 
 used popularly to signify the result of a well-to-do 
 middle class father's education of his daughters, 
 as in the phrase " Gentlewoman's Employment 
 Association" the name of an excellent society for 
 helping daughters of the well-to-do father when 
 he is deceased or has ceased to be well-to-do. 
 
 Concerning daughters then, and to help their 
 fathers to bring them up as gentlewomen I take 
 upon myself as one who has given grave personal 
 consideration to the subject, to offer a few 
 suggestions of a practical nature ; for I have found 
 the gentleman father in the matter of the education 
 of girls — like his namesake the gentleman farmer 
 in matters of agriculture — to be an enthusiastic 
 and amiable, but eccentric amateur. 
 
 And remember my dear sir, that there are two 
 main objects to be kept in view in the education of 
 a daughter. The first is to fit her for the ultimate 
 ownership of a well-to-do husband, the second is 
 to guard her from acquiring any knowledge or 
 capacity that might take her out of the ranks of 
 the unemployable. 
 
 And first of marriage. Charlotte Lucas when 
 she has made up her mind to the inevitable Mr. 
 Collins, " was," writes Jane Austen, " tolerably 
 
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CONCERNING DAUGHTERS 131 
 
 composed. She had gained her point and had time 
 to consider it. Her reflections were in general 
 satisfactory. Mr. Collins, to be sure, was neither 
 sensible nor agreeable : his society was irksome 
 and his attachment to her must be imaginary. 
 But still he would be her husband. Without 
 thinking highly of either man or of matrimony, 
 marriage had always been her object; it was the 
 only honourable provision for well educated young 
 women of small fortune, and however uncertain 
 of giving happiness must be their pleasantest 
 preservative from want." 
 
 How refreshing in these neurotic days is 
 Charlotte's old-fashioned commonsense. And 
 once recognising that marriage is the "pleasantest 
 preservative from want" a father may be wise to 
 leave the affair to mothers and daughters and 
 chance. Holding, as I do, the extreme doctrine 
 that anything that a mother does is of necessity 
 absolutely right, I do not propose to enlarge upon 
 this branch of the subject. There is a belief, 
 however, among social naturalists that the solvent 
 son-in-law is fast becoming extinct. This may be 
 from the fact that he has been hunted with too 
 great rigour in the past. The handsome but non- 
 solvent variety though ornamental in the house is 
 vastly expensive. Then there is the larger question 
 of grandchildren. Here, too, sentiment finds itself 
 again opposed by considerations of economy. 
 
 The problem of training one's daughters to 
 become in Charlotte Lucas's phrase "well educated" 
 
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132 CONCERNING DAUGHTERS 
 
 or as Miss Austen and Miss Edgeworth so 
 constantly word it "gentlewomen" is a far easier 
 matter, and may therefore be the more safelj left 
 in the hands of a father. Still in this, as in the 
 more serious amusements of life, there are 
 principles to be followed. 
 
 The main object of such education to-day should 
 be to give girls what their brothers describe as 
 " a good all round time." Avoid anything that 
 hints of serious work, eschew "grind," choose a 
 multitude of accomplishments rather than any one 
 serious study, encourage the collection of useless 
 objects and the manufacture of much fancy-work, 
 and by this means there will be little fear of your 
 girls attaining any real knowledge of affairs. So 
 may your daughter be as one of the polished 
 corners of the Temple, in the world and of the 
 world, and in her you will see reflected the delight- 
 ful patterns of the society by which she is 
 surrounded. 
 
 But to descend to particulars. In early life 
 commence with home-training. Beware of kinder- 
 gartens. They are too often taught by women 
 trained from early life in habits of work. They 
 are apt to instil ways of industry, and to cultivate 
 a socialistic tendency towards unselfishness,, and 
 might even at an early age suggest to the girl 
 baby that the mission of women is to work as well 
 as to weep. The poet must not however be taken 
 too literally about this. Men must work and 
 women must weep, but intervals ought clearly 
 
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CONCERNING DAUGHTERS 133 
 
 to be allowed for joint amusement, and the length 
 of these is for one's own decision. In her young 
 days then let the girl be taught that she alone 
 exists in the world, and that other human beings 
 are mere dream persons. The difference, never 
 to be bridged over, between herself and the house- 
 hold servants, ought to be constantly insisted upon. 
 A nursery g;^overness is a suitable companion. 
 Some of these neither know nor desire to know 
 how to scrub a nursery, and teaching is not their 
 mission. Obtain one if possible, who is a nursery 
 governess only in name, she will be cheap, and 
 what is more important to you — ladylike. In a 
 few years a school becomes a necessity ; partly from 
 the irksomeness of constant association with a 
 spoiled child, but more immediately in the real 
 interests of the girl herself. Choose by all means 
 a school that you cannot well afford. Here your 
 daughter will meet with companionship that must 
 fill her young mind with ideals of life and society 
 that cannot possibly be attained by her in after life. 
 Be careful, too, not to thwart her expenditure in 
 dress or amusement. Shun the modern craze — 
 sprung up now I fear even among the wealthiest — 
 for instruction in such subjects as cookery, dress- 
 making, and the like. A camera is a necessity. 
 It enables inaccurate representations to be produced 
 without skill or labour, and checks that desire for 
 detailed information, which might easily develop 
 into scientific study. The presence of a camera 
 has saved many a young person from serious 
 
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134 CONCERNING DAUGHTERS 
 
 attention to art. It is an excellent plaything. 
 By all means let your daughter learn French, for 
 it is the language of the menu, and there is no 
 great harm in a little Latin, but let it be ladylike. 
 Whenever you are in difficulties, Mrs. Malaprop — 
 who is always with us — will be only too glad to 
 tell you in further detail what kind of education 
 becomes a young woman, and the school where it 
 can be found. 
 
 If you are "carriage people" — and by all means 
 be "carriage people" if your wealthier neighbours 
 are — then of course your daughter will not learn to 
 cycle, but will rather learn to regard the cyclist as 
 the curse of the highway, which was obviously 
 built for her pleasure. The omnibus or tramcar 
 will, I hope, always be regarded as impossible. 
 Remember that people who now-a-days possess 
 motor-cars are not necessarily "carriage people." 
 It is becoming daily more difficult to diagnose 
 "carriage people" by the symptoms of their out- 
 ward circumstances. 
 
 When your daughter leaves school, if your 
 income is less than ^x, and you are spending 
 more, you should certainly have your daughter 
 presented at Court. She will naturally desire it, 
 and it may for the moment go far towards appeasing 
 your creditors who, I take it, will by this time be 
 pressing you after the vulgar fashion of such 
 I>eople. 
 
 Bring out your daughter at a ball, similar in cost 
 and style — ^but especially the former — to that given 
 
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CONCERNING DAUGHTERS 135 
 
 by Mrs. Goldberg Dives, when your daughter's 
 dear school friend, Aurora "came out," as the 
 saying is. You remember that on that occasion 
 young Dives brought home Lord Bareacre's 
 youngest son from Oxford, and the marriage that 
 ensued, was followed by that entertaining case so 
 recently decided in the third division of the Probate 
 and Admiralty Court. Who knows what good 
 fortune your daughter may have if you follow these 
 high examples. 
 
 But if during the prolonged pursuit of pleasure 
 — which after her careful education your daughter 
 ought now to be able to plan and carry out for 
 herself — no son-in-law solvent or insolvent appears, 
 then when you have departed to another sphere 
 leaving behind assets insufficient to meet your 
 worldly liabilities, or — as we may hope will be 
 your case, dear reader, — when you have called 
 together the callous creditors into an upper 
 chamber of some persuasive accountant who can 
 explain to them cheerily the true inwardness of 
 your estate, and tender, with fitting apology, the 
 pence that now represent the pound that was, — 
 think not with the austere moralist that this costly 
 education of your daughter has been a rash and 
 hazardous speculation. Let us be thankful that 
 the world is not at one with the Inspector-General 
 of Bankruptcy with his sallow views of the possi- 
 bilities of life. True your daughter will know 
 nothing, and be fit for nothing, true it will take 
 her years of misery to make herself capable of the 
 
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136 CONCERNING DAUGHTERS 
 
 meanest employment. She has eaten dinners she 
 cannot cook, she has worn dresses she cannot 
 make, she has lived in rooms she cannot sweep, and 
 she has grumbled at the service of others she could 
 not herself perform, but at least you can say that 
 she has been brought up as other gentlewomen 
 are, and that shall be your boast. 
 
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137 
 
 THE FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT. 
 
 " Had I God's leave, how I would alter things !" 
 
 — Robert Browning. 
 
 The County Court like the poor in whose interests 
 it was invented is always with you if you have one 
 of those perverted minds that wastes its moments 
 on dreams of legal reform. Seventeen years ago 
 I studied the question with earnest enthusiasm 
 under the strange hallucination that it was a real 
 business question ripe for a business solution. It 
 seemed to me nearer to the lives of people than the 
 Veto, or Tariff Reform or the Ornaments Rubric. 
 That is the result of leading a narrow self-centred 
 life. In a word, without knowing it, I must have 
 been a Whig, for, as Sir Walter Scott remarks, 
 " Whigs win live and die in the heresy that the 
 world is ruled by little pamphlets and speeches, 
 and that if you can sufficiently demonstrate that 
 a line of conduct is most consistent with men's 
 interest you have therefore and thereby demon- 
 strated that they will at length after a few speeches 
 adopt it of course." Thus for many years I have 
 pegged away with papers and Sf)eeches arid like a 
 true Whig find myself still hopefully at it, playing 
 
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138 FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 the same game perhaps but with slightly increased 
 handicap. To-day I have learned by experience 
 that the future of the County Court is not to come 
 in my time and to doubt if I shall ever climb into 
 some sufficiently high place to see the promised 
 land that I shall certainly never enter. 
 
 I have come to regard the question with 
 the same child-like affection and belief in its 
 possibility, but also in a sense archaeologically, as 
 becomes one whose first childhood is but a dream 
 and who feels himself pausing on the threshold of a 
 second. Had I any political foresight seventeen 
 years ago I should have recognised that the reform 
 of the County Court system is not a party matter, 
 it is eminently a matter of greater interest to the 
 poor than to the rich, to the business man than 
 to the man of leisure. Now, more and more. 
 Parliament has become a machine for registering 
 the decrees of the prevailing party and one cannot 
 find that the poor are in any way directly represented 
 in Parliament and business men only in a small 
 degree, whilst the interests of the rich and of men 
 of leisure have an overwhelming representation. 
 Moreover Legal Reform has to fight for its hand 
 against that band of brothers, the lawyers in 
 Parliament, who from generation to generation 
 we find stalwart and faithful in their clear-sighted 
 optimism that all is well with the law — and lawyers. 
 
 The story of the evolution of the County Court 
 is not without entertainment for those who are 
 interested in the practical affairs of the community. 
 
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FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 139 
 
 In its struggle for existence we find a warfare being 
 carried on between the business man and the lawyer 
 in which, foot by foot, the business man gains and 
 places his pet tribunal in a more secure position 
 whilst he takes breath for a new encounter. Still, 
 although the building up of the County Court to its 
 present story of usefulness has been the work in the 
 main of business men, yet few realise that the County 
 Court of to-day with its ;^ioo jurisdiction is only 
 a belated attainment of the ideals of Lord Broug- 
 ham in 1830. It was in that year that Brougham 
 brought in a Bill in the Commons — ^he was then 
 member for Yorkshire — to establish "Local District 
 Courts," with a jurisdiction limited to ;^ioo in 
 contract, ;^5o in injury to person or property, and 
 an unlimited jurisdiction by consent. It has taken 
 us seventy-five years to arrive at the position that 
 was thought practicable by a great reforming 
 Chancellor in 1830. And yet there are many 
 Englishmen in daily terror lest we should reform 
 anything too hurriedly. Lord Brougham's ruling 
 idea was free law. He was in a sense a legal 
 socialist. Law to him was one of those things that 
 every member of an ideal community should have 
 without paying for it individually, like fresh air 
 and sunshine, and the Church of England and 
 the British Museum, and gaslight (in urban 
 streets), and roads, and the police, and the education 
 of your children — all which things an English 
 citizen is entitled to have to-day without the pay- 
 ment of any fees. He admitted the over-ruling 
 
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140 FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 necessity of fees in his day, owing to the poverty 
 of the Exchequer, but he said, ' ' he must enter his 
 protest against the principle, and insist that any 
 tax no matter what, for the purpose of drawing 
 the payment from the public rather than from the 
 suitor would be better than fixing it on legal 
 proceedings." Free law is, of course, a grand 
 ideal, and may again attract legal reformers; but, 
 without attaining that ideal, it might be possible 
 to abandon in a great measure the fees collected 
 from poor suitors. Law, like medicine and 
 surgery, might be free to the poor — not merely to 
 paupers, but to all who are unable to pay fees and 
 costs without running into debt. It will take a 
 Savonarola to convert the Treasury to this view, 
 but it is an enticing subject for a youthful legal 
 missionary full of ardent zeal and possessed of 
 what the insurance world calls "a good life." 
 
 The dramatic duel between Lord Brougham and 
 Lord Lyndhurst over the former's Bill in 1833 is 
 full of historical interest, but Lord Brougham was 
 unsuccessful, and it remained for Lord Cottenham 
 in 1847 to establish County Courts with a juris- 
 diction of ;^20. These are the Courts that we use 
 to-day, with an enlarged jurisdiction up to ;^ioo 
 in common law, ;^5oo in equity matters, and the 
 added jurisdictions given by the Workmen's 
 Compensation Acts and many other statutes which 
 have chosen for their tribunal the County Court. 
 
 Throughout the country we are face to face with 
 two statistical facts which, if our reforms were 
 
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FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 141 
 
 moved by scientific considerations, would lead the 
 legal reformer to turn his serious consideration 
 to the County Court. We find in the great centres 
 of population in the north and the midlands,, firstly, 
 that there is a slight shrinkage or perhaps only 
 stagnation in the world of the High Court, and 
 secondly^ that there is a continuous increase of 
 business keeping f>ace with the growth of 
 population in the County Courts. I am far from 
 saying that all the expansion of County Court 
 work is progress — much of it is the reverse and 
 in order to understand how far it is good and how 
 far it is bad, it is worth while trying to understand 
 what the County Courts do. 
 
 These Courts lead as it were a double life. They 
 have extended their energies along two different 
 branches of business. Each Court has become a 
 huge debt-collecting machine for minor tradesmen 
 and at the same time has developed, into an 
 important and trusted tribunal for deciding disputes 
 between citizens. Both these functions are 
 important ones, but the two branches have nothing 
 to do with each other. In the debt-collecting 
 branch the cases are, for the most part, undefended ; 
 in the other branch the cases are nearly all fought 
 out. In the first branch the judicial work is 
 unimportant, the machine works automatically ; in 
 the second branch the vitality of the Court depends 
 almost entirely on the quality of the judicial work. 
 
 In considering the future of the debt-collecting 
 branch of the Court it will be necessary to consider 
 
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142 FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 the whole question of imprisonment for debt, which 
 is the ultimate sanction of the business. The point 
 to be considered is, I think, How far is it right for 
 the State to provide a machine to collect the class 
 of debts that are, in fact, collected by the County 
 Courts? The point is a practical one, for if 
 imprisonment for debt were abolished or mitigated, 
 a great deal of the work of the County Courts would 
 undoubtedly fall away, leaving reasonable time at 
 the disposal of the Courts to try cases under the 
 present extended jurisdiction, and possibly making 
 room for a further extension, if that were thought 
 desirable. 
 
 Let me try and describe the present system 
 in a few words. A grocer, draper, or jeweller 
 hands over to a debt-collector a large number of 
 debts to collect ; the customers are, from a business 
 point of view, the "undesirables." The debt-col- 
 lector makes some effort to collect the debts outside 
 the Court, and then issues a batch of summonses 
 against all who are or pretend to be impecunious. 
 It is no uncommon thing for one collector to issue 
 a few hundred summonses in one day. On the 
 day of trial the cases are either undefended, or the 
 wife appears and consents to judgment, and an 
 order is made of so many shillings a month. The 
 defended cases are, I should say, less than five 
 per cent, of the total summonses issued, and those 
 successfully defended are a negligible quantity. 
 In Manchester and Salford, where we used to 
 divide this class of work from real litigation, the 
 
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FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 143 
 
 lists were seldom less than 400 cases a day. When 
 the judgments are obtained, the duty of the defend- 
 ant is to pay the monthly instalment into Court, 
 and a ledger account is opened, the Court becom- 
 ing a sort of banker for the purpose of collecting 
 and paying out the money. Whenever the debtor 
 fails to pay an instalment, the collector is entitled 
 to take out a judgment summons, calling on the 
 debtor to show cause why he should not be com- 
 mitted to prison for non-payment. On proof that 
 the debtor has means to pay, or has had means 
 since the judgment, the judge's duty is to commit 
 him to prison. 
 
 Two things are clear about this system. It is 
 not a system of deciding disputes, but a system 
 of collecting debts, and in the cases of workpeople 
 without property it could never be carried out 
 without imprisonment for debt. When the legal 
 reformer looks at the figures relating to imprison- 
 ment for debt, he will see at a glance that if he 
 could get rid of a large quantity of the debt-collect- 
 ing, there would be more time for the real 
 litigation. Many people still seem to think that 
 imprisonment for debt is abolished. In France 
 and the United States and in most civilised coun- 
 tries I believe it is, but in England it is not only 
 not abolished, but is greatly increased. The actual 
 number of debtors imprisoned has recently 
 decreased, owing no doubt to the fact that Judges 
 are more and more inclined to temper the wind 
 of the statute to the shorn lamb. But the number 
 
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144 FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 of summonses issued and heard increases, and 
 there is no doubt the credit habit grows upon the 
 working classes, and is encouraged by the system 
 of imprisonment for debt. la 1909, the last year 
 of statistics before me, no less than 375,254 sum- 
 monses were issued. It is the commercial and 
 domestic waste which lies hid in these figures that 
 distresses me. They reduce me to the despair of 
 those two immortals, the Walrus and the Carpen- 
 ter, who 
 
 " Wept like anything to see 
 Such quantities of sand. 
 'If thia were only cleared away,' 
 They said, 'it would be grand.'" 
 
 But ought it to be cleared away? In the main I 
 think it should. One might lay down the principle 
 that where the debt was not necessarily incurred 
 the State should not assist the creditor to collect 
 it by imprisoning the debtor. For the system is 
 used, in the majority of cases, by a very undesir- 
 able class of creditor. I analysed a list of 460 
 summonses heard by me in one day. There were 
 284 drapers and general dealers. These include 
 all the instalment and hire system creditors. There 
 were sixty jewellers, thirty-five grocers, twenty- 
 four money-lenders, and ten doctors. Now, with 
 the exception of the doctors, and possibly in a few 
 instances the grocers, it was not in the least 
 desirable, from the point of view of the State, that 
 these debts should be collected at all. Why should 
 taxes be imposed and work' done at the public 
 
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FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 145 
 
 expense to enable a jeweller to persuade a man to 
 buy a watch he does hot want? Why should the 
 State collect the jeweller's money for him by 
 imprisonment for debt? If there had been no 
 imprisonment for debt the jeweller's business 
 wouldn't pay, and the workman would have one 
 chance less of mortgaging his wages for the 
 immediate delight of possessing a third-rate piece 
 of jewellery. This would be better for the State 
 and the workman, and for everybody but the 
 jeweller. But why should his interests prevail 
 over those of the rest of the community, and why 
 should we spend money in promoting a business 
 of which most of us disapprove? Everyone must 
 have noticed of late years the enormous growth of 
 firms whose main business seems to be to tempt 
 people of small means to purchase things they do 
 not want, or, at all events, cannot afford. Take 
 up any newspaper or magazine circulating among 
 the lower middle classes, or among working men, 
 and you will find it crowded with advertisements 
 of musical instruments, cycles, furniture on the 
 hire system, packets of cutlery, all of which can 
 be obtained by a small payment down and smaller 
 instalments to follow. Remember, too, that over 
 and above these there exists a huge array of " tally 
 men" and travelling touts, who are pushing on 
 commission, clothing, sewing machines, Family 
 Bibles in expensive series, jewellery, and a host of 
 un necessaries. What chance has tire working-man 
 to keep out of debt ? Not one of these transaction* 
 K 
 
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146 FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 has any commercial sanction. Credit is given 
 merely because there is imprisonment for debt. 
 And there is a further aspect of this question which 
 I am surprised has never attracted the attention of 
 temperance reformers. As long as a man can get 
 credit for groceries and clothes there is not the 
 same urgent reason to spend his cash upon these 
 things. But cash is necessary in the public-house, 
 because, by the Tippling Acts, no action can be 
 brought for the price of drink consumed at a 
 public-house. So the obvious result too often 
 follows : the wages are spent at the public-house, 
 and the credit for the week's groceries and the 
 children's boots is obtained under the sanction of 
 imprisonment for debt. 
 
 Much more might be said in objection to the 
 system of imprisonment for debt, but we have 
 enough before us, I think, to show a strong case 
 for reform. The next question will be : Should 
 that reform be abolition ? Although I am per- 
 sonally in favour of the abolition of imprisonment 
 for debt, I am in doubt whether it is desirable at 
 the moment ; and I am so eager to see some reform 
 that I would welcome any measure, however 
 meagre, that did something to mitigate the misfor- 
 tunes of the insolvent poor. I have suggested as 
 a practical measure that no summons should be 
 issued or committal made for a less sum than forty 
 shillings. One must remember that there are a 
 huge number of traders giving reasonable credit to 
 their fellow-traders, who find, when they seek to 
 
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FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 147 
 
 recover the debt, that the goods in the house or 
 shop are in the wife's name. This is really a 
 quasi-fraudulent obtaining of credit, and there are 
 many similar cases not within the criminal law 
 where imprisonment for debt seems a natural 
 remedy. Moreover, if one studies the evidence 
 given before the Commissioners on the subject, 
 and if one discusses it, as I have, with men in 
 business, one finds that abolition would meet with 
 great opposition from powerful trade interests, 
 whereas the "forty shilling" proposal is generally 
 regarded as a fair experiment, which would injure 
 no one but traders who deliberately give credit to 
 the poorer working class under the sanction of 
 imprisonment for debt. In my own experience, I 
 have found hardly^ any cases of judgments sum- 
 monses taken out for more than two pounds where 
 there was not ample evidence of means, and where 
 the non-payment was not more or less of the 
 nature of a contempt of Court. In the smaller cases 
 the means, though proved to have existed since 
 the judgment, have disappeared, and the debtor 
 is only saved from imprisonment by the leniency 
 of the Court. Total abolition of imprisonment for 
 debt would probably never be carried by consent. 
 It would mean more commissions, inquiries, 
 reports, and the waste of time that these things 
 necessitate. Abolition of imprisonment for debt 
 for sums under forty shillings — a great practical 
 reform for the very poor — would, I believe, be 
 carried by consent. That is why I put it forward. 
 
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148 FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 It is utterly illogical but intensely practical ; and 
 when one has been face to face with the misery of 
 others for many years, one cares more for business 
 than logic. 
 
 Assuming, therefore, that the future of the 
 County Court as a debt-collecting machine is to 
 be a future of decrease, that the legislature are 
 going to save the taxpayer's money and encourage 
 thrift by refusing to collect undesirable debts, what 
 will be its future as a litigating machine? 
 
 I may commend to anyone desirous of studying 
 in further detail the arguments for and against the 
 extension of County Courts, the proceedings of 
 the Norwood Commission on County Courts in 
 1878. There is no doubt that if the business man 
 had had his way the County Court in urban cen- 
 tres would have long ago been a district Court for 
 all but cases of some peculiar public or legal 
 importance. The great enemy to such an exten- 
 sion has always been the lawyer, and the London 
 lawyer in particular. A very eminent solicitor,, 
 giving evidence before the Commission in I878^ 
 had no confidence whatever in County Courts. 
 His evidence was very typical, and shows how^ 
 carefully one should criticise the evidence of a 
 professional man who is also a very supericM" per- 
 son. His view was that "When occasionally a 
 client of mine of position who has been summoned 
 to the County Court comes to me, I am unable to 
 leave him in the lurch^ but I never go into the 
 County Court myself." Asked whether he thought 
 
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FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 149 
 
 it "undignified," he replied enigmaticalLy : "It is 
 not a matter of dignity, but a man of position can- 
 not go into the County Court." It turned out 
 later that it was a physical difficulty, for it was 
 "quite inconsistent with the position of a profes- 
 sional man to stand in the County Court with 
 women bringing cases about washing-tubs, and 
 servants summoning their masters for wages." 
 
 He called them tmtaughi knaves uiunaimeTly 
 To bring a slovenly, unhandsome corse. 
 Betwixt the wind and his nobility. 
 
 Dozens of times, he told the Commission, barris- 
 ters had declined to go into the County Court, 
 and his clerk had gone to half-a-dozen barristers 
 before he could find one who would demean him- 
 self by taking a case in the County Court. County 
 Courts were, in his view, "inherently incapable of 
 conducting important litigation." The County 
 Court Judges had not, in his opinion, the confid- 
 ence of the country, because they are not taken 
 from the successful members of the Bar, it is 
 known that their salary is an extremely small one, 
 there is no Bar attending before them, there is no 
 report of their proceedings, and there are difficulties 
 of appeal. One thing I find very delightful in 
 the eminent solicitor's evidence. 
 
 Question. — Some of the County Court Judges are very 
 competent men, are they not ? 
 
 Answer. — Extremely. 
 
 Question. — ^You think that there are some who are not equal 
 to the others ? 
 
 Answer. — ^Yes. 
 
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ISO FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 Question. — Is not the same thing true in regard to the 
 Superior Courts? 
 
 Answer. — You will not expect me to answer that question, 
 I think. 
 
 Even in the dark ages of 1878 one would have 
 thought he might have risked an affirmative. 
 
 One does not quote the eminent solicitor's 
 opinion merely for the humour that attaches to 
 old-fashioned ideas and prophecies that are 
 brought to light in a new age and found to be 
 absurd. No doubt he was fighting for a substan- 
 tial thing, in a word — costs, and he was fighting 
 the wreckers that wanted to break up the machinery 
 that made costs, for he naturally disliked to see 
 the smooth, well-oiled machine that worked so 
 well for him replaced by some cheap machinery 
 of one-horse " costs " power. In one thing I con- 
 fess to his statesmanlike insight. If you want to 
 improve the County Courts, he said, the " only 
 improvement would be to double the salary of the 
 judges at least," and let the judge reside in his 
 district, "but then you would be establishing 
 superior Courts all over the country." And the 
 idea of the "country" having similar facilities to 
 London for the trial of actions was too preposter- 
 ous. It had only to be stated, it was self- 
 condemned, and the matter dropped. 
 
 One must not suppose that there were no 
 champions of saner methods in 1878. On the 
 contrary, I think the reformers were the better 
 team of the two, and pressed their opponents hard. 
 
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FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 151 
 
 although they did not score greatly in the end. 
 What could be more interesting or important than 
 the opinion of Lord Bramwell, who was concerned 
 in several of the Judicature Commissions prior to 
 1878? His view was that the County Courts 
 should be made constituent branches of the High 
 Court of Justice, and that as a consequence of 
 that, the existing jurisdiction in common law should 
 be unlimited. That is to say every action would 
 commence in the County Court and be tried there 
 unless the defendant chose to remove it to the High 
 Court. It was pointed out that this would prac- 
 tically mean giving to every district, local Courts 
 with full powers, and among other things that it 
 would lead to the "deterioration of the Bar," Lord 
 Bramwell objected to the phrase, and answered 
 his opponents by saying that the then Attorney- 
 General (Sir John Holker) and Mr. Gully and Mr. 
 Pope and Mr. Higgins, one of her Majesty's 
 counsel, have belonged to the local Bar, "and I 
 think I may say of my knowledge, that the local 
 Bar of Liverpool is as good as the London Bar." 
 This is important testimony, inasmuch as any 
 evolution towards district Courts that will injure 
 the assize system is sure to be opposed by those 
 barristers — and there are many in Parliament — 
 who are interested in the assize system, and one 
 argument will be that the client will be deprived 
 of the advantage of London "silk" if his case is 
 tried in the County Court. Lord Bramwell dis- 
 poses of that argument very shortly. " If there is 
 
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152 FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 any disparagement or injury to the Bar for the 
 benefit of the public, the Bar must undergo it; 
 that is all." 
 
 In other words, the Courts of the future must 
 be made convenient to the public as well as con- 
 venient to the profession ; and where interests 
 clash the public interest must be considered before 
 the professional interest. This looks when written 
 down an obvious platitude, but the history of the 
 efforts to obtain and improve County Courts since 
 1830 will convince the legal reformer that it is 
 worth re-stating. 
 
 Some years ago I made some elaborate calcula- 
 tions from the Blue Books, the results of which 
 were rather surprising even to myself. I investig- 
 ated the figures of ten typical urban Circuits in 
 the centres of industry of ten typical rural 
 Circuits in agricultural districts. I found that in 
 the former Circuits in ten years there had been a 
 large increase in business. Nearly ;^40,ooo a year 
 more was paid to the Treasury in fees, and more 
 than ;^i5o,ooo was the increase in monies collected 
 for suitors. In the same ten years similar figures 
 for the rural districts showed a marked decrease. 
 When one compared the turnover of the ten urban 
 Circuits as against the turnover of the ten rural 
 Circuits, it was as ten to one. I wondered what a 
 Harrod or a Lipton or a Whiteley would have 
 done with these Courts if he had found in auditing 
 their accounts over many years that ten of them 
 were non-increasing in a business sense, and that 
 
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FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 153 
 
 the other ten were increasing; if he found that he 
 drew ;^ 1 50,000 as an income from one set and 
 ;^40,ooo from the other set. Would he not con- 
 sider whether there was not a class of business 
 being done by the urban circuits worthy of special 
 consideration and encouragement ? 
 
 For what did these figures show ? They showed 
 on the one hand a stagnant and non-increasing 
 business, and on the other a business increasing 
 by leaps and bounds. What business man would 
 hesitate to extend ten branch concerns capable of 
 so great an improvement in turnover in the course 
 of a few years ? I am frankly an enemy to making 
 the suitor pay for his law. I believe, as Lord 
 Brougham did, in free law ; but if the system is 
 to continue, why should a suitor in Birmingham 
 pay more for his law than is necessary in order 
 that a suitor in Ambleside may pay less for his 
 law than it costs? 
 
