A Book About Lawyers. John Cordy Jeaffreson

laughter blinds no one to the genuine affection and wholesome honesty of the young husband and wife. One has reason to wish that marriages such as theirs were more frequent amongst lawyers in these ostentatious days. At present the young barrister, who marries before he has a clear fifteen hundred a year, is charged with reckless imprudence; and unless his wife is a woman of fortune, or he is able to settle a heavy sum of money upon her, his anxious friends terrify him with pictures of want and sorrow stored up for him in the future. Society will not let him live after the fashion of 'juniors' eighty or a hundred years since. He must maintain two establishments—his chambers for business, his house in the west-end of town for his wife. Moreover, the lady must have a brougham and liberal pin money, or four or five domestic servants and a drawing-room well furnished with works of art and costly decorations. They must give state dinners and three or four routs every season; and in all other matters their mode of life must be, or seem to be, that of the upper ten thousand. Either they must live in this style, or be pushed aside and forgotten. The choice for them lies between very expensive society or none at all—that is to say, none at all amongst the rising members of the legal profession, and the sort of people with whom young barristers, from prudential motives, wish to form acquaintance. Doubtless many a fair reader of this page is already smiling at the writer's simplicity, and is saying to herself, "Here is one of the advocates of marriage on three hundred a year."

      But this writer is not going to advocate marriage on that or any other particular sum. From personal experience he knows what comfort a married man may have for an outlay of three or four hundred per annum; and from personal observation he knows what privations and ignominious poverty are endured by unmarried men who spend twice the larger of those sums on chamber-and-club life. He knows that there are men who shiver at the bare thought of losing caste by marriage with a portionless girl, whilst they are complacently leading the life which, in nine cases out of ten, terminates in the worst form of social degradation—matrimony where the husband blushes for his wife's early history, and dares not tell his own children the date of his marriage certificate. If it were his pleasure he could speak sad truths about the bachelor of modest income, who is rich enough to keep his name on the books of two fashionable clubs, to live in a good quarter of London, and to visit annually continental capitals, but far too poor to think of incurring the responsibilities of marriage. It could be demonstrated that in a great majority of instances this wary, prudent, selfish gentleman, instead of being the social success which many simple people believe him, is a signal and most miserable failure; that instead of pursuing a career of various enjoyments and keen excitements, he is a martyr to ennui, bored by the monotony of an objectless existence, utterly weary of the splendid clubs, in which he is presumed by unsophisticated admirers to find an ample compensation for want of household comfort and domestic affection: that as soon as he has numbered forty years, he finds the roll of his friends and cordial acquaintances diminish, and is compelled to retire before younger men, who snatch from his grasp the prizes of social rivalry; and that, as each succeeding lustre passes, he finds the chain of his secret disappointments and embarrassments more galling and heavy.

      It is not a question of marriage on three hundred a year without prospects, but a marriage on five or six hundred a year with good expectations. In the Inns of Court there are, at the present time, scores of clever, industrious fine-hearted gentlemen who have sure incomes of three or four hundred pounds per annum. In Tyburnia and Kensington there is an equal number of young gentlewomen with incomes varying between £150 and £300 a year. These men and women see each other at balls and dinners, in the parks and at theatres; the ladies would not dislike to be wives, the men are longing to be husbands. But that hideous tyrant, social opinion, bids them avoid marriage.

      In Lord Eldon's time the case was otherwise. Society saw nothing singular or reprehensible in his conduct when he brought Bessie to live in the little house in Cursitor Street. No one sneered at the young law-student, whose home was a little den in a dingy thoroughfare. At a later date, the rising junior, whose wife lived over his business chambers in Carey Street, was the object of no unkind criticism because his domestic arrangements were inexpensive, and almost frugal. Had his success been tardy instead of quick and decisive, and had circumstances compelled him to live under the shadow of Lincoln's Inn wall for thirty years on a narrow income, he would not on that account have suffered from a single disparaging criticism. Amongst his neighbors in adjacent streets, and within the boundaries of his Inn, he would have found society for himself and wife, and playmates for his children. Good fortune coming in full strong flood, he was not compelled to greatly change his plan of existence. Even in those days, when costly ostentation characterized aristocratic society—he was permitted to live modestly—and lay the foundation of that great property which he transmitted to his ennobled descendants.

