Bardell v. Pickwick

The Judge who was to try the case, Mr. Justice Stareleigh, as is well known, was drawn from Sir Stephen Gaselee, of whose name Stareleigh is a sort of synonym. Serjeant Gaselee was once well known in the prosecutions directed against Radicals and so-called Reformers, but Pickwick has given him a greater reputation. The baiting he received from patriotic advocates may have inflamed his temper and made him irritable. He is described by one author, in a most humorous, if personal fashion. He was “a most particularly short man, and so fat that he seemed all face and waistcoat. He rolled in upon two little turned legs, and having bobbed gravely to the bar who bobbed gravely to him, put his little legs under the table, when all you could see of him was two queer little eyes, one broad, pink face, and somewhere about half of a big and very comical-looking wig.” All through he is shown as arrogant and incapable, and also as making some absurd mistakes.

It will be a surprise to most people to learn that this picture is no more than an amusing caricature, and that the judge was really a person of high character. He is described as “a very painstaking, upright judge, and, in his private capacity, a worthy and benevolent man.” Thus, Mr. Croker, who, however, supplies a sound reason for his being the subject of such satire. “With many admirable qualities both of head and heart, he had made himself a legitimate object of ridicule by his explosions on the Bench.” Under such conditions, the Bar, the suitors and the public had neither the wish nor the opportunity to search for extenuating excuses in his private life. They suffered enough from the “explosions” and that was all that concerned them. He had been fourteen years on the Bench, and, like Stareleigh, belonged to the Common Pleas. He was suffering too from infirmities, particularly from deafness, and appears to have misapprehended statements in the same grotesque fashion that he mistook Winkle’s name.

Boz’s fashion of burlesque, by the way, is happily shown in his treatment of this topic. Another would have been content with “Daniel,” the simple misapprehension. “Nathaniel, sir,” says Winkle. “Daniel – any other name?” “Nathaniel, sir – my lord, I mean.” “Nathaniel Daniel—or Daniel Nathaniel?” “No, my lord, only Nathaniel, not Daniel at all.”

“What did you tell me it was Daniel for, then, sir?”

“I didn’t, my lord.”

“You did, sir. How could I have got Nathaniel in my notes, unless you told me so, sir?”

How admirable is this. The sly satire goes deeper, as Judges, under less gross conditions, have often made this illogical appeal to “my notes.”

Though not gifted with oratorical powers which were likely to gain him employment as a leader, Gaselee’s reputation for legal knowledge soon recommended him to a judge’s place. He was accordingly selected on July 1st, 1824, to fill a vacancy in the Court of Common Pleas. In that Court he sat for nearly fourteen years “with the character of a painstaking judge, and in his private capacity as a worthy and benevolent man.” Thus Mr. Foss, F.S.A.

The reader will have noted the Judge’s severity to poor Groffin, the chemist, who had pleaded the danger of his boy mistaking oxalic acid for Epsom salts. Could it be that the Judge’s experience as the son of a provincial doctor, had shown what class of man was before him? Later, unexpectedly, we learn that the Judge was a steady member for fourteen years of the Royal Humane Society, of which institution he was also a Vice-President.

But we now come to a most extraordinary thing – the result of the young author’s telling and most sarcastic portrait of the irascible little judge. It is curious that Forster, while enumerating various instances of Boz’s severe treatment of living persons, as a sort of chastisement for their defects of manner or character, seems not to have thought of this treatment of the judge – and passes it by. Nor did he notice the prompt result that followed on the sketch. The report of the trial appeared in the March number, 1837 – and we are told, the luckless judge retired from the Bench, shortly after the end of Hilary Term, that is in April or the beginning of May. We may assume that the poor gentleman could not endure the jests of his confrères or the scarcely concealed tittering of the Barristers, all of whom had of course devoured and enjoyed the number. We may say that the learned Sergeant Buzfuz was not likely to be affected in any way by his picture; it may indeed have added to his reputation. I confess to some sympathy for the poor old judge who was thus driven from the Bench. Sam Foote was much given to this sort of personal attack, and made the lives of some of his victims wretched. Boz, however, seems to have felt himself called upon to act thus as public executioner on two occasions only. After the fall of the judge in June, 1837, he wanted a model for a tyrannical magistrate in Oliver Twist– and Mr. Laing, the Hatton Garden Magistrate – a harsh, ferocious personage, at once occurred to him. He wrote accordingly to one of his friends that he wished to be smuggled into his office some morning to study him. This “smuggling” of course meant the placing him where he would not be observed – as a magistrate knowing his “sketches” might recognise him. “I know the man perfectly well” he added. So he did, for he forgot that he had introduced him already in Pickwick as Nupkins – whose talk is exactly alike, in places almost word for word to that of “Mr. Fang.”