 The Courts are, no doubt, not paying concerns, 
 but how far some Circuits are run at a profit it 
 is impossible for anyone outside the Treasury to 
 ascertain. There is no doubt, however, that the 
 loss in small Courts is very great, and whether 
 they are of any great value to a district in these 
 days of postal facilities and cheap railway transit 
 I have grave doubts. I have always thought that 
 the Post Office might work a great deal of the 
 pure debt-collecting business in connection with 
 the County Court, if it were thought desirable. 
 It would, to my mind, be a natural co-ordination 
 
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154 FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 of two public offices, and might adapt itself very 
 well to the needs of rural districts. If a country 
 debtor could pay his debt to the nearest post office, 
 and get an official receipt there, many small Courts 
 and offices would become wholly unnecessary, and 
 with a post office cash on delivery system one 
 excuse for giving credit would be removed. 
 
 Why one little town has a Court and another 
 has none it is as impossible to say, as why one 
 little pig went to market and the other little pig 
 stayed at home. These ancient myths are part of 
 our history, and any effort to dislodge them is 
 rightly made difficult. But whilst the Courts of 
 London and the Midlands and the North are over- 
 crowded, there are actually ten Courts issuing less 
 than loo plaints each — ihen average is 57 ! — and 
 thirty-two Courts with less than 200. Alston, in 
 Cumberland, is the holder of the record. This 
 Court issued twenty-seven plaints and four actions 
 were heard. It heard two judgment summonses, 
 and made a commitment order in one. And the 
 Court collected sixteen pounds in fees. To cope 
 with this annual business the Judge sat once and 
 the Registrar three times. It will take a long 
 time to persuade these small communities that it 
 is necessary they should give up conditions such 
 as these to which they have become accustomed. 
 I think it would be more readily done if the dis- 
 tricts that had no real use for a County Court or 
 an Assize Court were only allowed to retain them 
 on payment of what they cost to the community. 
 
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FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 155 
 
 The endeavour to bring justice to the poor man's 
 door is more praiseworthy than practical. I 
 remember explaining to a collier's wife that her 
 husband must attend with her, and adjourned the 
 case to a Monday for that purpose. Monday is 
 often kept by colliers as a saint's day. "Eh!" 
 she replied. "It will be very onconvanient. My 
 maister winna like coming on a Monday. Besides, 
 it's my weshing-day." 
 
 I expressed my regret, but said it must be. 
 
 "Well, it's very onconvanient our coming here. 
 Couldn't yo calf?" 
 
 The idea of calling personally on the litigants 
 — especially in these days of motor-cars, when 
 every registrar is probably an expert chauffeur — is 
 a very attractive one, and not much more absurd 
 that the present system of sending Judges to 
 Courts that have no real use for them. 
 
 But from my point of view, the difficulties of 
 dealing with the smaller Courts, if they exist, 
 should not hinder the development of the larger 
 Circuits. It is clear that the problems of providing 
 adequate Civil Courts for Central Wales and Nor- 
 folk is not the same as the problem of providing 
 similar tribunals for Manchester, Birmingham, 
 and Leeds. I have shown that there are a large 
 number of districts where the Courts are increasing 
 yearly in usefulness and in public favour, and 
 there is, I think, a strong case that from a business 
 point of view Circuits that are dealing with large 
 amounts of work should be specially considered. 
 
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156 FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 
 
 I do not think there will be any great difficulty 
 in dealing with the great urban centres when the 
 legislature makes up its mind to make the County 
 Courts district Courts working directly in touch 
 with the High Courts. No doubt it will mean the 
 providing of money for further and better equip- 
 ment, but it has certainly to come about, and there 
 are signs that it is being faced. The problem of 
 the rural Courts is more difficult, but I think the 
 grouping of several Courts under one resident 
 permanent registrar with extended powers and 
 allowing him to gather together in one place a 
 day's work for the Judge who is to travel his Circuit 
 with a business regard for the actual wants of 
 litigants from time to time is a statement of the 
 general lines upon which reforms can be carried 
 out. The rural Courts will always be costly to 
 the community, out of all proportion to the services 
 rendered, but they are necessary and the expense 
 must be borne; the urban Courts, on the other 
 hand, might be made to pay their way, and might 
 be of far greater service to the business communi- 
 ties around them than they already are. 
 
 It is difficult, of course, to write upon such a 
 subject without personal bias, and it has been my 
 lot to take an official position for the sake of its 
 comparative leisure, and to find that leisure taken 
 away by successive Acts of Parliament without 
 compensation for disturbance. Still, experience 
 of legal reform leads me to believe that I cannot 
 be writing this with any personal motive, for I 
 
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FUTURE OF THE COUNTY COURT 157 
 
 cannot hope to be presiding in any County Court 
 in the latter part of the twentieth century, when, 
 according to recorded precedent, such reforms as 
 I propose will be about due. 
 
 Why, then, do I commend the future of the 
 County Court to the attention of the legal refor- 
 mer? Because I see in the County Court, and in 
 that Court only, a growing and popular tribunal 
 favoured by the business men of the country. 
 Because in that Court there is a crying abuse calling 
 aloud for reform, namely, imprisonment for debt, 
 which abuse, when abolished or mitigated, will 
 release Judges from odious duties, and give them 
 time far more honourable services. Because in 
 great urban centres there has long been a demand 
 for continued sittings, which the High Court has 
 been unable to comply with, but which the County 
 Court already satisfies to some extent, and with 
 reasonable equipment could supply in full measure. 
 The record of the County Courts in the last fifty 
 years is a very remarkable one. In the face of 
 keen professional opposition. Parliament has given 
 them year by year more important and onerous 
 duties. These have been carried out in the main 
 to the satisfaction of the business man in the 
 business centres. It is because the urban County 
 Courts are live business concerns, carrying on their 
 business to the satisfaction of their customers, that 
 I believe in the future of the County Court. 
 
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158 
 
 THE PREVALENCE OF PODSNAP. 
 
 "The question about everything was would it bring about a 
 bluah into the cheek of the young person? And the incon- 
 venience of the young person was that according to Mr. 
 Fodsnap she seemed always liable to burst into blushes when 
 there wag no need at all." 
 
 — Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend. 
 
 There seems an alarming recrudescence of Pod- 
 snappery at the present moment. Perhaps in a 
 measure it is a protest against things that are 
 wrong. If some novel-writers exceed the limits 
 of reasonable plain speech, and some dramatists 
 seek publicly to exhibit the results of moral 
 leprosy, they challenge the latent Podsnap, that 
 is a valuable asset in our national character, to 
 flourish its right arm and say, "I don't want to 
 know about it; I don't choose to discuss it; I don't 
 admit it !" With every proper contempt for Pod- 
 snap, there are some excesses about which he is 
 right when he sweeps them away with the verdict, 
 "Not English!" But having tasted too much 
 success by reason of the excesses of his enemies, 
 he is beginning not only to reform our morals, but 
 has started upon our manners. 
 
 A " Town Vicar," writing a letter to a Church 
 paper, recently lifted up his voice in the following 
 
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THE PREVALENCE OF PODSNAP 159 
 
 complaint : " It is not long ago that I heard a 
 Dean declare that ' we were not going to take it 
 lying down,' and more than one Bishop has in 
 preaching lately had recourse to 'the bottom dog.' 
 But these are mere details in the alarming spread 
 of vulgarity where culture and right feeling used 
 to be." 
 
 What would Charles Kingsley have said or His 
 Honour Judge Hughes to a parson who shrank 
 from a simile drawn from the noble art of self- 
 defence ? Seeing, too, that the phrase has attained 
 esoteric political value in respect of its use by the 
 leader of Birmingham state-craft, the Podsnap in 
 our good Vicar takes too much upon itself when 
 it declares that the sporting Dean who used it was 
 wanting in "culture and right feeling." 
 
 The reference by more than one Bishop to the 
 "bottom dog" is less easy to defend. The "Town 
 Vicar" no doubt regards a Bishop as so far removed 
 from the every-day affairs of the world that the 
 phrase should never have polluted his ears, far less 
 his lips, and that if he has indeed heard of the 
 existence of " bottom dogs," and he desires to 
 express himself about them, he should allude to 
 them on the platform as the "submerged tenth," 
 and in the pulpit as "our poorer brethren." 
 
 To many of us it will come as a pleasant surprise 
 to know that there is more than one Bishop whose 
 courage is stronger than his culture. Not that 
 one desires to see in Bishops or in anyone else a 
 tendency towards the patronage of meaningless 
 
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i6o THE PREVALENCE OF PODSNAP 
 
 slang or dull expletive. I remember a story of the 
 seventies that used to be told with equal inaccuracy 
 of Canon Farrar and Bishop Eraser. The Bishop 
 — let us say — travelling in a third-class carriage 
 with some workmen, took occasion to reprove one 
 on his constant and meaningless use of the adjec- 
 tive "bloody." 
 
 The workman took the reproof in good part, and 
 by way of excuse said : "You see, Mister, I can't 
 help it. I'm a plain man, and I call a spade a 
 spade." 
 
 "That is just what you don't do," retorted the 
 Bishop quickly. "You call it 'a bloody shovel.' " 
 At which they all laughed in a friendly spirit, and 
 the offender promised amendment. 
 
 Relating this anecdote at a dinner, a well-known 
 pillar of the Church, noted for his pompous demean- 
 our and the ignorant pleasure he took in the use of 
 long words, expressed his horror that such language 
 could be used in any form of society. "For 
 myself," he said, "I cannot believe it possible that, 
 however I had been brought up, such words could 
 pass my lips," "I am sure of it," replied the 
 Bishop, "in whatever society you found yourself 
 you would always refer to a spade as an agricul- 
 tural implement for the trituration of soil." 
 
 And, indeed, in this story lies the test of the 
 matter. A spade is to be called a spade. And 
 whilst even Podsnap is right in putting his veto 
 on the media&val adjective dear to the sons of toil, 
 we are not going to be bullied by him into peri- 
 
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THE PREVALENCE OF PODSNAP i6i 
 
 phrastic descriptions of facts that are better stated 
 in plain, simple, and even vulgar language. 
 
 The "Spectator" voiced a very general feeling 
 among the Podsnap family in writing of Mr. 
 Lloyd-George's reference to the hereditary prin- 
 ciple and his simile that a peer became a legislator 
 by being "the first of the litter." The word 'litter' 
 quoted without its context may seem a little harsh, 
 but the point of the allusion was that, although 
 we chose our legislators in that way we did not 
 choose our spaniels by this curious and, as he 
 argued, obsolete method. The "Spectator" found 
 this to be mere vulgarity. I have a great affection 
 for the "Spectator," having been brought up from 
 earliest childhood to reverence her teachings. I 
 say "her" because I always visualise the "Spec- 
 tator" as some being like Charles Lamb's aunt, 
 who was "a dear and good one .... a stedfast 
 friendly being, and a fine old Christian .... 
 whose only secular employment was the splitting 
 of French beans and dropping them into a china 
 basin of fair water." Much as I honour the 
 " Spectator," I cannot but think the prevailing 
 Podsnap is warpring her better judgment. 
 
 But there is an excuse for the "Spectator" that 
 cannot be offered for the average man of the world 
 who claims to be righteously offended at the vul- 
 garity of Mr. Lloyd-George's similes. 
 
 I met a friend upon the golf links who used 
 language upon the last green, where he failed to 
 hole out in three, that no Bishop could have sanc- 
 L 
 
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i62 THE PREVALENCE OF PODSNAP 
 
 tioned, even although he fully appreciated that 
 my friend was for the moment a "bottom dog." 
 On the way to the Club-house he vented his wrath 
 upon the offending Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 for the language he used on the platform. I 
 pleaded in mitigation that just as my friend had 
 been endeavouring to hole out a lively "Helsby" 
 on a tricky green, so the Chancellor was endeavour- 
 ing to put the House of Lords in a hole, a process 
 in which that rubber-cored institution refused to 
 assist him. To express your feelings and beliefs 
 at a moment like that required that some latitude 
 should be allowed to you in the choice of simile 
 and language. 
 
 But so far had the microbe of Podsnap entered 
 into my friend's understanding that he treated my 
 poor pleasantry as an added insult and complained 
 bitterly that such vituperation, as he called it, was 
 "not English, and never used to be done." 
 Curiously enough, I had in my mind a passage in 
 a political speech that created even greater pleasure 
 and displeasure to Reds and Blues more than a 
 quarter of a century ago. It was that famous 
 passage in which Mr. Chamberlain scorned Lord 
 Salisbury as constituting ' ' himself the spokesman 
 of a class — of the class to which he himself belongs 
 — 'who toil not neither do they spin,' whose for- 
 tunes, as in his case, have originated in grants 
 made long ago, for such services as courtiers 
 render kings, and have since grown and increased 
 while their owners slept by the levy of an unearned 
 
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THE PREVALENCE OF PODSNAP 163 
 
 share on all that other men have done by toil and 
 labour to add to the general wealth and prosperity 
 of the country of which they form a part." There 
 was not so much whining over a few hard words 
 in those days, and Lord Salisbury himself could 
 hit out with his "black man" allusion and the 
 famous Hottentot simile, and, lost, as the ' Town 
 Vicar ' would think, to culture and right feeling, 
 could talk of "having put our money on the wrong 
 horse." 
 
 Memory may be misleading after a gap of 
 twenty-five years, and the wisest of us is apt to 
 grow " difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti," 
 yet I cannot but think that there are signs in the 
 air that our old friend Podsnap is having it too 
 much his own way. He is a good fellow in the 
 main, and some of the ideas he worked for are 
 sound. His belief in the young person had its 
 touching and beautiful side as it had its ridiculous 
 side. The young person, however, has grown up 
 since his day, and has her own movements which 
 are but lightly clad with Podsnappery of any kind. 
 And for grown-ups , dealing with the every-day 
 affairs of the world we must, in the old English 
 way, stick to our fighting instincts, and give and 
 take hearty blows in good part, and win pleasantly 
 and lose ungrudgingly, as most of our fighters, 
 fair play to them, still do. And we must not be 
 afraid of the Town Vicar's "mere vulgarity." For, 
 after all, our language is a vulgar tongue, and we 
 are proud that our Bible is printed in it, and our 
 
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i64 THE PREVALENCE OF PODSNAP 
 
 speeches have to be made in it. As a vulgar 
 tongue vulgarly used it brought forth the triumphs 
 of Elizabethan literature, and was the medium of 
 such varied writers as Fielding, Dickens, and 
 Rudyard Kipling. And when it is the duty of 
 wisdom to cry without and utter her voice in the 
 street, she must do it without fear of Podsnap and 
 in the vulgar tongue. 
 
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i6s 
 
 AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER. 
 
 " I assert that all past days were what they must have been, 
 And that they could no-how have been better than they were.'' 
 
 — Walt Whitman. 
 
 Many years ago, when I happened upon a few 
 extracts from the letters of Mistress Dorothy 
 Osborne, I wondered how they had escaped the 
 grasp of the historian learned in the domestic 
 annals of the Commonwealth. And in the same 
 way it has always surprised me that the correspon- 
 dence of William Fleetwood, Recorder of London 
 from 1571 to 1591, should have been left hidden 
 in the scarce but charming collection of Elizabethan 
 Letters edited by that excellent antiquary and man 
 of letters, Thomas Wright. 
 
 Some day, perhaps, popular interest may 
 demand a Life and Letters of Fleetwood; but, 
 meanwhile, a mosaic of the man and his work, 
 pieced together from his own written words, may 
 interest latter-day readers. His career was similar 
 to that of many another minor Elizabethan official, 
 and the records show him to have been an honest, 
 active Protestant magistrate, full of zeal for his 
 religion, honour for his Queen, and integrity in 
 his office. In his letters we have a twenty years 
 experience of an Elizabethan Quarter Sessions 
 
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i66 AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 
 
 which we may use as a base to measure our pro- 
 gress in law and humanity during the last four 
 hundred years. 
 
 And first a word or two of the man himself that his 
 message may be the more clearly understood. The 
 Recorder was a descendant of the ancient Lanca- 
 shire Family of the Fleetwoods of Hesketh, in 
 which village Baines, Lancashire's historian, 
 thinks our Recorder was born, and the probable 
 date of his birth seems to be 1535. He is said to 
 have been an illegitimate son of Robert Fleetwood, 
 third son of William Fleetwood of Hesketh, who 
 married Ellen Standish, daughter of another old 
 Lancashire family. Their second son, Thomas, 
 came to Buckinghamshire, and was known as 
 Thomas Fleetwood of the Vache in Chalfont St. 
 Giles. He was Master of the Mint, and Sheriff 
 of Buckinghamshire. The Recorder must have 
 been recognised by the family, and no doubt 
 visited his uncle Thomas, for he himself married 
 a lady of a well known Buckinghamshire family, 
 Mariana, daughter of John Bailey of Kingsey. 
 He was educated at Oxford, and was of Brazenose 
 College, but he took no degree, and came to Lon- 
 don to study law at the Middle Temple, where at 
 the age of twenty-eight we find him appointed 
 Reader. In Mary's reign he was member for 
 Lancaster, and afterwards sat in the House for 
 Marlborough and the City of London. The Earl 
 of Leicester was his patron, and it is said to be 
 through his influence that in 1571, at the early age 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 167 
 
 of thirty-six, he became Recorder of the City of 
 London. 
 
 This office he held for twenty years, when he 
 retired on a pension of ;^ 100 a year, and becoming 
 Queen's Serjeant the following year, did not live 
 to enjoy the further honour, for he died at his 
 home in Noble Street, Aldersgate, in February, 
 i593> and was buried at Great Missenden, in 
 Buckinghamshire, where he seems to have had 
 considerable estates. 
 
 Altogether he stands before us as a type of 
 successful professional lawyer coming from the 
 ranks of the county families into the larger world 
 of London, bringing with him a certain amount of 
 Lancashire grit and humour, and a strong sense 
 of duty to the Government and the public. Nor 
 does he seem to have been in any way a hide- 
 bound, dry-as-dust, technical minded official, but 
 there is evidence that he had a wide sympathy with 
 many social movements of the time. He was an 
 eager Protestant, but I cannot find that he was 
 fanatical in his dislike of the Roman Catholics, 
 whom it was his duty to prosecute. Anthony 
 Wood describes him as "a learned man and a 
 good antiquary, but of a marvellous merry and 
 pleasant conceit "; and it is said he contributed 
 much to the last of the old editions of Holinshed. 
 Strype, the annalist, speaks of him in reference to 
 a speech in the House of Commons as "a wise 
 man," and he seems to have combined wisdom 
 and humour with a stern sense of official duty. 
 
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i68 AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 
 
 That he was not a mere creature of Leicester's and 
 the Court is shown in his examinations of one 
 Bloss, who had uttered terrible scandals concern- 
 ing Elizabeth and her favourite, but Fleetwood 
 reports upon his conscience as a lawyer, that it is 
 "a clear case of no treason." A weak man would 
 have been tempted to strain the law against the 
 prisoner, who was an undeserving and dangerous 
 person. There is a pleasant incident, too, of his 
 writing to Secretary Walsingham about some 
 young orphans whose Catholic mother had com- 
 mitted suicide, begging him to acquaint Peter 
 Osborn, the Lord Treasurer and the Master of the 
 Wards, with the details of the unfortunate case, 
 in order that their monies may be kept for them. 
 "Such was the care," writes Strype, "of this good 
 Recorder, of the Children of the City." 
 
 There was one exciting incident in his life when 
 in 1576 he was cast into the Fleet Prison. Lord 
 Burghley seems to have suggested a raid upon the 
 Charterhouse, where unlawful Mass was being 
 celebrated. The Recorder carries out his instruc- 
 tions, and writes a vivid account of his proceedings. 
 Unfortunately, Lady Geraldi, the wife of the 
 Portuguese Ambassador, was present, and her 
 husband carries his complaint of her treatment to 
 Court, with the result that Elizabeth — after the 
 manner of all rulers of all times — promptly disa- 
 vows her agent, and by way of a pleasant apology 
 to Portugal, throws Fleetwood into gaol. The 
 Recorder, who probably thoroughly understands 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 169 
 
 that he is only in the Fleet, "without prejudice" 
 and for purely Pickwickian state purposes, writes 
 to Lord Burghley: "I do beseech you thank Mr. 
 Warden of the Fleet for his most friendly and 
 courteous using of me, for surely I thank God 
 for it. I am quiet and lack nothing that he or 
 his bedfellow are able to do for me." And after 
 a short experience of gaol he sums up the situation 
 much as Mr. Stead did after a similar experience : 
 "This is a place wherein a man may quietly be 
 acquainted with God." 
 
 It is in passages like these in the man's own 
 letters that his figure becomes dimly discernible to 
 us across the ages of time, and when our eyes 
 grow accustomed to the sight, we see before us 
 the form of an Englishman not unlike many we 
 have known in our own time. The more one 
 studies the unaffected domestic documents of any 
 period written without afterthought of publication, 
 the more convinced one is that social progress 
 moves like the tide and the rocks and the trees; 
 its growth is nearly imperceptible, and four hundred 
 years in the development of mankind is but a small 
 moment of time. 
 
 The correspondence of William Fleetwood with 
 Lord Burghley commences in 1575, when my Lord 
 Burghley was at Buckestones — what a charming 
 spelling of the prosaic Buxton — for his health. In 
 those days an English Premier got rid of his gout 
 in his own country, and knew not Homburg. The 
 knowing ones in the political circles of London 
 
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I70 AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 
 
 whispered with emphasis that the Prime Minister 
 was "practising with the Queen of Scots," then 
 in custody at Sheffield, but the historical evidence 
 points to mere gout. 
 
 Our Recorder, being Leicester's creature, and 
 being also a man of the world and looking for 
 promotion as his deserts, writes careful reports to 
 my Lord Burghley, telling him of London that 
 from a police point of view" the state of the city 
 is well and all quiet." The Star Chamber had 
 received the city fathers, and my Lord Keeper 
 with the Chancellor of the Duchy, the Master of 
 the Rolls and others had met the Recorder, and 
 Master Nicholas the Lord Mayor, and divers 
 Aldermen who had reported to them of city 
 affairs. And as is the way of official men, they 
 reported all to be well. 
 
 "And as," writes the Recorder, "my Lord 
 Keeper's order is to call for the book of misbehavi- 
 ours of masterless men, rogues, fencers, and such 
 like, we had nothing to present for London, for 
 Mr. Justice Southcot and I had taken fine of six 
 strumpets such as haunt the hedge and which had 
 lately been punished at the Assizes at Croydon, 
 and two or three other lewd fellows, their com- 
 panions, whom we despatched away into their 
 countries. As for Westminster, the Duchy (the 
 Savoy), St. Giles, High Holborn, St. John's Street 
 and Islington, (they) were never so well and quiet 
 for neither rogue nor masterless man dare once to 
 look into those parts." Could Scotland Yard make 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 171 
 
 a better report than that to-day? No doubt Fleet- 
 wood believed with the optimism of a modern Home 
 Office official that he and his fellows had purged 
 London of crime. 
 
 Crime being well in hand, these good men set 
 out with feverish energy to put down the source 
 of crime, and like the social reformer of to-day, 
 thinking that pimples were the origin of disease 
 rather than mere evidence of a disordered system, 
 commenced a crusade on the alehouse. 
 
 One is apt to think of the Star Chamber as 
 merely a Court for the oppression of English free- 
 dom and the abolition of Magna Charta, but in 
 Elizabeth's day it was busying itself with much the 
 same problems that are troubling Parliament and 
 the magistrates to-day. It is very modern reading 
 to learn that my Lord Keeper and the residue of 
 the Council at the Star Chamber have set down 
 in writing certain orders for the reforming of cer- 
 tain matters, and that the very first of these is 
 "for the suppressing of the over great number of 
 alehouses, the which thing upon Wednesday last 
 my Lord Mayor, Sir Rowland Hayward and 
 myself for the liberties of Southwark, and Mr. Jus- 
 tice Southcot and myself for Lambeth town, 
 Lambeth Marsh, the Mint, the Bank, Parr's 
 Garden, the Overground, Newington, Bermond- 
 sey Street and Kentish Street, sitting altogether, 
 we have put down, I am certain, above two 
 hundred alehouses and yet have left a sufficient 
 number, yea, and more, I fear than my 
 
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172 AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 
 
 Lord Keeper will well like of at his next 
 coming." 
 
 All this was done on Wednesday and Thursday, 
 and on Wednesday there was an influential dinner 
 party at Mr. Campion, the brewer's — one wonders 
 if he owned tied houses in those days and whether 
 their licenses were spared — and "at after dinner, 
 Mr. Deane and I went to Westminster, and there 
 in the Court we had before us all the officers of 
 the Duchy and of Westminster, and there we have 
 put down nearly an hundred alehouses. As for St. 
 Giles, High Holborn, St. John Street, and 
 Islington, Mr. Randall and I mean this Saturday 
 at afternoon to see the reformation, in like manner 
 Mr. Lieutenant and Mr. Fisher deal for the East 
 part. I am sure they will use great diligence in 
 this matter." 
 
 One may piously hope that the souls of these 
 good men are not vexed to-day with the know- 
 ledge of the futility of their work on earth and that 
 they know nothing of our modern licensing system. 
 Could Master Fleetwood return to listen to the 
 procedure of a local licensing bench in the twentieth 
 century he would perhaps laugh in his sleeve to 
 think that the methods of the Star Chamber were 
 yet with us and that magistrates of austere mind 
 were still using "great diligence in these matters." 
 
 Fleetwood's earliest letter is dated from Bacon 
 House, August 8th, 1575. The vacation is on, 
 yet it seems the Temple is full of students. For 
 as Richard Chamberlayne tells us this is the 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 173 
 
 " second learning vacation " which began on 
 Lammas Day. Readings continued for " three 
 weeks and three days," and the Recorder seems 
 to think my Lord Burghley would take an interest 
 in the matter of legal education, which is not 
 an affair that has troubled the mind of any 
 minister of modern times. The plague is with 
 them and the study of the law has to give 
 way to the plague, for the Recorder tells us 
 that " as touching the Inns of Court it so fell 
 out that at Gray's Inn there was no reading this 
 vacation because one died there of the plague. 
 At the Inner Temple there hath been a meeting, 
 but by means that the plague was in the house, 
 the reading being scarce half done, is now broken 
 up. In Lincoln's Inn yesterday being Friday, at 
 afternoon one is dead of the plague and the 
 comj>any are now to be dispersed. In the Middle 
 Temple, where I am, I thank God we have our 
 health and our reading continually. I am always 
 at the reading, and I have taken stringent order 
 upon the pain of putting out of commons, that 
 none of the Gentlemen of our house or their servants 
 shall go out of the house except it be by water 
 and not to come in any place of danger, the which 
 order is well observed." 
 
 "Our house" is the old world phrase familiar 
 to Templars and means the Middle Temple, and 
 "putting out of commons" was in that day a serious 
 penalty. The "readings" took the form of 
 "moots" or arguments on a case put by the reader. 
 
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174 AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 
 
 and argued not only by students but by lawyers 
 of position. They must have been of considerable 
 educational value and have always been prized by 
 the older generation of lawyers. I remember well 
 an old learned Judge solemnly exhorting me in the 
 days of my youth, to become a good "put-case," 
 a phrase which one does not hear used now-a-days. 
 Moots and readings might, one would think, be 
 revived especially in the interest of the newly called 
 barrister, who can say with but too much truth 
 as Fleetwood wrote in August, 1575, "For my own 
 part I have no business but go as quietly to my 
 book as I did the first year that I came to the 
 Temple." 
 
 In July, 1577, Lord Burghley is again at "Buck- 
 stons" [sic] and the faithful recorder sends him a 
 budget of news. He has been at the Mercers' feast 
 "and there were we all very merry . . . and I told 
 them that I was to write privately to your Lordship ; 
 and they required me all to commend them to your 
 good Lordship; at which time the Master of the 
 Rolls, who is no wine drinker, did drink to your 
 Lordship a bowl of Rhenish wine and then Sir 
 Thomas Gresham drank another, and Sir William 
 Demsell the third and I pledged them all." It 
 reads like a page from the Book of Snobs. 
 
 And after the "great and royal banquet" which 
 took place at the house of the new Master, some 
 time we may suppose about mid-day, Fleetwood, 
 as he tells us "walked to Powle's to learn some 
 news." For in that day St. Paul's was the 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 175 
 
 Exchange and the club and the Market Place of 
 the men of the world where news came from all 
 quarters of the world and where news passed from 
 lip to lip and thence out into the corners of England 
 in such letters as this of Fleetwood's to Lord 
 Burghley. The extraordinary uses to which the 
 Cathedral was put in Elizabeth's time, are a 
 constant theme of reproach from religious-minded 
 men. Idlers and drunkards used to sleep on 
 benches at the choir door, and porters, butchers 
 and water bearers were suffered in service time, 
 to carry and re-carry their wares across the nave, 
 and in the upper choir itself irreverent people 
 walked about with hats on their heads^ whilst if 
 any entered the Cathedral booted and spurred, the 
 gentlemen of the choir left their places and 
 demanded "spur-money" and threatened their 
 victim with a night's imprisonment in the choir 
 if the tax were not paid. Such was "Powle's" on 
 this July afternoon when Recorder Fleetwood went 
 down in search of news, and indeed he heard 
 terrible tidings; for there "came suddenly into the 
 church Edmund Downing, and he told me that he 
 was even then come out of Worcestershire and that 
 my Lord Chief Baron died at Sir John Hubbard's 
 house and that he is buried at Leicester. And he 
 said that the common speech of that country is that 
 Mr. Serjeant Barham should be dead at Worcester, 
 but that is not certain. The like report goeth of 
 Mr. Fowler, the Clerk of the same Circuit . . . 
 and a number of other gent that were at the 
 
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176 AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 
 
 gaol delivery at Oxon are all dead. The inquest 
 of life and death are almost all gone. Such Clerks 
 servants and young gent, being scholars as were 
 at the same gaol delivery, are either dead or in 
 great danger. Mr. Solicitor's son and heir being 
 brought home to his father's house at Woodstock, 
 lieth at the mercy of God. Mr. Attorney's son 
 and heir was brought very sick from Oxon to his 
 father's house at Harrow, where he lieth in as great 
 danger of death as might be, but now there is 
 some hope of amendment. The gaol delivery of 
 Oxon, as I am told, was kept in the Town Hall, 
 a close place and by the infection of the gaol as all 
 men take it, this mortality grew." 
 
