Of course the notes of the preceding paragraphs of this chapter are but suggestions as to the mode in which the artistic reader must call up the life of the old lawyers. Encouraging him to realize the manners and usages of several centuries, not of a single generation, they do not attempt to entertain the student with details. It is needless to say that the young couple did not use hackney-coaches in times prior to the introduction of those serviceable vehicles, and that until sedans were invented my lady never used them.
It is possible, indeed it is certain, that married ladies living in chambers occasionally had for neighbors on the same staircase women whom they regarded with abhorrence. Sometimes it happened that a dissolute barrister introduced to his rooms a woman more beautiful than virtuous, whom he had not married, though he called her his wife. People can no more choose their neighbors in a house broken up into sets of chambers, than they can choose them in the street. But the cases where ladies were daily liable to meet an offensive neighbor on their common staircase were comparatively rare; and when the annoyance actually occurred, the discipline of the Inn afforded a remedy.
Uncleanness too often lurked within the camp, but it veiled its face; and though in rare cases the error and sin of a powerful lawyer may have been notorious, the preccant man was careful to surround himself with such an appearance of respectability that society should easily feign ignorance of his offence. An Elizabethan distich—familiar to all barristers, but too rudely worded for insertion in this page—informs us that in the sixteenth century Gray's Inn had an unenviable notoriety amongst legal hospices for the shamelessness of its female inmates. But the pungent lines must be regarded as a satire aimed at certain exceptional members, rather than as a vivacious picture of the general tone of morals in the society. Anyhow the fact that Gray's Inn[1] was alone designated as a home for infamy—whilst the Inner Temple was pointed to as the hospice most popular with rich men, the Middle Temple as the society frequented by Templars of narrow means, and Lincoln's Inn as the abode of gentlemen—is, of itself, a proof that the pervading manners of the last three institutions were outwardly decorous. Under the least favorable circumstances, a barrister's wife living in chambers, within or near Lincoln's Inn, or the Temple, during Charles II.'s reign, fared as well in this respect as she would have done had Fortune made her a lady-in-waiting at Whitehall.
A good story is told of certain visits paid to William Murray's chambers at No. 5, King's Bench Walk Temple, in the year 1738. Born in 1705, Murray was still a young man when in 1738 he made his brilliant speech in behalf of Colonel Sloper, against whom Colley Cibber's rascally son had brought an action for crim. con. with his wife—the lovely actress who was the rival of Mrs. Clive. Amongst the many clients who were drawn to Murray by that speech, Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, was neither the least powerful nor the least distinguished. Her grace began by sending the rising advocate a general retainer, with a fee of a thousand guineas; of which sum he accepted only the two-hundredth part, explaining to the astonished duchess that "the professional fee, with a general retainer, could neither be less nor more than five guineas." If Murray had accepted the whole sum he would not have been overpaid for his trouble; for her grace persecuted him with calls at most unseasonable hours. On one occasion, returning to his chambers after "drinking champagne with the wits," he found the duchess's carriage and attendants on King's Bench Walk. A numerous crowd of footmen and link-bearers surrounded the coach; and when the barrister entered his chambers he encountered the mistress of that army of lackeys. "Young man," exclaimed the grand lady, eying the future Lord Mansfield with a look of warm displeasure, "if you mean to rise in the world, you must not sup out." On a subsequent night Sarah of Marlborough called without appointment at the same chambers, and waited till past midnight in the hope that she would see the lawyer ere she went to bed. But Murray being at an unusually late supper-party, did not return till her grace had departed in an over-powering rage. "I could not make out, sir, who she was," said Murray's clerk, describing her grace's appearance and manner, "for she would not tell me her name; but she swore so dreadfully that I am sure she must be a lady of quality."
Perhaps the Inns of Court may still shelter a few married ladies, who either from love of old-world ways, or from stern necessity, consent to dwell in their husbands' chambers. If such ladies can at the present time be found, the writer of this page would look for them in Gray's Inn—that straggling caravansary for the reception of money-lenders, Bohemians, and eccentric gentlemen—rather than in the other three Inns of Court, which have undoubtedly quite lost their old population of lady-residents. But from those three hospices the last of the ladies must have retreated at a comparatively recent date. Fifteen years since, when the writer of this book was a beardless undergraduate, he had the honor of knowing some married ladies, of good family and unblemished repute, who lived with their husbands in the Middle Temple. One of those ladies—the daughter of a country magistrate, the sister of a distinguished classic scholar—was the wife of a common law barrister who now holds a judicial appointment in one of our colonies. The women of her old home circle occasionally called on this young wife: but as they could not reach her quarters in Sycamore Court without attracting much unpleasant observation, their visits were not frequent. Living in a barrack of unwed men, that charming girl was surrounded by honest fellows who would have resented as an insult to themselves an impertinence offered to her. Still her life was abnormal, unnatural, deleterious; it was felt by all who cared for her that she ought not to be where she was; and when an appointment with a good income in a healthy and thriving colony was offered to her husband, all who knew her, and many who had never spoken to her, rejoiced at the intelligence. At the present time, in the far distant country which looks up to her as a personage of importance, this lady—not less exemplary as wife and mother than brilliant as a woman of society—takes pleasure in recalling the days when she was a prisoner in the Temple.
One of the last cases of married life in the Temple, that came before the public notice, was that of a barrister and his wife who incurred obloquy and punishment for their brutal conduct to a poor servant girl. No one would thank the writer for re-publishing the details of that nauseous illustration of the degradation to which it is possible for a gentleman and scholar to sink. But, however revolting, the case is not without interest for the reader who is curious about the social life of the Temple.
The portion of the Temple in which the old-world family life of the Inns held out the longest, is a clump of commodious houses lying between the Middle Temple Garden and Essex Street, Strand. Having their entrance-doors in Essex Street, these houses are, in fact, as private as the residences of any London quarter. The noise of the Strand reaches them, but their occupants are as secure from the impertinent gaze or unwelcome familiarities of law-students and barristers' clerks, as they would be if they lived at St. John's Wood. In Essex Street, on the eastern side, the legal families maintained their ground almost till yesterday. Fifteen years since the writer of this page used to be invited to dinners and dances in that street—dinners and dances which were attended by prosperous gentlefolk from the West End of the town. At that time he often waltzed in a drawing-room, the windows of which looked upon the spray of the fountain—at which Ruth Pinch loved to gaze when its jet resembled a wagoner's whip. How all old and precious things pass away! The dear old 'wagoner's whip' has been replaced by a pert, perky squirt that will never stir the heart or brain of a future Ruth.
[1] The scandalous state of Gray's Inn at this period is shown by the following passage in Dugdale's 'Origines:'—"In 23 Eliz. (30 Jan.) there was an order made that no laundress, nor women called victuallers, should thenceforth come into the gentlemen's chambers of this society, until they were full forty years of age, and not send their maid-servants, of what age soever, in the said gentlemen's chambers, upon penalty, for the first offence of him that should admit of any such, to be put out of Commons: and for the second, to be expelled the House." The stringency and severity of this order show a determination on the part of the authorities to cure the evil.
Chapter