Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 20.pdf/525

 THE GREEN BAG out lunatic in every mad-house and its dead in every church yard, which has its ruined suitor, with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress, borrowing and begging through the round of every man's acquain tance, which gives to moneyed might the means abundantly of wearying out the right; which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart: that there is not an hon orable man among its practitioners who would not give — who does not often give the warning "suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here." But an entire article could be written of the courts of Dickens as distinguished from his lawyers. On the whole he has displayed no particular leniency in dealing with mem bers of the profession, save possibly in the case of Mortimer Lightwood and Sydney Carton and we may query how far the latter should be considered as an exception. It has been claimed for Stryver's jackall that he is the noblest character in fiction. Be that as it may, his legal career certainly cannot be held up as a model to the rising generation. Even Perker would have ap peared in better light had he reiterated less frequently and fervently his admiration for the shyster practices of Mrs. Bardell's solicitors. In Stryver "stout, loud, red, bluff, and free from any drawback of delicacy," who "had a pushing way of shouldering himself morally and physically into companies and conversations that augured well for his shouldering himself up in life," we have the practitioner at the criminal bar drawn to -the life. Paralleled with Stryver is Jaggers in Great Expectations, a portrait perhaps better drawn. In the days when Dickens wrote it was a cardinal rule to spare no pains in describing the persons and person alities of the characters. Whether this is a better plan than to require the reader to draw his own inference from their acts I leave it to critics to judge. Painting in the detail, at least does not leave us in the uncertainty often painful, provoked by the impressionist. Thus the features of Jag-

gers are itemized. "He was prematurely bald on the top of his head, with bushy black eyebrows that wouldn't lie down but stood up bristling. His eyes were set very deep in his head and were disagreeably sharp and suspicious. He had a large watch chain and strong black dots where his beard and whiskers would have been if he had let them." This massive chain which no London thief would dare to take, completes a portrait not unlike that of the senior member of the late firm of Howe and Hum mel. And speaking of Jaggers brings up Wemmick whose mouth was like a slit in a post-office and whose predeliction was for portable property, chiefly mourning rings, therein somewhat resembling the senior member of that eminent firm Quirk, Gam mon & Snap; the Wemmick of Walworth and of the city, whose marriage to Miss Skiffins is one of the most delightfully sketched scenes in the book. If prominence has seemingly been given to the criminal branch of the profession in two of the novels already referred to, the Sage of Gadshill more than makes good any deficiency when we come to Bleak House. Here appear Messrs. Kenge and Carboy, Mr. Tangle and his "eighteen learned friends each armed with a little summary of eighteen hundred sheets " who bobbed up "like eighteen hammers on a pianoforte " and then dropped into obscur ity, Mr. Vholes, he of the aged father in the Vale of Taunton and last but chief of all the great Mr. Tulkinghorn, "an oyster of the old school whom nobody can open." In Lincoln's Inn he lived, "a large house formerly a house of state ... let off in sets of chambers now, and in these shrunken fragments of its greatness lawyers lie like maggots in nuts." Not a very flattering comparison certainly. Later on there is presented the picture of Allegory "in Roman helmet and celestial linen" pointing to the lifeless form. In Pickwick Papers are lawyers of a radi cally different type. First and foremost