 We know now all about the Oxford Black 
 Assizes of the 5th and 6th of July, 1577, and how 
 Judges, Sheriffs, Knights, Squires, Barristers and 
 and members of the Grand Jury were stricken down 
 with what was probably typhus. The disease 
 spread to the Colleges. Masters, Doctors and 
 heads of houses left almost to a man. "The Master 
 of Merton remained longe omnium vigilantissimus 
 ministering to the sick. The pharmacies were soon 
 emptied of their conserves, oils, sweet waters, 
 pixides and every kind of confection." Wild 
 rumours spread abroad that it was the result of a 
 Papist plot. In a few weeks of the Assizes, some 
 five hundred perished, nearly all men of the better 
 class. The disease did not attack the poor or 
 women. There seems little doubt that the infection 
 was among the prisoners and there is a record 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 177 
 
 that two or three thieves had died in chains shortly 
 before the Assizes. One would have supposed that 
 such a visitation would have been a signal for 
 prison reform, but those who have read of Howard's 
 experiences, know how little was done to mitigate 
 the horrors of life in gaol until a much more recent 
 date. 
 
 Fleetwood tells us a great deal about his own 
 activity at this time. He is holding an oyer and 
 terminer at the Guildhall in the vacation "to keep 
 the people in obedience." He sits with the Justices 
 to discuss the abolition of alehouses and the 
 advancement of archery, he is constant in his 
 search after rogues and masterless men and there 
 being cases of plague in the Savoy, he takes 
 occasion to pass with all the constables between 
 the bars and the tilt-yard in both the liberties, to 
 see the houses shut, which he notes with pride 
 "neither the Master of the Rolls nor my cousin 
 Holcroft the Bailiff, would or durst do." At the 
 same time he was writing a book on "The Office 
 of a Justice of the Peace" which was printed a hun- 
 dred years later. Amidst these various employments 
 however, he finds room for the lighter social duties 
 and sfjends an afternoon with the Shoemakers of 
 London, who "having builded a fair and a new 
 hall, made a royal feast there for their friends, 
 which they call their housewarming." 
 
 A really heavy sessions must have been a terrible 
 experience since this is what the Recorder evidently 
 regards as a light one. "At the last Sessions," he 
 
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178 AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 
 
 writes, "there were executed eighteen at Tyburn, and 
 one, Barlow, born in Norfolk but of the house of the 
 Barlows in the county of Lancashire, was pressed. 
 They were all notable cut-purses and horse-stealers. 
 It was the quietest Sessions that ever I was at." 
 At the beginning of the year he makes an audit 
 of known criminals "that I may know what new 
 may be sprung up this last year and where to find 
 them if need be" and he makes out a list of 
 "receivers and gage takers and melters of stolen 
 plate and such like." 
 
 Part of his duty was the actual police work of 
 "searching out of sundry that were receptors 
 of felons." In the course of this duty he tells 
 Burghley on another occasion of the discovery of 
 a den that Dickens might have used as a model 
 in Oliver Twist, so little had the ways of criminals 
 altered from Elizabeth to Victoria. "Amongst 
 our travels this one matter tumbled out by the way, 
 that one, Walters, a gentleman born and some 
 time a merchant of good credit, who falling by 
 time into decay, kept an alehouse at Smart's Keye 
 (Quay) near Billing's Gate, and after some mis- 
 demeanour being put down he reared up a new- 
 trade of life and in the same house he procured 
 all the cut-purses about this city to repair to his 
 same house. There was a school-house set up to 
 learn young boys to cut purses. There were hung 
 up two devices, the one was a pocket, the other 
 was a purse. The pocket had in it certain counters 
 and was hung about with hawk's bells, and over 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 179 
 
 the top did hang a little sacring bell; and he that 
 could take out a counter without any noise was 
 allowed to be a publique foyster, and he that could 
 take a piece of silver out of the purse without the 
 noise of the bells, he was adjudged a judicial 
 nipper." Note that a foyster is a pick-pocket, and 
 a nipper is termed a pick-purse or a cut-purse. 
 
 The path of an honest judge in the days of 
 Elizabeth was beset with difficulties. Although 
 bribes were not actually offered to the individual 
 magistrate, yet he was written to by influential 
 persons about the Court, and he had to choose 
 between doing his duty and incurring the dislike 
 of powerful men. Fleetwood complains "that 
 when by order we have justly executed the law 
 ... we are wont either to have a great man's 
 letter, a lady's ring, or some other token from 
 some other such inferior persons as will devise 
 one untruth or another to accuse us of if we prefer 
 not their unlawful requests." Our honest Recorder 
 is strong to maintain the principle that all men 
 are equal in the sight of the law. 
 
 Here is a typical case of which he complains : 
 "Mr. Nowell of the Court hath lately been in 
 London. He caused his man to give a blow unto 
 a carman. His man hath stricken the carman 
 with the pommel of his sword and therewith hath 
 broken his skull and killed him. Mr. Nowell and 
 his man are likely to be indicted thereof, I am sure 
 to be much troubled with his letters and his friends, 
 and what by other means, as in the very like 
 
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i8o AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 
 
 case heretofore, I have been even with the same 
 man. Here are sundry young gentlemen that use 
 the Court that most commonly term themselves 
 gentlemen ; when any of them have done anything 
 amiss, and are complained of or arrested for debt, 
 then they run unto me and no other excuse or 
 answer can they make but say — ' I am a gentleman, 
 and being a gentleman I am not thus to be used 
 at a slaves and a colion's (scullion's) hands.' I 
 know not what other plea Mr. Nowell can plead. 
 But this I say, the fact is foul." 
 
 A "gentleman" in England in Elizabethan days 
 seems to have thought himself as little amenable 
 to law as an American millionaire, but Fleetwood 
 had the English gist of the matter in him when he 
 says "the fact is foul." 
 
 But though the Recorder stood firm against the 
 hangers on of the Court, London was not a happy 
 soil for judicial integrity. He never attained to 
 the promotion he deserved, and maybe it was 
 because he could not dishonour his office to serve 
 his friends at Court. Such mercy as the Recorder 
 could honestly show to a prisoner, he was only too 
 ready to exercise. "Truly, my Lord," he writes, 
 "it is nothing needful to write for the stay of any 
 to be reprieved for there is not any in our 
 commission of London and Middlesex but we are 
 desirous to save or stay any poor wretch if by 
 colour of any law or reason we may do it. My 
 singular good Lord, my Lord William of 
 Winchester was wont to say : ' When the Court 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER i8i 
 
 is furthest from London then is there the best 
 justice done in all England.' I once heard as 
 great a personage in office and authority as ever 
 he was and yet living say the same words. It is 
 grown for a trade now in the Court to make means 
 for reprieves; twenty pounds for a reprieve is 
 nothing, although it be but for bare ten days. I 
 see it will not be holpen unless one honoured 
 gentleman who many times is abused by wrong 
 information — and surely upon my soul not upon 
 any evil meaning — do stay his pen. I have not 
 one letter for the stay of a thief from your Lord- 
 ship." 
 
 But Elizabethan mercy was not a very vigorous 
 virtue and did little to temper the wind to the 
 criminal lamb. Here is a typical day's work and 
 its terrible results. "Upon Friday last we sat at 
 the Justice Hall at Newgate from seven in the 
 morning until seven at night when were condemned 
 certain horse-stealers, cut-purses and such like to 
 the number of ten, whereof nine were executed and 
 the tenth stayed by a means from the Court. 
 These were executed on Saturday in the morning. 
 There was a shoemaker also condemned for wilful 
 murder committed in the Black friars, who was 
 executed upon the Monday in the morniAg." The 
 superior criminal dignity of murder over larceny 
 appears to have given the murderer two days 
 further life. 
 
 The Recorder's main work however, was a 
 constant warfare with rogues and masterless men. 
 
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i82 AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 
 
 The Elizabethan vagabonds were to be "grievously 
 whipped and burnt through the gristle of the right 
 ear " unless they could find someone who under 
 penalty of five pounds would keep them in service 
 for a year. Rogues and vagabonds were all those 
 able-bodied men having no land or master prac- 
 tising no trade or craft and unable to account for 
 the way in which they earned their living, and 
 further included actors, pedlars, poor scholars and 
 labourers who would not work for what employers 
 called "reasonable wages." London swarmed with 
 these vagabonds, and Fleetwood seems to have 
 been the official who was made resp>onsible if they 
 committed any excesses. 
 
 One January afternoon in 1582, Her Majesty at 
 even was taking of the air in her coach at Islington, 
 in which suburb she had a Lodge. During her 
 drive, writes Fleetwood, "Her Highness was 
 environed with a number of rogues. One, Mr. 
 Stone, a footman, came in all haste to my Lord 
 Mayor, and after to me and told us of the same." 
 No mention is made of any molestation, but the 
 complaint rouses the Recorder to extraordinary 
 efforts. "I did, the same night," he writes, "send 
 warrants out to the said quarters and in the morning 
 I went abroad myself and I took seventy-four rogues 
 whereof some were blind, and yet great usurers 
 and very rich," All these were sent to the Bride- 
 well, and the next day "we examiried all the said 
 rogues and gave them substantial payment, (a 
 euphemism for grievous whipping), and the strongest 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 183 
 
 we bestowed in the mylne (mill) and the lighters. 
 The rest were dismissed with a promise of double 
 pay if we met with them again." In the South- 
 wark district, forty rogues, men and women, were 
 taken and "I did the same afternoon peruse Poole's 
 (St Paul's) where I took about twenty cloaked 
 rogues." All these went to the Bridewell and to 
 punishment. The constables of the Duchy (the 
 Savoy), brought in "six tall fellows that were 
 draymen unto brewers. The Master did write 
 a very courteous letter unto us to pardon them. 
 And although he wrote charitably unto us, yet 
 they were all soundly paid and sent home to their 
 masters"; which seems to have been in excess of 
 the Recorder's jurisdiction, as the draymen were 
 clearly not "masterless." Another day a hundred 
 lewd people were taken and the Master of Bridewell 
 received them and immediately gave them punish- 
 ment. The bulk of these poor wretches were 
 unemployed seeking work in the City, which they 
 could not obtain in their own counties. And 
 Fleetwood writes : "I did note that we had not 
 of London, Westminster nor Southwark, nor yet 
 Middlesex nor Surrey above twelve, and those we 
 have taken order for. The residue for the most 
 were of Wales, Salop, Chester, Somerset, Bucking- 
 ham, Oxford and Essex and that few or none of 
 these had been about London above three of four 
 months. I did note also that we met not again 
 with any in all our searches that had received 
 punishment. The chief nursery of all these evil 
 
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i84 AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 
 
 people is the Savoy, and the brick-kilns near 
 Islington." It is curious to remember that a hun- 
 dred and fifty years afterwards Defoe writes of the 
 beggar boys getting into the ash-holes and nealing 
 arches of the glass houses in Ratcliflf Highway, 
 and that to-day one of the difficulties of Manchester 
 magistrates is to keep vagabonds from sleeping 
 in suburban brick-kilns. Truly the ways of the 
 vagabond seem to be a force of nature which 
 centuries of progress and reform have done very 
 little to amend. 
 
 The history of the Bridewell which was filled 
 with so many generations of evil-doers, is a very 
 curious one. An ancient palace of the Kings of 
 England, it was in the reign of Edward VI. stand- 
 ing empty. The suppression of the monasteries 
 and other religious houses filled London with 
 multitudes of necessitous and to some extent 
 dissolute persons. It was Bishop Ridley who 
 wrote to Sir William Cecil : " Good Mr. Cecil 
 I must be a suitor unto you in our Master 
 Christ's cause," and pointed out that " there 
 is a wide, large empty house of the King's 
 Majesty called Bridewell, that would wonderfully 
 serve" to house these poor wanderers. Thus in a 
 spirit of pure charity, did the good Bishop open 
 the doors of one of the most miserable prisons that 
 ever disgraced humanity. Already we see in 
 Fleetwood's time how it had fallen away from the 
 Bishop's ideal Christian home to shelter the 
 hungry, naked and cold. What it was then it 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 185 
 
 remained for more than a hundred and fifty years, 
 as we may see in Hogarth's print in the "Harlot's 
 Progress," with its pillory and its whipping post, 
 and the heavy log to be fastened on the prisoner's 
 leg and the gaoler with his rod standing over the 
 wretched woman beating out the hemp with her 
 mallet. 
 
 The Recorder seems to have had absolute power 
 in dealing with prisoners charged with offences, to 
 use force to obtain confessions. Here is a very 
 horrible story which Fleetwood reports to Lord 
 Burghley as a matter of every day routine. A 
 French merchant charged a carrier's wife with 
 stealing jQ^o. After great search the money was 
 found and restored. The carrier's wife denied all 
 knowledge of it. " Then," says Fleetwood, " I 
 examined her in my study privately, but by no 
 means, she would not confess the same, but did 
 bequeath herself to the devil both body and soul 
 if she had the money or ever saw it." After much 
 cross-examination, the woman refused to answer 
 anything further. "And then," continues Fleet- 
 wood, "I took my Lord Mayor's advice and 
 bestowed her in Bridewell, where the Masters and 
 I saw her punished, and being well whipped she 
 said that the devil stood at her elbow in my study 
 and willed her to deny it, but so soon as she was 
 upon the cross to be punished he gave her over. 
 And thus, my singular good Lord, I end this 
 tragical part of this wretched woman." 
 
 But Fleetwood did not spend all his days in 
 
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i86 AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 
 
 the Criminal Courts. As a Serjeant-at-law, he is 
 present when his "brother" Sir Edmund Anderson, 
 was made Lord Chief Justice of the Common 
 Pleas, and he took part in the ceremony by follow- 
 ing the "ancient" in the ceremony of putting a 
 case to the new Judge. And the way of it was 
 thus: " my Lord Chancellor did awhile stand at 
 the Chancery bar upon the side of the hall, and 
 anon after that the Justices of the Common Place 
 (Pleas) were set, his Lordship came to the 
 Common Place and there sat down and all the 
 Serjeants, my brethren, standing at the bar, my 
 Lord Chancellor my brother Anderson called by 
 name and declared unto him Her Majesty's good 
 liking and opinion of him, and of the place and 
 dignity that Her Majesty had called him unto, 
 and then my Lord Chancellor made a short 
 discourse what the duty and office of a good Justice 
 was, and in the end his Lordship called him up 
 unto the midst of the Court and then Mr. Anderson 
 kneeling, the commission was read, and that done, 
 his Lordship took the patent into his hand, and 
 then the clerk of the Crown, Powle, did read him 
 his oath, and after he himself read the oath of his 
 supremacy, and so kissed the book, and then my 
 Lord Chancellor took him by the hand and placed 
 him upon the bench. And then Father Benloos, 
 because he was "ancient" did put a short case, 
 and then myself put the next. To the first my 
 new Lord Chief Justice did himself only argue, 
 but to the next that I put, both he and the residue 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 187 
 
 of the Bench did argue. And I assure your good 
 Lordship he argued very learnedly and with great 
 facility delivered his mind. And this one thing I 
 noticed in him, that he despatched more orders 
 and answered more difficult cases in this the fore- 
 noon than were despatched in one whole week in 
 his predecessor's time." 
 
 So too, when the Lord Mayor was sworn in in 
 the Exchequer, the Recorder presented him in the 
 name of the City, and they "did such services as 
 appertained viz. : in bringing a number of horse- 
 shoes and nails, chopping knives and little rods." 
 These customs were antiquarian even in Elizabeth's 
 days, but they are with us still. 
 
 And no doubt Fleetwood loved to take part in 
 these things, for he was a good antiquary himself, 
 and we must not think of him merely as a harsh 
 persecutor of the "rogues and masterless," for 
 away from his work we hear record of his merry 
 and pleasant conceit, and note that he is an eloquent 
 and witty speaker at City banquets. And there 
 is evidence in these letters that he did not love 
 much of his work, as indeed what man can take 
 pleasure in so unfortunate a task, but to him it 
 was a duty, and one to be done like all duties — 
 thoroughly. And that he did it to the best of his 
 ability and with honesty seems clear, but that he 
 longed to be removed from the intolerable toil of 
 it, even as early as 1582, is shown by this pathetic 
 appeal to Lord Burghley. "Truly, my singular 
 good Lord, I have not leisure to eat my meat, I 
 
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i88 AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 
 
 am so called upon. I am at the least the best part 
 of one hundred nights in a year abroad in searches. 
 I never rest. And when I serve Her Majesty, then 
 I am for the most part worst spoken of and that 
 many times. In the Court I have no man to 
 defend me, and as for my Lord Mayor, my chief 
 hand, I am driven every day to back him and his 
 doings. My good Lord, for Christ's sake ! be such 
 a mean for me as that with credit I may be removed 
 by Her Majesty from this intolerable toil. 
 Certainly I serve in a thankless soil. There is, as 
 I learn, like to fall a room of the Queen's Serjeant ; 
 if your Lordship please to help me to one of these 
 rooms, I assure your honour that I will do Her 
 Majesty as painful service as six of them shall do. 
 Help me, my good Lord, in this my humble suit, 
 and I will, God willing, set down for your Lord- 
 ship such a book of the law as your Lordship will 
 like of." 
 
 The offer of a new law book did not tempt Lord 
 Burghley, and the end did not come until nearly 
 ten years afterwards, when in 1591 Fleetwood 
 resigned with a pension of ;^ioo a year, which the 
 Common Council voted him. And in the next 
 year he obtained the wished for post of Queen's 
 Serjeant, which he held for scarcely two years, as 
 he died on February 28th, 1594. 
 
 And this is the last piece of writing I have found 
 of his, written the day he gave up his Recordership. 
 Even with his resignation upon his mind he notes 
 down for Lord Burghley's satisfaction the excellent 
 
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AN ELIZABETHAN RECORDER 189 
 
 punishment awarded to two lewd people for mis- 
 conduct against the public health. 
 
 "This day I rode to the Yeld (Guild) Hall to 
 sit on the commission for strangers and in the lower 
 end of Cheapside towards Poole's (St. Paul's) there 
 stood a man and a woman both aged persons with 
 papers upon their heads. The man was keeper 
 of the conduit there. These two lewd people in 
 the night entered into the Conduit and washed 
 themselves, et ad hunc et ibidem turpiter exonera- 
 verunt ventres eorum, etc. 
 
 This day Mr. Recorder surrendered his office. 
 The lot is now to be cast between Mr. Serjeant 
 Drew and one Mr. Fleming of Lincoln's Inn. 
 This present Saturday. 
 
 Your good Lordship's most bounden 
 W. Fletewoode." 
 
 This picture of the old Recorder riding out to 
 the Guild Hall for his last sitting and reporting 
 to my Lord the common sights of the City brings 
 back to us a real picture of his days. So that we 
 can almost feel that we are living on "this present 
 Saturday" and regretting with all good citizens 
 that " this day Mr. Recorder surrendered his 
 office." 
 
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190 
 
 THE FUNNIEST THING I EVER SAW. 
 
 " Laughter almost ever cometh of things most dUproportioned to 
 ourselves and nature.'' — Sir Philip Sidnej/, 
 
 To ask one to write to such a title is a challenge 
 to be taken up, but one does not expect to vanquish 
 the challenger. The funniest thing I ever saw 
 would not make you laugh because you never saw 
 it and if I had the skill to make you see it probably 
 you would not think it funny. Then again the 
 older you grow the few funnier things you see. 
 What a lot of laughter there was thirty or forty 
 years ago. Whither has it fled? In childhood 
 nearly every discomfort or disaster to others is food 
 for laughter whilst your own little troubles are 
 tragedies fit for tears. 
 
 It is a curious thing that the funny things you 
 see always involve a certain amount of cruelty, pain 
 or at least discomfort to others, and I suppose as one 
 grows older the painful side of the matter oppresses 
 you more than the funny side inspires you to laugh- 
 ter. There are some human attributes that are 
 always laughable. Of these the chief is fatness. The 
 troubles of a fat man or woman are always comic. 
 Littleness, if it amounts to wee-ness, is comic in 
 a somewhat less degree and thin-ness may move 
 folk to laughter but scarcely unless it be added to 
 some amusing eccentricity. Height and tall-ness 
 are not funny. One never heard of a king 
 
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FUNNIEST THING I EVER SAW 191 
 
 employing a giant as a jester or a butt. The dwarf 
 on the other hand has been cast for such parts from 
 time immemorial. 
 
 I believe quite small babies see a lot of funny 
 things. Certainly they laugh to themselves with- 
 out end and seem to find their surroundings full of 
 amusement. I have no doubt the funniest thing 
 one ever saw is cinematographed on some ancient 
 film at the back of one's bram so far out of reach 
 that the memory cannot get at it. Children 
 undoubtedly see most of the fun. I remember 
 many years ago Louis Calvert, the well-known 
 actor, was staying with me in a little house in a 
 remote corner of Wales. The house had a small 
 verandah doorway with two narrow doors, one of 
 which was usually bolted as it was a windy place 
 and the outlet by the half door was, to say the 
 least of it, meagre. Louis Calvert was in those 
 days, I will not say fat or stout or corpulent — these 
 ample men are so susceptible — but he was a fine 
 figure of a man and he was then as he is now a 
 great actor in both comedy or tragedy. It was a 
 summer afternoon and I was lolling in a deck chair 
 beneath our only tree, and the children, four of 
 them, from five years old to twelve, were sitting on 
 the lawn in front of the doorway basking in the 
 sun. Suddenly Calvert appeared at the door-way 
 and accidentally stuck in it as he was coming 
 through. The children caught sight of him and on 
 the moment were off in fits of laughter which good 
 manners required them to stifle as he came among 
 
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192 FUNNIEST THING I EVER SAW 
 
 us. But if laughter challenges manners, the latter 
 generally get the worst of it, and the mere memory 
 of the incident sent one or another off into small 
 explosions of laughter. Calvert who always wanted 
 to be in at any fun sought explanations, which only 
 made them laugh the more and reprove each other 
 for doing it, and whilst their attention was so 
 engaged I told Calvert what the joke was. A few 
 minutes later he went back into the house making 
 an elaborate sideway entrance, which started the 
 young audience on the laugh again and all eyes 
 were fastened on the door watching for his return. 
 And he did return and gave us one of the finest 
 pantomimes I have ever seen. He came along 
 loading a pipe and not looking at the doorway at 
 all and stuck fairly fast in it before he was aware 
 that he was up to it and opened his eyes in annoy- 
 ance and amazement. Four shouts of laughter 
 greeted him. Fingers of delighted mockery were 
 pointed at him and he made a face as if he were 
 on the brink of tears, which drew echoing tears of 
 uncontrollable laughter from the youngsters. 
 Then his pipe dropped on to the shingle path in 
 front of the door and he dived to get it and failed 
 and grabbed and kicked in the air until the children 
 threw themselves on the ground and sobbed and 
 begged him to leave off for he was hurting them. 
 Then Calvert, to give them a moment's respite, 
 pulled himself together and still fast in the door- 
 way rested his hand on the door-post and thought 
 dismally while the audience sobbed and sniffed 
 
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FUNNIEST THING I EVER SAW 193 
 
 and slowly recovered breath enough to laugh 
 again. By a mighty effort he now backed out of 
 the door-way and approached it as Uncle Remus 
 would say "lyehime" first. This was a signal for 
 yells of delight, the more so as the manoeuvre 
 resulted in the most undignified and comic failure. 
 All beautiful and simple people have a thoroughly 
 broad and healthy laugh for the "behime" quarters 
 of man in awkward positions. A man sitting down 
 on the ice, a man sitting on another's hat — these 
 are situations that can never cease to be funny 
 whilst there is any fun left in the world and simple 
 minds to be moved to laughter. But this effort at 
 an exit was only one of many. A carefully 
 designed strategeticmove edgeways, after the fashion 
 of Bob Acres, which was so nearly successful that 
 it grew really exciting to watch, ended in hilarious 
 shouts and yells, when the climax of it was the 
 victim waving his arms and head out of the door 
 and kicking violently inside the house and calling 
 for help. This business having nearly reduced 
 the audience to exhaustion there was further panto- 
 mime of deep expressive thought followed by a 
 solemn retirement within the doors and a laboured 
 and careful pulling at the bolts of the other half 
 of the door and a ceremonial entrance through the 
 whole double space of it with a smile and sigh of 
 supreme content at the glorious triumph over 
 difficulties undergone and vanquished. I can see 
 in my mind's eye a middle-aged gentleman with 
 tears rolling down his cheeks and four absolutely 
 N 
 
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194 FUNNIEST THING I EVER SAW 
 
 limp children lying on the grass still gasping with 
 laughter — dying with laughter as the phrase is — 
 and begging Calvert in the intervals of their spasms 
 to "Do it again !" 
 
 Now this may not seem one of the funniest 
 things in the world nor was it perhaps the funniest 
 thing I ever saw, for unfortunately I was only the 
 middle-aged gentleman and my days for seeing 
 funny things were more or less over. But to the 
 children it was certainly one of the funniest things 
 they ever saw, only the question that haunts me 
 is — will they, when they grow up, be able to 
 describe the fun they saw so as to impart a tithe 
 of it to those who never saw it? And although I 
 know that, at some period of my life, I must have 
 seen equally funny things that moved me to equally 
 stormy and glorious laughter, yet the storm and 
 the glory have died so completely away that the 
 memory of them is gone and I cannot even 
 remember from what point of the compass they 
 sprang. 
 
 And in my view grown up people really see beauti- 
 fully funny things only in the conduct of children 
 and these incidents can only be described to fathers 
 and mothers, or people who love children as though 
 they were their fathers or mothers. One of the 
 funniest things I ever saw since I was grown up 
 was a baby struggling to find its way to its mouth 
 with a rusk. Why don't they have a baby doing 
 that at a music hall to slow music, or at least show- 
 one on a cinematograph ? I could laugh at such 
 
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FUNNIEST THING I EVER SAW 195 
 
 a thing "sans intermission an hour by the dial," 
 How it jabs itself in the eye with the soft end of 
 the biscuit and bedaubs its cheekis and loses the 
 biscuit in a temper and if not assisted by an over 
 indulgent mother finds the biscuit after infinite 
 search and goes at it again with renewed energy 
 and at length is rewarded by success. 
 
 There is plenty of comedy and laughter about a 
 baby as well as sleepless melodrama in the middle 
 of the night — but it must be your own baby. There 
 is no fun in next-door babies except when the 
 Clown gets hold of them in a pantomime. 
 
 And now having solemnly failed to recount the 
 funniest thing I ever saw, let me again remind you 
 that I said from the first that the task was impossible, 
 since the thing to be funny must be seen, and the 
 funniest thing I ever saw you never saw. But the 
 way to see funny things and to enjoy them is to 
 keep your heart like the heart of a little child, for 
 it is only children who are moved to the purest and 
 healthiest laughter as the trees are moved in the 
 breeze by a power they know nothing of. And of 
 course if you have never been a child — and some 
 poor people are born grown up — you will never 
 have been able to see the funniest thing you ever 
 saw. 
 
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196 
 
 THE PLAYWRIGHT. 
 
 " In youth he learned had a good mistere 
 He was a well good wright a carpentere." 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 The play is very nearly extinct. This is an age 
 of dramatists. The reason is not far to seek. The 
 playwright is merely a craftsman. The dramatist 
 — so his friends in the press tell him — is a genius. 
 And in these years genius is plentiful and crafts- 
 manship becomes a rarer thing every day. 
 
 Just at the moment it is certainly not considered 
 important to be a playwright. It is better to be 
 an aviator. In the eighteenth century it was better 
 to be a performing bear. But in my view now as in 
 the eighteenth century the alternatives to the theatre 
 will not destroy the theatre and a sound entertaining 
 play will always find theatre-goers. There is room 
 for plays written by a playwright, and as it is open 
 to anyone who cares to learn the business to become 
 a respectable craftsman — just as a man can learn 
 to play the fiddle or make an etching on copper — 
 there will generally be a few writers for the stage 
 of literary merit who can turn out a stage play 
 capable of weathering the varied storms of taste 
 and criticism by which it is assailed in its 
 endeavours to make safe harbour in the Box Office, 
 
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THE PLAYWRIGHT 197 
 
 A playwright is according to Dr. Johnson "a 
 maker of plays." The word "wright" is satis- 
 factorily enough a Saxon word derived from wyrht, 
 the third person indicative of wyrcan, meaning 
 "one that worketh." The mere derivation of the 
 word is enough to account for the absence of the 
 thing itself. This is not an age of work. We 
 retain in a degraded form the Saxon word, but 
 the Saxon idea is foreign to our civilisation. Still 
 in things that really matter we cling to the old 
 world notion of a "wright" or person who knows 
 his business, as in our word " ship-wright." Un-' 
 fortunately in the affairs of the theatre which in 
 the present age do not really matter very much, 
 any clever man may exploit his wares without 
 learning his business. Money is lost over it, 
 and the theatre as an institution suffers. But 
 play-goers like voters and ratepayers will continue 
 the struggle to obtain a well-made article built 
 according to their tastes, and in course of time 
 workmanship in play-writing will have its value 
 again. Meanwhile it seems a pity that among so 
 many brilliant and intelligent writers for and about 
 the stage, hardly one will take the trouble to master 
 a few essential problems of what is really, compared 
 to the technicalities of music or painting, a simple 
 business. 
 
 If a man were to claim to be a ship-wright for 
 instance, it would be accounted to him as a matter 
 of blame If, after money and time had been spent 
 on building his vessel, it were to be found bottom 
 
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198 THE PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 up on the evening of the launching. Explain it 
 as he might, his career as a ship-wright would be 
 endangered. With a playwright it is quite other- 
 wise. If a man hangs out a sign that he is a wheel- 
 wright, you go to him in the expectation that he 
 can makte a wheel. It may not be a highly artistic 
 wheel. It may be roughly painted, there may be 
 no poetical carving in its wood-work, still you do 
 expect him to turn you out a wheel. You would 
 be disappointed if the article were oblong or rhom- 
 boid in shape. You would hesitate to trust yourself 
 to it if it had no hub, no spokes, no tyres — none 
 of the attributes of a wheel, and you would certainly 
 be utterly disgusted if it did not run. But a play- 
 wright who makes his play without dramatic hubs 
 or spokes or tyres, is often accredited a genius by 
 those who have never learned how, and how only, 
 a play can be made, and the fact that his play 
 does not run is set down to the centrifugal ignor- 
 ance of the spectators by the side of the road who 
 came there desiring to see it run. 
 
