Читать книгу The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) - Baron Henry Hawkins Brampton - Страница 13

I ought to mention, in speaking of my ancestors, that I had a very worthy godfather who was half-brother to my father. He was connected with a family of great respectability at Royston, in Cambridgeshire, and inherited from them a moderate-sized landed estate. A portion of this property was a little farm situate at Brampton, in Huntingdonshire, from which village I took the title I now enjoy.

The farm was left, however, to my aunt for life, who lived to a good old age, as most life-tenants do whom you expect to succeed, and I got nothing until it was of no use to me. When I came into possession I was making a very fair income at the Bar, and the probability is my aunt did me, unconsciously, the greatest kindness she could in keeping me out of it so long.

So much for my ancestors. About the rest of them I know nothing, except an anecdote or two.

There was one more event in my boyhood which I will mention, because it is historic. I assisted my father, on my little pony, in proclaiming William IV. on his accession to the throne, and I mention it with the more pride because, having been created a Peer of the Realm by her late gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, I was qualified to assist as a member of the Privy Council at the accession of his present most gracious Majesty, and had the honour to hear him announce himself as King Edward of England by the title of Edward the Seventh!

Arrived in London, full of good advice and abundance of warnings as to the fate that awaited me, I entered as a pupil the chambers of a famous special pleader of that time, whose name was Frederick Thompson. This was in the year 1841.

I have the right to say I worked very hard there for several months, and studied with all my might; nor was the study distasteful. I was learning something which would be useful to me in after-life. Moreover, being endowed with pluck and energy, I wanted to show that my uncles—for the godfather warned me as well—and my father were false prophets. So I gave myself up entirely to the acquisition of knowledge, this being absolutely necessary if I was to make anything of my future career. "Sink or swim," my father said, was the alternative, so I was resolved to keep my head above water if possible.

After being at Thompson's my allotted period, I next went to Mr. George Butt, a very able and learned man, who afterwards became a Queen's Counsel, but never an advocate. I acquired while with him a good deal of knowledge that was invaluable, became his favourite pupil, and was in due course entrusted with papers of great responsibility, so that in time it came to pass that Mr. Butt would send off my opinions without any correction.

These are small things to talk of now, but they were great then, and the foundation of what, to me, were great things to come, although I little suspected any of them at that time; and as I look back over that long stretch of years, I have the satisfaction of feeling that I did not enter upon my precarious career without doing my utmost to fit myself for it.

In those early days of the century prize-fights were very common in England. The noble art of self-defence was patronized by the greatest in the land. Society loved a prize-fight, and always went to see it, as Society went to any other fashionable function. Magistrates went, and even clerical members of that august body. As magistrates it may have been their duty to discountenance, but as county gentlemen it was their privilege to support, the noble champions of the art, especially when they had their money on the event.

The magistrates, if their presence was ever discovered, said they went to prevent a breach of the peace, but if they were unable to effect this laudable object, they looked on quietly so as to prevent any one committing a breach of the peace on themselves. Their individual heads were worth something.

It was to one of these exhibitions of valour, between Owen Swift and Brighton Bill, that a reverend and sporting magistrate took my brother John, a nice good schoolboy, in a tall hat. He thought it was the right thing that the boy should see the world. I thought also that what was good for John, as prescribed by his clerical adviser, would not be bad for me, so I went as well.

There was a great crowd, of course, but I kept my eye on John's tall chimney-pot hat, knowing that while I saw that I should not lose John.

Presently there was a stir, for Brighton Bill had landed a tremendous blow on the cheek of Owen Swift, and while we were applauding, as is the custom at prize-fights and public dinners, a cunning pickpocket standing immediately behind John pushed the tall chimney-pot hat tightly down over the boy's eyes.

His little hands, which had been in his pockets, went up in a moment to raise his hat, so that he might see the world, the big object he had come to see; and immediately in went two other hands, and out came the savings of John's life—two precious half-crowns, which he had shown to me with great pride that very morning! When he saw the world again the rogue had disappeared.

The famous place for these pugilistic encounters, or one of the famous places, was a spot called Noon's Folly, which was within a very few miles of Royston, where the counties of Cambridge, Suffolk, Essex, and Hertfordshire meet, or most of them. That was the scene of many a stiff encounter; and although, of course, there were both magisterial and police interference when the knowledge reached them that a fight was about to take place within their particular jurisdiction, by some singular misadventure the knowledge never reached them until their worships were returning from the battle. All was over before any official communication was made.

* * * * *

I was entered of the Middle Temple on April 16, 1839, and remained with Mr. Butt until I had kept sufficient terms to qualify me to take out a licence to plead on my own account, which I did at the earliest possible date. This was a great step in my career, although, of course, the licence did not enable me to plead in court, as I was not called to the Bar.

If work came I should now be in a fair way to attain independence. But the prospect was by no means flattering; it was, in fact, all but hopeless while the position of a special pleader was not my ambition. The lookout, in fact, was anything but encouraging from the fifth floor of No. 3 Elm Court—I mean prospectively. It was a region not inaccessible, of course, but it looked on to a landscape of chimney-pots, not one of which was likely to attract attorneys; it was cheap and lonely, dull and miserable—a melancholy altitude beyond the world and its companionship. Had I been of a melancholy disposition I might have gone mad, for hope surely never came to a fifth floor. But there I sat day by day, week by week, and month by month, waiting for the knock that never came, hoping for the business that might never come.