These palliations, Boz, a young fellow of three and twenty or so, did not pause to weigh. He only saw a testy, red-faced old fellow with goggle eyes, and seventy-four years old, and past his work. His infirmities already made him incapable of carrying through the business of the Court as the mistake, “Is it Daniel Nathaniel or Nathaniel Daniel?” shows. It is curious, however, that this weakness of misapprehending names is described of another judge, Arabin – a strange grotesque. Theodore Hook gives an amusing specimen in his Gilbert Gurney.

From the general description in the text, it is evident Stareleigh was the prey of gouty affections – which swelled him into grotesque shape, and he found himself unequal to the office. He died two years after his retirement at No. 13, Montagu Place, Russell Square; so that the Judge in Bardell v. Pickwick was living close to Perker the Attorney in the same case. Here we seem to mix up the fictional and the living characters, but this is the law of Pickwick– the confines between the two worlds being quite confused or broken down. The late commander of our forces in China, Sir A. Gaselee, is of this family. It should be remembered, however, when we think of this judge’s frowardness, that judges in those times were dictatorial and carried matters with a high hand. There were often angry conflicts between them, and members of the Bar, and Stareleigh was really not so very tyrannical. He did what so many judges do – took a side from the first, and had decided in his own mind that Mr. Pickwick could not possibly have a case. That curious form of address from the Bench is now no longer heard – “who is with you, Brother Buzfuz?” Judges and sergeants were then common members of the Guild – both wore the “coif.”

THE COURT

When the swearing of the jury is going on, how good, and how natural is the scene with the unfortunate chemist.

‘Answer to your names, gentlemen that you may be sworn,’ said the gentleman in black. ‘Richard Upwitch.’

‘Here,’ said the greengrocer.

‘Thomas Groffin.’

‘Here,’ said the chemist.

‘Take the book, gentlemen. You shall well and truly try – ’

‘I beg this court’s pardon,’ said the chemist, who was a tall, thin, yellow-visaged man, ‘but I hope this court will excuse my attendance.’

‘On what grounds, sir?’ replied Mr. Justice Stareleigh.

‘I have no assistant, my Lord,’ said the chemist.

‘I can’t help that, sir,’ replied Mr. Justice Stareleigh. ‘You should hire one.’

‘I can’t afford it, my Lord,’ rejoined the chemist.

‘Then you ought to be able to afford it, sir,’ said the judge, reddening; for Mr. Justice Stareleigh’s temper bordered on the irritable, and brooked not contradiction.

‘I know I ought to do, if I got on as well as I deserved, but I don’t, my Lord,’ answered the chemist.

‘Swear the gentleman,’ said the judge, peremptorily.

The officer had got no farther than the ‘You shall well and truly try,’ when he was again interrupted by the chemist.

‘I am to be sworn, my Lord, am I?’ said the chemist.

‘Certainly, sir,’ replied the testy little judge.

‘Very well, my Lord,’ replied the chemist in a resigned manner. ‘There’ll be murder before this trial’s over; that’s all. Swear me, if you please, sir;’ and sworn the chemist was, before the judge could find words to utter.

‘I merely wanted to observe, my Lord,’ said the chemist, taking his seat with great deliberation, ‘that I’ve left nobody but an errand boy in my shop. He is a very nice boy, my Lord, but he is not acquainted with drugs; and I know that the prevailing impression on his mind is, that Epsom salts means oxalic acid; and syrup of senna, laudanum. That’s all, my Lord.’ With this, the tall chemist composed himself into a comfortable attitude, and, assuming a pleasant expression of countenance, appeared to have prepared himself for the worst.

One who was born in the same year as Boz, but who was to live for thirty years after him, Henry Russell – composer and singer of “The Ivy Green” – was, when a youth, apprenticed to a chemist, and when about ten years old, that is five years before Bardell v. Pickwick, was left in charge of the shop. He discovered just in time that he had served a customer who had asked for Epsom salts with poison sufficient to kill fifty people. On this he gave up the profession. I have little doubt that he told this story to his friend a dozen years later, and that it was on Boz’s mind when he wrote. Epsom salts was the drug mentioned in both instances.