 There are of course many playwrights to-day 
 who are masters of their craft and audiences who 
 can approve of them, but unfortunately the men 
 who make it their business to write criticisms of the 
 theatre are peculiarly and in some cases boastfully 
 ignorant of the business of the playwright. In this 
 way they mislead the aspirant dramatist into the 
 idea that his audience is to blame for not 
 appreciating his play, when his audience is only 
 the mercury in the barometer recording the general 
 
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THE PLAYWRIGHT 199 
 
 depression that must result in a theatre from a 
 badly made play. However beautiful the words 
 and the sentiments of a play may be, and whatever 
 their moral and literary value, they are quite useless 
 unless they are put in a form to get over the foot- 
 lights. Quite silly sentiments and foolish language 
 may be made serviceable by a playwright who 
 knows his craft, and it would be valuable if some of 
 the writers about theatrical affairs were to turn their 
 attention from the discovery of new genius to the 
 interesting business of the making of stage plays. 
 One does not expect this to happen just yet, for 
 the stage as a craft is a dull thing from a literary 
 point of view, compared to the politics of the theatre 
 and the apportioning of praise and blame^ 
 especially the latter — to writers, actors, and theatre- 
 goers. Besides, there is a cult and creed among 
 these writers, and to be in the movement, you must 
 of necessity abjure the well-made play. I read a 
 very clever essay the other day by a modern writer 
 about the theatre, proving that "the well-made 
 play" was the abomination of desolation. The 
 essay was full of learning and epigram, and the 
 questions were cleverly begged and answered in 
 an apparent spirit of generosity, but it did not 
 convince me. Supposing the title of the essay 
 instead of being "the well-made Play" had been 
 "the well-made Coat" or "the well-made Porridge" 
 and the author had set out to prove to you that you 
 were a stodgy Early Victorian duffer, because you 
 pretended to like well-made coats and well-made 
 
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200 THE PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 porridge, might you not reasonably have sighed 
 over his perversity. But this would never happen, 
 for you will find that in the matter of coats and 
 porridge, your writer is full of learning, and will 
 write on these subjects if at all, with a sound know- 
 ledge of the craft he is criticising. Indeed I think 
 the playwright and the actor are the only craftsmen 
 whose work is widely written about by people who 
 deliberately refrain from learning the grammar of 
 the crafts they are writing about. Even the critic 
 of pictures has generally failed to paint them, and 
 that in itself is a liberal education. But many 
 brilliant entertaining writers about the stage seem 
 to base their right to be read with attention upon 
 the scant attention they have themselves given to 
 the subject matter of their criticisms. Thankful as 
 I am, for the amusement contained in their 
 epigrams, I am still of opinion that for men to 
 set out to judge a play who have no idea how a play 
 is made, and no desire to learn how a play is made, 
 is bound to end in amazement. 
 
 I remember taking an eminent antiquarian to Old 
 Trafford on the occasion of a county cricket match. 
 It was in the historic days of A. N. Hornby and 
 Lancashire were in the field. My friend — who 
 by-the-bye had written dramatic criticism in his 
 early days — knew little or nothing about cricket 
 but was not wanting in that kind of courage that 
 goes to the making of a great critic. Viewing the 
 game solemnly for about a quarter of an hour, he at 
 length delivered judgment. "If I were Hornby," 
 
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THE PLAYWRIGHT 201 
 
 he said, " I should never have chosen those two 
 fellows in the long white coats for a Lancashire 
 team ; they haven't tried to stop a ball for the last 
 ten minutes." I am often reminded of that story 
 when I read a criticism of a play. Nor do I for 
 a moment harbour any feelings of wrath against 
 average critics. Like my friend they too have great 
 literary and scholastic qualities that I can humbly 
 envy and admire, but there is one thing that they 
 have not taken the trouble to learn because it is 
 too simple and easy for their really superior intelli- 
 gence — the rules of the game. 
 
 And play-writing is a game like chess or cricket 
 or many another great game and many a duffer can 
 learn its elementary moves and rules and the more 
 studious can master its gambits and strategy, but 
 not even the greatest can succeed at the game, or 
 understand what the game is about if they will not 
 learn the rules. This is an age in which quackery 
 and slush and conceit are having a long innings, 
 and it is a common boast that some new genius has 
 found a new way of saving souls, or painting 
 pictures or making plays that is to revolutionise 
 the practice of these things. Originality is a good 
 thing, and who shall say a harsh word to the youth 
 who dreams in the waking hours of his inexperience 
 of a new way of doing old things. There are many 
 new things to be done in the world, but not so very 
 many for the playwright or the wheelwright. The 
 world has long ago laid down the lines on which 
 a play or a wheel is to be built and whilst it is open 
 
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202 THE PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 to us to use any material we choose, that will bear 
 the necessary strain and decorate it with all the 
 artistic ability we possess the structure must be 
 sound — the work of the wright must be done — or 
 all is vanity. The most eloquent writer of sermons 
 in the world cannot make a play of his preachings 
 merely by chopping them into acts and giving 
 them to different eminent actors and actresses to 
 recite. 
 
 There is an A-B-C for the apprentice playwright 
 to learn as there is for the child at school, and if 
 he never learns it, he will not be a proficient work- 
 man. I acknowledge this simile is a little old- 
 fashioned for the modern kindergarten child is 
 taught now-a-days to grunt strange sounds instead 
 of mastering his or her A-B-C ; the scientific teacher 
 being I suppose, under a delusion that English 
 is a phonetic language like my own native Welsh. 
 But when the educational slush has subsided a little, 
 we shall begin again with the A-B-C in our study 
 of the English tongue, just as our playwrights will 
 go back to the simple elementary rules of their 
 interesting craft. 
 
 When Shakespeare wrote of the players that 
 "they have their exits and their entrances," he 
 wrote what was strictly true of his own plays, for 
 he took care to provide them with exits and 
 entrances as any honest playwright should. And 
 to explain briefly what I mean by the simple rules 
 of the craft, let us consider for a moment the subject 
 of " entrances." It does not, nor need it, enter 
 
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THE PLAYWRIGHT 203 
 
 into the head of the playgoer that his convenience 
 is consuhed by the playwright on the matter of the 
 entrances of the characters. The critic generally 
 misses the best "entrances" if any, and makes his 
 own exit with the programme as a book of refer- 
 ence before the players' exits are completed. He 
 has a soul above these matters. But Shakespeare 
 knew that an actor wanted— and rightly wanted 
 both an exit and an entrance and would not be 
 happy unless he got them. These matters had to 
 be thought out and designed, and in the matter of 
 entrances, Shakespeare seems to have learned a very 
 simple little truth, namely, that from a playwright's 
 point of view, and equally from an audience's point 
 of view, it was not the slightest use for a player 
 to be talking upon the stage unless the audience 
 knew who he was. Open your Hamlet and see how 
 the play begins : 
 
 Act I. Scene I. A Platform before the Castle. 
 
 Francisco at his post. Enter to him Bebnabdo. 
 
 Ber. Who's there? 
 
 Fran. Nay, answer me ; stand, and unfold yourself. 
 Ber. Long live the king ! 
 Fran. Bernardo ? 
 Ber. He. 
 
 Fran. Yon come most carefully upon your hour. 
 Ber. 'Tis novr struck twelve; get thee to bed, Francbco. 
 Fran. For this relief much thanks; 'tis bitter cold, 
 And I am sick at heart. 
 
 Ber. Have you had a quiet guard? 
 
 Fran. Not a mouse stirring. 
 
 Ber. Well, good-night. 
 
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204 THE PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 If you do meet Horatio and Marcellus, 
 The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste. 
 Fran. I think I hear them. Stand, ho ! Who's there ? 
 
 Enter Hobatio and Marcellus. 
 
 Hot. Friends to this ground. 
 
 Mar. And liegemen to the Dane. 
 
 Fran. Give you good-night. 
 
 Mar. ! farewell, honest soldier : 
 
 Who hath relieved you? 
 
 Fran. Bernardo has my place. 
 
 Give you good-night. [^Exit. 
 
 Mar. Holla ! Bernardo ! 
 
 Ber. Say, 
 
 What ! is Horatio there ? 
 
 Hor. A piece of him. 
 
 Ser. Welcome, Horatio; welcome, good Marcellus. 
 
 Notice how naturally and in what a business-like 
 way Bernardo, Francesco, Horatio and Marcellus 
 are all introduced to the audience, and the care 
 taken to stamp their identity upon the mind of the 
 spectators. The natural easy way in which it is 
 done springs from the good craftsmanship of 
 Shakespeare, but the doing of it is the business of 
 every playwright. 
 
 One would suppose that such a simple matter as 
 that could not be overlooked, but if one turns to 
 the plays of some modern dramatists and seeks to 
 understand them without studying the stage 
 directions and noticing carefully the name of the 
 speaker, one is apt to get into confusion. The 
 latest craze is to publish a programme with the 
 "order of going in" like a cricket card and thus 
 you can buy for sixpence information that the play- 
 wright is too slovenly and too ignorant of his 
 
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THE PLAYWRIGHT 205 
 
 business to provide for you. There were no pro- 
 grammes in Shakespeare's time, but there were 
 playwrights. 
 
 It may occur to those who have not studied the 
 rules of the game that there is not the same neces- 
 sity for careful workmanship in the matter of 
 entrances in a play of to-day that there was three 
 hundred years ago. The answer to that is that a 
 play or a wheel of to-day is essentially the same 
 as a play or a wheel was in the sixteenth or 
 seventeenth century. The duty of the playwright 
 to make his entrances obvious to his audience is 
 equally clear, and is equally understood by the 
 man who knows his business. 
 
 Compare as a modern instance Sir Arthur 
 Pinero's opening of "Sweet Lavender." The 
 scene is a sitting-room at 3 Brain Court Temple. 
 Left and right are two doors leading to the rooms 
 of Richard Phenyl and Clement Hale. Ruth, the 
 housekeeper, is discovered, and Bulger, the barber, 
 enters the room and the play begins. Now note 
 the workmanship. 
 
 Bui. I've give Mr. 'Ale a nice shave, Mrs. Rolt, clean and 
 quick. Water's 'ot enough for me jist to rub over Mr. Phenyl's 
 face if 'e's visible. 
 
 Suth. I'm afraid Mr. Phenyl isn't well enough for you this 
 morning, Mr. Bulger. 
 
 Bui. Not one of 'is mornings, hey? 
 
 {Ruth goes to the right-hand door and knocks sharply). 
 
 Buth (calling). Mr. Phenyl! Mr. Phenyl! The barber. 
 
 You see, Sir Arthur Pinero, having been an 
 actor and knowing his business, informs you in 
 
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2o6 THE PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 a few lines not only the names of Phenyl, Hale, 
 their housekeeper, and barber, but where each of 
 the two men sleep and something of their charac- 
 ters. In a word, Pinero, like Shakespeare, is a 
 thoroughly experienced playwright. 
 
 No doubt the younger writers of to-day have 
 been led into their contempt for the business they 
 have undertaken by the success that has enriched 
 Mr. Bernard Shaw. They should remember, 
 however, that he is more of a preacher and society 
 entertainer than a playwright, winning the game 
 by his delightful personality or personalities. He 
 is an earnest religious man, with a great hatred 
 of the theatre, the stage, and entertainment, 
 to use his own words, " the great dramatist has 
 something better to do than to amuse either 
 himself or his audience." But dour Noncon- 
 formist as he is, his dullest moments are 
 interrupted by his deep insight into the really 
 funny things of this world. Mr. Shaw could make 
 a sound play if he cared enough about it to try 
 to do so, and in "Arms and the Man" and "You 
 Never Can Tell" he showed much knowledge of 
 the business. He would never, I think, have 
 attained the real grip of the matter that Shakes- 
 peare and Pinero have, and knowing this he prefers 
 to exploit his really great qualities in other ways. 
 
 But anyone can see for himself in this one little 
 matter of entrances how slovenly the modern 
 writer can be. If you turn to Mr. Galsworthy's 
 "Joy," the play is opened without any effort being 
 
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THE PLAYWRIGHT 207 
 
 made to tell you the names and identities of the 
 people on the stage; so, too, I remember, in the 
 first act of the "Silver Box," Mr. and Mrs. Borth- 
 wick discourse amusingly about politics without 
 disclosing who they are. No doubt these little 
 mysteries are easily solved by the regular up-to-date 
 theatregoer armed with a programme, but the 
 absence of the information irritates some of the 
 duller members of the audience, and the play suf- 
 fers. Mr. Granville Barker, in " Waste," opens 
 his piece with a room containing five ladies and 
 one gentleman. He does not disclose you an 
 identity by name for twelve lines, and Mr. Walter 
 Kent, one of the characters, is not introduced by 
 name until some nine pages of very clever dialogue 
 have been spoken. 
 
 No one supj>oses that Mr. Galsworthy or Mr. 
 Barker could not put these little matters right 
 somehow, though they could not do it with the craft- 
 manship of Pinero or Shakespeare. Unfortunately 
 they seem to have a very real contempt for the 
 minor details of the playwright's business, which 
 prevents the full effect of their literary gifts being 
 appreciable in a theatre. Mr. Galsworthy, it is very 
 pleasant to notice, is growing out of these ways 
 somewhat, and will probably, as his knowledge of 
 the stage increases, come to respect its old world 
 characteristics, and recognise that they are per- 
 manent, fixed, and unalterable. In his love of 
 pantomime and the exhibition of real things on the 
 stage, he has the true playwright's instinct. His 
 
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2o8 THE PLATWRIGHT 
 
 real police courts, real prisons, and real board- 
 rooms are admirable, and he is on the verge of 
 understanding the true gospel of the playwright 
 according to Vincent Crummies, manager, who 
 really knew all about it from the Shakespearean 
 stand-point. 
 
 Of course, this little matter of opening a play 
 and designing an entrance for a character is only 
 one of many simple matters that a good workman 
 or "wright" has to attend to, but it is a very 
 important one, and sufficiently illustrative of the 
 difference between good and bad craftsmanship. 
 To extend the theme by citing further instances 
 of elementary rules broken and followed would 
 be to commence an essay on the construction 
 of plays. But to anyone who wishes to pursue 
 the matter, it is curiously entertaining to see 
 how in all essential things the actor-play- 
 wright is invariably the better craftsman than 
 the literary man who commences dramatist. Mr. 
 McEvoy, one of our most interesting modern 
 dramatists, who has still perhaps something of the 
 craft to learn, writes in a spirit of noble optimism : 
 " I, as a dramatist, who knows how to do things 
 the right way, mainly because I never had to 
 unlearn how to do them wrong," in a few words, 
 expresses the attitude of the dramatist of to-day 
 towards the experience of centuries in the craft of 
 playwriting. No one doubts that Mr. McEvoy and 
 others may help a little in the evolution of the 
 stage, but they lessen their chances of success by 
 
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THE PLAYWRIGHT 209 
 
 the belief so piously held now-a-days that there is 
 nothing to be learned from the playwrights that 
 have gone before. It was reckoned a mad conceit 
 that prompted Walt Whitman to sing : 
 
 " I conn'd old times 
 I sat studying at the feet of the great masters 
 Now if eligible O that the great masters might return and 
 study me." 
 
 The modern genius finds nothing to study in the 
 old masters, and if they, poor fellows, were now 
 eligible to return and study our world of genius, I 
 fear they would lack even the courtesy of an 
 invitation box. 
 
 It is a pity that it should be so, but for my part 
 I think it is only a temporary matter, and that, 
 like all other things connected with the stage, it 
 will work itself out under the wholesome discipline 
 of the Box Office. A man who will not learn 
 some of the elementary rules of play-writing must 
 ultimately become too expensive for the most 
 patient patron. Nor should we blame the literary 
 man who turns dramatist very severely because he 
 has a contempt for the craft of the playwright. He 
 was born for higher things. His journalist 
 friends proclaim the value of his ideas, and the 
 literary expression of them in his play, and it is 
 only the carelessness of the players and the 
 stupidity of the playgoers that hinder his success. 
 It is all to the good for the stage that men of 
 education and intellect should be players, and that 
 good artists should be scene painters, but no one 
 
 O 
 
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2IO THE PLAYWRIGHT 
 
 who is a player or a painter expects to succeed in 
 his stage work without learning the rules of the 
 game. Why should a literary man despise the 
 craft of the playwright when he seeks to earn his 
 wages as a craftsman ? 
 
 There is nothing new in this distaste of a literary 
 man for the baser duties of playwriting. Bulwer 
 Lytton, who, whatever we may think of his literary 
 qualities, had undeniable talent as a playwright, 
 discovered when he wrote "The Duchess de la 
 Valli^re" the interesting fact that playwriting was 
 a special craft and that "dramatic construction and 
 theatrical effect" were mysteries to be mastered. 
 "I felt," he writes in his preface to the Lady of 
 Lyons, "that it was in this that a writer accustomed 
 to the narrative class of composition would have 
 the most faults to learn and unlearn. Accordingly, 
 it was to the development of the plot and the 
 arrangement of the incidents I directed my chief 
 attention, and I sought to throw whatever belongs 
 to poetry less into the diction and the ' felicity of 
 words' than into the construction of the story, the 
 creation of the characters and the spirit of the 
 pervading sentiment." 
 
 Genius will shrug his shoulders at the name of 
 Bulwer Lytton, but as a playwright two things 
 are worth remembering about him — first, that in 
 modern phrase he "got there," and, second, that 
 "he remains." And if genius desires to write 
 plays with a view to "getting there" and "remain- 
 ing," after the manner of Bulwer Lytton and other 
 
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THE PLAYWRIGHT 211 
 
 greater men who have stooped to the craft, 
 let genius seriously consider whether, in his own 
 interests as well as in the interests of the harmless 
 necessary playgoer, it is not worth while to learn 
 the rules of the game and commence playwright. 
 
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212 
 
 ADVICE TO YOUNG ADVOCATES. 
 
 Here in the street poor Juvenis 
 May raise his head and proudly trudge 
 
 Alongside Judex — judicis 
 The Third Declension — Judge. 
 
 Pater's Boole of Rhymes. 
 
 In England the legal profession has two 
 branches. There is also the root of the matter, 
 but that is seldom referred to. These two branches 
 are called — (i.) The Upper Branch, and (ii.) The 
 Lower Branch. In great affairs the Lower Branch 
 tells the Upper Branch what it has learned about 
 the case from the client, and the Upper Branch 
 tells the Court what it remembers of what it has 
 been told by the Lower Branch. The advantage 
 of retaining these separate branches is that where 
 error occurs it is difficult to assign responsibility 
 therefor. The Upper Branch learns advocacy by 
 passing examinations and eating dinners; the 
 Lower Branch by means of further and better ex- 
 aminations and fewer dinners. Those rules of 
 advocacy that have not been learned by that method 
 are acquired afterwards, if at all, by practical 
 experience in the Courts of Law at the expense of 
 the client. 
 
 To offer advice to members of the Upper 
 Branch of the Profession on the Art of Advocacy 
 
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ADVICE TO YOUNG ADVOCATES 213 
 
 would be unseemly, and these hints are intended 
 — merely as suggestions made in the friendliest 
 spirit — for the Law Student of the Lower Branch 
 who proposes to take up advocacy in those inferior 
 Courts which are open to him. Long experience 
 of sitting as Judge in an inferior Court has led me 
 to believe that it is not necessary or convenient 
 that the advocacy should also be inferior, and I 
 humbly commend this point of view to the younger 
 members of both branches of the Profession. 
 
 Perhaps the most important Court from the 
 young solicitor's point of view is the County 
 Court. A solicitor is allowed to act for a client in 
 a County Court. W^hen he is acting he has what 
 is called a right of audience. This does not mean 
 that all he says will be listened to by the audience, 
 even if it be uttered in an audible voice. Moreover, 
 the advocate's right of audience must *not be con- 
 founded with the rights of the audience themselves, 
 who are always entitled to leave the Court if they 
 are bored. For this purpose the Judge is not 
 "audience." He is bound to go on sitting, and 
 ought to listen. The commission of Judge is oyer 
 and terminer, but in actual practice in County 
 Courts you will find that Judges are more ready to 
 dispense justice terminando than audiendo. 
 
 Law students who have afterwards risen to 
 eminence in their profession have sought to practise 
 advocacy in their earlier years by making appear- 
 ances at the local Police Courts as defendants. 
 Much of the law of the motor-car may be learned 
 
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214 ADVICE TO YOUNG ADVOCATES 
 
 in this matter — and much that is not law. The 
 young enthusiast will find, I fear, that the method 
 is an expensive one, the legal educational value of 
 the magistrate's dicta is slight, and the opportuni- 
 ties allowed by the magistrate's clerk to the 
 defendant for the practice of advocacy wholly 
 unsatisfying. 
 
 Even in later life the young solicitor is not 
 advised to begin his career as an advocate in the 
 Police Courts. Criminals have very little cash, 
 and ought not to receive much credit. As to 
 licensing matters, these are wisely placed in the 
 hands of matured and experienced advocates. A 
 licensing Bench has always made up its mind — 
 which is divided into two parts — long before the 
 case is called on, and the advocate's duty is to say 
 nothing that could conceivably disturb the consid- 
 ered judgment of the Court. This is a delicate 
 task not often entrusted to beginners, and although 
 it is well worth while to study the technic of some of 
 the masters of the game, yet it is to be remembered 
 that only with a licensing Bench, and perhaps 
 before some of the more remote Ecclesiastical 
 Courts, is this style of advocacy required. The 
 young solicitor will probably find more scope 
 for his abilities as an advocate in the County 
 Court than before any other tribunal. The Judges 
 of these Courts are far more tolerant of advocacy 
 and less dogmatic on legal questions than lay 
 Magistrates, and are neither as omnipotent nor as 
 omnivorous as Magistrates' Clerks. 
 
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ADVICE TO YOUNG ADVOCATES 215 
 
 Thus much for advocacy in general. " I will 
 now," as Lord Chesterfield says, " consider some 
 of the various modes and degrees of it." I 
 assume that you are a young solicitor entrusted 
 by some hopeful and friendly client with a County 
 Court Action. Your first duty as a solicitor 
 advocate is to get something on account of costs. 
 Do not omit this common opening. A gambit 
 here is a mistake. The fact of your client being 
 a personal friend makes it the more necessary. 
 Many a friendship has not survived a fourteen 
 days' order to pay a debt and costs. This sum on 
 account may prove your real and only solace (sola- 
 tium) when you hear the judgment. 
 
 Always consider yourself before your client. 
 Your client is here to-day and gone to-morrow, 
 whilst you, I hope, may remain. Proper pride will 
 instinctively teach you when to consider your own 
 interests rather than your client's. Remember 
 Bacon's saying that "Affected dispatch is one of 
 the most dangerous things to business that can be." 
 All dispatch is indeed alien to the interests of your 
 profession, whether afifected or otherwise, but there 
 are many forms of affectation which you will find 
 useful to your advancement. I would not have 
 you pretend to forget the names of the earlier cases 
 you obtain, though I do not advise you to take 
 cognisance of the Court number of your case. If 
 you knew this it would save the Court officials 
 trouble, and they are paid to take trouble. Later 
 in life you will find it well to call the Defendant 
 
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2i6 ADVICE TO YOUNG ADVOCATES 
 
 by the Plaintiff's name and vice versa. It suggests 
 to the Court and the audience that you have too 
 many cases to attend to, though it will not gratify 
 your particular client. 
 
 In examining a witness, never let him tell his 
 own story in his own way. Many a case is lost 
 by this. The leading question is a sign of ripe 
 advocacy. But do not overdo it; remember over- 
 ripeness is rotten. The seniors at the Bar are 
 called ' ' leaders ' ' from their habit of using this 
 form of question unless restrained by quasi-physical 
 violence. Cross-examination is not merely the art 
 of making the witness cross. If your opponent's 
 witness proves nothing against your client, cross- 
 examine vigorously. By this means the truth is 
 often brought out and justice is done. During 
 your cross-examination notice carefully whether 
 the Judge is taking a note of the answers you are 
 obtaining, or writing letters. In either case do 
 not prolong your cross-examination, for if the latter 
 it is useless trouble, and if the former it is probable 
 you are eliciting answers that will be used against 
 you. In re-examination, endeavour to lead your 
 witness once more through his proof. It is an 
 excellent test of judicial complacency. 
 
 The rules of the County Court are to be found 
 in books, and need not therefore be committed to 
 memory. Indeed, most law can be found in books 
 by those who know where to look for it. Yet it 
 is ill to stir the green mantle of the standing pool 
 of law yourself if you can persuade another to do 
 
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ADVICE TO YOUNG ADVOCATES 217 
 
 it for you. A slight knowledge of the first princi- 
 ples of elementary law will always be welcome in 
 any Court. You may evade a detailed study of 
 the more intricate points in your case by insisting 
 that it falls within the rule laid down in one of 
 Smith's Leading Cases. For this purpose, how- 
 ever, you should learn at least the one rule you 
 propose to quote. After all, the Judge has to 
 decide the law, and ought to know it. The legal 
 presumption is that everyone knows the law — this 
 includes Judges. In cases under the Workmen's 
 Compensation Act, be careful how you quote a 
 decision of the Court of Appeal. It may not have 
 gone to the House of Lords, but if it did it is well 
 to find out what happened to it when it got there. 
 If an appeal to the House of Lords is pending the 
 current odds against the legal value of the e;yisting 
 decision will be found in any sporting paper. If, 
 during your argument, the Judge points out to you 
 that there is a leading case deciding exactly the 
 opposite of what you are arguing, ask him, with 
 pained irritation, to be patient, and tell him you 
 will distinguish it presently — but do not try to do 
 so. Never give yourself away unnecessarily, rather 
 give your client away, and you will find that 
 generosity of this kind is never forgotten. 
 
 Allow the Registrar's clerks to fill up for you 
 the prolix and difficult forms in use in the County 
 Court. They are not solicitors, and are therefore 
 less likely to make mistakes in the work. If, how- 
 ever, a mistake is made you can always explain 
 
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2i8 ADVICE TO YOUNG ADVOCATES 
 
 to the Judge how it arose, and you will not be 
 blamed for it. In any case, where the law is really 
 obscure and difficult, agree with your learned friend 
 to leave the matter entirely to His Honour. By 
 this means His Honour— if he makes no objection 
 — will have to hunt up the authorities, and this 
 will save you and your learned friend much useless 
 labour, whilst the decision of the Judge will be 
 far more valuable to your client. If you lose your 
 case and your client loses his temper, blame the 
 Judge, and urge your client to write to one of the 
 Government departments — it does not matter 
 which — to make a formal complaint of the Judge's 
 conduct. Government departments enjoy corre- 
 spondence, and will treat your client's letter with 
 the respect and attention it deserves. On days 
 when county cricket matches are being played in 
 the neighbourhood of the Court, and generally on 
 fine summer afternoons, your arguments will be 
 the more admired if they are brief and occasionally 
 to the point. If the case you have lost is for an 
 amount of over ;^20, nevertheless ask leave to 
 appeal. You do not want leave, but the Judge 
 may not remember this, and may either grant or 
 refuse it. In any case it gives you what you are 
 probably longing for at that particular moment — 
 an effective exit. Finally, remember that however 
 genuine your contempt for the Court may be, you 
 conceal it until you get outside — otherwise, seven 
 days. 
 
 If the law student will peruse these suggestions 
 
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ADVICE TO YOUNG ADVOCATES 219 
 
 and act upon them, and assuming him to be, as 
 no doubt he believes he is, a young man of clear, 
 strong, subtle intellect, of sound judgment, quick 
 perceptions and brilliant forensic abilities, I can 
 assure him that there is nothing between him and 
 a very considerable and remunerative practice as 
 an advocate in the County Court in matters which 
 are not of sufficient importance to "stand" Counsel. 
 
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220 
 
 THE INSOLVENT POOR. 
 
 "Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every 
 side and can scarcely be escaped without a wound; great 
 debts are like cannon; of loud noise but little danger." 
 
 — Dt. Johnson. 
 
 The average man — the "man in the street," as the 
 journalist of to-day calls him — has no clear notion 
 of the affairs of the County Court. He reads 
 occasional paragraphs in the evening papers of 
 some amusing incident, in which the humour of 
 the Plaintiff or Defendant is capped by the humour 
 of the playful and learned Judge, and the humour 
 of the reporter, displayed in his dramatic sketch 
 of the litigants, is the chief motive for the record 
 of the case. I have often been told that my work 
 must be very amusing, that I must see a great 
 deal of life, and that County Court cases seem very 
 entertaining, and I have come to the conclusion 
 that those of the public who never enter a County 
 Court, or read any sane record of its everyday 
 work, which is too often dull, wearisome, and pain- 
 ful, and no fit material for paragraphs and head- 
 lines, live in the belief that the occupation of a 
 Judge of a County Court is a legal form of small 
 beer and skittles, in which the Judge's part is to 
 preside with free and easy good humour, and settle 
 disputes with as much wit and readiness as he 
 happens to possess. No one who has any experi- 
 
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THE INSOLVENT POOR 221 
 
 ence of the actual proceedings of the Courts would 
 recognise such a picture as in any way portraying 
 the facts of the case. 
 
 In Manchester and Salford I was able to 
 divide the work of the Courts into two classes, 
 and to keep them distinct from each other. One 
 contained an increasing number of Bankruptcy, 
 High Court, and other cases, in which the 
 litigants are of the same class and have the 
 same legal assistance as in the High Court. The 
 main differences between the High Court and the 
 County Court in the conduct of such actions, being 
 the simplicity of the procedure, and the rapidity 
 and punctuality of trial in the inferior Court. The 
 second, and to my mind the more important, if 
 less interesting class of cases, was the large mass 
 of debt collecting cases under £2, which were the 
 original work of Courts created by the legislature 
 for the "better securing the payment of small 
 debts." The first class of work is a somewhat 
 onerous compliment to the ability with which the 
 County Courts of the country are worked, but the 
 second class ought always, it seems to me, to be 
 the chief interest and care of County Court officials. 
 And in the work connected with this smaller class 
 of cases, the chief result of my experience has 
 been a dull sense of the enormous mass of misery 
 and wretchedness it is one's duty to cause, and 
 the despondent feeling that of necessity oppresses 
 one in the presence of misfortune, that one can 
 sympathise with, but not to any material extent 
 
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222 THE INSOLVENT POOR 
 
 alleviate. I should like, therefore, if it be possible 
 to bring home to the average citizen the hopeless 
 and almost degrading position of the insolvent 
 poor, and to suggest for his consideration some of 
 the reforms which, with or without legislation, 
 might assist in bringing about a better state of 
 things. 
 