      When satire has done its worst with the miserly propensities of the great lawyer and his wife, their long familiar intercourse exhibits a wealth of fine human affection and genuine poetry which sarcasm cannot touch. Often as he had occasion to regret Lady Eldon's peculiarities—the stinginess which made her grudge the money paid for a fish or a basket of fruit; the nervous repugnance to society, which greatly diminished his popularity; and the taste for solitude and silence which marked her painfully towards the close of her life—the Chancellor never even hinted to her his dissatisfaction. When their eldest daughter, following her mother's example, married without the permission of her parents, it was suggested to Lord Eldon that her ladyship ought to take better care of her younger daughter, Lady Frances, and entering society should play the part of a vigilant chaperon. The counsel was judicious; but the Chancellor declined to act upon it, saying—"When she was young and beautiful, she gave up everything for me. What she is, I have made her; and I cannot now bring myself to compel her inclinations. Our marriage prevented her mixing in society when it afforded her pleasure; it appears to give pain now, and why should I interpose?" In his old age, when she was dead, he visited his estate in Durham, but could not find heart to cross the Tyne bridge and look at the old house from which he took her in the bloom and tenderness of her girlhood. An urgent invitation to visit Newcastle drew from him the reply—"I know my fellow-townsmen complain of my not coming to see them; but how can I pass that bridge?" After a pause, he added, "Poor Bessie! if ever there was an angel on earth she was one. The only reparation which one man can make to another for running away with his daughter, is to be exemplary in his conduct towards her."

      In pecuniary affairs not less prudent than his brother, Lord Stowell in matters of sentiment was capable of indiscretion. In the long list of legal loves there are not many episodes more truly ridiculous than the story of the older Scott's second marriage. On April 10, 1813, the decorous Sir William Scott, and Louisa Catharine, widow of John, Marquis of Sligo, and daughter of Admiral Lord Howe, were united in the bonds of holy wedlock, to the infinite amusement of the world of fashion, and to the speedy humiliation of the bridegroom. So incensed was Lord Eldon at his brother's folly, that he refused to appear at the wedding; and certainly the Chancellor's displeasure was not without reason, for the notorious absurdity of the affair brought ridicule on the whole of the Scott family connexion. The happy couple met for the first time in the Old Bailey, when Sir William Scott and Lord Ellenborough presided at the trial of the marchioness's son, the young Marquis of Sligo, who had incurred the anger of the law by luring into his yacht, in Mediterranean waters, two of the king's seamen. Throughout the hearing of that cause célèbre, the marchioness sat in the fetid court of the Old Bailey, in the hope that her presence might rouse amongst the jury or in the bench feelings favorable to her son. This hope was disappointed. The verdict having been given against the young peer, he was ordered to pay a fine of £5000, and undergo four months' incarceration in Newgate, and—worse than fine and imprisonment—was compelled to listen to a parental address from Sir William Scott on the duties and responsibilities of men of high station. Either under the influence of sincere admiration for the judge, or impelled by desire for vengeance on the man who had presumed to lecture her son in a court of justice, the marchioness wrote a few hasty words of thanks to Sir William Scott for his salutary exhortation to her boy. She even went so far as to say that she wished the erring marquis could always have so wise a counsellor at his side. This communication was made upon a slip of paper, which the writer sent to the judge by an usher of the court. Sir William read the note as he sat on the bench, and having looked towards the fair scribe, he received from her a glance and smile that were fruitful of much misery to him. Within four months the courteous Sir