It must be said that even in our day a defendant for Breach, with Mr. Pickwick’s story and surroundings, would have had small chance with a city jury. They saw before them a benevolent-looking Lothario, of a Quaker-like air, while all the witnesses against him were his three most intimate friends and his own man.

We have, of course, testy judges now, who may be “short” in manner, but I think it can be affirmed that no judge of our day could behave to counsel or witnesses as Mr. Justice Stareleigh did. It is, in fact, now the tone for a judge to affect a sort of polished courtesy, and to impart a sort of light gaiety to the business he is transacting. All asperity and tyrannous rudeness is held to be out of place. Hectoring and bullying of witnesses will not be tolerated. The last exhibition was perhaps that of the late Dr. Kenealy in the Tichborne case.

All the swearing of jurymen before the court, with the intervention of the judge, has been got rid of. The Master of the Court, or Chief Clerk, has a number of interviews – at his public desk – with important individuals, bringing him signed papers. These are excuses of some sort – medical certificates, etc. – with a view to be “let off” serving. Some – most, perhaps – are accepted, some refused. A man of wealth and importance can have little difficulty. Of course this would be denied by the jurists: but, somehow, the great guns contrive not to attend. At ten o’clock this officer proceeds to swear the jury, which is happily accomplished by the time the judge enters.

SERJEANT BUZFUZ

Mr. Pickwick, considering the critical nature of his case, was certainly unfortunate in his solicitor, as well as in the Counsel selected by his solicitors. The other side were particularly favoured in this matter. They had a pushful bustling “wide-awake” firm of solicitors, who let not a point escape. Sergeant Buzfuz was exactly the sort of advocate for the case – masterful, unscrupulous, eloquent, and with a singularly ingenious faculty for putting everything on his client’s side in the best light, and his adversary’s in the worst. He could “tear a witness to pieces,” and turn him inside out. His junior, Skimpin, was glib, ready-armed at all points, and singularly adroit in “making a hare” of any witness who fell into his hands, teste Winkle. He had all the professional devices for dealing with a witness’s answers, and twisting them to his purpose, at his fingers’ ends. He was the Wontner or Ballantyne of his day. Mr. Pickwick’s “bar” was quite outmatched. They were rather a feeble lot, too respectable altogether, and really not familiar with this line of business. Even the judge was against them from the very start, so Mr. Pickwick had very poor chances indeed. All this was due to that old-fashioned and rather incapable “Family Solicitor” Perker.

Serjeant Buzfuz is known the world all over, at least wherever English is known. I myself was once startled in a fashionable West End church to hear a preacher, when emphasizing the value and necessity of Prayer, and the certainty with which it is responded to, use this illustration: “As Serjeant Buzfuz said to Sam Weller, ‘There is little to do and plenty to get.’” Needless to say, an amused smile, if not a titter, passed round the congregation. But it is the Barrister who most appreciates the learned Serjeant. For the topics he argued and his fashion of arguing them, bating a not excessive exaggeration, comes home to them all. Nay, they must have a secret admiration, and fondly think how excellently well such and such topics are put, and how they must have told with a jury.

Buzfuz, it is now well known, was drawn from a leading serjeant of his day, Serjeant Bompas, K.C. Not so long since I was sitting by Bompas’s son, the present Judge Bompas, at dinner, and a most agreeable causeur he was. Not only did Boz sketch the style and fashion of the serjeant, but it is clear that Phiz drew the figure and features.

“I am the youngest son of Serjeant Bompas,” Judge Bompas writes to me, “and have never heard it doubted that the name Buzfuz was taken from my father who was at that time considered a most successful advocate. I think he may have been chosen for the successful advocate because he was so successful: but I have never been able to ascertain that there was any other special resemblance. I do not remember my father myself: he died when I was eight years old. But I am told I am like him in face. He was tall (five feet ten inches) and a large man, very popular, and very excitable in his cases, so that I am told that Counsel against him used to urge him, out of friendship, not to get so agitated. A connection of mine who knew him well, went over to hear Charles Dickens read the Trial Scene, to see if he at all imitated him in voice or manner, but told me that he did not do so at all. I think, therefore, that having chosen his name, as a writer might now that of Sir Charles Russell, he then drew a general type of barrister, as he thought it might be satirised. My father, like myself, was on the Western Circuit and leader of it at the time of his death.”