 To begin with, one may state that there are over 
 a million cases entered every year in County 
 Courts, to recover debts under ;^20, and it will 
 give some idea of how few cases are seriously dis- 
 puted when I state that there are only between 
 eleven and twelve thousand cases in which the 
 Plaintiff fails to succeed, and these latter figures 
 refer to all cases up to and above the j£so limit. 
 Many cases get settled, some plaints never get 
 served, but I have no doubt that one is well within 
 the mark in stating that 98 per cent, of cases under 
 ;^20 result in judgment for the Plaintiff. It is 
 clear, therefore, that the Court is to this extent a 
 collecting agency rather than a Court for the deter- 
 mination of disputes, and it is, in this respect, that 
 its machinery should be examined. Few who do 
 not know by personal experience, something of 
 the life of the poorer class of working men and 
 women, recognise the enormous extent to which 
 they live and have their being on credit. The 
 extent to which credit is given, and recklessly 
 given, to men, women, and children, by the com- 
 peting tradesmen who supply the working classes, 
 would be an absurdity if it did not lead to so much 
 
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THE INSOLVENT POOR 223 
 
 misery. As Judge Chalmers put it in an epigram 
 born of his wide experience of the insolvent poor : 
 "They marry on credit to repent on Judgment Sum- 
 monses." 
 
 Now the two main causes of this reckless system 
 of credit are : — (i) the keen competition among 
 tradesmen ; (2) the existence of imprisonment for 
 debt. It is not advisable here to say much of 
 trade competition. If it were a competition to sell 
 the best goods at the most reasonable price it would 
 perhaps be healthy enough, but it seems to be 
 rather a competition to give the longest credit for 
 the most inferior article. The largest classes of 
 competitors are the money lenders, the credit 
 drapers, or "Scotchmen," the travelling jewellers, 
 the furniture hirers, and all those firms who tout 
 their goods round the streets for sale by small 
 weekly instalments. These of necessity give reck- 
 less credit, and, equally of necessity, collect their 
 monies with much suffering to their poorer 
 customers. It seems fairly clear that to a work- 
 ing man on small weekly wages, no credit can 
 be given in any commercial sense. A tradesman, 
 if he gives credit at all to such a man, ought to 
 give it upon the ground that he has reason to 
 believe that he is an honest man who can and will 
 pay his debts. As a matter of fact, the two chief 
 reasons, or rather excuses, for giving credit are 
 both somewhat weak. Tradesmen will tell you 
 that they have given a man credit either because 
 he was in receipt of good wages or because he was 
 
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224 THE INSOLVENT POOR 
 
 out of work. In the first case they ought clearly 
 to insist upon cash, and the workman ought to 
 get the advantage of a cash price, and in the second 
 case they should only give credit if they know the 
 character of the man, unless, of course, they choose 
 to call it charity, with which the County Court has 
 nothing to do. But in truth, credit is given with- 
 out enquiry, recklessly and equally to those in 
 work and out of work, for necessities, luxuries, 
 and inutilities, and given at a price which includes 
 the profit of the credit giver, his costs of making 
 weekly collections, the costs of his debt collector 
 or solicitor, and ultimately a considerable tribute 
 towards the maintenance of the County Court. 
 
 Now all this is only possible because of the 
 second factor in our treatment of the insolvent poor, 
 namely, imprisonment for debt. The insolvent 
 rich — if we may use such a phrase — ^do not now- 
 adays fear imprisonment for debt. At the expense 
 of a few pounds borrowed from a friend, they file 
 their petition in bankruptcy and shake themselves 
 free of all their creditors as if by magic; for not 
 being traders their discharge is of little importance 
 to them, and they go absolutely unpunished. I set 
 down a few cases from an Annual Report of the 
 Board of Trade for comparison with some other 
 cases, which I propose to set out later : — 
 
 " Bristol. No. 64, of 1896. 
 
 Liabilities expected to rank £36,631 
 
 Probable value of assets on realisation ;^ioo." 
 Debtor, younger son of a duke. Creditors, mostly 
 
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THE INSOLVENT POOR 225 
 
 money-lenders and tradesmen. His expenditure, 
 which included lasses by betting, largely exceeded 
 his income, and knowledge of his insolvent posi- 
 tion for some considerable period was admitted. 
 
 " Kingston. No. 21, of 1896. 
 
 Liabilities expected to rank ;^2i,74i 
 
 Probable value of assets on realisation £^7'" 
 Debtor, formerly in the army, lived on his wife's 
 income, lost money in Stock Exchange speculations 
 and betting. No income except ;^i35 derived 
 under marriage settlement. 
 
 " No 471, of 1896. 
 
 Liabilities expected to rank ;^298,i66 
 
 Probable value of assets on realisation ;^i,7oo." 
 Debtor, a peer. At the time of his succeeding to 
 estates in 1864 his liabilities were ;^30,ooo, and 
 have apparently continued to increase in conse- 
 quence of his expenditure being larger than his 
 income. His discharge was suspended three years 
 on account of unjustifiable extravagance in living. 
 
 These are samples of the glorious achievements 
 of the insolvent rich. Now let us turn to the 
 shorter and simpler annals of the insolvent poor. 
 For them the maxim, "Si non habet in aere luat 
 in corpore," is still a living truth, only they hear 
 it as quoted to me once by a poor woman in the 
 words of some Scotch draper : " If I canna 'ave 
 yer brass I'll tek yer body." The law is not the 
 same for the speculator who lives extravagantly 
 
 P 
 
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226 THE INSOLVENT POOR 
 
 above his income to the injury of his creditors and 
 the working man on five-and-twenty shillings a 
 week who fails to live within his means. The 
 latter is only in a very limited sense the creature of 
 bankruptcy. The luxury of legal insolvency is 
 almost denied to him. He is ordered to pay his 
 creditor, and the costs his creditor has incurred in 
 obtaining judgment, and the fees of the County 
 Court, at so many shillings a month, and if he 
 fails to pay his instalments his creditor proceeds, 
 at further cost to the debtor, to collect them by 
 means of a judgment summons. Then, upon proof 
 that he has or has had the means to pay the instal- 
 ments due, he is committed to prison for default. 
 Few citizens, I think, recognise the number of 
 persons who are thus committed to prison. In 
 1909* no less than 375,254 summonses were issued, 
 234,753 heard, 136,630 warrants issued, and 8,904 
 debtors actually imprisoned. Nor can it be 
 granted that of those who pay between the issue 
 of the summonses and the day of imprisonment, 
 all, or nearly all, are in a position to pay, in the 
 sense of possessing surplus money sufficient to dis- 
 charge the debt. Friends and relatives come to the 
 rescue, fresh credit is obtained to pay off the old 
 debt, and thus the result of a committal order is 
 too often to thrust the unfortunate debtor one step 
 deeper into the slough of insolvency in which he 
 is already sinking beyond recovery. At the same 
 
 • The figures of 1909 are given because in June, 1911, when this 
 was revised, no later figures' were then published. 
 
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THE INSOLVENT POOR 227 
 
 time it is of no use railing at the system. The 
 Select Committee of 1893 reported generally in 
 favour of it, mainly, I think, because the working 
 class themselves uphold it. They uphold it for 
 one reason — ^and a powerful one — because without 
 imprisonment for debt there would be no reckless 
 credit, and without reckless credit there would be 
 no possibility of prolonging a strike after their 
 own accumulated funds began to give way. All 
 that any individual Judge can do is to administer 
 the system with as much sympathy and mercy as 
 is compatible with its honest working, without 
 prejudice to his right of private protest as a citizen 
 against its social iniquity. 
 
 Having now pointed out the position of the small 
 debtor in the County Court, I want to draw atten- 
 tion to an existing system of small Bankruptcies 
 known as Administration Orders which are very 
 little used or appreciated by either the Courts or 
 by debtors, but which with some improvements 
 might do much to mitigate the evils of the existing 
 system of imprisonment and check the recklessness 
 with which credit is given to the poor. 
 
 This Administration Order was the creation of 
 the Bankruptcy Act of 1883, and in a few words 
 the system may be thus described : Where a debtor 
 has a judgment against him in a County Court and 
 is unable to satisfy it forthwith, and alleges that his 
 whole indebtedness does not exceed ;^5o, he may 
 file a request for an Administration Order. In 
 this request he gives a full list of all his creditors 
 
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228 THE INSOLVENT POOR 
 
 with particulars of their debts, and states whether 
 or not he proposes to pay them in full and by what 
 monthly or other instalments. Notice is given to 
 creditors of the date of hearing, and on that day 
 the Judge either makes or refuses the order, or 
 makes a modified order at his discretion. As soon 
 as the order is made all proceedings against the 
 debtor, in respect of the debts scheduled, are sus- 
 pended, and the creditors individually cannot attack 
 him. He can, however, if he does not pay his 
 instalments, be committed for default or the order 
 can be rescinded. The fund created by his pay- 
 ments is appropriated — (i) for the Plaintiff's costs 
 in the action ; (2) for the Treasury fees, which are 
 2s. in the £ on the total amount of the debts; and 
 (3) for the debts in accordance with the order. 
 
 This is the system which Mr. Chamberlain, on 
 the second reading of his Bill, March 19th, 1883, 
 described as a system whereby the "small debtor 
 would be in exactly the same position as a large 
 debtor who had succeeded in making a composition 
 with his creditors or in arranging a scheme of 
 liquidation. Although he had not abolished in 
 all cases imprisonment for debt, yet, if these pro- 
 visions became law, it could be no longer said 
 that any inequality existed in the law as between 
 rich and poor. The resort to imprisonment* to 
 secure payment would be much rarer, and a large 
 discretion would be vested in the Judges to arrange 
 
 *In 1883, 43,344 warrants of commitment were issued; and, 
 m. 1909, 138,630 warrants of cinnmitmmt were issued. 
 
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THE INSOLVENT POOR 229 
 
 for the relief of the small debtor by a reasonable 
 compensation." 
 
 These were brave and wise words, interesting 
 to-day as showing the then intentions of the author 
 of the system, hopeful to-day as suggestive of what 
 may be expected from those in authority when they 
 recognise the failure of the system in achieving the 
 objects for which it was invented. 
 
 The advantage of the Administration Order over 
 the individual collection of debts is manifest, but 
 the imperfections in the system are equally mani- 
 fest. The limit of ;^5o, and the exorbitant Trea- 
 sury fees to be paid in priority tO' the dividend to 
 creditors, are of themselves sufficient to account 
 for the failure of the system. Thus it is not 
 surprising to find that in many of the Courts this 
 section of the Act is a dead letter, and the Admin- 
 istration Order is unknown. There is, and I think 
 rightly, a wide discretion given to Judges of the 
 County Courts who are supposed to study the needs 
 and wants of their particular localities, and minister 
 to these wants in a quasi-pastoral spirit. Without 
 the active assistance of Judges and Registrars such 
 a system as this could not be either known to — or 
 understood by — the insolvent poor. Many Judges 
 probably think the system worthless, and in 
 consequence it is not used. Thus in 1909, on two 
 circuits, 5 and 8, Bolton and Manchester, 821 orders 
 were made, while on five large London circuits, 
 40 — 44 inclusive, only 37 orders were made. I 
 have myself found a considerable increase in appli- 
 
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230 THE INSOLVENT POOR 
 
 cations for Administration Orders since I have 
 encouraged debtors whose affairs were in a hopeless 
 state, to make their application, and taken occasion 
 to explain to debtors appearing on Judgment Sum- 
 monses the provisions of the section enabling them 
 to apply. How hopeless is the condition of many 
 of the insolvent poor, and what they are reduced 
 to by reckless credit given to them by some classes 
 of tradesmen may be seen from some of the follow- 
 ing cases extracted from the Administration Order 
 Ledgers of Manchester and Salford : — 
 
 " M. No. 358. — Labourer ; wife ; 9 children ; ISs. per week ; 
 12 creditors; 7 judgments; debts £40. 9s. 8d. Has nearly 
 finished paying these at 5s. in the £ by instalments of 6s. a 
 month. The Treasury got £3. 4s. Court fees on the 7 judg- 
 ments, and £4 fees on the Administration Order. 
 
 "M. No. 399. — ^Labourer; 22s. a week; wife; H children, 
 two earning 5s. a week; 14 creditors; 10 judgments; debts 
 £44. 16s. Id. Was paying 10s. in the £ at 10s. per month. 
 Paid £6 ; order then rescinded. Treasury taking £4. 8s. fees ; 
 creditors, £1. 12s. The Treasury had previously had £3. 17s. 
 Court fees on the 10 judgments. 
 
 "S. No. 429.— Railway Porter; 16s. lOd. a week; wife and 
 1 child, aged three ; 19 creditors ; 13 of the creditors travelling 
 drapers; debts, £33. lOs. Order, 10s. in the £ at 5s. 6d. a 
 month. Before the Order was made he was, under the 9 judg. 
 ments, bound to pay 39s. 6d. a month, and liable to committal 
 if he failed. The Treasury had already had £3. 4s. 9d. Court 
 fees on the judgments, and will get a further £3. 6s. fees on the 
 Administration Order. 
 
 "S. No. 551.— Labourer; wife and 6 children, two earning 
 jointly 10s. per week; wages, 18s. a week; 18 creditors, of 
 whom 11 were travelling drapers; 16 judgments; debts, 
 £20. 10s. 2d. Already liable to pay 353. a week to different 
 judgment creditors. Order made, 10s. in the £ at 4s. a month. 
 
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THE INSOLVENT POOR 231 
 
 Court fees already paid to Treasury £4. 14s. i>a. Under the 
 Order they wUl have another £2. In this case the State has 
 added more than 30 per cent, to the original indebtedness of 
 the man in the vain endeavour to make him do what he was 
 unable to do, i.e., pay his debts without the means to pay them. 
 
 "S. No. 460. — Ostler; wife; no children; 2l8. a week ; 25 
 creditors ; 9 judgments ; debts, £32. 7s. 6d. ; 14 of the creditors 
 travelling drapers. Order, 10s. in the £ at 6s. per month. 
 Apart from the Order he was bound under the judgments to 
 pay 22s. a month. Here the Treasury have already had 
 £2. 8s. 6d. Court fees, and will get a further £3. 43. fees on 
 the Order." 
 
 In the three last cases the insolvency was chiefly 
 due to a careless wife. The porter's wife was quite 
 young and an easy prey for the travelling draper. 
 
 From these cases it is at least clear that if such 
 debtors are to be left to their various creditors, a 
 large portion of their time will be spent in evading 
 the service of Judgment Summonses or appearing 
 in Court, either by themselves, or more usually by 
 wife and baby, to show cause why they should not 
 go to gaol. Without the assistance of some form 
 of bankruptcy and discharge their case is hopeless, 
 and their future must be one of chronic insolvency. 
 
 One of the chief objections to the present system 
 raised by creditors is the exorbitant fees charged 
 by the Treasury. Parliament enacted that these 
 fees should "not exceed" as. in the £ on the total 
 amount of the debt. The Treasury interpreted 
 this to mean that there should always be 2S. in the 
 jQ, whatever composition was paid, and ordered 
 accordingly. So, if a man's total debts be ;^50, 
 the Treasury draw ;^5, whether the debtor pays 
 
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232 THE INSOLVENT POOR 
 
 20S. in the £ or 2S. in the £,, and draws this in 
 priority to creditors and whether the Order is fully 
 carried out or not. As we have seen, the Treasury 
 have often, before the Order is made, drawn con- 
 siderable sums on judgments forming part of the 
 Order, and creditors contend, and I think rightly, 
 that these fees are excessive. 
 
 Some time ago I collected the views of the 
 Judges on these fees, and forwarded them to the 
 Treasury. Speaking generally, they were adverse 
 to the fees, but the Treasury, although they have 
 the power to mitigate the fees, cannot see their 
 way to do it. I put this matter in the forefront 
 of possible reforms, because it can be done by a 
 stroke of the departmental pen without legislation, 
 and if done would do much to render these orders 
 more useful to — and therefore less unpopular with 
 — creditors. I have often pointed out to grumbling 
 creditors that these fees were probably not 
 intended by Parliament to be exacted, for I have 
 never thought it part of my duty to apologise for 
 the rapacity of a Government department. And 
 when I saw the figures for 1909, "Treasury income 
 from fees on Administration Orders ;^i2,824, 
 money paid to creditors ;^45,o59," I could only 
 concur in the view that it was little short of a 
 scandal that such an income should be drawn by 
 any department out of so miserable and helpless 
 a class as the insolvent poor, especially when it 
 is done at the expense of those to whom they 
 owed money. 
 
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THE INSOLVENT POOR 233 
 
 The Treasury, of course, have a departmental 
 view perfectly sane and satisfactory after its sort. 
 If I understand the view aright it is this : — These 
 Orders do not pay their way according to our cal- 
 culations. There is an income of nearly ;^i3,ooo a 
 year coming to us under an Act of Parliament, and 
 our duty is to take what is provided, asking no ques- 
 tions for conscience sake. If one could get beyond 
 the department to the individuals composing it, 
 and make them realise in the midst of their great 
 affairs that this sum of ;^i3,ooo a year, trumpery 
 but acceptable, at Whitehall, is a grievous tax in 
 the cottages of the insolvent poor, some reform 
 would perhaps be made. Indeed, I cannot but 
 think that the departmental view of the small work 
 of the County Court is altogether wrong in prin- 
 ciple, and that the time is at hand when Parliament 
 should enforce a more modern view of its duties 
 on the department. The constant cry is that the 
 Courts do not pay. The answer is that they ought 
 not to be asked to do so. The toll-bar principle ought 
 to be gradually abolished, and the Courts of the 
 country ought to be as free to Her Majesty's poorer 
 subjects as the high roads. Nowhere is this more 
 true than in the County Court, where the fees 
 throughout are exorbitant and excessive, pressing 
 with the greatest harshness on those who are 
 already over-burdened with debts. 
 
 These and other matters have, however, been 
 reported upon by commissioners and mentioned in 
 Parliament. The only immediate reform that can 
 
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234 THE INSOLVENT POOR 
 
 be made is the reduction in Treasury fees. That 
 can be done forthwith and without legislation if 
 Parliament desires it, and ought to be done without 
 delay. After that it will be time to put forward 
 a more satisfactory scheme of small bankruptcies, 
 open to all weekly wage-earners, whatever the 
 amount of their debts, with an official receiver 
 responsible to the creditors and the Court. Par- 
 liament ought at least to find time to carry out the 
 recommendations of the Select Committee of the 
 House of Lords in their report on the working of 
 the Debtors' Act, printed in 1893. The most 
 important suggestion there made was: "That the 
 question of costs in respect of Judgment Sum- 
 monses and Orders of Commitment is one 
 deserving serious consideration, and that it would 
 be advisable that a Departmental Committee of 
 the Treasury should carefully consider the matter 
 as early as possible." This question of costs and 
 fees in all small proceedings is one that wants an 
 immediate and searching investigation and reform 
 of a not wholly departmental character. 
 
 Meanwhile faith, which will remove mountains, 
 enables me to believe that the Departmental Com- 
 mittee of the Treasury are giving it a wise and 
 most deliberate consideration. Hope also buoys 
 me up to look forward to a time when Parliament 
 will amend the Statutes of Limitations in regard 
 to small debts, curtail imprisonment for debt, and 
 enact at least as favourable laws for the insolvent 
 poor as exist for the insolvent rich. Charity, 
 
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THE INSOLVENT POOR 235 
 
 meanwhile, compels me to grieve that so little is 
 done to stop the reckless credit which is offered 
 to the poorer classes, and to urge the consideration 
 of such measures as may assist the insolvent poor, 
 who of all our fellow citizens seem to me to demand 
 pity and sympathy, in place of punishment, rigour, 
 and harsh laws. 
 
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236 
 
 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 " Of making many books there is no end ; and mnch study is a 
 weariness of the flesh." Eccleniaetes xii., 12. 
 
 The connecting of the making of books with study 
 is an old world idea that it is difficult for a latter-day 
 reader to understand. A modern world recognises 
 that book-making in all its branches is a natural 
 pursuit for those of the unemployed who honestly 
 strive to live by their wits. But if the making of 
 books was allowed to be a national nuisance in the 
 days of Solomon, much more must it be so to-day, 
 when book's are fast ceasing to be saleable, and 
 have to be given away with out-of-date or up-to- 
 date newspapers, pounds of tea, and other doubtful 
 merchandise. 
 
 If, therefore, the supply of authors could be 
 mitigated, much of this long-standing trouble 
 might be abated; and it becomes a reasonable thing 
 for a citizen — especially one who has himself been 
 guilty of some of the minor literary misdemeanours 
 — to inquire why authors become authors, instead 
 of following some useful trade, and what human 
 motive it is that drives people to authorship. I 
 do not pretend that I have found the answer to 
 the question, "Why be an Author?" If I had I 
 should have solved one of the riddles of the uni- 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 237 
 
 verse. But I can, perhaps, set forth a few sugges- 
 tions upon the lines of which future scientists will 
 be able to pursue the problem to its ultimate solu- 
 tion. 
 
 To make a rough attempt at the classification of 
 the common motives of authorship is a bold thing 
 to do. Experimentally I should set down — "in 
 the order of going in," to use a cricket phrase — 
 the four following, namely : — 
 
 (1) Vanity^ or conceit. 
 
 (2) Greed. 
 
 (3) The fun of the thing, 
 
 and 
 
 (4) Having a message to deliver. 
 
 And first of vanity or conceit. How easy this is 
 to diagnose in the literary works of others; how 
 impossible to admit, even for a moment, that it 
 is at all a permissible suggestion about the motive 
 of our own work. And yet if one will be honest 
 with oneself, what is there in life that ministers to 
 the delightful pleasure of vanity so thoroughly and 
 satisfactorily as the sight of one's first printed pro- 
 duction. I remember well the first book I ever 
 published. It was, curiously enough, a Life of 
 Queen Elizabeth^ a subject I returned to in later 
 years. It was not a large book — but then at the 
 time I published it I was not a large person, being 
 only nine years old, and the physical act of writing 
 was burdensome to me; spelling also had more 
 difficulties about it than perhaps it has to-day. No, 
 it was not a large volume : to be exact it contained 
 
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238 WHY BE AN AUTHOR ? 
 
 two pages demi octavo of rather large print. It 
 was not, however, intended to be printed in book 
 form at all. It was rather a first effort at journal- 
 ism, and was written for the pages of an excellent 
 periodical called Little Folks, which had offered a 
 prize for the best life of the Maiden Queen. The 
 prize, no doubt, was, as these things often are, 
 carelessly adjudged to some budding author, who 
 has probably never been heard of since. Anyhow, 
 I did not get it, and my MS. was returned, — ^you 
 send a stamped envelope if you want it returned, 
 never forget that — mine was returned "highly 
 commended." That Editor has saved himself a 
 lot of nasty abuse from literary historians of the 
 next century by those two words, "highly com- 
 mended." He made a mistake, no doubt, about the 
 prize; but I, who have had to give many hundred 
 decisions in my later years — not perhaps verdicts 
 of such moment, but concerning smaller matters, 
 where right decision is equally advisable — know 
 the difficulties of coming to a true result, and have 
 long ago readily forgiven him. Doubtless the poor 
 fellow did his best, and if he is still alive — more 
 power to his elbow, if he has gone 
 
 Where the Budyards cease from Kipling, 
 And the Haggards ride no more 
 
 then — peace to his ashes. 
 
 The world was not however to lose this master- 
 piece. I remember showing it to my father when 
 it came back in its stamped envelope, and he put 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 239 
 
 it in his pocket, gravely expressing a desire to 
 read it. I am not sure that he did read it, but 
 he had it printed — at Guildford, I believe, when he 
 was away on circuit. 
 
 I remember him placing the parcel in my hands 
 on his return and my delight in opening it, and 
 my wild surprise at the discovery of the contents, 
 and the awed silence that came over my soul when 
 I saw the print on the pages and knew I was an 
 author. I can hear my father's good-natured laugh 
 over the affair, and my mother's insistence on my 
 autograph on the front page "with the author's 
 compliments." I spelt compliment with an "e." 
 It is absurd having two ways of spelling one word. 
 Afterwards I have a dim remembrance of walking 
 about on air for a few days, and finding it difficult 
 to sit on chairs for any length of time, and quite 
 impossible to learn lessons. All my spare time 
 was taken up by reading the great work in solitary 
 corners, and marvelling at the beauty of the lan- 
 guage and the respectability of the spelling. When 
 I went for a walk in Kensington Gardens I shrank 
 from the gaze of the populace, much as a real 
 grown-up author might do, who had lived at the 
 Isle of Man or Stratford-on-Avon. After a time 
 I became normal again, but the mischief was done : 
 I had, in the seventeenth century phrase, "com- 
 menced author." 
 
 Looking back at the matter from the cold, grey 
 standpoint of a grandfather, there is this to be 
 said for my first book. It is out of print. It is 
 
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240 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 so rare that I doubt if an American millionaire 
 could buy one. The last copies of it that I saw- 
 fell out of an old desk many years ago, and were 
 made into paper boats by my children. Luckily I 
 have plenty more materials for paper boats for the 
 next generation when they shall need them. 
 
 I have written down this little experience 
 because, to my mind, it is perhajjs the one certain 
 instance I can testify to, of a book being written 
 wholly and entirely from motives of vanity or con- 
 ceit. The prize did not attract me in the least; 
 it was, I believe, a book of religious tendency. 
 There was no greed about the matter. I did not 
 do it for the love of the thing, for in those days 
 I spent my spare time in carpentering and pro- 
 ducing pantomime in a toy theatre. As for any 
 sense of having a message to deliver that was 
 absurd, because I copied the bulk of it out of 
 Little Arthur's History of England, carefully 
 paraphrasing the language to hide from the over- 
 curious the source of my authorities. There is no 
 doubt that this book was written and produced 
 solely by the author's — and perhaps his parents' — 
 strong sense of vanity and conceit. I can speak 
 about the author impersonally to-day for he seems 
 to me such an entirely different person from myself. 
 
 I have asked many living writers whether they 
 have ever knowingly written anything purely from 
 motives of vanity and conceit. They all answer 
 me in a pained and haughty negative. For myself, 
 I rather glory in it. It is good to have done some- 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR ? 241 
 
 thing that nobody else has achieved. It is a big 
 thing to have written at least one book that does 
 not lie on the shelves of the British Museum, a 
 book the original edition of which no gold can 
 buy, a book that has given, to one reader at least, 
 moments of more thrilling joy than any book that 
 was ever printed. 
 
 But although we may accept the statements of 
 living authors, that they never feel moved to author- 
 ship by vanity, yet if we look at the records of those 
 who are gone we shall find schools of literature 
 whose mainspring has been conceit. Of such are 
 the French Philosophes of the reign of Louis XV. 
 of whom Carlyle writes : " They invented simply 
 nothing : not one of man's powers, is due to them ; 
 in all these respects the age of Louis XV. is among 
 the most barren of recorded ages. Indeed, the 
 whole trade of our Philosophes was directly the 
 opposite of invention : it was not to produce that 
 they stood there, but to criticise, to quarrel with, 
 to rend in pieces, what has been already produced ; 
 — a quite inferior trade : sometimes a useful, but 
 on the whole a mean trade; often the fruit, and 
 always the parent of meanness in every mind that 
 permanently follows it." 
 
 And indeed in all critics there must be a marrow 
 of conceit stiffening the backbone. Else how could 
 they — who fell out of the ranks footsore on the 
 march to battle — come along so complacently when 
 the fight is over, to talk to the soldiers covered with 
 the grime and sweat of their work, and tell them 
 
 Q 
 
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242 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 how easily it might all have been done without 
 soiling the pipeclay. 
 
 All critics however do not write merely from this 
 motive. There are many of course writing from 
 the far higher motive of greed. Then there are 
 some few who do it for the rare fun of the thing — to 
 enjoy the intense annoyance it gives to foolish, 
 sensitive artists — these are the mud flingers and 
 corner boys of the trade, and of course a few critics 
 have lived who played the game and knew it and 
 brought a message of heaven-sent sympathy to the 
 artist. Maybe such a one exists to-day, in some 
 corner behind the clouds, struggling to let his rays 
 shine encouragement on honest endeavour. 
 
 But apart from the writings of critics vanity and 
 conceit have always been strong motives of authors. 
 They are found especially in schools of literature, 
 where the form is preferred to the substance. Take 
 our eighteenth century writers and read the story 
 of their lives. Can it be denied that they were a 
 vain crowd? Even Swift, Pope and Addison — the 
 greatest of them — were not without it. As for the 
 smaller fry, with their degrading squabbles and 
 jealousies — their very faces seem to me pitted with 
 the small-pox of conceit. And throughout this 
 period you have one symptom ; — the writer exalting 
 the letter above the spirit, — and when you find that, 
 it is invariably the indication of disease, and the 
 disease is vanity. 
 
 This is not only the case in writing. It is so in 
 nearly all pursuits. When you begin to believe 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 243 
 
 in technical excellence of form as an end in itself, 
 it is necessary to become to some extent narrow, 
 vain and conceited or you will not achieve your end. 
 In those arts in which form is more essential to the 
 art than substance, vanity and conceit are more 
 commonly found. Thus actors, singers, dancers, 
 and schoolmasters are often not without vanity. 
 You may notice, too, that the minor technical 
 pursuits of life produce a certain conceit. It is 
 occasionally observable in the semi-professional 
 lawn-tennis amateur. In a lesser degree too by 
 many golfers the same vice is sometimes displayed, 
 but more often in the club-house and on the first 
 tee than during the progress of the game. When 
 a man is deeply bunkered style becomes a secondary 
 consideration. 
 
 But generally speaking all writers who think 
 literature an affair of quantities, metres, syntax and 
 grammatical gymnastics, all men who reverence 
 literary form rather than practical substance, are 
 bound to write in a spirit of vanity and conceit, 
 which is the only petrol that can push them along 
 the weary road they have chosen. It oppresses 
 you to-day to find this spirit in nearly all the great 
 writers of the eighteenth century. How Oliver 
 Goldsmith stands out amongst them as the one 
 great writer with a human heart ; how we readers 
 of to-day love him and reverence him with an 
 enthusiasm we cannot offer to Addison himself. 
 
