The Reminiscences of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) Part 1

The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton).

by Henry Hawkins Brampton.

PREFACE.

As a preface I wish to say only a very few words--namely, that but for the great pressure put upon me I should not have ventured to write, or allowed to be published, any reminiscences of mine, being very conscious that I could not offer to the public any words of my own that would be worth the time it would occupy to read them; but the whole merit of this volume is due to my very old friend Richard Harris, K.C., who has already shown, by his skill and marvellously attractive composition in reproducing my efforts in the Tichborne case, what interest may be imparted to an otherwise very dry subject.

In that work[A] he has done me much more than justice, and for this I thank him, with many good wishes for the success of this his new work, and with many thanks to those of the public who may take and feel an interest in such of my imperfect reminiscences as are here recorded.

BRAMPTON.

HARROGATE, _August 17, 1904_.

[Footnote A: "Ill.u.s.trations in Advocacy" (fourth edition, Stevens and Haynes).]

CHAPTER I.

AT BEDFORD SCHOOL.

My father was a solicitor at Hitchin, and much esteemed in the county of Hertford. He was also agent for many of the county families, with whom he was in friendly intercourse. My mother was the daughter of the respected Clerk of the Peace for Bedfordshire, a position of good influence, which might be, and is occasionally, of great a.s.sistance to a young man commencing his career at the Bar. To me it was of no importance whatever.

My father had a large family, sons and daughters, of whom only two are living. I mention this as an explanation of my early position when straitened circ.u.mstances compelled a most rigid economy. During no part of my educational career, either at school or in the Inn of Court to which I belonged, had I anything but a small allowance from my father. My life at home is as little worth telling as that of any other in the same social position, and I pa.s.s it by, merely stating that, after proper preparation, I was packed off to Bedford School for a few years.

My life there would have been an uninteresting blank but for a little circ.u.mstance which will presently be related. It was the custom then at this very excellent foundation to give mainly a cla.s.sical education, and doubtless I attained a very fair proficiency in my studies. Had I cultivated them, however, with the same a.s.siduity as I did many of my pursuits in after-life, I might have attained some eminence as a professor of the dead languages, and arrived at the dignity of one of the masters of Bedford.

However, if I had any ambition at that time, it was not to become a professor of dead languages, but to see what I could make of my own.

It is of no interest to any one that I had great numbers of peg-tops and marbles, or learnt to be a pretty good swimmer in the Ouse. There was a greater swim prepared for me in after-life, and that is the only reason for my referring to it.

In the year 1830 Bedford Schoolhouse occupied the whole of one side of St. Paul's Square, which faced the High Street. From that part of the building you commanded a view of the square and the beautiful country around. The sleepy old bridge spanned the still more sleepy river, over which lay the quiet road leading to the little village of Willshampstead, and it came along through the old square where the schoolhouse was.

It was market day in Bedford, and there was the usual concourse of buyers and sellers, tramps and country people in their Sunday gear; farmers and their wives, with itinerant venders of every saleable and unsaleable article from far and near.

I was in the upper schoolroom with another boy, and, looking out of the window, had an opportunity of watching all that took place for a considerable s.p.a.ce. There was a good deal of merriment to divert our attention, for there were clowns and merry-andrews pa.s.sing along the highroad, with singlestick players, Punch and Judy shows, and other public amusers. Every one knows that the smallest event in the country will cause a good deal of excitement, even if it be so small an occurrence as a runaway horse.

There was, however, no runaway horse to-day; but suddenly a great silence came over the people, and a sullen gloom that made a great despondency in my mind without my knowing why. Public solemnity affects even the youngest of us. At all events, it affected me.

Presently--and deeply is the event impressed on my mind after seventy years of a busy life, full of almost every conceivable event--I saw, emerging from a bystreet that led from Bedford Jail, and coming along through the square and near the window where I was standing, a common farm cart, drawn by a horse which was led by a labouring man. As I was above the crowd on the first floor I could see there was a layer of straw in the cart at the bottom, and above it, tumbled into a rough heap, as though carelessly thrown in, a quant.i.ty of the same; and I could see also from all the surrounding circ.u.mstances, especially the pallid faces of the crowd, that there was something sad about it all.

The horse moved slowly along, at almost a snail's pace, while behind walked a poor, sad couple with their heads bowed down, and each with a hand on the tail-board of the cart. They were evidently overwhelmed with grief.

Happily we have no such processions now; even Justice itself has been humanized to some extent, and the law's cruel severity mitigated. The cart contained the rude sh.e.l.l into which had been laid the body of this poor man and woman's only son, _a youth of seventeen, hanged that morning at Bedford Jail for setting fire to a stack of corn_!

He was now being conveyed to the village of Willshampstead, six miles from Bedford, there to be laid in the little churchyard where in his childhood he had played. He was the son of very respectable labouring people of Willshampstead; had been misled into committing what was more a boyish freak than a crime, and was hanged. That was all the authorities could do for him, and they did it. This is the remotest and the saddest reminiscence of my life, and the only sad one I mean to relate, if I can avoid it.