Hundreds of times did I listen with vain expectations to the footsteps on the stairs below—footsteps of attorneys and clerks, messengers and office-boys. I knew them all, and that was all I knew of them. Down below at the bottom flight they tramped, and there they mostly stopped. The ground floor was evidently the best for business; but some came higher, to the first floor. That was a good position; there were plenty of footsteps, and I could tell they were the footsteps of clients. A few came a little higher still, and then my hopes rose with the footsteps. Now some one had come up to the third floor: he stopped! Alas! there was the knock, one single hard knock: it was a junior clerk. The sound came all too soon for me, and I turned from my own door to my little den and looked out of my window up into the sky, from whence it seemed I might just as well expect a brief as from the regions below.

This was not quite true. On another occasion some bold adventurer ascended with asthmatical energy to the fourth floor, and I thought as I heard him wheeze he would never have breath enough to get down again, and wondered if the good-natured attorneys kept these wheezy old gentlemen out of charity. But it was rare indeed that the climber, unless it was the rent collector, reached that floor.

The fifth landing was too remote for the postman, for I never got a letter—at least so it seemed; and no squirrel watching from the topmost bough of the tallest pine could be more lonely than I.

At last I thought a step had passed even the fourth landing, and was approaching mine; but I would not think too fast, and damped my hopes a little on purpose lest they should burn too brightly and too fast. I was not mistaken: there was a footstep on my landing, and I listened for the one heavy knock. It seemed to me I waited about an hour and a half, judging by the palpitations of my heart, and wished the man had knocked as vigorously. But I was rewarded: the knocker fell, and as my boy was away with the toothache, I opened the door myself. He was the same wheezy man I had heard below some time before; and I really seem to have liked asthmatical people ever since—except when I became a judge and they disturbed me in court.

"Papers!"

That is enough to say to any one who understands the situation. You may be sure I gave them my best attention, that they were finished promptly, and, as I hoped, in the best style. If I had required any additional incentive to keep me to my daily task of watching, this would have been sufficient; but I wanted none. I knew that my whole future depended upon it, and there I was from ten in the morning till ten at night.

My first fee was small, but it was the biggest fee I ever had. It was 10s. 6d. I was only a special pleader, and with some papers our fees were even less; we only had to draw pleadings, not to open them in court—that comes after you are called to the Bar. Drawing them means really drawing the points of the case for counsel, and opening them means a gabbling epitome of them to the jury, which no jury in this world ever yet understood or ever will.

This little matter was the forerunner of others, and by little and little I steadily went on, earning a few shillings now and a few shillings then, but, best of all, becoming known little by little here and there.

I was aware that some knowledge of the world would be necessary for me when I once got into it by way of business as an advocate, so I came to the conclusion that it would be well to commence that branch of study as soon as I closed the other for the day—or rather for the night.

I had not far to go to school, only to the Haymarket and its delightful purlieus; and there were the best teachers to be found in the world, and the most recondite studies. For all these I kept, as the great politicians say, an open mind, and learned a great deal which stood me in good stead in after-life.

It is not necessary, I suppose, in writing these reminiscences, to describe all I saw—at least I hope not. Manners have so changed since that time that people who have no imagination would not believe me, and those who have would imagine I was exaggerating. So I must skip this portion of my youthful studies, merely saying that I saw nearly, if not quite, all the life which was to be seen in London; and I am sure I am not exaggerating when I say that that would nearly fill an octavo volume of itself. There is so much to be seen in London, as a dear old lady I used to drink tea with once told me.

But she did not know more than I, for she had never seen the night-houses, gambling hells, and other places of amusement that at that time were open all night long, nor had she seen the ghastly faces of the morning. I attribute my escaping the consequences of all these allurements to the beautiful influence which my mother in early life exercised over me, as I attribute my knowledge of them to the removal of the restraint with which my earlier years had been curbed.

My mother died before I came to London, but undoubtedly her influence was with me, although I broke loose, as a matter of course, from all paternal control.

But I was never a "man about town." To be that you must have plenty of money or none at all, and in either case you are an object to avoid. I had, nevertheless, a great many pleasures that a young man from the country can enjoy. I loved horse-racing, cricket, and the prize-ring. It was not because pugilism was a fashionable amusement in those days that I attended a "set-to" occasionally; I went on my own account, not to ape people in the fashionable world, and enjoyed it on my own account, not because they liked it, but because I did.

My rent at this time of my entrance into the fashionable world was £12 a year; my laundress, perhaps, a little less. She earned it by coming up the stairs; but she was a good old soul. I remembered her long years after, and always with gratitude for her many kindnesses in those gloomy days. Her name was Hannem.

Of course, I had to buy the necessary books for my professional use, coals, and other things, and after paying all these I had to live on the narrow margin of my £100 a year.

This recollection is very pleasing. I never got into debt, and never wanted; but I had to be frugal and avoid every unnecessary expense.

But the time at last came when I was no longer to rest on my lonely perch at the top of Elm Court. I had kept my terms, and was duly called to the Bar of the Middle Temple on May 3, 1843.

Just fifty years after, when I was a judge, and almost the Senior Bencher of my Inn, our illustrious Sovereign, then Prince of Wales, who is also a Bencher of the Middle Temple, favoured us with his presence at dinner, and did me the honour to propose my health in a gracious speech. On returning thanks for this kindness, I told the crowded audience of my jubilee, and pointed out the spot where fifty years before I had held my call party.