 But enough of conceit and vanity, let us turn 
 to our second motive— a far pleasanter and more 
 
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244 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 everyday affair — greed. I should put Shakespeare 
 among the first and greatest whose motive was 
 greed. I cannot imagine anyone taking the trouble 
 to write a play from any other motive, certainly 
 not from a lower motive. Shakespeare's main 
 desire in life, if we may trust his biographers, was 
 to become a landowner in Warwickshire — possibly 
 a county magistrate. What an ideal chairman he 
 would have made of a licensing bench. Would 
 Mistress Quickly's license have been renewed? I 
 doubt it. Shakespeare wrote plays for the contem- 
 porary box office to make money out of them and 
 thrive. As Mr. Sidney Lee tells us he "stood 
 rigorously by his rights in all business relations." 
 There being in those days no law of copyright he 
 borrowed all he could from common stock, added 
 to it the wonderful flavouring of his own personality 
 and served up the immortal dramatic soup which 
 nourishes us to-day. After this fashion of borrow- 
 ing, if Emerson be right, the Lord's Prayer was 
 made. The single phrases of which it is composed 
 were, he says, all in use at the time of our Lord 
 in the rabbinical forms. "He picked out the grains 
 of gold." It is the same if you think of it with 
 ^sop's fables, the Iliad and the Arabian Nights, 
 which no single author produced. And so must 
 all great work be done, for we are nothing of our- 
 selves and if we do not take freely of those who 
 are gone before we can do naught. But only 
 those have the right to borrow who can embroider 
 some new and glorious pattern on the homely 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR ? 245 
 
 stuff they appropriate. Shakespeare had no vanity 
 and conceit ; ho doubt he wrote for the fun of the 
 thing, as all writers who are worth their salt must 
 do, possibly — ^though I for one doubt it — he knew 
 of the message he was delivering to the world; 
 but that he wrote his plays primarily for greed, the 
 few records of his life that we possess seem to me 
 to prove beyond reasonable doubt. Unless, of 
 course, you are mad enough to believe Bacon wrote 
 the plays. Then indeed the motive power of the 
 author was greed — greed of a baser sort than 
 Shakespeare's — for the great Lord Chancellor never 
 did anything that I know of, except a few trivial 
 scientific experiments, from any other motive. 
 
 But when I speak of Shakespeare and greed, I 
 speak as a modern and not as an Elizabethan. 
 Greed in Shakespeare's day meant the greed of 
 filthy lucre, the insatiate greediness of evil desires. 
 It was an insanitary word in those days. But 
 greed to-day means something quite otherwise. 
 When I speak of greed as the main motive of 
 authorship I use the word, not with any old- 
 fashioned dictionary meaning, but in an up-to-date, 
 clear-sighted, clarion, socialist sense. You speak 
 to-day — ^those of you who are in the movement — of 
 the greed of the capitalist, the greed of the 
 employer. In this way I speak of the greed of the 
 author. The greed of anyone to-day is the greed 
 which urges him to endeavour to enrich himself 
 and provide for himself and his family by using 
 his brains in producing things. Incidentally he 
 
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246 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 may employ a vast number of people with less 
 brains or no brains, incidentally he may ruin him- 
 self after he has used his brains, and paid a large 
 number of people in publishing the result of his 
 brain-work ; but do not let us in an age of socialism 
 gainsay that it is pure greed to use your brains 
 for the purpose of putting money into your own 
 pocket. It is true this kind of greed led to Colum- 
 bus discovering America — but if he had not done 
 so how many fewer capitalists there would have 
 been. Sir Walter Raleigh, too, was a bad instance 
 of a man moved by greed ; we cannot acquit Drake, 
 or the great Lord Burghley or even my own 
 historical heroine the Maiden Queen herself. The 
 greed of Elizabethan England is a thing to shudder 
 at, if you are a real socialist, and Shakespeare, I 
 fear, must be found guilty from a modern stand- 
 point of having written his plays from the simple 
 motive power of greed. 
 
 I am the more certain of this for the only Shake- 
 spearean play of modern times "What the Butler 
 Saw," was written, I am ashamed to say, from 
 similar motives. I happen to know that this is a 
 play after Shakespeare's own heart. I learned it 
 in a vision. I am not a believer in dreams myself, 
 but there must be something in some of them, and 
 mine is worthy of the consideration of the Psychical 
 Research Society. It was after the first night of 
 the Butler in London, and after a somewhat 
 prolonged and interesting supper with some of 
 those responsible for the production,— in psychical 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 247 
 
 research supper should always be confessed to, — 
 that I had a curious dream of the people who were 
 present at the theatre. Many who appeared had 
 actually been present, others had not. Milton and 
 Oliver Cromwell, both came up to me and hoped 
 it would not have a long run — Wordsworth, I 
 remember, wanted to know what the Butler really 
 did see, and Charles Lamb, winking at me, took 
 him away to tell him. It was then that Shake- 
 speare came and patted me lightly on the shoulder, 
 saying "It's all right, my young friend" — young 
 of course from Shakespeare's point of view — "I 
 couldn't have done it better myself." 
 
 Many will wonder why this story has not long 
 before this gone the round of the press. The 
 answer is that I am not a business man. I once 
 mentioned the dream to a spiritualist, who said 
 that there was no evidence that it was the shade 
 of Shakespeare — it might have been the astral body 
 of one of the inhabitants of the Isle of Man. I 
 replied that then we should have heard of it long 
 ago. 
 
 As an instance of dramatic justice it is interesting 
 to know that the production of this play costs its 
 authors money. Incidentally it made money for 
 others, actors, actresses, scene-shifters, propriefors 
 of theatres, dramatic critics and the like, to the 
 tune of tens of thousands of pounds. Some day 
 when I publish the play, as I hope to do, I will 
 set out in detail its financial side, which is quite 
 as amusing as the play itself. But the main point. 
 
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248 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 which from a socialist point of view is so entirely 
 satisfactory, is that the brain-workers who wrote 
 it, and the capitalist who produced it lost over it; 
 but that it provided work and bread and cheese 
 for a large number of people who might otherwise 
 have filled the ranks of the unemployed. It is a 
 fitting termination to the work of an author whose 
 motive power is greed. The only fear is that if 
 this were always to happen, there might come a 
 time when there would be a shortage of authors 
 ready to supply food and wages for others at a 
 cost to themselves. Personally, I do not think 
 this is all likely to occur, for authors seem to me a 
 class of persons who will always be actuated by 
 vanity, and a greed of so unintelligent and un- 
 businesslike a character that they will go on writing 
 for others, rather than themselves to the end of 
 time. I in no way regret the results of "What 
 the Butler Saw." I fear my greed is of a very 
 poor commercial standard. I had plenty of fun 
 for my money. It is something to have written a 
 masterpiece, and it is something better to have 
 seen it beautifully acted. I am very poor at taking 
 the amusements of life seriously, and even when 
 playing golf I often find myself looking at the 
 scenery instead of at the ball. Indeed, I am not 
 sure that I did write "What the Butler Saw," 
 from any really high sense of greed, and that may 
 account for its having turned on me and bitten me 
 financially. I have more than a half belief that I 
 wrote it for the fun of the thing. 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 249 
 
 And this brings me to my third motive of author- 
 ship, writing for the fun of the things. All the 
 best writing in the world — short of the very highest 
 and most sacred work — is done for the fuh of the 
 thing. Some people prefer the phrase the love of 
 the thing, and say it is the love of the beautiful, 
 or the love of mischief, or the love of romance 
 that moves them to writing. But I prefer to call 
 it writing for the fun of the thing, because that 
 describes to me exactly what I mean. All games 
 should be played in this spirit, and writing is a 
 far less serious game with most of us than games 
 like bridge or chess or golf or cricket. 
 
 Charles Marriott — not the national novelist of 
 our high seas, but Marriott the modern — who has 
 a gracious gift of hinting great ideas in simple 
 phrases and never shouts them at you, so that 
 if you are a deaf reader you do not always get the 
 best out of him — Marriott says in "The Remnant" : 
 "Quite in the beginning, when men went out to 
 kill their enemies or their dinner, there was always 
 one man who wanted to stay at home and talk to 
 the women, and make rhymes and scratch pictures 
 on bones." There are two great truths in this. 
 One is that the first author was an artist. He 
 scratched pictures on bones long before he made 
 rhymes. Of course he did it for the fun of the 
 thing. There could be no other reason, the motives 
 of vanity and greed were not open to him. There 
 was no publisher in the cave-dwellers' days to 
 seize his bones, and pay him a royalty on them. 
 
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250 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 and build a big cave for himself out of the proceeds 
 of the speculation, whilst the bone-scratcher slept 
 in the open. I think a cave-artist had a good time. 
 He enjoyed his life in his own way, and I believe 
 got better food for his work than many an artist 
 of to-day. But modern artists have forgotten the 
 great truth that to paint well you must paint for the 
 fun of the thing, as the cave-man scratched his 
 bones, and as children draw to-day if you give 
 them paper and pencil, and don't look on and worry 
 them. Few artists now paint for the fun of the 
 thing without vanity or greed, but when they do 
 they sometimes find an echo in the shape of a 
 patron as mad as themselves, who buys pictures 
 for the fun of the thing, and not because the critics 
 tell him that this or that is good. The recent 
 McCullough collection at Burlington House was 
 worth showing despite the sneers of the superior 
 persons, because it was an honest collection of what 
 one man had really liked. What annoyed the 
 critics was that a man had bought the pictures 
 because he loved them, and not because he had 
 been told he ought to love them. 
 
 And then there is another great truth in what 
 Marriott says. The cave-artist stayed at home to 
 make rhymes and pictures for the women whilst 
 the men went out to get the dinner. How few 
 writers remember that the real judges of literature 
 are and must be the women of the country. Women 
 necessarily fill the churches and lecture halls, and 
 the lending libraries, and the theatres, and the 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 251 
 
 picture galleries — only in music halls do men 
 predominate. It is for women primarily that all 
 literature and art are made to-day, just as they 
 were in the cave-dweller's time. To follow out this 
 interesting theme and account scientifically for 
 the phenomenon would take a longer essay than 
 this. Moreover, one would run up against the 
 problem of the women who want to vote and many 
 other dangerous questions. The cave-dwellers 
 really knew all about it. The men went out to get 
 the dinner in those days merely because there were 
 no shops in Cave Street — but the researches of all 
 professors show that even in those days the women 
 ordered the dinner. And the voice that orders 
 the dinner, and the hand that rocks the cradle will 
 always rule the world. 
 
 If you want to test the value of writing for the 
 fun of the thing in relation to the work produced 
 take the case of Southey. Southey was, among 
 the many mansions of literature of his day, the 
 most eligible mansion of all. He was a most 
 erudite and superior literary man. But though 
 what he wrote was important and well paid for 
 when he wrote it, to-day the world has no use for 
 it. But once in a way Southey wrote a story for 
 the fun of the thing and it will live for ever. I 
 refer of course to "The Three Bears." Southey, 
 strange to say, wrote that wonderful story. He 
 invented the immortal three, the Great Huge Bear 
 with his great rough gruff voice, and the Middle 
 Bear with his middle voice, and the Little Small 
 
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252 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 Wee Bear with his little small wee voice. And such 
 a work of genius is it that already it is stolen and 
 altered and the name of the author is almost un- 
 known. And just because he wrote it for the fun 
 of the thing it will go on living as long as there 
 are children in the world to tell it to. Porthos, 
 Athos, and Aramis, Dumas' three musketeers, 
 may vanish into oblivion, but the three bears will 
 be a folk-lore story when the affairs of this century 
 are a pre-historic myth. 
 
 Remember too, Southey's companion, Words- 
 worth, the "respectable poet" as De Quincey 
 unkindly called him. Did he ever write anything 
 for the fun of the thing? Had he any fun in him 
 to write with ? Wordsworth serves his purpose 
 to-day, no doubt. He is there for professors of 
 English literature to profess. He is there for 
 serious-minded uncles to present as a birthday gift, 
 in one volume bound in whole morocco, floral 
 back and sides, gilt roll, gilt edges, price sixteen 
 shillings and sixpence, to sedate nieces. But do 
 the sedate nieces read his poetry ? As Sam Weller 
 says : "I don't think." Coleridge again, when 
 you set aside the few poems that he did write for 
 the fun of the thing, presents the somewhat mourn- 
 ful spectacle of a literary man spending a literary 
 life doing literary work. You read of him starting 
 this periodical and that periodical, roaming about 
 England in search of subscribers under the impres- 
 sion that he had a message to deliver; when, sad 
 to say, all the while he was ringing his bell and 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 253 
 
 shouting "Pies to sell" the tray on his head was 
 empty of any useful food for mankind. 
 
 Compare these great names with that of their 
 humble companion, Charles Lamb. He never 
 wrote an essay or a letter except for the fun of the 
 thing. He had to go down to an office day by 
 day and do his task. He might have kept pigeons 
 or done a little gardening or played billiards, but 
 he preferred to read books and to go to plays and 
 write about things he loved. Not that his hobby 
 was in its nature a higher thing to him than another 
 man's, but it was his naturally, and he simply 
 wrote because he enjoyed writing, in the same way 
 that he drank because he enjoyed drinking. And 
 what is the result? Southey has departed into 
 the shadows, when you take Wordsworth off the 
 young lady's shelves you have to blow the dust off 
 the top of the volume, and Coleridge is only to 
 be found in school poetry books which are carefully 
 compiled by economic editors of poems which are 
 non-copyright. But Charles Lamb has more 
 friends and lovers to-day than he had in his own 
 lifetime. He wrote for the fun of the thing and 
 the fun remains with us to-day, bounteous and 
 joyful, bubbling over with humour and delight, 
 and overflowing with affection and respect for 
 everything that is best in human nature. 
 
 And perhaps part of what I mean by writing 
 for the fun of the thing is to be found in a phrase 
 that used to be uttered about writings that they 
 "touch your heart." It is a curious old-fashioned 
 
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254 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 phrase. It would be interesting to enquire what 
 it is that keeps a book alive through after-genera- 
 tions. I think that this capacity of "touching the 
 heart" has much to do with it. Shakespeare, 
 Dickens and Goldsmith had this quality; so in a 
 different way had Izaak Walton and Samuel Pepys. 
 It may be that this magic power is the salt that 
 keeps a man's writings sweet among the varied 
 temperatures of thought through which they 
 survive. Qualities of brain and intellect vary 
 century by century, but what we call the heart 
 of man is the same to-day as it was when King 
 David wrote his psalms. Therefore, unless our 
 writings appeal to the heart it is impossible for 
 therh to attain everlasting life. Much of the 
 literature of to-day is, I fear, as Touchstone says — 
 "damned like an ill-roasted egg all on one side." 
 For the fashion of the hour is to despise the heart 
 and to sneer at the simple folk whose hearts still 
 beat in harmony with the silly domestic notions 
 of love and honour and charity and family life. 
 To-day who would be a writer must write for the 
 brains and intellects of the learned — meaning by 
 the learned those who have passed sufficient exami- 
 nations to render it unnecessary they should ever 
 think for themselves again. And even this is 
 outdone by the new school who pride themselves 
 that the brain is as old-fashioned an audience for 
 the author as the heart, that the proper portion 
 in the twentieth century is the liver. If a book 
 stirs the bile of all decent people it is to-day a 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 255 
 
 popular success. So unintelligent a view do some 
 take of the movement that they try to throw oppro- 
 brium upon it by the use of the epithet "yellow" 
 as in the phrase "Yellow Press" : whereas, yellow 
 among the inner brotherhood is the holy colour as 
 typical of the movement as it is of jaundice itself. 
 Personally, I should like to send many of our great 
 novelists and playwrights of to-day to Harrogate 
 for the season. I believe that a course of ten ounce 
 doses of the "strong sulphur," at that charming 
 watering place would diminish the risk for them 
 of a far longer course of far stronger sulphur in 
 the hereafter. Their writings may have a vogue 
 for a time and after all their position in literature 
 will not be decided by anything I say, or anything 
 their friendly and scholarly critics say, except in 
 so far as we are atoms of the general mob of man- 
 kind whose taste is final. For as Newman said : 
 " Scholars are the tribunal of Erudition, but of 
 Taste the educated but unlearned public is the only 
 right judge." 
 
 But before I deal with the last motive of author- 
 ship which I suggest, let me say a few words about 
 an entirely different answer to the question I am 
 putting "Why be an Author?" There are wise 
 men who declare that a man is an author from 
 pre-destination ; because he cannot help himself, 
 because he is built that way. In other words that 
 to be an author is a habit like drink or gambling. 
 I can see that if this theory gains ground, libraries 
 are going to have a rough time of it in the future. 
 
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256 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 No doubt there are people — like myself — who waste 
 a great deal of time in reading and writing which 
 might be better used by digging in the garden, or 
 cleaning the boots. As education proceeds upon 
 the lines of to-day this bad habit will grow more 
 popular. Young folk will take to spending their 
 evenings, and even their Sundays, in libraries and 
 meeting together over books as they do over foot- 
 ball. Older folks will imbibe books much as they 
 imbibe beer. Respectable employers of labour will 
 see the danger of it — indeed, many of them to-day 
 are clamouring against plays and fiction and other 
 literary products as evil in themselves. They 
 will, I think, rightly begin by persuasion. They 
 will form Blue Ribbon Societies and a United 
 Kingdom Alliance for the total suppression of the 
 Book Trade. Then will come, in the natural order 
 of things, a Licensing Bench to license libraries. 
 On this no magistrate will sit who has ever written 
 a book, or been connected with the publishing 
 trade, but magistrates who are total abstainers from 
 reading and writing will properly form a majority 
 of the tribunal. And in the city of Manchester, 
 which is a city of Libraries, which library will 
 they close first? I should say the Ryland's 
 Library. For there is a seductive beauty about 
 its surroundings, and the books it gives you to 
 drink are of such wondrous flavour and served in 
 such rare goblets, that to the poor erring man, 
 who like myself is not a teetotaler among books, 
 the temptation to leave his worldly duties and 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 257 
 
 forget his tasks among its luxurious pleasures, 
 is one that wise magistrates will not permit. Then, 
 too, the landlord — I mean the librarian — is such a 
 kind-hearted fellow. Always ready to give you 
 another — and nothing to pay. Charles Lamb 
 would never have got to the East India Office if 
 the Ryland's Library had been in his path. For 
 my part I always used to approach my County 
 Court in Quay Street from the other side, saying 
 to myself as I crossed Deansgate, " Lead us not 
 into temptation." 
 
 Do not think that this idea of a future licensing 
 authority for literature is by any means a fanciful 
 one: We have seen a Yorkshire town council 
 turning Fielding's works out of a free library to 
 their own eternal disgrace, and a Library Com- 
 mittee in Manchester boycotting Mr. Wells. 
 Already Town Councils decide what sort of plays 
 we may go and see, and what sort of dances are 
 good for us, and absolutely settle for us what we 
 are to drink in between the acts, putting all the 
 whisky on one side of the street and all the soda 
 on the other. When, therefore, the town council 
 mind wakes up to the fact that from a respectable 
 employer of labour point of view the author habit 
 is as dangerous a habit as the drink habit, the 
 licensing system will most certainly extend. And 
 I feel sure when things progress and authors them- 
 selves are made to take out licenses I shall run a 
 serious risk — unless I mend my ways — of having 
 my license endorsed. 
 
 R 
 
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258 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 But for my own part, I do not believe in an 
 author habit any more than I greatly believe in a 
 drink habit. Given sanity I believe a man can 
 kteep off authorship if he tries. I never seriously 
 tried, but I think I could stop, if I wished to, even 
 now. And there would be a danger in any system 
 of state or municipal control of authors that you 
 might hinder or prevent the author who has a 
 message to deliver. Surely there are enough 
 amateur censors to bully and destroy the man with 
 a message without setting the Town Council at 
 him. And the man with a message after all is the 
 only man who can plead justification to the indict- 
 ment "Why be an Author?" 
 
 Of course there are messages and messages; 
 purely business and temporary messages, and 
 heaven-sent messages of eternal import to mankind. 
 Of temporary messages, sermons, and scientific 
 treatises should ibe published by telegraph, lest 
 the message become stale news before it reaches 
 its destination. All books written by craftsmen 
 and schoolmen to impart knowledge are instances 
 of books written by people who have messages to 
 deliver. Lamb calls some of them biblia a biblia 
 — books that are no books. In a sense he is right, 
 the more so because this class of book is generally 
 written by an author, wholly unable to explain the 
 very limited message he sets out to deliver. 
 Reading a text-book is too often like listening to 
 a stutterer over the telephone. You know that he 
 knows what he has to say, but he can't get it over 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 259 
 
 the wires to your receiver. Some literary gift is 
 required even to write a school book. One must 
 have knowledge, power of arrangement, and the 
 gift of imparting knowledge to the ignorant. 
 This last quality depends, I believe, in a great 
 measure on the capacity in the writer to conceive 
 the depth of ignorance in his probable readers. 
 
 He must have the rare faculty of putting himself 
 in the students' place. I do not myself remember 
 a single good school book — but that may be due 
 to my youthful inattention, rather than any critical 
 insight in early life. On the other hand, I can 
 name three books which I regard as models of the 
 kind of message-literature I am speaking about; 
 books that told me clearly and admirably every- 
 thing I wanted to know about the subjects they 
 dealt with. These books are, Dr. Abbott's "How 
 to write clearly," Sir James Fitzjames Stephen's 
 "Law of Evidence," and Mr. H. Paton's "Etching 
 Drypoint and Mezzotint." The last book I regard 
 as a model of what a practical treatise on a craft 
 should be. Although himself an etcher of experi- 
 ence and great ability, he is able to follow the 
 mind of the ignorant and its possible questions, 
 so accurately, that he provides answers to the 
 questions that arise from time to time in the mind 
 of the duffer bent on making an etching on a copper 
 plate. I have never seen the process done, but 
 with the aid of this book I have made many etch- 
 ings — and what I have done other duffers can do. 
 I do not say these etchings of mine are masterpieces, 
 
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26o WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 but I do say that the book so delivers its message 
 that the most ignorant may hear and understand. 
 Mr. Justice Stephen's book on Evidence is a most 
 wonderful piece of codification. The English Law 
 of Evidence has about as near relation to the real 
 facts of life as the rules of the game of Poker. It 
 is one of those things that must be learned more 
 or less by heart, there is no sense or principle in 
 it. Until Mr Justice Stephen published his book 
 the law was a chaos of undigested decisions ; since 
 the publication it has been as orderly a science as 
 a game of chess. It has still no reality about it, 
 but the moves and gambits and openings are 
 analysed and can be learned. As to Dr. Abbott's 
 "How to write clearly," let no one think evil of 
 the work on account of anything I have written, 
 any more than Mr. Paton's volume should be 
 judged by the artistic quality of my etchings. 
 
 As to the greater messages of life which we have 
 had delivered to us by the hands of the great 
 authors, these are as I have suggested, the real 
 answer to the question, "Why be an Author?" 
 The writings of men like S. Paul and the author 
 of the Book of Job and S. Augustine, and in our 
 own day, of Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens, 
 all seem to me to have been written in reply to 
 some such command as was given to S. Paul himself 
 to whom it was said : "Arise and go into the 
 City and it shall be told thee what thou must do." 
 The writer who has a message to deliver is 
 generally told what it is and he never, I think. 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 261 
 
 fails to deliver it. He does not need motives of 
 vanity or greed — nor is there any question of 
 writing for the fun of the thing — he is told by 
 some force beyond and outside him what he must 
 do, and he does. He is a happy messenger boy 
 sent on his errand by the Great Postmaster, whose 
 messages he delivers. 
 
 There are many names we all instinctively 
 remember of writers who seem to have had mes- 
 sages to deliver to ourselves, and whose messages 
 we have received with thankfulnes, and I trust, 
 humility. It is wonderful sometimes to remember 
 how these messengers have been upheld in their 
 service through dangers and difficulty, and pro- 
 tected against the hatred, malice and uncharitable- 
 ness of the official ecclesiastical post-boys who 
 claim a monopoly of all moral letter carrying. 
 Take as an instance the author of the Book of Job. 
 It has always been a marvel to me how he ran 
 his message through the cordon of the infidelity 
 and ignorance by which the holy places of his time 
 were surrounded, and landed his book safely and 
 soundly into the centre of the literature of the 
 world. I suppose the creed of the author of the 
 Book of Job was, as Froude puts it, "that the sun 
 shines alike on good and evil, and that the victims 
 of a fallen tower are not necessarily greater offen- 
 ders than their neighbours." That was a new 
 message then, and very few believe it in their 
 hearts now. Most of us have a secret notion that 
 riches are the right reward of goodness, and poverty 
 
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262 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 the appropriate punishment of evil. It must have 
 required a stout heart to pen that message when 
 the Book of Job vi^as written, and a fearless heart 
 to face the publication of it among the orthodox 
 literature of the time. 
 
 I do not know if attention has ever been drawn 
 to the point, but the author of the Book of Job has 
 always settled for me the literary righteousness of 
 the happy ending. Job, you know — ^as every hero 
 of every story-book ought to — lives happily ever 
 afterwards. The Lord gave him twice as much 
 as he had before, his friends each gave him a piece 
 of money and a ring of gold, and he finished up 
 with fourteen thousand sheep and six thousand 
 camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen and a thou- 
 sand she-asses, not to mention seven sons and 
 three daughters — "So Job died, being old and full 
 of days." 
 
 Now-a-days, when every story we read or play 
 we see is deliberately formed to leave us more 
 unhappy than it found us, is it not pleasant to 
 those, who like myself do not believe in the dismal 
 Jemmy school of writers, to remember that the 
 author of the Book of Job "went solid" for the 
 happy ending? I have no doubt the dramatic 
 critic of the Babylon Guardian "went solid" for 
 him, and called him a low down, despicable person 
 — but the critics, if any, have disappeared — the- 
 author, too, has disappeared — only his message 
 remains, and will always remain until it is no 
 longer necessary to us. And one reason that it 
 
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WHY BE AN AUTHOR ? 263 
 
 remains is, because he was a big enough author to 
 know that if you write for mankind you must not 
 despise mankind, you must not sneer in your hearts 
 at the very people you are writing for, but you 
 must write for them in a spirit of love and affec- 
 tion, and respect, even to the respecting of their 
 little weaknesses, and you must remember that one 
 of the weaknesses of mankind — if it be a weakness — 
 is the child-like love of a story which begins with 
 "Once upon a time," and ends with everyone 
 living happily ever afterwards. 
 
 I have not answered the question, "Why be an 
 author?" because as I said in the beginning I do 
 not know the answer. In so far as there is an 
 answer, it is given, I think, in the words of the 
 prophet, Thomas Carlyle. He is reassuring him- 
 self that the work of a writer is after all as real and 
 sensible and practical a work as that of any smith 
 or carpenter. " Hast thou not a Brain ? " he says 
 to himself, " furnished with some glimmerings of 
 light ; and three fingers to hold a pen withal ? 
 Never since Aaron's Rod went out of practice, or 
 even before it, was there such a wonder-working 
 Tool : greater than all recorded miracles have been 
 performed by Pens. For strangely in this so 
 solid-seeming World, which nevertheless is in 
 continual restless flux, it is appjointed that Sound 
 to appearance the most fleeting, should be the most 
 continuing of all things. The word is well said 
 to be omnipotent in this world; man, thereby 
 divine, can create as by a Fiat. Awake, arise ! 
 
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264 WHY BE AN AUTHOR? 
 
 Speak forth what is in thee; what God has given 
 thee, what the Devil shall not take away. Higher 
 task than that of Priesthood was allotted to no 
 man : wert thou but the meanest in that sacred 
 Hierarchy, is it not honour enough therein to 
 spend and be spent?" 
 
 That, if any, is the answer to the question, 
 "Why bean Author?" 
 
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265 
 
 WHICH WAY IS THE TIDE? 
 
 " O call back yesterday, bid time return." 
 
 Richard II. iii., 2. 
 
 Dozing in a railway carriage on a journey to 
 Wales I listened dreamily to the faint echoes of 
 an argument between a gentleman of the old school 
 who contended that the country was going to the 
 dogs, and a younger enthusiast who was optimis- 
 tic as to the present and future of our race. It 
 was at Deganwy that the older man, who had, I 
 thought, somewhat the worst of the argument, 
 pointed to the sea and said, with the air of one 
 who uttered a new thought, that it was impossible 
 for those who stood on the shore to say at the 
 moment which way the tide was setting. The 
 younger man accepted the stale simile with the 
 courteous reverence that is the debt we willingly 
 pay to age when we know that we know better. 
 
 A few^ days afterwards a friend handed me a 
 copy of an old newspaper. His wife had discov- 
 ered it with other of its fellows during the Spring 
 cleaning. "The things," she said in her practical 
 way, "were harbouring dirt." But from my point 
 of view they were also harbouring history, and 
 turning over the single sheet it occurred to me 
 that it might help one to a conclusion about the 
 ever interesting problem "which way is the tide? " 
 
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266 WHICH WAY IS THE TIDE? 
 
 The newspaper was, to be exact, the Manchester 
 Guardian, of Saturday, January 24th, 1824, No. 
 143 of Vol. IV. The price was sevenpence or 
 seven and sixpence a quarter if paid in advance, 
 and eight shillings on credit. In the matter of 
 price the tide was clearly with the moderns. There 
 was an excellent wood-cut on the front page, a 
 semi-advertisement— as I took it — of Messrs. 
 David Bellhouse and Sons, of Eagle Quay, Oxford 
 Road, who "resi>ectfully informed the public that 
 they have commenced carriers of timber by water 
 betwixt Liverpool and Manchester" by means of a 
 paddle steam tug "The Eagle," with a funnel, the 
 height of its mast and a huge square sail and two 
 Union Jacks, one floating at the masthead and the 
 other astern, and accompanying rafts of timber 
 following the tug. In another column Fredk. and 
 Chas. Barry, sworn brokers, of Vine Street, 
 America Square, London, advertise that the fine 
 fast sailing new brig, Walworth Castle, 240 tons, 
 A.I. coppered, I. Wrentmore, Commander, will 
 sail for Vera Cruz from London, and had only 
 room for about fifty tons of goods. Certainly in 
 the matter of the carriage of goods at sea and by 
 canal we seem to have made progress. When 
 you come to the matter of passenger traffic, it is 
 interesting to read of "The Telegraph," which 
 leaves every afternoon at 3.30 for London 
 through Macclesfield, Leek, Derby, Leicester, 
 and Northampton to the White Horse, Fetter 
 Lane. In the same column we read of the " North 
 
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WHICH WAY IS THE TIDE? 267 
 
 Briton" and "Robert Burns," which leave every 
 morning at 4.30, and run through Chorley, Pres- 
 ton, Lancaster, Kendal, and Carlisle, to the Buck 
 Inn, Glasgow, and the splendid service of six 
 coaches to Liverpool, starting at intervals from 5 
 a.m. to 5.30 in the evening. This column of coach 
 advertisements is fine picturesque reading, but it 
 is a little old-fashioned by the side of a sixpenny 
 Bradshaw of to-day. 
 