But years afterwards, when I became a judge, this picture, photographed on my mind as it was, gave me many a lesson which I believe was turned to good account on the judicial bench. It was mainly useful in impressing on my mind the great consideration of the surrounding circ.u.mstances of every crime, the _degree_ of guilt in the criminal, and the difference in the degrees of the same kind of offence. About this I shall say something hereafter.

I remained at this school until I had acquired all the learning my father thought necessary for my future position, as he intended it to be, and much more than I thought necessary, unless I was to get my living by teaching Latin and Greek.

In due course I was articled to my worthy uncle, the Clerk of the Peace, and, had I possessed my present experience, should have known that it was a diplomatic move of the most profound policy to enable me, if anything happened to him, to succeed to that important dignity.

Had I been ambitious of wealth, there were other offices which my uncle held, to the great satisfaction of the county as well as his own. These would naturally descend to me, and I should have been in a position of great prominence in the county, with a very respectable income.

But I hated the drudgery of an attorney's office. In six months I saw enough of its doc.u.mentary evidence to convince me that I hated it from my heart, and that nothing on earth would induce me to become a solicitor. I took good care, meek as I was, to show this determination to my friends. It was my only chance of escape. But while remaining there it was my duty to work, however hateful the task, and I did so.

Even this, to me, most odious business had its advantages in after-life. I attended one morning with my uncle the Petty Sessions of Hertford, where, no doubt, I was supposed to enlarge my knowledge of sessions practice; it certainly did so, for I knew nothing, and received a lesson, which is not only my earliest recollection, but my first experience in _Advocacy_.

At this Hertford Petty Sessional Division the chairman was a somewhat pompous clergyman, but very devoted to his duties. He was strict in his application of the law when he knew it, but it was fortunate for some delinquents, although unfortunate for others, that he did not always possess sufficient knowledge to act independently of his clerk's opinion, while the clerk's opinion did not always depend upon his knowledge of law.

An impudent vagabond was brought up before this clergyman charged with a violent and unprovoked a.s.sault on a man in a public-house. He was said to have gone into the room where the prosecutor was, and to have taken up his jug of ale and appropriated the contents to his own use without the owner's consent. The prosecutor, annoyed at the outrage, rose, and was immediately knocked down by the interloper, and in falling cut his head.

There was to my untutored mind no defence, but the accused was a man of remarkable cunning and not a little ingenuity. He knew the magistrate well, and his special weakness, which was vanity. By his knowledge the man completely outwitted his adversary, and shifted the charge from himself on to the prosecutor's shoulders. The curious thing was he cross-examined the reverend chairman instead of the witness, which I thought a master-stroke of policy, if not advocacy.

"You know this public-house, sir?" he asked.

The reverend gentleman nodded.

"I put it to yourself, sir, as a gentleman: how would you have liked it if another man had come to your house and drunk your beer?"

There was no necessity to give an answer to this question. It answered itself. The reverend gentleman would not have liked it, and, seeing this, the accused continued,--

"Well, your honour, this here man comes and takes my beer.

"'Halloa, Jack!' I ses, 'no more o' that.'

"'No,' he says, 'there's no more; it's all gone.'

"'Stop a bit," says I; 'that wun't do, nuther.'

"'That wun't do?' he says. 'Wool that do?' and he ups with the jug and hits me a smack in the mouth, and down I goes clean on the floor; he then falls atop of me and right on the pot he held in his hand, which broke with his fall, bein' a earthenware jug, and cuts his head, and 'Sarve him right,' I hopes your honour'll say; and the proof of which statement is, sir, that there's the cut o' that jug on his forehead plainly visible for anybody to see at this present moment. Now, sir, what next? for there's summat else.

"'Jack,' says I, 'I'll summon you for this a.s.sault.'

"'Yes,' he says, 'and so'll I; I'll have ee afore his Worship Mr.

Knox.'

"'Afore his Worship Mr. Knox?' says I. 'And why not afore his Worship the Rev. Mr. Hull? He's the gentleman for my money--a real gentleman as'll hear reason, and do justice atween man and man.'

"'What!' says Jack, with an oath that I ain't going to repeat afore a clergyman--'what!' he says, 'a d--d old dromedary like that!'

"'Dromedary, sir,' meaning your worship! Did anybody ever hear such wile words against a clergyman, let alone a magistrate, sir? And he then has the cheek to come here and ask you to believe him. 'Old dromedary!' says he--' a d--d old dromedary.'"

Mr. Hull, the reverend chairman, was naturally very indignant, not that he minded on his own account, as he said--that was of no consequence--but a man who could use such foul language was not to be believed on his oath. He therefore dismissed the summons, and ordered the prosecutor to pay the costs.

I think both my father and uncle still nursed the idea that I was to become the good old-fashioned county attorney, for they perpetually rang in my ears the praises of "our Bench" and "our chairman," out Bench being by far the biggest thing in Hertfordshire, except when a couple of notables came down to contest the heavy-weight championship or some other n.o.ble prize.