“I had a curious episode happen to me once. A client wrote to apply to the court to excuse a juror on the ground that he was a chemist and had no assistant who understood the drugs. It was not till I made the application and the Court began to laugh that I remembered the Pickwick Trial. I believe the application was quite bonâ fide, and not at all an imitation of it.” An interesting communication from one who might be styled “Buzfuz’s son;” and, as Judge Bompas alludes to his own likeness to his sire, I may add that the likeness to the portrait in the court scene, is very striking indeed. There is the same fullness of face, the large features. Buzfuz was certainly a counsel of power and ability, and I think lawyers will admit he managed Mrs. Bardell’s case with much adroitness. His speech, besides being a sort of satirical abstract of the unamiable thundering boisterousness addressed to juries in such cases, is one of much ability. He makes the most of every topic that he thought likely to “tell” on a city jury. We laugh heartily at his would-be solemn and pathetic passages, but these are little exaggerated. Buzfuz’s statement is meant to show how counsel, quite legitimately, can bring quite innocent acts to the support of their case by marshalling them in suspicious order, and suggesting that they had a connection with the charge made. Many a client thus becomes as bewildered as Mr. Pickwick was, on seeing his own harmless proceedings assuming quite a guilty complexion.

Serjeant Buzfuz-Bompas died at the age of fifty-three, at his house in Park Road, Regents Park, on February 29th, 1844. He was then, comparatively, a young man, and must have had ability to have attained his position so early. He was called to the Bar in 1815, and began as Serjeant in 1827, in Trinity Term, only a year or so before the famous case was tried.

So dramatic is the whole “Trial” in its action and characters, that it is almost fit for the stage as it stands. There have been a great number of versions, one by the author’s son, Charles “the Younger,” one by Mr. Hollingshead, and so on. It is a favorite piece for charitable benefits, and a number of well-known performers often volunteer to figure as “Gentlemen of the Jury.” Buzfuz has been often played by Mr. Toole, but his too farcical methods scarcely enhanced the part. The easiness of comedy is essential. That sound player Mr. James Fernander is the best Buzfuz that I have seen.

There is a French translation of Pickwick, in which the general spirit of the “Trial” is happily conveyed. Thus Mr. Phunky’s name is given as “M. Finge,” which the little judge mistakes for “M. Singe.” Buzfuz’s speech too is excellent, especially his denouncing the Defendant’s coming with his chops “et son ignoble bassinoire” i.e., warming pan.

THE OPENING SPEECH

Buzfuz’s great speech is one of the happiest parodies in the language. Never was the forensic jargon and treatment so humorously set forth – and this because of the perfect sincerity and earnestness with which it was done. There is none of the far-fetched, impossible exaggeration – the form of burlesque which Theodore Hook or Albert Smith might have attempted. It is, in fact, a real speech, which might have been delivered to a dull-headed audience without much impairing credibility. Apart from this it is a most effective harangue and most plausible statement of the Plaintiff’s case.

A little professional touch, which is highly significant as part of the pantomine, and which Boz made very effective at the reading, was the Serjeant’s dramatic preparation for his speech. “Having whispered to Dodson and conferred briefly with Fogg, he pulled his gown over his shoulders, settled his wig, and addressed the Jury.” Who has not seen this bit of business?

Again, Juries may have noted that the Junior as he rises to speak, mumbles something that is quite inaudible, and which nobody attends to. This is known as “opening the pleadings.”

The ushers again called silence, and Mr. Skimpin proceeded to ‘open the case;’ and the case appeared to have very little inside it when he had opened it, for he kept such particulars as he knew, completely to himself, and sat down, after a lapse of three minutes, leaving the jury in precisely the same advanced stage of wisdom as they were in before.

Serjeant Buzfuz then rose with all the majesty and dignity which the grave nature of the proceedings demanded, and having whispered to Dodson, and conferred briefly with Fogg, pulled his gown over his shoulders, settled his wig, and addressed the jury.