 Again, if we turn to the report of the Salford 
 Epiphany Quarter Sessions, Thomas Starkie, Es- 
 quire, Chairman, we have much to be thankful 
 for in latter-day records. It must be remembered 
 of course that the Sessions of to-day are more 
 frequent, and different Sessions are held in small 
 areas. Still, in January, 1824, there were no less 
 than 240 prisoners, a number far in excess of any- 
 thing we read of to-day. Nearly all the cases 
 seem to have been cases of stealing, and there 
 were few acquittals. The sentences were terrible, 
 and only those who remember sentences given by 
 some of the minor tribunals in comparatively recent 
 years can credit the fact that such sentences were 
 passed by humane and thoughtful men, in what 
 was genuinely believed to be the interest of 
 society. A long list of sentences begins thus : 
 "Transported for life, William Thomas (16), for 
 stealing one pocket handkerchief." Lower down 
 we find that Thomas Kinsey (21), for stealing 
 thirty pieces of cotton cloth, gets off with trans- 
 portation for fourteen years. The number of 
 
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268 WHICH WAY IS THE TIDE? 
 
 young people that are transported for small thefts 
 is astonishing. Martha Jowett (30), for stealing a 
 purse; John Webster (19) and John Drinkwater 
 (24), for stealing a gun; Martha Myers (16), for 
 stealing wearing apparel, and Mary Mason (24), 
 for stealing a purse, are all among the list of those 
 transported for seven years. More aristocratic 
 sinners had a better chance of acquittal, and the 
 receivers of the Birmingham notes stolen from the 
 Balloon coach were respited because the jury 
 found that the receiving "was elsewhere than in 
 the County of Lancaster," and counsel success- 
 fully contended that they must be discharged. 
 Certainly in these matters the tide has flowed 
 towards less crime and more humanity to prisoners 
 since 1824. 
 
 But whereas human institutions seem to have 
 improved, human nature seems to have been much 
 as it is to-day. Dr. Lamert — the predecessor of 
 many twentieth century quacks — is at No. 68 
 Piccadilly, ready to be consulted about and to cure 
 "all diseases incidental to the human frame," and 
 has his testimonials and affidavits as to the success 
 of his treatment almost in the very language in 
 which we can read them to-day. "The greatest 
 discovery in the memory of man is universally 
 allowed to be the celebrated Cordial Balm of Raka- 
 siri," whose name is "blown on the bottle" and 
 whose properties will cure any disease from 
 " headache to consumptions." " Smith's Genuine 
 Leamington Salts are confidently offered to the 
 
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WHICH WAY IS THE TIDE? 269 
 
 public under the recommendation of Dr. Kerr, 
 Northampton," and other eminent medical men, 
 whilst from Mottershead and other chemists you 
 can obtain Black Currant Lozenges "in which are 
 concentrated all thip well-known virtues of that 
 fruit." In this backwater of life the tide seems 
 to be running, if at all, the other way. In the 
 matter of gambling, too, it would be hard to say 
 whether State lotteries, well protected from private 
 imitations, were worse for our morals than free 
 trade in bookmaking, coupled by uncertain and 
 unequally worked police supervision. In the 
 paper before me, " T. Bish, of the Old State 
 Lottery Office, 4 Cornhill, respectfully reminds his 
 best friends the public that the State lottery begins 
 the 19th of next month." There are to be seven 
 ;^20,ooo prizes and many others, and "in the very 
 last Lottery Bish shared and sold 18,564, a prize 
 of ;^20,ooo, 1379 a prize of ;£^ 10,000, and several 
 other capitals." Bish of 1824 was but one evil 
 more or less honest in his dealings and controlled 
 by the State. Bish of 191 1 is a legion of book- 
 makers, more or less dishonest and wholly uncon- 
 trolled. Still I am far from saying things are not 
 better so, and even here could we discern it clearly 
 the tide may be flowing the right way. 
 
 In the interest taken in art and literature it 
 would be hard to say that we do not see signs of 
 earnestness and enthusiasm in this one newspaper of 
 1824 that it would be hard to find in a single copy 
 of a journal of to-day. The people of Liverpool 
 
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270 WHICH WAY IS THE TIDE? 
 
 are sinking sectarian differences and starting a 
 mechanics and apprentices' library, and already 
 have 1,500 volumes. It is true that the whole 
 thing was done very much on the lines of the 
 gospel according to Mr. Barlow and Mr. Fair- 
 child, but it was being done with enthusiasm. The 
 elder Mr. Gladstone sent ten pounds and a letter 
 of "correct ideas," which was read to the meeting, 
 but unfortunately we shall never read the "correct 
 ideas" which were "basketed" by the then sub- 
 editor. The Library was to contain no works of 
 controversial theology or politics, and the Liver- 
 pool Advertiser sees with regret that "Egan's 
 Sporting Anecdotes" was amongst a number of 
 volumes contributed by an American gentleman. 
 The Pharisee, we must admit, is with us to-day, 
 and even in well governed cities sometimes finds 
 a place on Library Committees. But here is 
 another announcement in this wonderful number 
 of the newspaper which lovers of art will read 
 with pious interest. There is to be a General 
 Meeting of the Governors of the Manchester Insti- 
 tution, to consider a report to be submitted with 
 reference to the building and to the general welfare 
 of the Institution." Below this is printed 
 "amounts already advertised ;^i4,6io," and then 
 follows a list of between thirty and forty new 
 hereditary members subscribing forty guineas 
 .apiece. 
 
 A hundred years hence a newspaper of our own 
 day will be unearthed to tell future generations of 
 
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WHICH WAY IS THE TIDE? 271 
 
 a City Council refusing supplies for continuing 
 the great work that these city fathers started with 
 their own monies. Could we to-day from a far 
 richer Manchester and far wealthier citizens obtain 
 hereditary subscribers at forty guineas apiece for 
 a new theatre or opera house or art gallery, if 
 such were required in Manchester? It is at least 
 doubtful. 
 
 Two other announcements that cannot rightly 
 be evidence of human progress, but which may 
 make us worthily envious of the good old days 
 that are gone : — at the Theatre Royal, Mr. Mat- 
 thews is playing in "The Road to Ruin" and the 
 musical farce of "The Bee Hive," and on Wednes- 
 day he will have a benefit with three musical farces 
 including "The Review." It would be worth 
 owning one of Mr. Wells's time machines to 
 take the chance of dropping into Manchester in 
 1824, if only to go to the Royal and see the show. 
 And here is another echo of glad tidings. "We 
 have been informed that the author of Waverley 
 has contracted with his bookseller to furnish him 
 with three novels a year for three years, and that 
 he is to have ten thousand pounds a year for the 
 supply, and that four novels have actually been 
 delivered as per contract." 
 
 When one reads an announcement such as that, 
 and thinks of the joy of unpacking the parcel of 
 books when it arrives, and cutting and reading 
 three new masterpieces a year hot from the press, 
 the novel reader of to-day may be excused if he 
 
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272 WHICH WAY IS THE TIDE? 
 
 sighs over a golden age that will never return. 
 Nevertheless, man cannot live by Waverley novels 
 alone ; and what is this we read a little lower down 
 the column? "Average price of corn from the 
 returns received in the week ending January lo : 
 Wheat, 57s. 4d." 
 Of a truth in essential things the tide has flowed 
 steadily in the right direction since this year of 
 1824, and is not on the turn — as yet. 
 
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273 
 
 KISSING THE BOOK.* 
 
 " The evidence you ahall give to the Court touching the matter 
 in question shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
 but the truth — So help you God." The Oath. 
 
 When the clerk in an English Court of Justice 
 administers the usual oath, he finishes with the 
 words "Kiss the Book," spoken in an imperative 
 mood, and if the witness shows any hesitation in 
 carrying out the unsavoury ceremony, he does his 
 best to compel performance. The imperative mood 
 of the clerk has not, to my thinking, any legal 
 sanction. Kissing the Book is not, and never has 
 been, as far as I can learn, a necessary legal incid- 
 ent of the oath of a Christian witness or juror. 
 Why, then, does the twentieth-century Englishman 
 kiss the Book by way of assuring his fellow-citizens 
 that he is not going to He if he can help it ? The 
 answer is probably akin to the answer given 
 to the question : "Why does a dog walk round 
 and round in a circle before he flings himself upon 
 the hearth-rug?" Naturalists tell us that it is 
 because the wild dog of prehistoric days made his 
 bed in the contemporary grass of the forest after 
 that fashion. Both man and dog are victims of 
 
 *This was published in April 1909. The Oaths Act 1909, 
 9 Edw. vii. c 39 abolished the practice of kissing the book. 
 
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274 KISSING THE BOOK 
 
 hereditary habit. Probably the majority of men 
 and dogs never consider for a moment how they 
 came by the habit. But when, as in the case of 
 kissing the Book, the habit is so insanitary, super- 
 stitious and objectionable, it is worth a few 
 moments to consider its history, origin, and prac- 
 tical purpose, and then to further consider whether 
 mankind is not old enough to give it up, and 
 whether we should not make an effort at reform in 
 the healthy spirit that a growing schoolboy 
 approaches the manly problem of ceasing to bite 
 his nails. 
 
 In a modern English Encyclopaedia of Law it is 
 suggested that the habit of kissing the Book did 
 not become recognised in the English Courts until 
 the middle of the seventeenth century, and that it 
 only became general in the latter part of the 
 eighteenth century. For my part, I cannot sub- 
 scribe to that view. It is true that there is very 
 little direct authority in any ancient law book on 
 practice which enables one to say what the prac- 
 tice was. But that is because the old lawyers did 
 not consider "kissing the Book" essential to the 
 oath, and the practice was so universally followed 
 that there was no need to describe it. 
 
 Shakespeare wrote "The Tempest" about 1613. 
 He gives Stephano, when offering Caliban the 
 bottle, these lines : "Come, swear to this; kiss the 
 book : — I will furnish it anon with new contents : 
 — swear. (Gives Caliban drink. y And a few 
 lines later on Caliban says, "I'll kiss thy foot; 
 
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KISSING THE BOOK. 275 
 
 I'll swear myself thy subject." To me, reading 
 the scene to-day, and bearing in mind that it was a 
 low-comedy scene written to amuse the ground- 
 lings, the conclusion is irresistible that Shakes- 
 peare drew his simile from the common stock of 
 every-day affairs, and that the idea of kissing the 
 Book was as familiar to the average playgoer at 
 the Globe or the Curtain as it is to-day to the 
 pittite at His Majesty's. Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 too, in Women Pleased, 11, vi, have the lines: 
 "Oaths I swear to you .... and kiss the book, 
 too"; and no doubt, if diligent search were made 
 in the Elizabethan writers other such popular refer- 
 ences could be found. 
 
 Samuel Butler, who, we must remember, was 
 clerk to Sir Samuel Luke, of Bedfordshire, and 
 other Puritan Justices of the Peace, and therefore 
 had administered the oath many hundreds of times 
 prior to the Restoration, has the following passage 
 in "Hudibras" concerning a perjurer: — 
 
 " Can make the Gospel serve his turn. 
 And helps him out ; to be forsworn ; 
 When 'tis laid hands upon and kiss'd ; 
 To be betrayed and sold like Christ." 
 
 This is, I think, conclusive that in 1660, in the 
 common form of oath, the practice was for the 
 witness to lay the hand upon the Book and after- 
 wards to kiss it. 
 
 Fleetwood, the Recorder of London, writing to 
 Lord Burghley, describing Serjeant Anderson 
 taking his seat as Chief Justice of the Common 
 
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276 KISSING THE BOOK 
 
 Pleas in 1582, notes that : "Then the clarke of the 
 corone, Powle, did read hym his oathe, and after, 
 he himself read the oathe of the supremacie, and 
 so kist the booke." This, of course, was a cere- 
 monial oath, but it throws light upon the custom. 
 Although the direct references to kissing the Book 
 are few and far between, several interesting speci- 
 mens are given in Notes and Queries from early- 
 Irish records, showing that oaths were taken both 
 upon holy relics and upon the Holy Gospels, cor- 
 poraliter tacta et deosculata, in the time of Henry 
 VI., and that in the reign of Edward I. kissing 
 the Book was an incident of the official oath of the 
 Exchequer. It is possible that a close study of the 
 records of a Catholic country would throw light 
 upon the origin of kissing the Book, which, from 
 a Protestant point of view, is doubtless as super- 
 stitious a custom as kissing relics or the Pope's toe 
 or a crucifix. It was said by John Coitus, the 
 Archbishop of Armagh, in 1397, that the English 
 introduced the custom of swearing on the Holy 
 Evangelists into Ireland, and that in earlier days 
 the Irish resorted to croziers, bells, and other 
 sacred reliquaries to give solemnity to their 
 declarations. That kissing the Book is directly 
 evolved from the superstitious but reverential 
 worship of holy relics can scarcely be doubted. 
 When Harold pledged his solemn oath to William 
 the Conqueror, we learn in the old French 
 Roman de Rou how William piled up a 
 reliquary with holy bodies and put a pall over 
 
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KISSING THE BOOK 277 
 
 them to conceal them, and, having persuaded 
 Harold to take the oath upon these hidden relics, 
 he afterwards showed Harold what he had done, 
 and Heraut forment s'espoanta, Harold was 
 sadly alarmed. Curious, but interesting, is the 
 form of oath here described. Harold first of all 
 SU2 sa main tendi, held his hand over the reli- 
 quary, then he repeated the words of his oath, 
 and then li sainz beisiez kissed the relics. It 
 is almost the same ceremony that we have to-day, 
 and in the same order. The Book is held in the 
 hand, the words of the oath are repeated, and then 
 the Book is kissed. 
 
 The Rev. James Tyler, in his interesting book 
 on oaths, quotes an eleventh-century oath of 
 Ingeltrude, wife of Boston, that she swore to 
 Pope Nicholas, as one of the earliest examples of 
 kissing the Book. It runs thus: "I, Ingeltrude, 
 swear to my Lord Nicholas, the chief Pontiff and 
 universal Pope, by the Father, the Son and the 
 Holy Ghost, and these four Evangelists of Christ 
 our God which I hold in my hands and kiss with 
 my mouth." This early example of the habit 
 shows that kissing the Book was contemporaneous 
 with kissing bells crucifixes and relics, and that 
 the religious origin of the custom is similar. In 
 the Roman Catholic ritual the priest still kisses the 
 Gospel after he has read it, and I have been told 
 that this is done in some Anglican churches. It 
 is curious that the ceremony should survive in the 
 law courts and have died out in most of the 
 
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278 KISSING THE BOOK 
 
 churches. But in these things the average man 
 violently strains at gnats and complacently 
 swallows camels. The Roman ceremony of kiss- 
 ing the Book — which is done reverently by the 
 priest as part of a religious ceremony — would dis- 
 tress a Protestant, who watches the kissing of the 
 same Book in a modern police court without the 
 least sign of moral or mental disturbance. 
 
 Of the ultimate origin of kissing as a sign and 
 pledge of truth much could be written, and it 
 would be an interesting task to trace the history 
 of the ceremonial kiss to its earliest source. The 
 p>erjury of Judas was signed by a kiss, and Jacob 
 deceived his father with the same pledge of faith. 
 So also false, fleeting, perjured Clarence swears to 
 his brother : "In sign of truth I kiss your high- 
 ness' hand." The kiss as a pledge or symbol of 
 truth is probably as old in the world as the 
 degraded ceremony of spitting on a coin for luck, 
 and is what students of folk-lore call a saliva cus- 
 tom, the origin of which seems to have been a 
 desire on the part of the devotee for a union with 
 the divine or holy thing. 
 
 So much for the ancient origin of the kissing 
 portion of this ceremony. It is shown to be of 
 superstitious if not idolatrous origin, and I hoi>e 
 to show beyond doubt that in the view of English 
 lawyers it is not, and never has been, an essential 
 part of the English Christian oath. That is to 
 say, an English Christian has a legal right to take 
 the oath by merely laying his hand upon the Book, 
 
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KISSING THE BOOK 279 
 
 and the act of kissing the Book afterwards is a 
 work of supererogation, and of no legal force or 
 effect whatever. 
 
 No lawyer that I know of has ever suggested 
 that a witness or juror must kiss the Book. Nor, 
 on the contrary, has any lawyer sought to forbid 
 a man to kiss the Book. I take it that any rever- 
 ent and decent use of the Book as a voluntary 
 addition to the oath would be allowed. The 
 general rule of English law is that all witnesses 
 ought to be sworn according to the peculiar cere- 
 monies of their own religion, or in such manner 
 as they deem binding on their consciences. If, 
 therefore, a Christian wishes to kiss the Book he 
 may do so, but the only formality that need be 
 legally observed is the laying of hands upon the 
 Book. As Lord Hale says, "the regular oath as 
 is allowed by the laws of England is Tactis sacro- 
 sanctis Dei Evangeliis." Lord Coke, too, says 
 "It is called a corporal oath because he toucheth 
 with his hand some part of the Holy Scripture." 
 Modern antiquarians have sought to show that the 
 word corporal was used in connection with the 
 ritual of an oath, and referred to the "Corporale 
 Linteum " on which the sacred Elements were 
 placed, and by which they were covered. Some 
 suggest that the word comes from the Romans, 
 and draws a distinction between an oath taken in 
 person and by proxy. But for my part I think 
 Lord Coke knew as much about it as any of his 
 scholarly critics, and is not far wrong when he 
 
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280 KISSING THE BOOK 
 
 says a corporal oath is an oath in which a man 
 touches the Booli. 
 
 This form of oath was practised by the Greeks 
 and Romans, and is of great antiquity. Hannibal, 
 when only nine years old, was called upon by 
 his father to swear eternal enmity to Rome by 
 laying: his hand on the sacred things. Livy, in 
 describing it, uses the words tactis sacris, the 
 very expression that passed into the University and 
 other oaths of modern England. Izaak Walton, 
 in his "Life of Hooker," sets down a bold but 
 affectionate sermon preached to Queen Elizabeth 
 by Archbishop Whitgift, in which he reminds the 
 Queen that at her coronation she had promised to 
 maintain the Church lands, and then he adds : 
 "You yourself have testified openly to God at the 
 holy altar by laying your hands on the Bible, then 
 lying upon it." 
 
 That this is the real form of an English Christian 
 oath, and that kissing the Book is purely a volun- 
 tary ceremony is, I think, made clear in a curious 
 little volume, entitled, "The Clerk of Assize, 
 Judges Marshall and Cryer, being the true Manner 
 and Form of the Proceedings at the Assizes and 
 General Goale Delivery, both in the Crown Court 
 and Nisi Prius Court. By T.W." This was 
 printed for Timothy Twyford in 1660, and sold at 
 his shop within the Inner Temple Gate. It is 
 probably the book Pepys refers to when he notes 
 in his diary: "So away back again home, reading 
 all the way the book of the collection of oaths in 
 
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KISSING THE BOOK 281 
 
 the several offices of this nation which is worth a 
 man's reading." 
 
 I am quite of Pepys' opinion, and a man may 
 read it after two hundred and fifty years with as 
 much profit as Pepys did. It is a quaint little 
 book, and in the preface T. W. writes that "the 
 Government of this nation being now happily 
 brought into its ancient and right course, and that 
 the proceedings in Courts of Justice to be in the 
 King's name, and in Latine and Court-hand (the 
 good old way), I have set forth and published the 
 small Manuel," for the benefit of the new officers 
 who may here "find all such Oaths and Words as 
 are by them to be administered." In the rubric 
 attached to the jurors' oath is the following :— 
 " Note that every juror must lay his hand on the 
 Book and look towards the prisoners." In the 
 same way in the oath to the foreman of the grand 
 jury, T, W. writes: "The foreman must lay his 
 hand on the Book." 
 
 Although it seems probable that kissing the 
 Book was customary at this date, T. W. would, 
 I think, certainly have pointed out that it was 
 necessary if he had so considered it, and the 
 absence of any reference to kissing the Book in a 
 "manuel" published for the very purpose of ex- 
 plaining to the ignorant the correct manner in 
 which to administer the oath, shows that the 
 author did not consider that part of the ceremony 
 a necessary one. The references to the form of 
 oath in old law books are very few. There is a 
 
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282 KISSING THE BOOK 
 
 case reported, in " the good old way " of law 
 French, in Siderfin, an ancient law reporter, in 
 Michaelmas Term, 1657. Dr. Owen, Vice-Chan- 
 cellor of Oxford, refused to take the oath en le 
 usual manner -per laying son main dexter sur le 
 Lieur et per baseront ceo apres. The doctor 
 merely lifted up his right hand, and the jury, 
 being in doubt, asked Chief Justice Glin whether 
 it was really an oath. The Chief Justice said, 
 "that in his judgment he had taken as strong an 
 oath as any other witness, but said if he was to be 
 sworn himself he would lay his right hand upon 
 the Book." There is another curious decision 
 upon the necessity of kissing the Book mentioned 
 in Walker's "History of Independency," in the 
 account of the trial of Colonel Morrice, who held 
 Pontefract Castle for the King. The colonel 
 wished to challenge one Brooke, foreman of the 
 jury, and his professed enemy, but the Court held, 
 probably rightly, that the challenge came too late, 
 as Brooke was sworn already. " Brooke being 
 asked the question whether he were sworn or no, 
 replied 'he had not yet kissed the Book.' The 
 Court answered that was but a ceremony." 
 
 The whole matter was very much discussed in 
 1744, when, in a well-known case, lawyers argued 
 at interminable length as to whether it were pos- 
 sible for a person professing the Gentoo religion 
 to take an oath in an English court. Sir Dudley 
 Rider, the Attorney-General, says in his argument 
 " kissing the Book is no more than a sign, and 
 
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KISSING THE BOOK 283 
 
 not essential to the oath." He seems to think 
 that touching the Book is not essential; but the 
 true view seems to be laid down by Lord Chan- 
 cellor Hardwicke, who says that the outward act 
 is not essential to the oath, but there must be some 
 external act to make it a corporal act. That is to 
 say, that the kind of external act done may be 
 left to the taste and fancy of the person taking the 
 oath. The laying the hand on the Book is con- 
 venient, and is the recognised form, but a salute 
 or act of reverence towards the Book would be 
 sufficient, as Dr. Owen's case seems to show. 
 
 Apart altogether from the forms and ceremonies 
 of oaths, it is surely well worth considering whe- 
 ther the practice of oath-taking in courts of justice 
 should not be discontinued. Although many good 
 and learned men have argued with great ability 
 that a man taking an oath does not imprecate the 
 Divine vengeance upon himself if his evidence is 
 false, yet the whole history and practice of oath- 
 taking is adverse to their amiable and well-mean- 
 ing philosophy. The gist of an oath is, and 
 always has been, that the swearer calls upon the 
 Almighty to inflict punishment upon him here or 
 hereafter if he is false to his oath. In early days 
 oaths were only taken upon solemn occasions, and 
 in a solemn manner. In modern life they have 
 been multiplied, and become so common that little 
 attention is paid to them. Even in this country 
 prior to Elizabeth there was no statute punishing 
 perjury, and the oath was the only safeguard 
 
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284 KISSING THE BOOK 
 
 there was against the offence. The statute then 
 passed shows of what little use the oath was even 
 in those days as a preventive of perjury. But 
 then few people could give testimony in courts, 
 and there may have been some semblance of a 
 religious ceremony in the affair. To-day that is 
 gone, and necessarily gone. 
 
 All writers who have seriously considered the 
 matter condemn the multiplicity of oaths on trivial 
 occasions as taking away from the ceremony any 
 practical value it may have. Selden, in Crom- 
 well's day, says : "Now oaths are so frequent they 
 should be taken like pills, swallowed whole ; if you 
 chew them you will find them bitter; if you think 
 what you swear, 'twill hardly go down." What 
 would he think of our progress to-day in this mat- 
 ter? Defoe, at a later date, lays down the prin- 
 ciple that "the making of oaths familiar is cer- 
 tainly a great piece of indiscretion in a Govern- 
 ment, and multiplying of oaths in many cases is 
 multiplying perjuries." England has been called 
 "a land of oaths," and familiarity with oath-taking 
 has always bred contempt of the oath. In the old 
 days of the Custom House oaths it is said that 
 " there were houses of resort where persons were 
 always to be found ready at a moment's warning 
 to take any oath required ; the signal of the business 
 for "which they were needed was this inquiry: 
 "Any damned soul here?' " 
 
 Without suggesting that there is a great amount 
 of perjury in English courts, for Englishmen res- 
 
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KISSING THE BOOK 285 
 
 pect the law and have a wholesome dread of 
 indictments, we cannot pride ourselves on a 
 system that uses what ought to be a very solemn 
 ceremony on every trumpery occasion. In the 
 County Courts alone a million oaths at least must 
 be taken every year in England. And upon what 
 trifling, foolish matters are men and women in- 
 vited by the State to make a presumptuous prayer 
 to the Almighty to withdraw from them His help 
 and protection if they shall speak falsely. 
 
 Two women, for instance, have a dispute over 
 the fit of a bodice ; each is full of passion and pre- 
 judice, and quite unlikely to speak the truth, the 
 whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Is it fair 
 to ask them to take an oath that they will do so, 
 and, in the language of Chaucer, to swear "in 
 truth, in doom and in righteousness," about so 
 trivial a matter? Or, again, in an arbitration 
 under the Lands Clauses Act, is it fitting that six 
 land surveyors should condemn themselves to 
 eternal penalties when everyone knows that, like the 
 barristers engaged in the arbitrations, they are paid 
 for services of an argumentative character rather 
 than as witnesses of mere fact? As Viscount 
 Sherbrooke said in an excellent essay on the oath, 
 written at the time of the Bradlaugh case, "If you 
 believe in God it is a blasphemy; if not, it is a 
 hollow and shameless cheat." 
 
 Any practical, worldly scheme to prevent per- 
 jury is of more use than a religious oath, and one 
 might quote many historical instances in proof of 
 
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286 KISSING THE BOOK 
 
 this. Two widely apart in circumstance and 
 period will show my meaning. The Ministers 
 of Honorius on a certain occasion swore by 
 the head of the Emperor, a very ancient form 
 of oath. (Joseph, it may be remembered, swore 
 " by the life of Pharaoh," and Helen swore 
 by the head of Menelaus.) The same Ministers, 
 says Gibbon, "were heard to declare that if they 
 had only invoked the name of the Deity they would 
 consult the public safety (by going back on their 
 word), and trust their souls to the mercy of 
 Heaven; but they had touched in solemn ceremony 
 that august seal of majesty and wisdom, and the 
 violation of that oath would expose them to the 
 temporal penalties of sacrilege and rebellion." 
 In like manner I remember a Jew, annoyed by 
 apparent disbelief of his oath, saying before me 
 in a moment of irritation, "I have sworn by Jeho- 
 vah that every word I say is true, but I will go 
 further than that : I will put down ten pounds in 
 cash, and it may be taken away from me if what 
 I say is not true." What sane man will say that 
 the oath, as an oath, is of practical use when for 
 centuries we find instances such as these of the 
 way it is regarded by the person by whom it is 
 taken. But it will be said that if a man pleases 
 he can to-day affirm. Undoubtedly that is so, but 
 the average Englishman has a horror of making 
 a fuss in a public place, especially about a matter 
 of every-day usage. The other day I suggested to 
 a man who was suffering from cancer in the tongue 
 
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KISSING THE BOOK 287 
 
 that he might take the Scotch oath instead of 
 kissing the Book. He did it reluctantly, as I 
 thought. Once, too I made the same sugges- 
 tion to a witness at Quarter Sessions who was in 
 a horrible state of disease, but he preferred to kiss 
 the Book — which was afterwards destroyed. 
 
 The average man is like the average schoolboy, 
 and would any day rather do "the right thing" 
 than to do what is right. All of us have not the 
 courage of Mrs. Maden, who was refused justice in 
 a Lancashire county court as late as 1863 because 
 she honestly stated her views on matters of 
 religion. As Baron Bramwell pointed out in de- 
 ciding the case, the judgment he was giving in- 
 volved the absurdity of ascertaining the fact of 
 Mrs. Maden's disbelief by accepting her own 
 statement of it, and then ruling that she was a 
 person incompetent to speak the truth. Truly no 
 precedent in English law can be over-ruled by its 
 own inherent folly. 
 
 Later on, too, in our own time, we can remember 
 the fate of Mr. Bradlaugh in his struggles with 
 Courts and Parliament, and we can read in history 
 the stories of George Fox and Margaret Fell. The 
 cynic may say that these people made a great deal 
 of fuss about a very unimportant matter ; but, after 
 all, the attitude of George Fox on the question of 
 the oath was a very noble one. 
 
 " Will you take the oath of allegiance, George Fox ?" asks the 
 Judge in the Court of Lancaster Castle. 
 George Fox: "I never took an oath in my life.'' 
 
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288 KISSING THE BOOK 
 
 Judge : " Will you swear or no ?" 
 
 George Fox : " Christ commands we must not swear at all ; 
 and the apostle : and whether I must obey God, or man, judge 
 thee, I put it to thee." 
 
 And having read many volumes of man's 
 answer to George Fox, I am content for my part 
 to think he still has the best of it, and that "Swear 
 not at all" is as much a commandment as "Thou 
 shalt not steal," or "Sell all that thou hast and give 
 to the poor." Whether in a work-a-day world of 
 timid people, who cling to the bad habits of their 
 prehistoric ancestry, it is possible to live up to 
 the ideals of these commandments is quite another 
 matter, and I should be the last in the world to 
 throw stones at others in this matter. 
 
 I must confess that on the few occasions I have 
 given evidence I have dutifully "kissed the Book" 
 like any other witness. Whether I should do so 
 again I am not so sure. Probably literary pride 
 would overcome the natural shyness of my dis- 
 position, and I should propose to read what I have 
 written here to a long-suffering judge, and claim 
 as of right to take the oath "tactis Sanctis," with 
 no ceremony of kissing. 
 
