Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 24.pdf/420

 The Lawyers of Dickens-Land the stationer's, expense being no con sideration. The middle-aged man in the pew knows scarcely more of the affairs of the peerage than any crossingsweeper in Holborn. Mr. Tulkinghorn very rarely tells him anything more explicit than "I shall be back presently." It is around this lawyer that the complicated plot of "Bleak House" re volves. Being the family lawyer of Sir Leicester Dedlock, he accidentally gets a clue which makes him suspicious of the past of Lady Dedlock. He then pursues her doggedly and unwearyingly, with no touch of compunction, remorse or pity; while her beauty, and all the state and brilliancy surrounding her, only give him greater zest for what he is set upon and make him the more inflexible in it. Cold, cruel and im movable in what he has made it his duty to unravel, he determines to permit nothing to remain hidden from him in ground where he has secretly burrowed all his life. Despising the splendor of which he is a distant beam, he treasures up slights and offenses in (he haughty affability of his gorgeous clients, and scents and ferrets out the scandal in her ladyship's life. It results in driving her to a shameful and pitiful death and indirectly causes his own murder. The masterly manner in which Dickens un ravels the threads of the plot through the instrumentality of Mr. Tulkinghorn and his detective, Mr. Bucket, and the human interest he gives to the other characters in this novel — the Smallweeds, Guppy, Jo, Mr. George, the Bagnets, the Snagsbys, Krook, Mr. Jobling and Hortense, the maid, who are created for the purpose of working out the minor details and of completing the chain of circumstantial evidence against Lady Dedlock — are a striking proof of the remarkable genius of the author.

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A good type of the "criminal lawyer," as he is sometimes called, and his manner of dealing with the degenerates among mankind who go to make up the client&le of this branch of the pro fession, is to be found in Mr. Jaggers, in "Great Expectations." He is Pip's guardian, or intermediary, in dispensing the bounty of Pip's unknown bene factor — a convict client of Mr. Jaggers whom he had defended on a capital charge and got off with transportation .to the English penal colony in New South Wales. Mr. Jaggers was a burly man of an exceedingly dark complexion, with an exceedingly large head and a correspondingly large hand. He was prematurely bald on the top of his head, and had bushy black eyebrows that wouldn't lie down but stood up bristling. His black eyes were set deep in his head, and were disagreeably sharp and suspicious. He had a large watch-chain and a gold repeater watch, worth one hundred pounds. Wemmick tells Pip, anent this watch, that there are about seven hundred thieves in town who know all about that watch; that there's not a man, a woman or a child among them who wouldn't identify the smallest link in the chain, and drop it as if it was red-hot, if inveigled into touching it. He had strong black dots where his beard and whiskers would have been if he had let them, and an air of authority not to be disputed, and a manner expressive of knowing something secretly disparaging about everyone, if he only chose to mention it. He had the habit of biting the side of his great forefinger as he bullied and cross-exam ined witnesses, and he always insisted upon the categorical answer "Yes" or "No" to his questions. He cross-exam ined everything, everybody — his clients, his food, his wine, his glass, his books; and his entire conversation was ever