A most delightful legal platitude, as one might call it, is to be found in the opening of the learned Sergeant’s speech. It is a familiar, transparent thing, often used to impose on the Jury. As Boz says of another topic, “Counsel often begins in this way because it makes the jury think what sharp fellows they must be.” “You have heard from my learned friend, gentlemen,” continued the Serjeant, well knowing that from the learned friend alluded to they had heard just nothing at all, “you have heard from my learned friend, that this is an action for Breach of Promise of Marriage, in which the damages are laid at £1,500. But you have not heard from my learned friend, inasmuch as it did not lie within my learned friend’s province to tell you, what are the facts and circumstances of the case.” This rich bit of circumlocution is simple nonsense, in rotund phrase, and meant to suggest the imposing majesty of legal process. The Jury knew perfectly beforehand what they were going to try: but were to be impressed by the magnifying agency of legal processes, and would be awe stricken accordingly. The passage, “inasmuch as it did not lie within my learned friend’s province to tell you,” is a delightful bit of cant. In short, the Jury was thus admitted to the secret legal arena, and into community with the learned friends themselves, and were persuaded that they were very sharp fellows indeed. What pleasant satire is here, on the mellifluous “openings” of Counsel, the putting a romantic gloss on the most prosaic incidents.

A sucking Barrister might well study this speech of Buzfuz as a guide to the conducting of a case, and above all of rather a “shaky” one. Not less excellent is his smooth and plausible account of Mrs. Bardell’s setting up in lodging letting. He really makes it “interesting.” One thinks of some fluttering, helpless young widow, setting out in the battle of life.

He describes the poor innocent lady putting a bill in her window, “and let me entreat the attention of the Jury to the wording of this document – ‘Apartments furnished for a single gentleman!’ Mrs. Bardell’s opinions of the opposite sex, gentlemen, were derived from a long contemplation of the inestimable qualities of her lost husband. She had no fear – she had no distrust – she had no suspicion – all was confidence and reliance. ‘Mr. Bardell,’ said the widow: ‘Mr. Bardell was a man of honour – Mr. Bardell was a man of his word – Mr. Bardell was no deceiver – Mr. Bardell was once a single gentleman himself; to single gentlemen I look for protection, for assistance, for comfort, and for consolation – in single gentlemen I shall perpetually see something to remind me of what Mr. Bardell was, when he first won my young and untried affections; to a single gentleman, then, shall my lodgings be let.’ Actuated by this beautiful and touching impulse (among the best impulses of our imperfect nature, gentlemen), the lonely and desolate widow dried her tears, furnished her first floor, caught her innocent boy to her maternal bosom, and put the bill up in her parlour window. Did it remain there long? No. The serpent was on the watch, the train was laid, the mine was preparing, the sapper and miner was at work. Before the bill had been in the parlour window three days – three days, gentlemen – a being, erect upon two legs, and bearing all the outward semblance of a man, and not of a monster, knocked at the door of Mrs. Bardell’s house. He enquired within.”

Those who attended the Reading will recall the admirable briskness, and more admirable spirit with which Boz delivered the passage “by the evidence of the unimpeachable female whom I shall place in that” – here he brought down his palm with a mighty slap on the desk, and added, after a moment’s pause, “Box before you.” It was that preceding of the stroke that told. So real was it, one fancied oneself listening to some obstreperous counsel. In all true acting – notably on the French boards – the gesture should a little precede the utterance. So the serjeant knew something of art.

When Mr. Pickwick gave an indignant start on hearing himself described as a heartless villain how cleverly does the capable Buzfuz turn the incident to profit.

‘I say systematic villany, gentlemen,’ said Serjeant Buzfuz, looking through Mr. Pickwick, and talking at him; ‘and when I say systematic villiany, let me tell the defendant, Pickwick, if he be in court, as I am informed he is, that it would have been more decent in him, more becoming, in better judgment and in better taste, if he had stopped away. Let me tell him, gentlemen, that any gestures of dissent or disapprobation in which he may indulge in this court will not go down with you; that you will know how to value, and to appreciate them; and let me tell him further, as my lord will tell you, gentlemen, that a counsel, in the discharge of his duty to his client, is neither to be intimidated nor bullied, nor put down; and that any attempt to do either the one or the other, or the first or the last, will recoil on the head of the attempter, be he plaintiff or be he defendant, be his name Pickwick, or Noakes, or Stoakes, or Stiles, or Brown, or Thompson.’