 For the more I see of the ceremony the more it 
 jars upon me as a mere matter of reverence to 
 holy things, and the more I read of the matter 
 the more convinced I am of its superstitious origin. 
 When, too, I feel sure that it is of no practical 
 purpose and is as useless as it is insanitary, I 
 
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KISSING THE BOOK 289 
 
 begin to think that the hour is approaching when 
 we may, without impiety to the shades of our 
 ancestors, adopt some more reasonable ceremony 
 of commencing our evidence in the law courts 
 than that of kissing the Book. 
 
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290 
 
 A WELSH RECTOR OF THE LAST 
 CENTURY. 
 
 "E'en children follow'd with endearing wile. 
 And pluck'd his gown to share the good man's smile." 
 
 — Oliver Goldsmith. 
 
 "I MUST tell you this indeed," as the Reverend 
 John Hopkins, Rector of Rhoscolyn, always began 
 his stories; but I wish I could tell you what I 
 have to tell in his own delightful accent. For 
 the form of words, " I must tell you this indeed," 
 was only, I think, a trick of speech he used in 
 order to give himself time to translate his Welsh 
 thought into the English tongue, and his English 
 tongue, when it spoke, gave something of the 
 rhythm and music of the Welsh to the foreign 
 language he was using. His was a curious Welsh 
 accent, unlike any I have heard. For though he 
 had lived in the pure and bracing atmosphere of 
 Anglesey^ — where, as in all the Welsh counties I 
 have been in, they assure me the most classical 
 Welsh is spoken — yet the rector did not speak 
 with the Anglesey tongue, being a South Wales 
 man himself, a "Hwntw" in the phrase of the 
 North, or "man from beyond." And the beyond 
 he had sprung from was, I believe, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Merthyr. He was a son of the soil 
 and of the school of Lampeter, and — the rectory 
 
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A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 291 
 
 of Rhoscolyn being in the gift of the Bishop of 
 Llandaff — he had, when I first knew him, been sent 
 some twenty years ago to minister on this out-of- 
 way rock, and there he remained to the day of 
 his death. The rector's duties included minister- 
 ing in two distant chapels, Llanfair-yn-Neubwll 
 and Llanfihangel-y-Traeth, which was performed 
 by deputy, but wholly or partly at his cost. In 
 the days of Elizabeth, the whole of the duties were 
 performed for ten pounds five shillings ; nowadays, 
 I believe, the living is worth nearly two hundred 
 pounds. 
 
 But though, as I said, there was the song in 
 his words that there is in all right-spoken Welsh, 
 and the high note lovingly dwelt on towards the 
 end of the sentence, which only a Welshman can 
 produce without effort, yet I am not artist enough 
 to describe to you in words the difference of the 
 rector's speech from that of his neighbours, only, 
 "I must tell you this indeed," that so it was and 
 always is, I am told, with the "men from beyond." 
 
 The Rector of Rhoscolyn was a bachelor, a man 
 of stout build and middle stature. He had the air 
 of a Friar Tuck about him. His eyes were merry 
 and kindly. If he had changed his long rusty 
 black coat and clerical hat for a cassock and cowl, 
 he would have been a monk after Dendy Sadler's 
 own heart. He loved his pipe and his glass, when 
 the day's work was done, and the talk of books 
 and men, with those who had lived in the outer 
 world, was to him the rarest and most delightful 
 
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292 A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 
 
 of pleasures. He was outspoken, simple, and 
 generous, an earnest believer in his creed and 
 his Church, a lover of music, and above and beyond 
 all, a man who attracted to himself animals and 
 little children as if by instinct, and gained their 
 love as only those who suffer them to come without 
 affectation can do. He seemed, as far as I could 
 see, to have no enemies. I think it was a weakness 
 in his character — a Christian weakness — ^that he 
 shrank from causing annoyance or hurt to anyone's 
 susceptibilities. I was his neighbour for some 
 seven summer weeks, and five evenings out of seven 
 we smoked our pipes together, and he poured out 
 to very willing ears the tales of his lonely parish, 
 but I scarce remember an unkindly story among 
 them all. If there was a tale that he feared might 
 give pain in the repetition, it was always prefaced 
 by a smile of great candour, and as he began, "I 
 must tell you this indeed," he placed his fore-finger 
 on his broad nostril and said in a sly merry whisper, 
 with a great rolling of the letter "r" : "This is 
 inter-T-r nos/' That is why some of his best stories 
 cannot be set down here. 
 
 But, to understand the man and his ways, you 
 must know how and where he lived. For the 
 surroundings and the man were as if Nature had 
 designed the one for the other, and he was as much 
 in his place in his rectory, on the side of the 
 Mynydd Rhoscolyn, as the Sarn Cromlech is on 
 the slopes of Cefnamlwch. Rhoscolyn is a typical 
 Anglesey parish. No doubt, when Mona was one 
 
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A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 293 
 
 of the Fortunate Islands, it had a Druid temple 
 and a Druid priest, and if the latter had come 
 back to the site of his temple he would have found 
 little of change. A church, a plas, a post-office, 
 a rectory, a life-boat, and a few farmhouses in 
 sheltered corners ; but the rest is as it always was. 
 The eternal rocks, the restless waves rushing up 
 into the black water caves, the steep cliffs crumbling 
 a little day by day, the cruel, sharp island rocks 
 hidden at high water and marked by the spray and 
 swirl of the tide as it sinks away from the shore, 
 the purple heather and yellow gorse clothing the 
 cliffs to the edge of the sky, the samphire finding 
 a fearful footway between earth and sea. and, above 
 all, the wild bees humming their eternal summer 
 song, and the fresh breezes, always pure, always 
 sweet, always sweeping backwards and forwards 
 across the promontory. Those things were there 
 in the day of the Druids and they are there to-day. 
 And in Roman times Rhoscolyn was of more 
 note than it is now, for some say that the name of 
 it is derived from a Roman column that was placed 
 here to signify the utmost bounds of Roman vic- 
 tories. Whether this be true or not, we have in 
 the name Bodiar — which is still the squire's house 
 — the governor's habitation, and in the neighbour- 
 ing Prieddfod the Praesidii Locus ; or, at least, this 
 is what antiquaries tell us, and it is comfortable to 
 believe these things. Telford and his new road 
 thrust Rhoscolyn further away from civilisation, 
 and the railway brought it no nearer as it sneaked 
 
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294 A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 
 
 into Holyhead, across the Traeth-y-grubyn, behind 
 the shelter of the road embankment. For Holyhead 
 is on an island, and the old main road, with that 
 instinct for the line of least resistance which in 
 old highways tends to such picturesque results, 
 kept south of the wide marsh and crossed the water 
 at Four Mile Bridge — Rhyd-y-bont Pennant calls 
 it, and he rode over it, and knew at least as much 
 of Wales as an ordnance surveyor of to-day. There 
 you can see the most beautiful sunset views of the 
 Holyhead Mountain, at the head of the open water, 
 when the tide is high; and if you turn your back 
 to the town, you will find Rhoscolyn within a 
 couple of miles of Four Mile Bridge and six miles 
 south of Holyhead. 
 
 The rectory stands on the slope of the Rhoscolyn 
 Mountain — ^there are no hills in Wales to speak 
 of, for we speak of them all as mountains. It is 
 four-square, whitewashed, and has a slate roof. 
 There are no trees round it. The only trees in 
 Rhoscolyn are an imported plantation at the plas. 
 There are a few thorn bushes in the hedgerows, 
 but the wind has carved them into finger-posts, 
 pointing consistently eastward, and they scarcely 
 look like trees at all. The rectory is surrounded 
 by substantial farm buildings, for the rector is a 
 farmer. His old mare, Polly, and the low gig 
 are well-known figures in Holyhead market, and 
 he tells you with a farmer's pride that all through 
 the winter his evening supper is oatmeal porridge 
 and milk, the produce of his own farming. He 
 had no relish, he told me, for oatmeal that was 
 
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A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 295 
 
 bought at a shop, for he had a countryman's delight 
 and belief in the home-made. His was a good 
 herd of cows, and he knew each by name, and, 
 like all true Welshmen, could call them to him 
 as he walked through his fields. Different Welsh 
 districts seem to have different calls for their cattle, 
 and the real Nevin call, for instance, is another 
 thing altogether from the Rhoscolyn call. These 
 things are a mystery, and are well understood by 
 the cows themselves, who will shake their heads 
 contemptuously at the Saxon imitator. 
 
 The church is a pretty modern building, with 
 a belfry, standing on an eminence away from other 
 buildings. The post-office where I was living is 
 its nearest neiighbour. There are no streets in 
 Rhoscolyn, nor has it any centre square. It is a 
 parish rather than a village, and its few hundred 
 inhabitants live in scattered farms and cottages. 
 There are generally a few artist visitors, for Rhos- 
 colyn is almost another Sark for the rock-painter, 
 and one or two families find summer homes in the 
 neighbouring farms. There is bathing out of your 
 tent, which you leave on the grass at the edge of 
 the tiny bay, at the mercy of the winds and the 
 little black bullocks that roam about in the flat 
 marshes inland. There are rambles among the 
 cliffs and the heather. An ideal place for a holiday 
 for those who really want a holiday and are content 
 with oxygen and rest 
 
 I think, perhaps, I should have found seven 
 weeks of Rhoscolyn more than enough, if it had 
 
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296 A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 
 
 not been for the rector. I had met him casually 
 on an earlier visit, and looked forward to meeting 
 him again. One evening, soon after I had arrived, 
 I was walking for some distance behind him. He 
 was in company with a Nonconformist minister, 
 and at a turn in the road the two parted very 
 amicably with a kindly shake of the hand. It is 
 not always so in Wales. I ventured, when I got 
 up to the rector, to make some remark to this effect. 
 He did not at that time know whether or not I 
 had any ecclesiastical leanings, and with great 
 simplicity he remarked, "I must tell you this 
 indeed, Judge Parry : we must be charitable, you 
 know, even to Dissenters." I have often wondered 
 whether the phrase would be acceptable to the 
 authorities if it were inserted in the Welsh Church 
 Catechism. As it was uttered and acted upon by 
 the Rector of Rhoscolyn, it could give offence to 
 no one who had the least charity and sense of 
 humour. 
 
 The post-office was between the rectory and the 
 outer world, and so the rector came in that evening, 
 and many another evening afterwards, and I was 
 always glad to hear the heavy scrunch of his boots 
 on the loose gravel in the front of the door. 
 Seated in an armchair with a pipe, he would 
 proceed to discourse at length of the affairs of the 
 world and his parish with great simplicity and 
 humour. 
 
 The recent Disestablishment Bill of Mr. Asquith 
 had troubled him very much. " I must tell you 
 
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A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 297 
 
 this," he said: "it has given rise to a great deal 
 of ill-feeling. Very wicked things have been said 
 indeed, and the pulpit has been used in chapels 
 on the Liberal side." 
 
 I was glad to meet a clergyman of the Church of 
 England in Wales who did not approve of this use 
 of the pulpit, and asked him the kind of thing that 
 had happened. "I must tell you this indeed, 
 though you will hardly believe it," he began. 
 "There was a preacher at the Calvinistic Methodist 
 
 Chapel at Llan , who, on the eve of the election, 
 
 told his congregation this. He said he had once 
 been at a hanging — I suppose," said the rector 
 with a pleasant smile, "that was the hanging of 
 a late member of his congregation, but I do not 
 know — and he went on to say it had been a terrible 
 ordeal for him, and had made him very sick and 
 ill. But he told his congregation quite solemnly 
 that, if he knew any of them on the morrow were 
 going to vote for the Conservatives, he would not 
 only go to his hanging with pleasure, but he would 
 be there to pull his legs." 
 
 I am afraid I was more amused than shocked, 
 for he added quickly, "I must tell you it was 
 terrible, and it sounds very much worse in Welsh 
 indeed." 
 
 I dare say the story had little foundation in fact ; 
 but, like all these election stories, each side firmly 
 believes them for the moment, and as the rector 
 said, "it makes it very difficult not to be angry." 
 
 The bitterness of the election seemed, however, 
 
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298 A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 
 
 to have quite passed away. By nature, the Welsh- 
 man is Conservative, almost to the point of bigotry. 
 This is particularly noticeable in his methods of 
 agriculture, horticulture, and sanitation. When 
 he is emancipated, and, like the Jew and the 
 Catholic, his grievance is gone, it will be very 
 interesting to note his further political develop- 
 ment. 
 
 The rector was a great theologian, and enforced 
 his views with liberal quotations from the Greek 
 Testament, which he could recite in great quantity. 
 He took a simple pride in his knowledge of the 
 Greek, and used it on occasions, I must say, in a 
 somewhat unsportsmanlike manner. He had much 
 sympathy with the Baptists, and was an upholder 
 of the ceremony of total immersion. He told me, 
 more in sorrow than in anger, of the wicked out- 
 burst of a Particular Baptist whom he had 
 encountered in a third-class carriage between Holy- 
 head and Bangor. 
 
 "I must tell you this. Judge Parry — for you 
 know I have a great weakness for the Baptists, 
 and I should see no objection to the ceremony of 
 total immersion being performed in our Church; 
 well, to-day I met an old gentleman, a grave 
 reverend man, with a white beard, in the train, 
 and he asked me what views I had about baptism. 
 Well, I told him, and then I found he wanted to 
 speak very evil things about the ceremony of 
 baptism in the English Church. So I quoted the 
 Greek Testament to him to explain it, and I could 
 
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A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 299 
 
 see he did not understand it, so then I quoted a 
 whole chapter to the fellow in Greek, and he got 
 in a terrible rage and jumped up and shook his 
 fist in my face, and said, ' I will tell you what you 
 are ! You are nothing but a damned sprinkler. 
 That's what you are ! ' Dear me, it was terrible 
 for a reverend old gentleman with a white beard 
 to use such language to a rector, was it not?" 
 
 I asked him if he had ever performed a ceremony 
 of total immersion as a minister of the Church of 
 England, and he told me he had not, but he was 
 very near it on one occasion. "I must tell you 
 this," he continued; " it was when I was curate 
 in Glamorganshire, a fellow, named Evan Jones, 
 came to me and wanted to be baptized. Well, I 
 knew he was a poacher and a bad fellow, and a 
 Presbyterian, but he said he had never been bap- 
 tized, so I said I would baptize him. 
 
 " 'But I want to be baptized like the Baptists 
 do it,' says he. 
 
 " 'Total immersion, you mean,' says I. 'Well, 
 I will do it then for you, if my vicar will let me.' 
 
 " 'Where will you do it? ' asked Evan. 
 
 " 'It would be good to do it at the pond in the 
 middle of the village on a Saturday afternoon, 
 when the school children are there to see, and we 
 can have a hymn,' said I. 
 
 " Well, Evan did not like that idea at all, and 
 wanted me to go up to a pool on the hills by a 
 little bridge on the old mountain road; and I did 
 not care to go up the hills with him alone, for he 
 
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300 A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 
 
 was a bad fellow. But he did not want anyone 
 to come with us, for his wife objected to him being 
 baptized, and he was afraid she might get to hear 
 of it and cause a disturbance. Well, I decided it 
 was my duty to go with the fellow, and I told him 
 I would do so if my vicar would allow me. Now 
 my vicar was a very shrewd, wise old man, and 
 I was very eager to do this if it was for the good 
 of the Church, so I went to him at once. 
 
 " 'What is it, Hopkins, my boy?' he said, look- 
 ing up from a sermon he was writing. 
 
 " 'Evan Jones wants to be baptized.' 
 
 " 'Who is Evan Jones?' asked the vicar. 
 
 " 'He is a poacher and a Presbyterian, and has 
 never been baptized,' I said. 
 
 " 'Well baptize him then,' said the vicar. 
 
 " 'But he wants to be immersed.' 
 
 " 'Oh, indeed,' cries the vicar; 'Well, why not? 
 Immerse him, if you like.' 
 
 " 'But he wants me to go up on the hills and 
 baptize him all alone in the pool by the bridge.' 
 
 " 'What does he want that for?' 
 
 " 'I don't know,' said I. 
 
 " 'But I do,' said the vicar. ' He will just be 
 drowning you in the pool, and we shall have all 
 the Dissenters going about saying Hopkins fell 
 in the pool late at night, when he was coming 
 home drunk, and that will be a very bad thing for 
 the Church. No, I will have none of it at all.' 
 
 " 'But what shall I tell him then?' I asked. 
 
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A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 301 
 
 " 'Tell him to go to — the Presbyterians,' says 
 the vicar, and I knew well what he meant." 
 
 You rarely saw the rector going through the 
 lanes without a few of the children of the parish 
 at his heels. For they all loved him. He stuffed 
 the pockets of his long black coat with sweets, 
 and was never in too much of a hurry to have a 
 chat with his young parishioners and hear the news 
 of their families, and listen to the recital of a text 
 from the Welsh Bible. He knew even more of 
 his Welsh Bible by heart than his Greek Testa- 
 ment and would correct the least slips in the recital. 
 But when the text was said, it was duly rewarded 
 by bull's-eyes and toffee, and a few kindly words 
 of encouragement. I heard that, when he was 
 dying, several of the shyest and wildest lads in 
 the place used to haunt the rectory for news of 
 their friend, and when the end came they would 
 not believe that he was gone until they saw the 
 coffin being carried from the house, and then they 
 burst into a dismal howl of mourning and despair. 
 Certainly, the Rector of Rhoscolyn was a friend 
 to all the children under his care. 
 
 He did not shine as an English preacher, for 
 to him it always remained a foreign language, 
 though he was a great student of the English 
 classics and always seeking to improve his English. 
 Milton was a favourite author. His idea of winter 
 happiness was to draw by the fire after his porridge 
 supper and read Milton. As a Welsh preacher 
 he was sought after and I have heard the chanting 
 
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302 A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 
 
 song of his eloquence through the open windows 
 of the church, as I sat upon the hillside, many 
 fields away, on a still summer evening. He read 
 the service in English fairly well, with some curious 
 tricks of pronunciation, and I remember that we 
 "hurried and strayed from thy ways" rather than 
 "erred," which in these modern days sounded a 
 very reasonable reading. But in a sermon, the 
 foreign tongue with which he wrestled bravely 
 and visibly sometimes threw him, and one still 
 remembers with a smile phrases such as "I must 
 tell you this, said St. Peter," and "Excuse me" — 
 another favourite form of words to gain time for 
 translation — "Excuse me, but we are all mortal." 
 I think, in the use of the last phrase, there was 
 an expression of his constant desire not to give 
 pain, and perhaps a feeling that the well-dressed 
 West-End English congregation that filled his 
 little church from many miles round in the summer 
 holidays were unused to hear these home truths 
 in their own elegant tongue. 
 
 But the great charm of the service was the wel- 
 come he gave you. The Welsh service was ended, 
 and the English service started at half -past eleven. 
 The rector stood at the door of his church in a 
 pre-historic but very square and dignified top-hat, 
 shaking hands with all as they arrived. He used 
 to scandalise the stricter brethren somewhat by 
 his greeting to me. "Good morning Judge Parry, 
 I am glad to see you. I saw you going down to 
 bathe. I was afraid you would not be back in 
 
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A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 303 
 
 time for church. How was the water this morn- 
 ing?" 
 
 I think he was — like many another good man — 
 at his very best in his own home. Many a visitor 
 to Rhoscolyn will have taken part in one of his 
 picnic cricket matches. We played in a field in 
 front of the rectory, from which the grass had been 
 recently mown with scythes. The pitch was of 
 the nature of rough stubble ; but as everyone played 
 between the ages of two and seventy, without 
 restraint of sex, there was, of course, no swift 
 bowling, and the science of the game as we play 
 it in the east was neither wanted nor missed. For 
 there was great excitement and enthusiasm, and 
 the heartiest cheering when the rector thundered 
 across from wicket to wicket, and this was re- 
 doubled when, at length — having been technically 
 out on several occasions — he gave up his bat from 
 sheer fatigue, and hurried off to look after the 
 preparations for his tea. His anxiety that the 
 buns should arrive in time from Holyhead, and 
 that the butter should be put on thickly, and that 
 the tea should be well-brewed, makes his feasts 
 more memorable to me than many an important 
 banquet I have assisted at. 
 
 But in his own study, when two or three were 
 gathered together, he was even more at ease and 
 at home. He had never been a rich man, and had 
 always been a lover of books, and his shelves were 
 crowded with the most unkempt collection of dear 
 friends that ever a book-lover had gathered 
 
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304 A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 
 
 together. Bindings were in many cases conspicu- 
 ous by their absence, and in a series of volumes 
 one or two were often missing. These were 
 bargains he had picked up on some of his rare 
 visits to English towns. The most of his books 
 were theological, and many were Welsh; but the 
 English classics were well represented. There 
 were no decorative books. Favourite volumes were 
 placed lengthways on the shelves instead of up- 
 right, with slips of paper in them, so that the 
 passages he wished to read again could be readily 
 found. He was, I fancy, a slow reader and a 
 thoughtful one. I was often astonished at the 
 passages from Milton and Shakespeare he could 
 quote. These he translated in thought, he told 
 me, into Welsh, to get their real meaning into his 
 mind. 
 
 I have heard say that he was eloquent in 
 extempore prayer, and I can well believe it. He 
 used to be very indignant over the alleged short- 
 comings of some of the Nonconformists in this 
 respect. "I must tell you this indeed," he said: 
 "there are fellows who will repeat the most beautiful 
 passages of our beautiful Prayer-book in a chapel, 
 and pretend to the poor people it is extempore 
 prayer. I wonder what they think ! Do they 
 think God has never heard our Prayer-book at 
 all?" Then he would sjjeak with great respect of 
 the powers of extempore prayer of some of the great 
 Welsh Nonconformist divines, but he always 
 wound up in a spirit of sportsmanlike church- 
 
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A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 305 
 
 manship rather than boasting : " Excuse me, but 
 I think I could pray extempore against any of 
 them." 
 
 One of the sights of the rectory was the kitchen. 
 It was a bright example of cleanliness, comfort, 
 and hospitable warmth. In it was the only musical 
 instrument in the house, an harmonium, and 
 here, of an evening, the rector came to play over 
 the Welsh hymns which he and his servants loved 
 to sing. The rector was always rather in fear of 
 his housekeeper and spoke of her with the affection- 
 ate awe that a capable domestic rightly inspires 
 in a confirmed old bachelor. I have no doubt that 
 his habit of friendliness with all the children of 
 the parish who visited the rectory freely, and at 
 their own moments, made dirt and trouble for 
 the household authorities, whose views of children 
 were more practical than the rector's, and born 
 of a wider and different experience of their ways 
 and habits. 
 
 I remember him telling me, one Sunday evening, 
 a story that, I think, must have been very 
 characteristic of the man and his methods with the 
 little ones about his gate. The story arose quite 
 naturally, and he told it with pleasure, but without 
 the least suspicion that it was in any way a story 
 to his own credit. 
 
 "Did you see that young fellow at the church 
 door this morning with a top-hat and a black coat, 
 and a gold watch-chain?" he asked. 
 
 "I did not notice him," I said. 
 
 u 
 
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3o6 A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 
 
 "Dear me ! I must tell you this," he said. 
 "Have I never told you of 'Schoni-bach* ?" 
 
 The name "Schoni-bach"— the "Sch" was soft, 
 and the "o" moderately long — was, I felt sure, a 
 Welsh equivalent for Little Johnny, and I waited 
 with interest to hear more about him. 
 
 "It is a long time ago," continued the rector, 
 "since Schoni's father died. You know the 
 thatched cottage on the shore ! Well, he lived 
 there. He was the strongest man in the parish, 
 and he could get underneath a cart, a big farm 
 cart, and lift it on his back. On market day, he 
 would go to Holyhead and make bets he could 
 lift a cart, and he would win a lot of money, as 
 much as half-a-crown or three shillings sometimes. 
 But he was not a temperate man, and one day he 
 had been drinking in Holyhead, and they got him 
 to lift a cart, when he slipped, and the cart broke 
 his back, and he died. Well, his widow had three 
 little children, and Schoni-bach was the eldest. 
 And they wanted her to go to the workhouse, 
 but she would not go. And they were very poor, 
 for she was not strong, poor woman, and there 
 was very little work for her to do, and the little 
 children were often starving. They were wild, 
 naked, shy little things, and would never come 
 near anyone. The poor mother had frightened 
 them by telling them that they would be taken 
 to the workhouse, and if a stranger came near the 
 house, they ran up to the mountain-side and hid 
 among the heather. However, one day I found 
 
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A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 307 
 
 little Schoni on the hillside near the rectory. He 
 looked very thin and starved, so I brought him 
 down the hill, and gave him a slice of bread and 
 some butter-milk, and he ate it like a dog, I tell 
 you. I told him to come down again, but I was 
 out next day, and he came with his wet, bare feet 
 into the kitchen, and my housekeeper sent him off, 
 I think. However, the day after, I was writing 
 my sermon, and there came a tap at my own side- 
 door — a very gentle, little tap — and I went to the 
 door, and there was Schoni-bach, a little ragged, 
 yellow-haired urchin with bare feet. So I went 
 round to the kitchen, and got a loaf and some 
 butter-milk, for the housekeeper was in the laundry, 
 and the coast was clear. So I asked him where 
 his little brother and sister were, and he went 
 behind the laurel bush and dragged them out. 
 For there they were in hiding all the time, more 
 like little wild foxes than children. Well, indeed, 
 after that, Schoni-bach would always bring them 
 down and tap at my side door, and he always found 
 out when the housekeeper was away; but how he 
 did it I don't know. He must often have been 
 lying hid about the house, waiting for an hour 
 or more, but he was good friends with my dog, 
 Gelert, who never barked at him at all. But 
 he was very frightened of the housekeeper, who 
 had scolded him for his dirty feet. 
 
 " Well, in the summer, they did not come so 
 often, for there were bilberries and blackberries to 
 gather, and more chances of work and food, and 
 before winter came Schoni's uncle, who was a 
 
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3o8 A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 
 
 farmer in Canada, sent for him and paid his 
 passage out, and a little after that he sent for his 
 mother and the other children, and so they went 
 away, and a very good thing it was, too, for all 
 of them. 
 
 "Well, all this was many years ago. And last 
 Thursday I was writing my sermon, and I heard 
 old Gel start up and growl, and there was quite a 
 gentle little tap at my side-door. I went to the 
 door, for my housekeeper uas out, and there was 
 a big fellow with a top-hat and a black coat, and 
 a gold watch-chain. I knew what he would be 
 after, so I said to him, 'It is no use coming here 
 to sell cattle spice and patent foods and gold 
 watches, for we don't want them, indeed, in 
 Rhoscolyn ! ' 
 
 "The fellow laughed a bit, and said : 'Don't you 
 know me, Mr. Hopkins?' 
 
 " ' Not a bit of it,' I said. 
 
 " ' I have often knocked at this door before," 
 he said. 
 
 " ' I don't believe you, indeed,' I replied. 
 
 " 'Well, it is true,' he said. And he looked 
 straight at me, and I looked at him, and then I 
 began to see him again just a little ragged, yel- 
 low-haired boy, and I cried out : ' It is Schoni- 
 bach ! Little Schoni come back ! ' And I must 
 tell you this, that I was so full of joy to see him 
 again, I could have fallen on his neck and wept. 
 Dear me, but I was glad to see him yet alive!" 
 
 The rector sighed to think of the old days, and 
 
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A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 309 
 
 then went on; "Yes, that was little Schoni outside 
 the church this morning. He was a great fellow 
 among all the young men there, indeed. 'What 
 do you think of Canada, Schoni?' they kept ask- 
 ing him. And all he did was to keep his hands 
 in his pockets and rattle his money. That made 
 them stare, I can tell you. Schoni-bach, with a 
 black coat and a top-hat, and a gold watch-chain, 
 and his hands in his pockets rattling his money. 
 That was something for these fellows who have 
 stayed at home to see, wasn't it? Schoni-bach 
 rattling his money — or, perhaps, it was only a 
 bunch of keys. He was always a smart lad, was 
 Schoni-bach." 
 
 These stories of the old rector's seem very col- 
 ourless without the music of his accent, the con- 
 stant pauses for the whiff of the tobaccOj and the 
 kindly smile that accompanied them. To those 
 who never knew him, any written portrait of the 
 man must give but a faint echo of his personality ; 
 but to the many English visitors, artists, sports- 
 men, and others, who have found their way 
 beyond the Four Mile Bridge to the ultimate corner 
 of Anglesey, and there been made welcome by 
 the rector, these recollections will, I doubt not, 
 call to mind the memory of a kind friend, and a 
 holiday made the brighter by his cheerful hos- 
 pitality. Characters such as his seem to grow 
 rarer day by day. Few men of his energy and 
 enthusiasm would remain nowadays for a quarter 
 of a century in so narrow a sphere, content with 
 
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310 A LAST CENTURY RECTOR 
 
 such a simple life. But the Reverend John Hop- 
 kins was more than content — he was happy. He 
 had sprung from the people, and was by nature 
 a farmer, and to live upon the land was to him to 
 be at home. But, above all things, he was enthu- 
 siastic in his ministry. His qualities are set out 
 without flattery on a bronze tablet that his friends 
 erected in the church he loved so well : 
 
 "A servant of God, in true simplicity of soul, 
 he loved books, music, and happy human faces, 
 but his chief delight was in the services of the 
 Church." 
 
 I have written what I remember of the man, 
 and not of the priest, and though I should have 
 no right to chronicle or criticise his ministerial 
 career, I saw enough of him to understand that 
 the keynote to the cheerfulness and simplicity 
 of his character is sounded in the text that the 
 friends amongst his congregation have chosen for 
 his memorial : 
 
 "Llawenychais pan ddywedent wrthyf : Awn i 
 dy'r Arglwydd." 
 
 " I was glad when they said unto me. Let us 
 go into the house of the Lord." 
 
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WORKS BY HIS HONOUR 
 JUDGE EDWARD ABBOTT PARRY 
 
 Letters From Dorothy Osborne 
 
 to Sir William Temple. 
 
 Crown 8vo. Illustrated. 350 pp. 
 
 Price 6s. 
 
 Presentation Edition, White Vellum, 6s. net. 
 
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Katawampus Kanticles. 
 
 Music by Sir J. F. Bridge, Mus. Doc, Organist 
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